It’s Christmas time. No doubt you’ll get a few Christmas cards with traditional depictions of the Child Jesus, Joseph and his Mother Mary—the history of our Savior according to Matthew and Luke, as illustrated by St. Francis. But John from the very beginning took a different approach. He bears witness to the meaning of Jesus’ entrance into our world.

November: one month to go. It’s countdown time; countdown to Thanksgiving, countdown to Black Friday, countdown to Christmas. The first Sunday in November celebrates All Saints’and we get an extra hour of sleep on November 5. That’s all well and good, but it also signals to pastors that there is three weeks until the Feast of Christ the King.

What hasn’t been said up to this point is that the service outline continues to preserve a Lutheran -ized version of the Latin Mass. Just as the sacred scriptures preserve for us the Word of God, so the Divine Service preserves among us Christian tradition and the Lord’s Supper. There are some things you just don’t play with. More on that next time: and I promise, not so long.