Hope Realized

The season from Advent to Transfiguration is one of the most theologically rich stretches of the Christian year; a journey from waiting in darkness to the blinding light on a mountaintop, from a baby in a feeding trough to the Son of God revealed in glory. What binds it all together is a question the season keeps asking: who is this Jesus, and what does it mean to be awake to his coming?

Vicar Robert E. Glenn Jr. brings to this lectionary series more than twenty-five years of ministry and a pastor's passion for what he calls "genuine exegetical work" — letting the text speak before letting the preacher speak. Drawing on Hebrew roots, Greek nuance, and the sweep of biblical history from Isaiah to the Transfiguration, these sermons ground each Sunday's Gospel in its cultural and historical soil before asking the harder contemporary question: so what do we do with this today?

Covering the four Sundays of Advent through the Baptism of the Lord, Epiphany, and the Transfiguration, this series is a resource for preachers, Bible study leaders, and lay readers who want to meet the Word not just as a familiar story, but as a living encounter that changes how we see the world and our place in it.

Stay awake. He is coming.

Vicar Robert E. Glenn Jr. has been in ministry for over twenty-five years as a lay Bible teacher, worship leader, and senior pastor. He holds a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Bluffton University and is a Seminarian at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Iowa. He has written hundreds of sermons and continues to study and preach with equal parts rigor and humility.