Pastor Chris Brademeyer’s Podcast

Today’s readings give us a concept that our culture thinks it already understands: love. Our culture, western culture, speaks constantly about love. They say that love is affirmation. Love is acceptance. Love is desire. Love is romance. Love is emotional intensity. Love is being seen and validated. If it feels strong and sincere, it must be love.

This is al...

There is a question that Christians often hesitate to ask out loud, but many quietly carry in their hearts: If God loves everyone, why are some people not saved? Or perhaps you have asked it this way: If God loves everyone, why is there a hell at all?

Scripture is clear about certain things. God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge...

Today is a feast set aside to remember how Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Law of God in Exodus 13:2 commands that every firstborn male be consecrated to the Lord. Further, Leviticus 12:1-8 commands that a woman after childbirth go through a period of purification for forty days and then offer a sacrifice of either a lamb or two turtledoves is a lamb was...

Most of us learn very early in life a simple rule: you get what you earn. If you work harder, you deserve more. If you show up earlier, you should be paid more. If you sacrifice more, you ought to be rewarded accordingly. That principle governs almost everything in our lives. It governs our jobs, our schools, our farms and businesses, our reputations, and even, if we are honest, how we instinct...

We live in a world of denominations - every city in America has a lot of churches, many claiming to be the best church in town - the gold standard for Christianity. However, there are other churches that may be a bit more humble, admitting that they don't have it all together, but are striving to reach back to the church's Golden Age. All of this begs the question - is there such thing as a perfect church... a perfect Golden Age of...

The Transfiguration of our Lord confronts us with a basic and unavoidable question: Can God actually be known? Not speculated about, not felt toward, not vaguely sensed, but known.

Much of present-day spirituality answers that question with hesitation. God, we are told, is ultimately mysterious, perhaps even unknowable. Truth is said to be relative, especia...

Marriage is a gift from God. It is not an invention of human culture. It is not a contract devised merely for mutual convenience. It is a blessing woven into creation itself. Before sin, before death, before shame, God gave man and woman to one another. And ever since, marriage has remained one of the primary places where God chooses to bless His creatures with His presence, His provision, and ...

At first glance, Baptism can appear to be a very ordinary thing. A little water. A few words. A pastor’s hand. A crying infant or a wet adult. Nothing flashy. Nothing impressive. Nothing that looks particularly powerful. And yet, Scripture insists that something enormous is happening.

Today’s readings all press the same point from different angles: God ...

Today is a momentous occasion. Travis and Tiffany are vowing themselves to each other and thereby entering into God’s estate of holy matrimony. That is to say, they are getting married. And this is a good and God-pleasing thing. God delights in marriage.

The first social institution God created was marriage; it even predates the fall into sin, as our re...

Epiphany is a festival of revelation. It is the Church’s celebration that the child born in Bethlehem is not only the Savior of Israel, but the Savior of the nations, even the Light for the Gentiles. And this was not some unexpected revealing, no it is exactly what the prophet Isaiah proclaimed over five hundred years before: “Arise, shine, for your light ...

There is nothing more frightening for parents than having the life of your child, your newborn baby, in danger. While there is a difference in how we react to the threat, the fear is largely the same. Diseases and genetic conditions are mostly out of our care; violence from others can be either resisted or fled. But the danger is the same in either case. And if you are fortunate enough to not ha...

Eight days after His birth, the Child of Bethlehem is brought into the light of the Law. Luke records it simply and without sentiment: “When eight days were completed for His circumcision, He was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.” With that brief sentence, the Evangelist draws us into the first shedding of Christ’s blood and the public bestowal of th...

St. Luke tells us that on the night of Jesus’s birth, the shepherds were keeping watch over their flock. Nothing about that night appeared extraordinary. The world went on as it always had. The promised land was under Roman rule, subject to census decrees, weighed down by ordinary labor and ordinary fear. And yet into that unremarkable night the glory of the Lord shone around them.

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