Henry Ossawa Tanner had something in common with Nicodemus: failure. While it doesn’t specifically say so, we get the sense that Nicodemus leaves Jesus’ presence feeling beaten, feeling unsure of himself, feeling like he’s a failure. I mean after all, Jesus just said to him incredulously, “Are you the teacher of Israel and still you…

A few years ago there was a movie entitled “Snakes on a Plane.” That plane must have been flying over Moses and the children of Israel in Anthony van Dyck’s painting “The Brazen Serpent,” based on Numbers 21, because if you look up into the skies, you can see that the snakes are falling from…

Jesus’ clearing of the temple, upsetting the money changers’ tables and driving out the livestock, was a minor theme in religious art up until the time just after the Reformation. After the Reformation, the scene was painted and requested to be painted more than at any other time. The reason for this was that the…

“If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Mark 8 Tradition holds that Peter was put to death by crucifixion, but that he pleaded that he would be crucified in a way that was unlike Jesus’ crucifixion. He wanted to be crucified head down. In 1600,…

This Sunday we are officially starting our Lent sermon series, “Hopes and Fears”. Hope and fear have an interesting relationship with one another. Fear often drives us to hope. When we experience fear, we begin to hope for something that alleviates we we fear. For example, if we fear being late for school, we might…

What are your hopes for the Church? All sorts of ink has been spilled on what makes for a good church or a healthy church or an effective church. In fact, even those adjectives (good, healthy, effective) betray a little bit of what we might be hoping for in a church. Some church hopes are…

When Martin Luther said, “everything that is done in the world is done by hope,” he was largely meaning that for individuals. The expanded quote tells us about the hopes he was talking about: “No merchant or tradesman would set himself to work if he did not hope to reap benefit thereby.” Hoping is naturally…

This year, University Lutheran is engaging with our annual focus, “Done by Hope”. The name of the focus comes from Martin Luther’s quote, “Everything that is done in the world is done by hope. No merchant or tradesman would set himself to work if he did not hope to reap benefit thereby.” As with many…

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Jesus’ first words in Luke are “Why were you looking for me?” and that got me to wondering what each of the Gospel writers captured as Jesus’ first quotes. Like I said, in Luke, Jesus asks his parents, “Why were you looking for me?” and follows it…