"Good" Friday--as we look around at the way we Christians observe this particular day of the year, we might wonder why it was ever called "Good" Friday~

The event of Palm Sunday can be looked at in a number of different ways.

If you listen at all and pay any attention to what is reported in our society these days by and about various religious leaders, you may be quite confused as to what the essential message of the Christian faith is.

He and His words and actions actually mean something and so there is always a reaction--a mixed reaction

The more theology that I read and the more human behavior that I observe, the more convinced I am that every sin and every false doctrine really boils down to essentially one central issue, and that is man's attempt to be God.

As Lutherans we might be taken aback by the words of this morning's sermon text. Most of us have been taught from day one that our "blessedness" before the Lord is determined not by our "walk[ing] in the Law of the Lord" or by our "keep[ing] His testimonies" or by our "seek[ing] Him with [our] whole heart" or by our "do[ing] no wrong" or by our "walk[ing] in His ways," but solely by His redeeming grace in Jesus Christ.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

Genesis 3:7 (ESV)

When our son was very young, one of his favorite children's books that we would read to him was about a farmer named Golly Gump, who swallowed a fly while competing in a yawning contest at a state fair. As you might suspect, having a fly in his stomach created major problems for Golly, so he decided to solve the problem of the fly in his stomach by swallowing a spider. Certainly a spider would get rid of that bothersome fly--and indeed it did. The only trouble was that now poor Golly Gump had a spider to contend with. He tried to deal with that problem by swallowing a bird to get rid of the spider, and before the story was over he had also consumed a cat, a dog, and a dogcatcher.

Sometimes I think that we are a lot like Golly Gump when it comes to dealing with the problem of our sin. Instead of honestly facing it as a problem that we can't fix,