Pastor Foltz is Pastor Emeritus of Saint James Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, PA and author of the the Frontline Study content.
What is John up to? Seems to me he is tackling perhaps the most difficult problem of Christianity: how to explain what it means to proclaim a human being is God. There is no way you can convey how he does this inside the limitations of an electronic blog, so what I’ll offer is theological […]
As soon as you start reading John’s Gospel, you know you are into something very different. Mark starts with a carpenter having a religious experience and leaving his business and family; Matthew with foreign scholars worshiping an infant the Jewish king is trying to kill; Luke with shepherds of the third shift visiting a son […]
Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, “The Sower and the Setting Sun” played a very special role in my ministry. The artist wrote frequently that it was his first effort to use extravagant, bold, contrasting color to express emotion. You can almost feel the heat of the sun beating out from the canvas. You experience the exhaustion […]
This is a very special day for me. In November 1999, I began to feel ill in the middle of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In four days, I had heart bypass surgery. For the first time in my life, I faced the reality of my own death. After two months recovery I returned to work on […]
Why did Jesus heal the deaf man? What went through his mind when people brought this broken soul to him? Mark indicates he was inconvenienced; not prepared for this intrusion, but he sighed deeply, took him away from the crowds and healed him, with the admonition at least to keep it quiet. What did that […]
Behave as if you believe. Part of me wants this very much, because it is the way to the fullness of God. But another part resists. “Behave as if you believe” are very dangerous words. They remind me Tennessee Williams’ wonderful play, “Camino Real” where Gutman, a portly man in a white suit, panics when […]
It is Pentecost and Mothers’ Day, a good time to remind ourselves we are in the middle of the biggest revolution of all time. It sometimes pits one half of the world’s population against the other. Thank God it is a bloodless. Of course, I am speaking of women’s liberation. It is only in the […]
It is the Fourth of July, the day our nation sets aside to remember the birth of our freedom in 1776. The celebration has always been associated with the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. We often forget this document is primarily a long list of reasons why we were separating ourselves from the British […]
St. John never wrote a birth story. Instead he celebrates God becoming human by singing the first Christmas carol. His song claims that this birth overcomes the darkness of this world and enables us to become children of God. Repeatedly, he says it makes available grace upon grace. In many ways grace is Christianity’s gift […]
It’s hard to believe Jesus’ disciples can praise him as God’s Messiah, shouting, “Holy, Holy, Holy. Hosanna to the Son of David” on Palm Sunday and then abandon him on Thursday night. It seems impossible that the crowd can cry, “Bless is he who comes in the name of the Lord” on Palm Sunday and […]
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