Text: Luke 2: 22-40
Full Text
I don’t know what to say about this one. Just looking at the word picture above in comparison to almost any of the other sermons shows something is different. And that something different could be a very bad thing. The job from that pulpit is point at Christ as our salvation in as many verbal images as scripture allows. Jesus, Christ or God don’t appear in big words anywhere there. Probably the best thing that could be said is it is pietistic (and if you aren’t in the know on that word within Lutheranism it is one of those ill-defined put downs akin to calling someone a liberal in politics – it substitutes for argument). The pietist wears the heart on the sleeve and has a tendency to let the head go fuzzy. In the 17th – 19th centuries, to the hard headed Lutherans, the pietists were all law. They put the demands of piety upon you. This sermon does some of that – probably too much. Prayerfully the gospel was present.