Pastor Chris Brademeyer’s Podcast

“Beware of false prophets.” This is a simple command, yet it is one that is not received well in our present age. Indeed, Jesus tells us here to identify and avoid those who preach falsely, yet faithful pastors are often attacked by well-meaning parishioners who find Jesus’s words here to be insensitive. But this instruction is not optional.  Jesus does not say “if” false prophets come. He says ...

            “They had nothing to eat.” Simple words to convey a simple reality. Food is an essential part of life in this world. Indeed, if we go too long without nourishment, we will become faint. With enough time we will eventually expire. This reality is simple because it is so immediate. Infants know hunger as well as adults. Thankfully, many, if not most of us here this morning, have not ha...

Jesus says that He has not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. Not an iota, not a dot, not a single stroke of a single letter of these holy texts will pass away until all is fulfilled. He does not explain them away or minimize them, in fact He intensifies them. It is not enough, says the Lord, to withhold your hand from striking in anger. You must also restrain your speech and even your tho...

Dear friends in Christ, today we have set before us the task of laying to rest our dear sister Esther Orn. She was, and is, a great and precious gift to you from God the Father, shown that you have made it a point to come here today to see this done. That is to say, it is normal and right to mourn someone that God has put into our lives. Even though this world of ours would tell us that there i...

Picture the scene: Jesus standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the crowd pressing in, hungry to hear the Word of God. He steps into Peter’s boat, pushes out a bit, and from that humble fishing vessel preaches to the masses. Then, He tells Peter to do something absurd: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” Peter is tired. He’s fished all night and caught nothing. But...

Before us stands a simple yet profound truth: God desires the salvation of every sinner. Our Lord Jesus says that He came to seek and to save the lost. And that includes you and me. Left to ourselves, we are indeed lost in sin, sorrow, suffering, and death. We are misled by the foolishness of this world and trapped in the limits of our own broken lives. No one enjoys being lost, and yet it is ou...

Mary arose and went with haste. That is how our Gospel reading begins. She had just received the announcement from the angel Gabriel: that she, though a virgin, would conceive and bear the Son of the Most High. She asked, “How can this be?” and the angel pointed her to a sign: her elderly relative Elizabeth had conceived in her old age. “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

St. Peter and  St. Paul are two names known to every Christian, or, at least, should be. After our Lord Jesus, these two men are among the most important figures in the history of the Christian Church. Such is their importance that these two men were given the title “pillars of the Church,” due to their strong faith and great work of preaching the Gospel to multitudes of people.

The birth of John the Baptist is not just a heartwarming story about an elderly couple finally receiving the child they always longed for. It is a loud and mighty thunderclap of God's mercy breaking four hundred years of prophetic silence. It is the opening act of salvation history’s final chapter. And it is a reminder that God's promises may seem delayed, but they are never denied.

Zechariah, once silenced for his unbelief, now fi...

There’s an old saying: “Seeing is believing.” But in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus flips that completely on its head. A man begs for a miracle from beyond the grave to convince his family to repent and Abraham says, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.” In other words, if the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, won’t convince them, nothing will.

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