The Joshua Victor Theory

Who is Jesus? That’s the most important question that we can ever ask, and should be asking this Christmas. We’ll find the answer in reflecting on God’s Christmas gift to us tonight: the Gift of Two Names—Jesus and Immanuel. Those two names will help tell us Who is Jesus? Matthew 1 is Jesus’ genealogy. His earthly family tree. A genealogy has a rather monotonous rhythm: “so and so the father of so and so the father of so and so…” and so on, down through all the names. But there are a couple of key places where the cadence is broken, like this one: “ Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.   The cadence doesn’t end with the predictable “Joseph, the father of Jesus”—because J esus is not the son of Joseph, but as the angel told them, He would be the Son of God. The Virgin birth! Jesus the Son of God, the Son of Mary. Joseph, her betrothed (legal) husband is only Jesus’ adoptive father , not his natural father; the relatio...

** a little side note for those who pay attention to these things...I've moved back to the 3 year lectionary of readings. ** Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. John the Baptist is our familiar Advent messenger, hailing the coming of Jesus. John preached a fiery message in the wilderness, calling people to repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Crowds of people turned out to hear him, but he rebuked them as a “ brood of vipers…fleeing the wrath to come .” If John the Baptist were a visiting preacher at ELC, how would we respond to his sharp call to repentance? Pride or defensiveness? Close our ears or turn away? Alternatively, we could respond like some did to John, with the question, “ Teacher, what shall we do ?” A very good question. How do we respond to the call of repentance? What is repentance, and how do we bear fruits in keeping with repentance? Metanoia is the Greek word for repentance here. It  ...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Although 2,700 years is quite a long shot from “forever”—it is still a respectable distance from which we can see and recognize the enduring power and comfort of God’s word, which stands forever. 2,700 years ago, the prophet Isaiah wrote these words of comfort in Isaiah 40, which still “speak to our heart” today. They speak of a double comfort for all that God’s people have suffered for their sins. The passage also speaks of John the Baptist as the herald who would announce the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, the Lord who would traverse the wilderness and reveal His glory to us. The Word of the Lord stands forever, bringing a message of solid comfort and hope, across the centuries, despite all the changes and chances of life while several dozens of generations have flourished and then withered away like the flowers and grasses of the field. In human life, whenever we extend a gesture of comfort—it logically follo...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. As we’ve gone through the chapters of Mark these last weeks, it continues to hit me how the experiences of the community in Jesus’ day mirrors in many ways our present day world. Even the grisly executions done by ISIS echo and multiply the violent death of John the Baptist for standing for the truth. This Gospel reading is marked by rejection and misidentification of Jesus—so that right from the first verse, King Herod and the community are mistaking the miracles and works of Jesus and His disciples, for John the Baptist risen from the dead. With misidentification, superstition, scandal, incest, a prophet speaking the truth and righteousness, a conflicted conscience, a murderous grudge, rash vow, persecution, and gory ending, this story has all the elements of a modern movie drama. The reading explains through a flashback, that Herod had recently killed John, and he and the peop...

1. Matt. 18—several teachings all about pitfalls to our salvation. Embedded parable of the one lost sheep; Jesus seeks after it because “it is not the will of [His] Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” In this chapter, Jesus is doing the work of a Good Shepherd to guard His sheep against the pitfalls that would cause them to perish, or keep them from the kingdom of heaven. Sheep wander, and in our blindness or error, we can get separated from the flock, and fall into personal harm or injury. Spiritually, the stakes couldn’t be higher, as Jesus illustrates through several examples in the reading. 2. Disciples walk into the first pitfall, of pride and exalting oneself. Who is the greatest? Jesus teaches humility—not to think highly of yourself, but to count others more significant than yourselves (Phil. 2:3). Humble like a child is the only way into the kingdom. Jesus turns the disciples’ (and our) paradigm upside down—adults are not the model of faith, b...