The Joshua Victor Theory

  Life Sunday Sermon 2021 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 “From Invisible to Indispensable” Rev. Michael W. Salemink, Lutherans For Life   (lightly revised by Pastor Joshua Schneider for use on 1/17/21)   So, you have these two tiny organs in your ears. Sort of a sixth sense. The utricle senses your head’s horizontal motion, and the saccule detects its vertical movement. They live inside the mystical semicircular canals of the vestibular labyrinth. The magic happens using otoliths—literally ear stones—microscopic crystals of calcium carbonate, the stuff that makes up chalk, stalagmites, seashells, and Tums. Curious, because when the otoliths act up, you can get quite queasy. When your cranium moves, the otoliths lag a little behind for a minute and tickle miniature hairs. Your brain interprets these signals as a shift in position and compares the input from both ears with the data from your eyes to define direction and orientation. Experts call it proprioception or kines...

By God’s grace may I make the Word of God fully known to you, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints…this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim! (Colossians 1:25b-26, 27b-28a). In today’s Gospel Joseph and Mary are finishing their first visit with baby Jesus to the Temple, and performing the duties required by the Law. For those who keep track of dates and time, today we observe the 7 th day of Christmas, and tomorrow would be the 8 th —the day we remember Jesus’ circumcision and naming. The parting gift Joseph and Mary receive is the marvelous words and blessings of Simeon and Anna, two elderly believers who honor the infant Jesus and bless Joseph and Mary in their new responsibility of parenting Jesus. Age and youth are beautifully positioned side by side here, with aged Simeon and Anna as models of faith and hope in the promised Savior, and how they joyfully received the baby Jesus and thanked and praised God f...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul uses the analogy of a tent to describe life in our earthly body. Not everybody loves tent camping, but for many it’s a fun, summer family activity. But even die-hard campers—have stories of the frustrations of tent-living—floods and leaks, mosquitoes, cooking problems or food issues. And mostly we can laugh about them—because tent living is usually no more than a temporary vacation for us. But for Old Testament Israel, for 40 years, a whole generation of hundreds of thousands of people lived in tents on the move. Generations of Israelites afterward were to commemorate this in the Feast of Tabernacles or “Tents”, when they would live in a tent for one week, as a reminder of how God preserved Israel through the 40 years in the wilderness. The 40 years was no “fun camping trip” that could be cut short when things got uncomfortable and they wanted to head home early for the comforts of a...

The readings I selected and preached on for this midweek service are: Psalm 9, spoken responsively; Psalm 25; Luke 12:4-7; and Isaiah 49:15-16.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. In the past couple weeks we’ve seen how God’s people have a sinful tendency to forget both God and His Word, and how God remembers His people and forgets our sins. We’ve seen how great the cost is to forget God, or to live with the illusion that God forgets or ignores our sins when we think we’re getting away with it, but how God is patient to call us back to Him, and that when we repent, He does truly forget our sins. No doubt most of us have unintentionally forgotten countless things. Our human memory is not so good. But on some occasions when we wish we could forget—we find it nearly impossible to forget something on purpose. Perhaps bad memories we wouldn’t wish to keep—physical, mental, and emotional scars in our life. And then there are the good memorie...