Pious Lutheran

Merry Michaelmas! Today is one my favorite celebrations in the church year: St. Michael and All Angels, otherwise known as Michaelmas! It’s like Christmas in that the focus is on Jesus, but instead of focusing on a little baby in a manger, we get to focus on the defeat of Satan by the archangel Michael! So our focus for today is that our Lord defends us by means of His angels who are both messengers and warriors. Angels are a thoroughly fascinating topic and have been the interest of many people who aren’t even Christian. Generally, angels are depicted as fat little naked cherub babies. Or we imagine them as just regular people, thinking that anyone we see could be an angel and we don’t even know it.  These images of angels we have in our minds don’t typically come from scripture, but they come from popular TV shows like Touched By An Angel or books about angels or art about angels or people’s “visions” of angels they claim to have had. But those sources aren’t accurate; so ca...

“ For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. ” With these words Christ instructs us to regard humility as far more valuable than we typically do. Because we are united as one body in Christ, we are to live in humble service to each other, just as Christ lives in humble service to us.  We’ve already heard Jesus instruct us to be humble towards outsiders when He told the parable of the good samaritan. But here in today’s lesson Jesus teaches us to be humble in our relationships with other Christians. Rather than glorifying ourselves, we ought to humble ourselves. These words of Jesus are spoken to the congregations of Christians who sit in the pews every week without fail. These words are for us. Humility is a difficult concept to grasp because it’s so far outside of how we regularly think and operate as a society. In athletics the team that scores more points, has a stronger defense, runs faster, hits harder, makes fewer mistake...

“ As Jesus drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. ” What a sad situation. A woman who had already lost her husband to death and was a widow, with but one surviving son, now loses her only beloved son to death as well. You can probably imagine the grief this woman experienced, the tears streaming down her face as she walked slouching over behind the open faced box holding her son’s lifeless body, sobs occasionally overcoming her composure.  The death of children is nothing unusual, but the pain of going through such a thing is still heart wrenching. Whether the child is 40 years, 4 years, 4 weeks, or unborn. Whether it was a slow and painful death, or fast and unexpected, its pain is impossible to describe with words. It’s a pain many of you have experienced.  That numbingly empty pain of death can feel so lonesome. King David, at the news of the death of his wicked son Absalom, ...

In Jesus’ sermon on the mount, from which today’s Gospel lesson is taken, Jesus calls Christians out of the world from their worldly sinful ways of life, to a holy life in Christ. So Jesus calls us out the worldly ways of anger, lust, divorce, retaliation, hatred, greed, etc. But here Jesus calls us Christians out of the world of anxious worry to life in Christ where we seek first the kingdom of God. Jesus says to us: “ do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. ” So Jesus gently directs our attention to both birds and flowers. “ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ” With this illustration, Jesus invites you to imagine sparrows and robins driving little tractors. Bluebirds out there sowing the seed in their green or red tractors, the finches sitting behind the wheel of a combine bringin...

“ As Jesus entered a village, He was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. ” What faith these ten lepers exhibited! They were lepers and as such they weren’t allowed into close proximity to other people, therefore they wouldn’t have ever had the opportunity to meet Jesus and hear Him preach like others had been able. They’d only heard rumors of rumors, but still their faith urged them onwards towards the Christ.  “ Have mercy on us ” they cried out. This wasn’t the typical cry of a leper who was required by law to cry out that they were unclean so as to prevent anyone from coming near to them and being infected with their contagious disease. Instead, they drew near to Jesus, but at a distance, and pleaded for mercy.  What Jesus did next was also unexpected. If you’re ill and you beg someone for mercy, you expect them to alleviate your illness. But Jesus instead directed them to “ Go and show yourse...