Loaves and Fishes

Biblical Text: Matthew 14:13-21

It could be that a death in the parish family gave some depth that isn’t there. The Holy Spirit does show up from time to time and turn absolute dreck into something good. And the word cloud is nothing special – other than that big Jesus on top. And that is ultimately what this proclamation is about – exactly the kind of God we have, the kind seen fully in Jesus. And the feeding of the 5000 is such a revelation of exactly who he is. You have to back up a bit and hear the stuff the lectionary skips. That is in the introduction. But it sets the stage for the revelation that follows. And then understanding the God we have, understanding how he continues to work in exactly the same way among us. This is a good sermon. I don’t say that too often.

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Robert Barnes and English Lutheranism

July 30^th on Church calendar is a remembrance of Robert Barnes, Confessor and Martyr. Now I know that most of us don’t pay any attention to the church calendar beyond Christmas, Easter and maybe a nip of green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. But Robert Barnes got me thinking about one of history’s great “what-ifs” and the history of Lutheranism in the English language. In the US it is always interesting looking at common languages at the turn of the 19^thand 20^th century. The US was much closer to a Canadian two-language reality – with the two being German and English – than any of us can imagine. The turn of the century naturalization laws and then two wars against Germany eradicated that fact. The LCMS had been so German right until the 20^th century that it kept The English Synod – which eventually became our English District – as a separate entity. The first English hymnal was by that English Synod in 1912. Which largely became the 1941 The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH) that I imagine many readers might still call “The Hymnal.”

And it is that which gets us on our way back to Robert Barnes. In translating the common service and all the prayers of the day and everything else that is part of liturgical worship the English Synod did what anyone not concerned about copyright would do. They stole Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s English. Which isn’t as big a stretch as you might imagine. Compared to today’s variance of service even within a body like the LCMS, most of the magisterial protestant churches had kept a liturgy that resembled the Common Service. The service in the Book of Common Prayer is quite close. Cranmer in his first edition of the BCP took from Luther’s reworking of the Mass (in our hymnal as the stub DS5). And so even today, many of the prayers and wording in our services bare a striking resemblance to that Anglican BCP.

And that leads to the great “what if?” In 1525 Robert Barnes brought the reformation formally to England. Cambridge educated and brother of the same Augustinian friars as Luther, he was a doctor of theology and prior of the Cambridge convent. And he preached the first public proclamation of the Reformation gospel from his pulpit in that year. He was arrested leaving the pulpit and charged with heresy. Somehow he escaped and made his way to Wittenberg and was a personal acquaintance with Luther. He returned to England in 1531 with the mission of converting Henry VIII. He rose in office and stature rather swiftly, until as with a lot of Henry’s advisors, he was tasked with getting someone to agree to Henry’s first divorce. Barnes was sent back to Germany to secure Luther and Lutheran theologians’ approval for the king’s divorce and remarriage. They would not agree. (Which is ironic compared to the response later given to Philip of Hesse over bigamy.) Barnes returned without what was desired and Henry soured on Lutheranism. The thought of a Lutheran England, which was quite possible, remains the what-if. What if the Virginia aristocrats (Washington, Jefferson, Madison) had been Lutheran-Anglicans? What would European history have looked like if England and the Northern Continent shared a church?

As it was, Robert Barnes would not recant his Lutheran confession and was burned at the stake for it, July 30^th, 1540. His final words were a prayer, ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Luther wrote upon hearing that news something that probably sounds strange. “It is a particular joy for me to hear that our good and pious guest has been so graciously called by God to pour out his blood and to become a holy martyr…Hope betrayed him. For he always hoped his king would be good in the end.” As the apostle Peter says, “Rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. (1 Pet. 4:13 ESV).” Hope in earthly kings and their glory is bound to fail, but we have a more sure and certain Hope in the resurrection of Christ the King.

Buried Treasure

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Biblical Text: Matthew 13:44-52

The text is the completion of Jesus’ Parable Sermon. It is a string of three parables that are from appearances so easy. They aren’t detailed stories. None of them have multiple parts really. But I’m convinced most of the time I hear these preached or explained it misses the gold. Not that the standard interpretation is exactly wrong, but it depends upon so much that is left unsaid. It depends upon an unspoken gospel. This sermon attempts to preach the gospel that we might hear the parable again. It attempts to bring out of the storehouse things old and new.

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Convention Reflections

The every three years LCMS National Convention finished up its business this week. There really isn’t that much to report. It went as scripted. This is what I mean by that. In the run-up to a convention individual members (pastors and congregations), voting circuits (groups of congregations that elect the representatives to the convention) and even entire districts in their conventions can send memorials to the national convention. And they Do! Hundreds of them. Those memorials are grouped and divided by something called floor committees. A floor committee is a working group of members of the Synod that receive memorials and reconcile them together into floor motions. Hundreds of memorials, many of them duplicative, are reduced to a number of motions that the floor committees deem important enough for the time of the roughly 1000 representatives gathered. This is important because it only meets every three years and the cost is thousands of dollars per minute. Not including the vacation time the delegates themselves use. The floor committees also tend to create a couple of Omnibus motions. Omnibus motions are like the Island of Misfit toys. There is something off about them. Some of them are just “not the current thing.” Others are perfectly fine but don’t have “the rizz.” There is usually an omnibus of motherhood and apple pie motions that nobody could be against. There is another one of this is so embarrassing we are going to table it and forget it exists. And there is usually one of things that all good people agree should be rejected and it is important to say so. When I say the convention went as scripted I mean nobody extracted anything from an omnibus onto the floor. Nobody extracted an original motion to replace the floor committee work. No offered amendments from the floor to a floor committee draft were accepted. The vast majority of the elected positions went to people on “the United List” which is a list of people who wink and nod have the Synod President’s endorsement. And most of these votes ended at about 60%-40% if not 90%-10%. For what was an interesting election for the Synodical President decided by 4 votes, the convention turned into a deep ratification of the president’s desires. Even if most of the votes that were taken tended to do things like “instruct a joint seminary panel to study and report in three years.” It was the rare motion that put money or teeth into something.

There are positives out of that. You could read this a broad agreement across the church on important things. You can read it as good alignment between the elected officials of the body and the body itself. At the very least you can read it as everyone knowing the pulse of those who care the most about the Synod, those who care enough to put the time into getting elected and spending a week away from home in downtown Phoenix in July. You can also read this as excellent leadership. Both at an election organization level, but more importantly at the handling of issues between conventions. You don’t really want to send coinflip issues to the full powered legislative and deliberative body of the church. You want leadership that has studied and experimented. Because if that body decides something 50.1%-49.9% we all know it really isn’t over. And you have made the 49.9% into scofflaws until they get another crack at it. When the vote is 65%-35%, the 35% tend to get into line, or at least not parade their non-compliance.

There are also some negatives. There is a simmering split between younger representatives and the larger body, and probably not in the way you might think. It was the 70+ retired majority on the floor that was content to place most things in the “study” bucket. Those who were younger – and this might be relative as 50 is young at these things – it was the younger delegates that would have put more money and teeth into certain motions. It is the younger delegates who would have liked to direct the officers of the synod to act with more haste and determination. To make some deeper changes. That simmering split goes back underground, or I should probably say online, for another three years. Maybe three more years will temper that desire for change. Or maybe three more years will give time for the various burrs under saddles to find resolutions. Or in three years it might be interesting times.

Looking at how the sausage is made church-politically is never encouraging. We are human and being human we are sinners. And being sinners requires ways to mediate disagreements. We call that politics. Unless you want to turn toward war – politics by other means. But in line with the Theology of the Cross, God is present, even most present in this world, in the rough places. “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).” Even church-politics and Synodical Conventions are working together for good. And nothing in how the sausage is made separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39). Even if the least it might due is whet our appetite for the Return of the King.

Glory Stories

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Biblical Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (Matthew 35)

The parable of the wheat and the weeds on its surface is an answer to the problem of evil. I just don’t think we push it far enough. We settle for a type of glory story. It is not that the glory isn’t true. There will be a day when the straight line power is used. When the angels are sent out for the reaping. When the judgement comes. But it is a glory story to focus exclusively on that. If God could use that right-handed power the problem of evil would stand. Why doesn’t he do so? Now?

The parable gives a surface answer, but I believe it also encourages the deep one, the theology of the cross. The Christian doesn’t get to look past the cross. If God stayed locked up on his heaven, there is no hope for any of us. And the honest pagan might right. The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must, and this is just. It is just the way of the world. God is only in the strong. But God did not stay locked in his heaven. He descended – even to sheol – that he might get you (Psalm 139:8). The cross is the power of God that all might believe and be saved. And it is the only way for us weak sinners.

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Sower and Soils Redux

I have three purposes behind this “corner.” A) To offer a meaningful engagement with the Word of God for those who might not make Sunday service or one of the Bible Studies. B) To occasionally challenge or simply announce some activity or need of congregational life. C) To provide an example of Christian meditation. The word is a lamp to our feet and a guide to our path. What that means is that hopefully we are walking somewhere purposefully and not just aimlessly stumbling

The parable of the Sower and the Soils was the gospel reading last week. And I know in my sermon delivered that I encouraged more meditation in the Sower and less on the soils. More recognition that the Sower’s supply is inexhaustible, that He doesn’t care about the current soil status, and that sowing is not a once and done thing but moves in seasons. I think these are all the gospel elements Less concentration on discerning the soil, unless that discernment was turned toward the status of one’s own heart. Where have I been rocky soil, hard packed, shallow? What weeding or cultivation of my own heart might I do?

I usually do not have trouble leaving the prior lessons behind. Every Sunday before leaving the building I read the lessons for next Sunday. They can sit in my head and gut on my day off out of the office. Maybe they have germinated by the time I get back. But this week I could not shake the image of the soils. Many if not most of us give little thought to institutions. It is popular to be cynical about them. And many deserve it. Or if we are not cynical, we assume that they will be around forever even without our help. The seed sown is the Word of God. But the Word of God turns into a plant that is supposed to be fruitful. Maybe stretching the parable beyond what it is meant to take, but plants are planted somewhere. We are planted somewhere. We grow somewhere. And that somewhere is often various institutions.

At the most basic level we are all planted in specific families. We are citizens of specific nations. We are members of a specific church. And within those three estates – or broad institutions – we often have roles to play in other groups. And those groups are both shaped by us, but more often form us. I’ve been reading Vice President Vance’s recent memoir of his return to faith. My interest is professional. What type of faith did he have? What type of faith has he returned to? What spurred it? Who or what helped or hindered along the way? And his story is largely one of formation by various institutions. His family gave him a faith, but honestly not one set on a very secure foundation. He watched more televangelists with his memaw than Sundays he was in a church. He had developed something of a relationship with one pastor in one of the phases where his Dad was active in his life, but it could not have been that great, because when he tried to contact that pastor he was surprised the man had taken a call elsewhere. “I had no pastor that I could turn to…and I was too far away to stay in close touch. (p49).” Life in the Marines and especially in Iraq had given him both the best witnesses and a perfect storm of cynicism as waiting for his discharge he got sucked into an attempt to end a Sarge’s career.

In his story it isn’t the institutions of Ohio State and Yale Law that destroy his early ungrounded faith. That work had already largely been done. But the soil of those institutions grew something different. Ohio State drilled in the idea that “I deserved everything that came to me…any sense of community attachment – that we owe something to the people from whom we come – gave way (p67).” Yale put that on steroids and added pure status. “I wanted to go to a good law school because that is what other’s wanted (p72)…the belief system of places like Yale had a way of turning real vice into perceived virtue (p79).”

Vance’s loss of faith is a story of non-participation and weak institutions. His loss of faith is a story of his family absenting themselves from the institutions of that faith, and then stronger institutions stepping in to provide different ways for the plant to grow. Within his story I think is something for us in general. If you want good soil that produces 30, 60 even 100 fold, you’ve got to maintain it. It is those institutions that are often the soil. And we have not done the work to maintain them.

Why Does It Feel So Hard at Times?

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Biblical Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 (Isaiah 55:10-13)

The core text is the Parable of the Sower and the Soils, one of about two or three Biblical stories that I think are still general knowledge even today. Although honestly this sermon doesn’t treat them as that. It has a good section talking about basic textual meaning. A smart preacher once said, “assume they know nothing.” Now the best thing about this text happens to be how great a service you can construct with the hymns. Including ending with LSB 923 Almighty Father, Bless the Word which ends on the actual Doxology. You don’t get better.

But turning back to the sermon, the text at a very basic level is one of the few answers to a why question. It’s a common and natural why question, why if God gets his way and he wants people to believe are there so many that do not? The parable of he Sower and Soils explains that. The gospel comes a certain way – by proclamation, by the Word. And it has enemies. The sermon matches these up with three types of soils. In this sense the parable is legalistic in that it describes the basic functioning of the world. But I do think there are ways it proclaims the gospel. And those come not by focusing on the soils, but by focusing on the sower. And then with the picture of the sower pondering the nature farming. How it is a seasonal game. In that sense I don’t think you are meant to take the soils are unchangeable eschatological statements. They are more encouragements to examine ourselves. What type of soil has our heart been?

Anyway, maybe it is getting older. Or maybe my personal standards are slipping. But I like this sermon.

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Dr. Luther and Summertime Sadness

Sure, you could pick up the Old Testament reading and mine it for something. This week’s is Isaiah 55:10-13 and it is perfectly paired with the Gospel lesson – the parable of the Sower and the Soils. The Isaiah passage is surely part of the understanding of the soils. We do not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And that word does go out. And that word does accomplish what it was sent to do. Now we might wonder at why some of it falls on hard soil and apparently does nothing, but that is about the human heart. The Word does do something. It reveals the state of our hearts. And maybe like the rain and snow of Isaiah’s passage, that Word can eventually crack even the hardest of hearts. Or maybe they are like Pharoah. Knowing our own heart is tough. Does it bring up thorns? Or shall it become a tree, a cypress, planted over the waters?

You could turn to the Romans passage. But that would be cannibalizing what you are going to say in Bible Study after worship. Sure, that is only 20% of the worship population, but they deserve something prepared and fresh. But supposedly 60% of the total roster opens this email. If on any given summer Sunday you are fortunate to cross 50% of the roster in worship. And you humor yourself into thinking that 80% who open might at least read the first paragraph. You get to the idea that this little article is probably the item of work most engaged with in the week. And besides, as the epistle says (Romans 8:12-17), “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” Oh, you could certainly come up with something that quickens the spirit from that. At least if you are willing to cut it off there and ignore Romans 8:17, “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” Even then maybe you could invoke Tennyson’s Odyssey – “made weak by time and fate, yet strong in will…to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” Unlike Odysseus who angered Poseidon and suffered, we have not angered God and so suffer. Our journey home through suffering is walking with God, with angels, with Jesus all the way.

But as you stare at the blank page, maybe stuck in a bit of summertime sadness, you hear something moving down the hall. What soul is it in need of solace that without knowing it is giving your soul purpose? And then you get the surprise. “Dr. Luther, it’s been a few years, I was beginning to think that we might not meet again in this realm. How is Leo X doing? Are you guys having a good chuckle over another Leo excommunicating another group (SSPX) that insists they are just preaching and teaching what the church has always taught?”

“Heh. Yes, that little episode has certainly come up. Although maybe I’d point out with a little too much pride, half of Christendom sided with me. Bishop Lefebvre’s group is smaller than even your little Synod.”

“You got me there Dr. Luther. Heaven doesn’t issues traveling passes lightly. What brings you to my small corner today? Why does the great man show up in this humble parish study?”

“What is that pungent phrase you just invoked? Summertime sadness?”

“Yes, well, I stole that, from the singer, Lana DelRey. It’s kinda her entire vibe. And it’s a little infectious.”

“Yes. I can understand that. All the best lines are stolen anyway. We are all just recycling the Word that went out from God originally. Although being German we never called it anything as trite as sadness. We called it anfechtung. There are so many different ways of suffering. Stealing someone else’s line, everyone you meet is engaged in a great struggle. Maybe not over half of Christendom. Maybe over a single soul. Maybe theirs. Maybe that single struggle engulfs all of the Kingdom with it.”

“Dr. Luther, you’ve never been indirect before. Is the sadness spreading, even in heaven? Make it clear, why are you here?’

“Read your Isaiah again. You know I called him the fifth evangelist.”

“Yes, who did you steal that line from?”

“That’s mine, or that’s my story. But focus now Herr Pastor. Does the Word fail?”

“No. But I know where you are going. Look at things. Does this look like success?”

“So are you now the judge? Were you there when he laid the foundations? Have you discerned all the purposes of almighty God? I remind you I’ve had 500 years in paradise and Leo and I are just starting to put some of our lives together.”

“Fine. No. I’m not. But what it your point.”

“You live by faith. God’s word goes out and it accomplishes his purposes. Whether you know them or not. You can go out and come back in in joy.”

And with that Dr. Luther must have been needed elsewhere. Although without a good bye, maybe I shall see him again.

All Authority

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Biblical Text: Matthew 11:25-30

National holidays – like July 4th – sit uneasily within the church. Why is that? The short answer is various authorities of the three estates. This sermon talks about those three – home, church and state – and their rightful authority. And how the authority of each is rightly derived from Christ who all authority in heaven and upon earth has been granted to by the Father. The sermon is an attempt to walk the middle path between a couple of ditches that the church so often falls in when it comes to national celebrations.

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Prisoners of Hope

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of Hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. – Zechariah 9:12

Some phrases just dwell in the imagination. Prisoners of Hope. That’s one of them. Two words that you wouldn’t normally put together. Prisoner and Hope. Prisons of various types are famed for the words put over their entry. The entry is Hell in Dante is “Abandon Hope All You Who Enter Here.” The entry to Auschwitz was “Work will set you free.” On Riker’s Island (NYS Prison) you will find the correction facility motto “New York’s Boldest.” On one Soviet Gulag it said, “Shock labor is the path to early release!” It is absurdly funny that Hell might have been the most honest. In most ways we might think of prison as being the opposite of Hope. Yet the prophet Zechariah ties these two things together to describe faithful Israel, prisoners of Hope.

Zechariah is prophesying to Israel in exile. Their kingdom gone, their temple destroyed, the reality of their covenant with God at least in question. Would any God with any reality allow this for his people? Israel’s exile for most of Christian history has been used as a metaphor for the church in this world. Wherever you find the church, that is not its native ground. That is a beachhead in Satan’s territory. The people of God an infiltrating Army in this old world. And often an army surrounded. Maybe an army in chains. Most of the apostles found themselves in various prisons. Yet they were always prisoners of Hope. As Paul once said, “it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain. (Acts 28:20)”

And what is that hope?

That you would behold your King coming to you righteous and having salvation. That the chariot and the war horse would be cut off. That the battle bows would be broken. That your King would speak peace to the nations. That his rule would be from sea to sea, from The River to the ends of the earth.

That sounds great, by why is this my hope? Why would I endure chains now, for that hope? Why would I consider myself a prisoner held by this hope?

“Because of the blood of my covenant with you.”

Christ has shed his blood for you. Christ has given you his body and blood. He has marked you in your baptism as one redeemed. And these things – these sacraments – are the acts of his covenant with you. Now we might break contracts or covenants. We might be faithless, but God is faithful. God fulfills his promises, his covenant. And He has given us a covenant sealed with the blood of his Son. “I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.”

We have been washed in the waters of Holy Baptism. The Good Shepherd will lead us beside still waters. Today, we might find ourselves in chains of various kinds. Worldly chains of fame and status and want. We might find ourselves in personal chains of besetting sins. But God has set us prisoners free in the blood of his Son Jesus.

Today we might be prisoners of Hope. Tomorrow, God declares, “I will restore to you double.” As Jesus said last week. “You will not lose your reward.” We are prisoners of this hope. Even the shiniest and most gilded cage of the world’s prisons can’t promise this. They all lied, other than Hell which has no hope. But with Christ, we have hope.