The Joshua Victor Theory

A sermon from  Rev. Dr. James I. Lamb, Executive Director of Lutherans For Life On his death bed, an elderly pastor dictated a letter to his last remaining seminary classmate. He told his wife to write, “I am soon to leave the land of the living and will be with the dying.” But after a pause he said, “No, no! Change that. I am soon to leave the land of the dying and will be with the living.” As this pastor understood, we all in one sense live with dying. We all live in a dying, sin-broken world and in dying, sin-broken bodies. Sin pays its wages of death. Unless the Lord returns, we will all receive those wages. No matter how robust we might be right now, no matter what advances might be made in medical science, death awaits us all. We all live with dying. But we live with dying in other ways too. We live with dying if we have an illness that cannot be cured and will eventually take our life. We live with dying when we care for someone with such an illness. We live wit...

Sermon Outline: ·          Season of Epiphany: season of light, from the illumination of the place of the Christ child’s birth to His blinding transfiguration on the mountaintop. Epiphanios—shining out, manifest, revealed. All point to Jesus as the Son of God in human flesh, God in man made manifest . Today’s Gospel serves the same purpose—dramatically manifest or shine out Jesus’ glory. ·          Tomorrow: president “inaugurated”—oaths and new term of office. Jesus had an “inauguration” of a very different sort: baptism—the Father announced: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased”; public ministry began. Likewise, wedding at Cana is the “inaugural miracle”. Fitting that it was also at the inauguration of a new marriage, as Jesus would frequently use marriage, and particularly the wedding banquet as a picture of the heavenly banquet of believers united to Him by faith. Jesus had now “com...