Groucho Marx once quipped to a priest, "I want to thank you for all the joy you've taken out of this world." Is there joy and anticipation when you think about church? The Psalmist thought so as the group of pilgrims was approaching the temple in Jerusalem. 1 I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” (Psalm 122) Apparently the church in Rome had the purist Christians who tried to do everything right and tried to get everyone else to do everything right, according...

People in mainline Christian churches don’t talk about the Holy Spirit very much. This is puzzling because we, according to our creeds, consider the Holy Spirit to be co-equal to the Father and the Son. This got me thinking—Why don’t we talk about the Holy Spirit more? Let me suggest that it is because the Holy Spirit points to the Son and the Son points to the Father. Let me further suggest that Lutherans mention Jesus more than the other two because of our focus on the grace of God that we...

We like joy and happiness. We certainly try to avoid pain and suffering. We do whatever we can to avoid pain and suffering. And so we like to jump from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and avoid the negative vibes of Good Friday and all of the pain and suffering that is expressed there. However, without Good Friday there is no Easter Sunday. There can be no resurrection without a death. Some religions try to suggest that Jesus didn’t really die. If that were the case, then Jesus would never...