Letters On The Page

Video of Divine Service at St. Luke, Rensselaer Fourth Sunday after Pentecost   Jeremiah 20:7-13  Romans 6:12-23  Matthew 10:5a, 21-33 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.  At the bottom of the hymns in our hymnal, the authors and composers of the hymn is cited. The explanation of who is the author of today’s Hymn of the Day (LSB 659 Lord of our Life) is misleading. According to Professor Robert Kolb, Matthaus Apelles von Lowenstern (1594-1648) wrote a hymn text that Philip Pusey (1799-1855), two hundred years later, very much liked. Pusey liked it so much that he translated it and re-wrote the hymn for his situation in England. Apparently, enough of the original hymn survives that it must ultimately be attributed to Lowenstern.  Both men, in different centuries, countries, cultures, and languages, found themselves in the midst of strife and threats from Satan and the world.  Lowenstern is from Silesia. He and his fami...

  Video of Divine Service at St. Luke, Rensselaer Third Sunday after Pentecost  Exodus 19:2-8   Romans 5:6-15   Matthew 9:35-10:8 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 1:2) Amen.  The Apostle Paul uses three words to describe our natural state before God: weak, sinners, enemies. The word weak can refer to any number of things, but in this context it certainly does not mean lack of physical strength or lack of mental acuity. A man that is strong as an ox can be weak. A person with a high IQ and is recognized as brilliant can be weak.  Weak refers to poor choices. Why can the strong man not resist the lure of drinking alcohol to excess? Shouldn’t a lesson be learned after the first hang-over? Why can’t the one with the high IQ resist the urge to return to the casino and once again lose all the family’s money? Shouldn’t he be intelligent enough to learn after the first fiasco that he cannot outsmart chance? Yes, lesso...

The Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 5A)  Hosea 5:15-6:6    Romans 4:13-25   Matthew 9:9-13 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. If you were to write an autobiography, what stories would you tell on yourself? Would you tell everything? Would you want to present yourself in the most flattering light possible? Or would you balance the amazing with the mundane and occasional embarrassing? I ask these questions because St. Matthew, the Apostle, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit includes an autobiographical section in his story of Jesus. The five verses that are today’s gospel reading reveal how Matthew sees himself. What he chooses to reveal to us tells us something about what he sees in Jesus.  Matthew is a tax collector. In the gospels, when a tax collector is referenced the word “sinner” is shortly to follow. There are reasons for this. Matthew is sitting at the tax booth in Capernaum, the city in the r...

Video of Divine Service at St. Luke, Rensselaer   The Festival of the Holy Trinity      Genesis 1:1-2:4a   Acts 2:14a, 22-36   Matthew 28:16-20 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.  The festival of the Holy Trinity is the only feast of the church that is based solely on a doctrine. If there is a Sunday in which the congregation can leave more confused than when they came in, this is the Sunday. The reason for the confusion is because words do not adequately express the mystery of God. Nor do our finite minds, have the capacity to understand the mystery of His being. In God’s infinite wisdom, God chooses to tell us only what we need to know for our salvation. The essential components of what is revealed to us in the Bible are articulated in the three summaries of faith that we use to confess our faith together: The Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds.  What God chooses to reveal about Himself is that...

Video of Divine Service at St. Luke, Rensselaer, IN Day of Pentecost   Numbers 11:24-30   Acts 1:1-21   John 7:37-39 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. (2 Cor 1:2)  If we lived and worked in Jerusalem in AD 33, even if we did not keep a daily calendar, we would know that the feast of Pentecost was in process. Pilgrims from across the Empire came and went regularly throughout the year in Jerusalem. The faithful came to the city to fulfill their observance of the Mosaic law and to participate in different festivals. The multi-day feast that culminated in the night of the Passover feast affected everyone. But, Pentecost is the farmer’s festival. Natives would note that there was a surge of farmers traveling the streets. During the feast of Pentecost farmers came to the temple with a sample of their first fruits of harvest.  The male head of the family would put a sample of the farms first fruits into a basket, bring ...

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