The Lutheran Witness

06/23/2026

When understood within a positive Gospel vision, such forms of self-denial and self-discipline as a weekly digital “fast” can be invigorating and liberating as they serve a larger purpose to point us toward Christ and our ultimate rest in our union and communion with Him. https://thelc.ms/4aHRWy4

06/22/2026

This topic about traditions contains many and difficult controversial questions. … When traditions are required as necessary, they torture in terrible ways the conscience, leaving out any ceremony. The repeal of ceremonies has its own evils and its own questions. … The adversaries require universal traditions, as they call them, as necessary for justification. Here we have Paul as a constant champion, who argues everywhere that these ceremonies neither justify nor are they necessary additions to the righteousness of faith. Still, we teach that freedom should be so controlled that the inexperienced may not be offended and, because of freedom’s abuse, may not become more opposed to the true doctrine of the Gospel. Nothing in customary rites should be changed without a reasonable cause. So to nurture unity, old customs that can be kept without sin or great inconvenience should be kept.
— Apology of the Augsburg Confession XV 49–51

06/18/2026

A Christian marriage is a living witness of Jesus and His Bride for all the world to see. Even when husband and wife fail, they point back to this reality, confessing to one another and granting each other forgiveness in the name of Jesus.

https://thelc.ms/4x5kvio

Married couples get to live out the sacrificial, unconditional and incarnational love of Jesus. (Lutheran Witness - Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod)

06/16/2026

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!"
— Revelation 7:9–10

06/15/2026

Do you have any special traditions or favorite recipes during the summertime? Find ideas for marking the commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach and the Nativity of John the Baptist in this article from last summer.

This season, which stretches forth as a seemingly endless “green” pasture from Pentecost through the end of the Church Year, is a time meant for slowing down and for learning more about our Lord’s work.

06/12/2026

Today the church commemorates the Council of Nicaea. Spend some time today meditating on the Nicene Creed with this article from last May's issue, which celebrated 1,700 years of Nicaea.

The creedal statements about Christ in our Nicene Creed express the clear truth about Jesus. He is God in the flesh.

06/11/2026

Weddings loudly confess God’s love for us. He made us so that we would delight in Him and husband and wife would delight in each other. For this reason, Christians celebrate the wedding day and all that it entails — the groom’s love for his bride, the procession and presentation of the bride adorned in the white of innocence, the vows of love and the pledge of faithfulness, the marriage feast and the marriage bed — as a microcosm of salvation. “This mystery is profound,” writes St. Paul, “and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32).

https://thelc.ms/49ClMnc

God made us so we would delight in Him and husband and wife would delight in each other. (Lutheran Witness - Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod)

06/10/2026

The Christian faith is full of great paradoxes, and so is the Church Year with its many feasts, festivals and holy days. On one hand, these days are deeply local — Christians throughout the world mark them in distinct ways. Days are remembered differently depending on the culture, time of year, place of their commemoration, and even the foods that accompany them. On the other hand, these days are profoundly universal — throughout the world you’ll find that the same feasts and fasts are part of the liturgical cycle, the same prayers and readings are proclaimed, and the same Christ is confessed and received. These days bind Christians together across centuries and continents and form a shared Christian life that is far richer and broader than any one place or people.

This is what Christians mean when they speak of the catholicity of the Church Year, and it echoes the Nicene Creed, where we confess that we believe in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” The Church Year is a place where unity and variety meet. The church confesses “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5), and yet that faith takes root in a multitude of places. The beauty of catholicity is that unity does not result in a flattening uniformity. Instead, those differences evince a unified church with a rich variety of practices.

Link in comments.

06/09/2026

Though with a scornful wonder
The world sees her oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed,
Yet saints their watch are keeping;
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.

Through toil and tribulation
And tumult of her war
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.
— Lutheran Service Book 644:3–4

06/08/2026

Summertime means the long, liturgical green season of "ordinary time" is here. But even though things are much slower than in Advent, Christmas, Lent or Easter, the weekly forgiveness of sins is anything but ordinary.

Green fields, green trees, green paraments. It can all seem a bit mundane. But look again: there's nothing ordinary about ordinary time.