​Thank the Lord and sing His praise; tell everyone what He has done.  Let all who see the Lord rejoice and proudly bear His name.  He recalls His promises and leads His people forth in joy with shouts of thanksgiving. Alleluia, alleluia.

These words are sung after communion in Divine Service setting 1 and 2, but I think they have a lot to say about our thanksgiving.  Note first of all that singing accompanies thanks.  We show our thankfulness to God by singing His praises.  We praise and thank the one who gives us all things.  We praise God by proclaiming what He has done.  Secondly, we tell others about the great things God has done, those things for which we are thankful.

As we have just "seen" the Lord in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, we rejoice.  We can be proud, in a good way, of the name of the Lord that we bear.  We bear the name Christian, the name given us in our baptism.  We go forth into the world with this name, telling others what Christ has done, and thanking Him for His saving work.

Why are we able to give thanks?  Because the Lord recalls His promises.  He keeps His promise to forgive our sins.  He promises to lead us through this life, through the valley of the shadow death, into eternal life with Him.  For all this we thanks and praise Him.

 INRI (11/14/22) 
You may have seen these letters in a church somewhere, INRI. If you look at the crucifix hanging above the literature table in our fellowship hall or the one hanging in the entry way to the sanctuary, you will see this printed above the head of Jesus. INRI is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase, Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, or in English, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Recall that when Jesus was crucified, Pilate had this inscription placed on Jesus' cross written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin so all could read it. (John 19:19-20).

Why would Pilate write such a thing? The Gospels of Matthew and Mark tell us that this was the charge against Jesus (Matt. 27:37). The Romans would sometimes indicate the criminal charge against the person being crucified by writing it on the cross. This was the best that Pilate could come up with. He asked the Jews if he should crucify their king. They replied, "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15). The Jewish authorities didn't like the placard. They told Pilate, "Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written" (John 19:21-22).

There are various ways to think about these words. On the one hand, the inscription rings true. Jesus was the king, the Messiah, that the Jews were promised in the Old Testament. Yet, most didn't recognize Him. On the other hand the statement doesn't go far enough. Jesus was also Pilate's true king. He is The King of all humanity, though the world does not recognize His authority. As God's children, we recognize the Jesus as The King and give thanks that we are citizens of His kingdom. As Paul writes, "He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Col. 1:13). Praise God that in Jesus we have a merciful and powerful king!

​As a congregation we have "worship" every Sunday at 10am.  But what do we mean by that word, "worship"?  The word is used in a variety of ways even within the church.  In a sense, our entire lives are lives of worship.  As God's people, we are His witnesses in our daily lives through our words and deeds.  Our daily prayers, reading of Scripture, and serving our neighbor are acts of worship.  But more specifically, we come together to worship as God's people gathered physically in one place at the same time on Sunday morning.  This worship service, or Divine Service, is primarily a time when God is giving something to us.  God is acting.  God is serving us.  God is feeding us His Word in our ears and the very body and blood of Jesus in our mouths.

In his book, The Fire and the Staff, Pastor Klemet Preus has this to say about the Divine Service, "If the Divine Service is viewed primarily as our praising God, then you can do that just as well at home. In fact, once we have looked at the topic of vocation, you will see that we can serve God better in the world than in the church building. But if the service is understood as God giving us the forgiveness of sins, then you've got to be there. It is very possible that the low attendance at Sunday services seen in so many churches today is a reflection of how we define the service. If I am acting, then I can do it at another time. If God is acting, I better be there."

We do not need to make God happy with us.  We cannot manipulate God by what we do.  Through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Lord already delights in us calling us His children.  God wants us in worship for our benefit not His, so He can serve us.  Worship starts with God.  He comes to us with His gifts.  We respond with our thanks and praise, our tithes and offerings.  The opportunity to come together as God's people on a Sunday morning to receive His gifts is a great blessing.  Let us not give up meeting together!

   You may be familiar with the "solas" of the Reformation.  Sola is Latin for "alone" or "only."  The three most familiar solas are sola scriptura (scripture alone), sola gratia (grace alone), and sola fidei (faith alone.)  Which is to say, we teach that scripture alone is the basis for what believe.  We believe that we are saved solely by God's grace, through faith in the saving work of Christ alone and not through our own works.  

There are a couple other solas that were prominent during the Reformation that you may be less familiar with.  The first is Solus Christus, or Christ alone.  In a sense, this is the most important sola.  We are saved through the atonement that Jesus made when he died on the cross.  "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). 

The last of the five solae comes to prominence about a century after the Reformation.  Soli Deo Gloria means to God alone be the glory. J. S. Bach wrote the initials S. D. G. and the bottom of all his sacred compositions, short for soli deo gloria.  Bach understood that his vocation was God-given, and he hoped that when the music was played and sung, it would point toward God.

The truth of Scripture rediscovered during the Reformation is that according to Scripture alone, we are saved by God's grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.  To God alone be the glory.

​In the book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. None of his court magicians or enchanters could tell him the dream or interpret it.  The king insisted repeatedly that he would not trust any of his wise men to interpret the dream unless they first tell him what the dream was.  One of these wise men responds, "The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh" (Dan. 2:11).

This reaction highlights a basic difference between the faith of the Christian and whatever it is that the pagan or unbeliever trusts in.  The assumption of the world is that if there is a god, he is far away and unknowable. Unbelief says the dwelling of the gods "is not with flesh."  God cannot be known or touched.  God is not here with us in the flesh, because he is too great to be among us mere mortals, so the thinking goes.

We know differently. In the case of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel was able to see and interpret the dream.  This is because God the Holy Spirit was dwelling within Daniel.  For us we know that in fact God does dwell with flesh, namely in the flesh of Jesus Christ, who is truly man and truly God.  Jesus is God incarnate, literally God in the flesh.  Our God has a body.  A body that was born, suffered, died, and was buried.  A body that rose victorious over death.  And Jesus still has His body.  He is still fully God and fully human, and He is in all places with His body.

As Christians we know that God's dwelling is with flesh, it is with us.  Moreover, our own bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.  That is, God dwells in each of us, so that we may be witnesses to the saving works of Christ in our words and actions.  Thanks be to God.

​  Think for a minute about all the images you see on a daily basis. They could be still images or moving images (video). It's estimated that the average person sees up to 10,000 ads a day, double the 2007 number and up to 20 times more than we saw in the 70's.  And that's just ads, the images we usually try to ignore!  Then there's social media pictures, and memes, and videos.  We see images on TV and in newspapers and books.  People show us images on their phones, and then there's all the images we intentionally seek out on the internet for better or worse.
  Now think about Jesus' day.  There were very few "images" to even see.  Statues or paintings of various Roman gods perhaps, but no images that were exact representations of actual things.  And yet Jesus says in Luke 11:34, "Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness."  Much evil starts with the eyes.  David's adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband started with his eyes (2 Sam 11:2).  What we see with our eyes can lead to jealousy, envy, and covetousness.  In the garden of Eden, when Eve saw that the tree was good for food and Satan promised that their (spiritual) eyes would be opened, Adam and Eve ate the fruit.
  Instead of subjecting our eyes to things that will lead us astray, we should focus our eyes (physical and spiritual) on the things of God.  "I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless" (Ps. 101:3). "I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways" (Ps 119:15) "The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season" (Ps. 145:15). Or as the writer the Hebrews says, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb. 12:2).  When the Hebrews grumbled against God in the desert and the Lord sent serpents to bite them, He offered salvation through Moses.  Moses built a bronze serpent on a pole, "if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live" (Num 21:9). So, we look to Jesus raised up on the cross and risen from the dead, so that we too might live.

​You've no doubt heard the saying, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." According to the Dictionary of Idiomatic English Phrases, this is "an ancient proverb recommending prudence in behaviour. We must adapt ourselves to the prejudices and customs of others." Evidently, this saying dates all the way back to the 300's AD.  The story goes that St. Augustine and his mother were planning to visit Rome. The Christians there fasted on Saturday.  This was not the practice in Milan where Augustine lived.  Augustine consulted his mentor St. Ambrose who told him, "When I am here (in Milan) I do not fast on Saturday, when in Rome I do fast on Saturday." This appears to have given rise to the saying, "When in Rome do as the Romans do."

The custom of fasting on Saturday is what we would call an indifferent matter.  It was a cultural practice, a particular religious discipline that in one place Christians fasted on Saturday while in another place they didn't.  It makes sense to conform to a particular culture when you're an outsider regarding indifferent matters. You may notice this when you visit other churches while travelling.  Even amongst traditional, liturgical, LC–MS churches you will see some variations in practice.

A problem arises when this mindset is taken too far. There are many practices that our culture promotes of which we should be wary because they are not indifferent. They run contrary to God's clear word. Sometimes dangerous cultural practices or mindsets finagle their way into the church or the lives of individual Christians. Some examples include: false definitions of marriage, the status of an unborn baby, losing ourselves in entertainment, living together before marriage, knowing more about our favorite sports team than the Bible, relying more on politcians than the Lord, or just generally wanting the church to look more like the world.

Now define this world as "Rome." We will not live in Rome forever.  Spending too much time learning how to live in Rome, puts our eternal destiny in danger.  We must be wary of everything the culture promotes as "good", yet we have the freedom, the obligation, to live in this world with our neighbors shining the light of God's love as we do so. You are a citizen of heaven living in Rome.