Pious Lutheran

  At first glance Palm Sunday appears to be a very confused day. It moves very rapidly from the grand procession singing “All glory, laud, and honor to you redeemer King,” to a 15 minute reading of Christ’s passion from Matthew. The two elements seemingly stand in stark contrast to one another. In order to make sense of all this we mustn't see these two events in isolation, but both within the context of Holy Week. Jesus did indeed enter with a grand procession and singing, as a King, One who rides on in majesty to defeat an enemy. He does come as King, with pomp and show, but the grand purpose of His entrance was to die. Jesus rides on in majesty to die. Jesus’ entrance on Palm Sunday is majestic and beautiful. “ Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! H...

Miracles are interesting. Although why Jesus performed miracles isn’t a mystery. It’s abundantly clear from Jesus’ own words that His miracles reveal Him to be the Son of God. “The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me.” “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Jesus performed miracles in order to reveal Himself as the Christ, the Son of God. His performance of miracles show us that He and the Father are one. The Greek language helps us to understand this point. One of the words translated in the Bible as “miracle” is σημεῖον which also means “sign.” Thus, the miracles Jesus performed were signs which revealed Him as the Christ; the signs pointed to Jesus’ true identity as God. To illustrate, when you come across a sign on the road “Workers Ahead,” the sign reveals the identity of the peo...

In the Old Testament sacrificial system at the temple, God’s people were kept distant from Him. Old Testament worship centered around the temple. But now in the New Testament era, God’s Word and God’s house have been opened to us through the sacrificial death of Jesus.  The Old Testament temple consisted of three distinct areas: the courtyard, the holy place, and the holy of holies. Anyone and everyone could enter into the courtyard, Jew and non-Jew alike. But the holy place was only accessible to the priests in the lineage of Aaron. “ The priests go regularly into this section, performing their ritual duties. ” Daily the priests would offer various sacrifices for the people. Into the holy of holies however, “ only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. ” Inside of the holy of holies was the ark of the covenant which carried Aaron’s staff, the two tablets of the law, and m...

“ As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ” This is the same type of thinking we’re tempted towards also. Bad things happen, and we just assume that those bad things are happening because someone sinned. Jesus answered quite clearly, “ It was not that this man sinned, or his parents. ”  Now, to be entirely fair, it’s easy to see how we fall into this line of thinking. Afterall, there are often earthly consequences for sinning. For example, we Americans tend to live very unhealthy lifestyles, eating and drinking to excess, and as a consequence we tend to be more susceptible to viral illnesses and we develop heart, lung, joint, and blood problems.  It’s also true that the fruit of our sin is death. We have physical, mental, and emotional problems because we are sinners. We are all going to die as a result of our sin. Because all sin, all therefore die. Nevertheless, it’s...

The small catechism teaches us: “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.” God provides for the needs of all people. The Lord’s providence is always sufficient. Even when we seemingly go without and suffer starvation and deprivation, the Lord is providing us with what we need. Thus our prayer, “give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer to receive God’s providence with thankful hearts, instead of grumbling hearts. A beautiful illustration of this is in the captivating tale of Robinson Crusoe. As a young man he was dissatisfied with his lot in life, so he set out to sea to seek his fortune. Time and again during his pursuit of wealth, he would find it and disaster would strike. Eventually, he was shipwrecked and washed ashore a deserted island, where he lived alone for nearly 30 years. During his time as a castaway, he ...

  Lent is a time of spiritual renewal. For Christians even just a couple hundred years ago, a large part of this spiritual renewal was fasting and other bodily preparations. During Lent it was standard to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, particularly to fast of richer and finer foods, such as meat. So it’s somewhat telling of our culture today in which, instead of fasting on Fridays, we feast on Fridays with fish fries and gorge ourselves on greasy fried foods.  Nevertheless, for many of the past centuries, Lent was a time of fasting. So hearing this reading on one of the fast days would’ve been a reminder that our spiritual renewal doesn’t come from what we do or don’t put into the body, but what comes out of our body. Today we are reminded that true sin and true faith come from the heart. “ It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person… Whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled. But ...

  The readings for Oculi Sunday, today, were presumably chosen by the early church fathers because this would have been the Sunday when the catechumens renounced the devil and the world. In the early church nearly everyone was a convert to Christianity, and over the course of a year the learners, called catechumens, prepared for baptism (which took place at the Easter vigil) by learning the faith.  This would have been the Sunday when the catechumens were given the chance, before baptism and becoming Christian, to go back to their old ways of life. Once they became Christian, they were often rejected by the world, including their own families. So if they were going to be baptized, they had to be willing to renounce the devil, just as we do in our baptisms: “Do you renounce the devil? Do you renounce all his works? Do you renounce all his ways?” Because as Jesus teaches us today, there’s only two camps. We’re either in the kingdom of Satan, or the kingdom of God. As Jesus says,...

  Jesus was very explicit about what it was that He came to do. “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day. ” He is even very explicit about what His death and resurrection are to accomplish: “ The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. ” Christ has ransomed us from our slavery to Satan, so that we may be lifted up to heaven and here on earth serve one another. Every aspect of Jesus’ death that He foretold came to pass. As we listen to the reading of the Passion account, which is a combination of all four Gospels, we see very plainly that it all happened just as He said. Jesus indeed went up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; on Maundy Thursday He was delivered over to the chief priests and scribes who condemned him to de...