Pious Lutheran

The Miracle of the Five Loaves and Two Fish, Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1472-1553 Sometimes we doubt God’s providence. Over the past year and a half for example, there have been ample opportunities to worry. A contagious virus and tyrannical rulers were just the beginning. Now recently there are various economic concerns: we have obviously high inflation since the cost of everything is going up and yet our investments have pitiful interest rates. So we’re losing our wealth, and on a fixed income especially, that’s no good. Those things are really just the tip of the iceberg of all of the things to worry about. I’m sure each one of us has our own set of concerns and worries. So it’s a good thing we’re all in church today and can listen to Jesus address these worries. “ In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have ...

Moses Descends from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments , Ferdinand Bol, 1662                “ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ” What does it mean to be righteous? That’s the question we’ll be answering today. Many people, including the scribes and Pharisees and most people in our day, view righteousness merely in terms of outward civil righteousness; doing the right things in the eyes of the world. But Jesus goes a step further, and explains that righteousness is not just a matter of outward actions, but ultimately is an inward spiritual matter of the heart. The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was an outward civil righteousness. Now, to be clear, it’s not necessarily wrong to be outwardly righteous. This outward civil righteousness is a part of natural law written on the hearts of all mankind. It’s common sense, do unto others as you w...

Miraculous Draught of Fishes , Jacopo Bassano, 1545 “And when Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”” Since the Covid crisis, the church in North America has shrunk; we’ve gotten smaller. Folks smarter than me estimate we’ve fast-forwarded 10-15 years of church shrinkage virtually overnight. Though this shrinking is nothing new: for the past 50 years the church in North America has been steadily and dramatically shrinking. It’s been well over a decade that many of our congregations have formed dual parishes, including our own. Experiencing this causes us panic and fear. “We’ve got to do something,” we exclaim! “We’ve got to stop the shrinking! We must grow the church!” So we paid Church Growth “professionals” to tell us what to do. However those professionals were no more than Mad Men, Madison Avenue men; they...