The Joshua Victor Theory

            Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today is a joyful day, a day to praise God and sing aloud; to give all the glory to God alone for His great salvation! God, by His grace and favor, has blessed Emmanuel Lutheran Church, with 50 years of sharing the Good News of Jesus on this island of Maui. 50 years of worshipping together as a family in Christ, 50 years of baptisms into God’s family, 50 years of prayer and intercession for this community, 50 years of preaching Jesus Christ. So many blessings have developed from the work of the Holy Spirit among us. Not to our credit, but to God’s credit, to His glory alone. 50 years of sharing the Gospel Truth that we are loved by God, we are forgiven freely by Jesus Christ as a gift, and that Jesus has called and blessed us into service toward others.           ...

This month we have focused on themes of the Lutheran Reformation, leading up to today, the 499 th year anniversary of the Reformation of the Christian Church. We’ve touched on themes of repentance and forgiveness, Law and Gospel, the hiddenness of God, and being justified by faith. Luther and his colleagues, usually called the Reformers, made important contributions to all of these Biblical teachings, bringing clarity and returning the church to the fountain from which these teachings flow—the Bible—God’s Word. Having this rich spiritual heritage, with next years’ milestone of 500 years, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the truth is a powerful weapon against error and the enslavement of sin, as Jesus teaches in today’s reading. But on the other hand, it’s dangerously easy to fall into that same sense of special privilege that Jesus’ confronts in the reading. The Jews had a rich spiritual heritage, and they claimed their ancestry back to Abraham, and they took pride t...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. During this month of October, we’re going to celebrate again a “Reformation Month” where we’ll take the opportunity to highlight some themes of our Lutheran Reformation heritage. We’re closing in on the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, which falls on October 31 st , 2017. The Reformation played a large role in returning the church to the foundational authority of the Bible, and the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. Today we look to the theme of “righteousness” to consider what Paul was teaching about it in Philippians, and how that informs our Lutheran understanding of our relationship to God. Imagine for a moment that you were the most successful person in your field—whatever that may be. Maybe it was that you were the employee of the year, or the world’s best mom, or the winner of the beauty pageant, or the valedictorian of your graduating class, o...