#759 Grace, Truth, and Glory

There’s nothing like coming home for Christmas. For me, that homecoming always includes the services at Messiah Lutheran Church in Fairview Park, Ohio, with a Christmas sermon (or, if I’m really lucky, two) from Jerry Burce. This year was no different, and I want to share with you the sermon that Jerry preached not on Christmas Eve but …

#758 Christmas Preaching in the Wake of Sandy Hook

Colleagues, Shame on the preacher who attempts this Christmas Eve or Day to dodge the horror of Sandy Hook. She will prove herself a fraud. On the other hand, woe to the Christmas preacher who tries to address it. He’s facing some fiercely hard work at the moment, with no guarantee that what he says will be heard …

#757 Book review—THE DIVORCE OF SEX AND MARRIAGE by Robert W. Bertram

This week’s Thursday Theology is a review of The Divorce of Sex and Marriage: Sain Sex, written by Crossings co-founder Robert W. Bertram and edited for posthumous publication by Dr. Michael Hoy, pastor of First Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Decatur, Illinois, and former editor of the Crossings newsletter. Our reviewer is Dr. Kathryn Kleinhans, Professor of Religion at …

#756 Book review—BROKEN HALLELUJAHS by Christian Scharen

This week we bring you a book review by Ed Schroeder. Ed wrote it for submission to Missiology, the journal of the American Society of Missiology, and he passed it along for us to preprint in Thursday Theology. Enjoy! Also, at the end of Ed’s piece, please find an important reminder about the upcoming Crossings Seminar, “Good News We Don’t …

#755 A Perfect World

This week’s Thursday Theology is by Steve Albertin, another member of the editorial team whose work often appears in this space. It’s a short homily that Steve gave on Matthew 5:38-48 at the Fourth International Crossings Conference this past January. Although it’s not an Advent sermon, it’s well suited to this time of year, because it touches on …

#754 An Observation on Bertram’s First Question

Colleagues, In this week’s Thursday Theology (arriving a few days late, thanks to the pleasant diversions of the Thanksgiving holiday), my fellow editor Jerry Burce follows up on ThTheol #752, in which Ed Schroeder reflected on the Crossings Six-Step Method. Starting with Mark’s story of the widow’s mite, Jerry focuses on the first of Bob Bertram’s six questions for …

#753 Thankfulness

Colleagues, This week’s Thursday Theology, like last week’s, comes from Ed Schroeder. It’s a short essay on thankfulness, first published in 1991 in Lutheran Women Today, and still available in the Library section of the Crossings.orgwebsite. In it, Ed reminds us that faith comes before thankfulness and makes thankfulness possible-a good thought to keep in mind as the Thanksgiving holiday …

#752 Six questions for any text or sermon

Colleagues, The item we send you today popped into our inboxes some weeks ago not as a submission to Thursday Theology, but rather as a contribution to a lively discussion that some members of the Crossings Board were busy with. It came from Ed Schroeder. The discussion had somehow gotten Ed to think back to long ago conversations …

Informal Remarks on the Historicity of Adam

Robert W. Bertram Presentation, 1973 Question: If we are to be faithful to the Smalcald Articles, Part III, must we not confess along with Luther that sin originated in the historical person of Adam? In other words, does not Luther here express the doctrinal belief that sin entered the world through one man—Adam? Answer: These two questions, at …

Legal Morality And The Two Kingdoms

By Robert W. Bertram Valparaiso University [Printed in The Cresset 20:4 (February, 1957): 6-9. Re-printed with permission] Every American Christian who is morally serious about the law of his land deserves two reminders: First, that being a Christian believer and being a good citizen, though he must be both, are two different things – and sometimes are two …