Reformation
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We must start with love
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6 min read
We hear all these other things about who we are and what we’re supposed to be, but there is one place we all must start: Love beyond ourselves. Of all things, we must start with love. It is our hermeneutic, our fundamental. Our North Star and compass. Love is the start and our predictor. Most…
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Love Against the Wind
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8 min read
Why we know to love, but not how or when. We often think of love as the antidote to chaos, but it isn’t so related to the chaos. Proper 25A | Matthew 22:34-46 This year, we gathered at the river for Convention. Down in Jeffersonville and New Albany, just across the Ohio River from Louisville,…
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A Common Sin
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4 min read
29. To fulfill the missio dei, Catholics and Protestants must repent of their common sin to power. Martin Luther saw something in the church others couldn’t. He found a flaw, running through the foundation of the faith. A flaw which influenced both the theology and practice of the church. Luther’s discovery was simple: that the common belief…
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Our Common Need
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6 min read
28. To repress our common need for the sake of personal piety is no lesser a sin of power when reformed. It is impossible to pin all of the Great Reformation on a moment. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses did not start or embody the Reformation in its totality. But they named a need unaddressed by the…
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A Faith Which Imprisons God
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5 min read
17. By faith alone imprisons a God of redemption without transformation or enfleshed mission. I never really understood the idea of justification by faith alone. At one level it made sense, I guess. Reading Paul alongside the Jesus revealed in the gospels, it sorta sounds like that. Believe in Jesus and you’re good. And as…
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Not Faith Alone
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6 min read
13. The indulgences Luther despised were no more dangerous to souls than elevating faith alone. Nearly 500 years ago, Martin Luther (may have) pounded a piece of paper to a church door. A mighty symbolic act of strangely low significance. Imagine hammering your own theses on your church door. It might spark a local stir,…