“A love that left people alone in their guilt would not be real love.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1990, 1995), 217. Bonhoeffer was speaking about the love Christ had for humanity. By taking on human …
Author: Matt
What happens when they are touched by the breath of God?
From its inception nearly two centuries ago, my church body, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod was known to be a church body that, despite all the caricatures (negative or positive, rightly or wrongly attributed) was a church body that had been, to borrow from a father in the faith, grabbed by a book that would not …
Continue reading What happens when they are touched by the breath of God?
A New Year; An Old Prayer
Advent begins on Sunday and I'm ready for it—not just professionally but personally. I love the hymnody, I love the collects, and I love that the church pulls me out of the cultural moment through a season that can be both penitential and joyful, anticipatory and nostalgic, rooted in what was and confident of what …
Asking Paul’s Question to the LCMS
Videos are dropping. (See this one and this one). Statements are being sent out (See this one). Times are fun in the LCMS. The topic of the day is pastoral formation and the restrictions regarding the SMP route to ministry. This is insider language and indeed the struggle is internal to the LCMS. I supervise …
The Kingdom Comes
The other week I buried a woman. She was advanced in years, in her mid nineties, and her death did not come as a surprise or a shock. At the close of the service I spoke two stanzas of a hymn I learned sitting in the pews of Lent midweek worship services. There was a …
A Lutheran of Conviction
I once heard someone say they are a Lutheran of conviction. I didn’t know what they meant then but I know what I might mean if I were to say it now. I would mean it in the way that Hermann Sasse once spoke about Lutheran identity. “We are faithful to this church, not because …
Good Lord, deliver us…
It’s been one week since… It’s been one week since I turned forty. A true statement but likely not the way anyone finished that sentence, including myself. It’s been one week since someone bearing the image of God murdered another. Even that doesn’t narrow it down but I’m sure in the minds of many the …
Never Forget
Never forget. Those words have been associated with this date on the calendar for over two decades. Like many others, I remember where I was, what I was doing, and what the days following the incident felt like. Those days were different than the days today. Then it felt like people pulled together—albeit in opposition …
Sharing the Southwell
The now sainted Anthony Thiselton gave a lecture back in the 1980s when he assumed a new post as Principal of St. John's, Nottingham dealing with exegesis and the posture of the interpreter (you can read the lecture here). I've often thought about that lecture in part because of one line in particular: Too often …
Troubled Hearts
Eight years ago my wife and I were expecting our second child. We went in for a gender scan at 18 weeks and they couldn’t find a heartbeat. To say that we were gutted is an understatement. Some may not see the death of a child in the womb as equivalent to the death of …
an occasional theologian 