Pious Lutheran

The Baptism of Christ,  Andrea del Verrocchio & Leonardo da Vinci, 1470-1475 A blessed Epiphany to you dear friends in Christ! On Christmas we commemorated the birth of Jesus and we celebrated that God became man, that the Son took on our human flesh. Jesus is truly man. He was born as a baby, He grew to be a boy and a full-grown man, He ate, drank, slept, breathed, walked, suffered, died all because He is fully human. That’s the great joy of Christmas, that Jesus became man for our sake to live and die and rise as one of us, so that we would live in Him. On Epiphany, which was on Thursday, and we’re still in the season of Epiphany, we celebrate that Jesus is not only man, but that He’s truly God! Even an atheist can believe that Jesus was a real man who lived in ancient Palestine, a man who travelled around and taught great wisdom. But the Christian faith is that Jesus isn’t only a real man, but that He’s also the true God! The visit of the gentile magi from the east who follo...

“ Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” ” This really is a crazy scene and I think we understand John’s confusion. Here stands the Savior of the World, Jesus, the Son of God, the One John has been preaching about and pointing everyone towards! But now that Messiah comes to John to be baptized.  What in the world!? It should be the other way around! John stops Jesus, and exclaims: “I need to be baptized by You!” John’s got a good point! Jesus is the greater one and John is the lesser one, John should be submitting to Jesus, not Jesus to John. But Jesus calmly answers the confused John, saying: “ “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” ” It’s entirely necessary that Jesus entered into those baptismal waters. If He had not been baptized, His righteousness would’ve been inaccessible to us, and none of us would be...

“ For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ” Paul originally spoke those words to the Christians in Corinth, and those same words could easily be spoken about us American Christians, us Iowa Christians, today. Now I highly suspect that the church at Corinth didn’t take too kindly to these words of admonition.  Afterall, Paul just called them unwise, unpowerful, and of ignoble birth. Then I just said the same thing to you. Those words are kind of offensive, aren’t they. Who says we’re not wise according to worldly standards? Statistically speaking, American Christians are mostly middle to upper middle-class, which means we’re better educated and make wiser financial decisions than the average person. Who says we’re not powerful? We have influence and power over our local governments! Who says we are of ignoble birth? We’re Americans! We the people are noble simply by that f...