Pious Lutheran

Christ Healeth the Dropsical Man , Emile Rouargue, 1795-1865 The sabbath is a day of healing The Sabbath in ancient Israel was a day of healing when they:  rested from work and  assembled to hear God’s Word. The Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ, but its fruits of rest and assembly continue today. When you are ill or injured one of the most important parts of healing is rest. We understand this instinctually since it’s part of our daily rhythm of life: waking and sleeping. God created this daily rhythm by creating night and day. God also created a weekly day of rest every 7th day, called the Sabbath day. Rest is so important that God even gave the ground rest every 7th year, when He instructed the Israelites to let the land lie fallow. From what I understand this was an agricultural practice up until the last few hundred years since it was considered good for the soil.  The point of all of this is that God created the Sabbath day of rest to be a day of healing. Jesus’ questi...

Adoration of the Trinity,  Vincent Lopez Portana, 1791-1792 Unity in Christ What is Christian unity? Exposing false unity Maintaining true unity St. Paul urges us “ to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called… eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ” Unity is a word which gets used quite frequently. Churches and hospitals have it in their name, our country is known as the United States, and Jesus Himself prayed for unity in His high priestly prayer. But for all of this talk about unity, do we know what it means and entails, do we know what it looks like? Oftentimes the term unity is bandied about, but what we’re united in is seldom identified clearly.  For the Christian our unity is in Christ. Today let us clearly define and identify Christian unity. This way we might expose false unity, which isn’t Christian or healthy. So that finally we might learn how to maintain true unity amongst ourselves. So, what is Christian unity?...

Jesus said, “ Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. ” St. Paul teaches us something similar: “ I … urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness. ” Humility, you might say, is somewhat of a Christian virtue. Let us, therefore, humble ourselves beneath the cross of Christ, so that God may raise us from the pit of the grave to the glory of heaven. Jesus, while having supper with the pharisees, taught them (as He teaches us) about humility by telling a parable: “ When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, mo...

The Pharisees were proud people. “ One Sabbath, when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. ” This Sabbath dinner wasn’t your typical meal, it was a feast! The pharisees would gather together on the Sabbath in order to gorge themselves at this rather pretentious dinner.  Jesus noticed that the pride of the pharisees was rather notable, “ when He noticed how they chose the places of honor. ” A great deal of thought went into where you sat because it was a symbol of how important you were. So you certainly didn’t want to sit with the losers and be numbered among them, but neither did you want to sit higher than you deserve, since you could get knocked down and told to sit lower, which would be embarrassing. So you needed to evaluate yourself in order to determine how great you are and which place of honor you deserve. These pharisees were so distracted by their pride and seating arrangement, they were so distracted by watch...

“ 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...