Knowing God

Biblical Text: Genesis 18:17, 20-33 and Luke 11:1-13

Superficially this is a sermon about prayer. It is an encouragement to prayer. But beyond that superficiality it is a sermon about knowing God. Can you know God? If so, how can you know God? What the sermon meditates on are three ways of knowing God. The first is not unimportant, but it really isn’t enough. It is knowing God as information. This is the way the demons know God. The second is knowing God through His word and promises. This is faith or the faith. And ultimately all ways of knowing God are grounded in his universal revelation of Himself in Scripture. But we are also invited to pray. And Prayer, as the Old Testament lesson of Abraham interceding for Sodom is an example, tell us something personal about God. Prayer is a personal knowledge of God. The sermon expands on this and the great invitation we have to know our God personally.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

One Thing’s Needful

072025 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 10:38-42

Of all the biblical stories that cause complaint, Mary and Martha is right up there. We are all natural Marthas. And even those who think they are Mary’s probably aren’t. But this sermon reflects really mostly on one phrase of Jesus in the story – “but one thing is necessary.” It set me thinking about the current American love affair with gambling. Because what Jesus is asking us to consider is something like “what is the probability of God revealing himself personally to you?” That is the one thing needful. And the truth is that when God shows up we are often behaving like Martha. When the Word is present we are letting the cares of the world dictate our actions, and we miss the time of our visitation. Thinking in the mentality of a gambler can actually be helpful in this. We might learn to recognize the truly worthy, the one thing needful – The Word of God, Jesus himself.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

You Get What You Need

071325 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 10:25-37

Note: The recording is a re-recording after the fact. We had a recording error real time.

Wants and needs are two different things. We want to justify ourselves, or maybe better put we want to be able to “do this and you will live.” There are lots of ways of being dishonest with ourselves to justify doing evil, but Paul’s “elementary spirits” (Galatians 4, call it the natural law) usually call us out. It is really hard to lie to yourself all the time. It is easier to justify leaving things left undone. That’s the lawyers tactic. “Who is my neighbor?” Who can I exclude from the circle of love and still satisfy the law. The sermon notes a recent cultural conversation stumbled into by the Vice President. And like all our cultural conversations these days, it was completely warped by our polarization. Because there is a way that the VP was correct in quoting the order of love. We are limited creatures. And call it the other ditch, we can often be sinful in helping out abstract far away neighbor while those in our direct care – on our daily roads – lie beaten and half dead. There is also a way that he could be wrong which is this lawyer’s question. Can I exclude people as too far away to care about? This is the very cutting edge of the law. It always convicts. All humanity is our neighbor.

But the biggest reason all humanity is our neighbor is because Christ has crossed the road and embraced all of humanity. Christ has bound our wounds, and placed us in care and promises to return and repay anything. We want to be able to talk our way in; we’ve been given mercy. You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. And then you go and show mercy to those in your walk.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

On the Ministry – Augsburg 5

070625 sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 10:1-20

The text is Jesus sending out the 72. It is a text unique to Luke. Other gospels have the sending of the 12; only Luke has the follow on larger sending. And I tend to think it is the perfect text to talk about what exactly the ordained ministry is. Within Lutheranism that is discussing Article 5 of the Augsburg Confession. And I think compared to all the other churches of the various schisms – discussed in the sermon – we get it right. Many fall in a ditch to the right ascribing something called ontological change to the one ordained. This puts sacramental magic on the ordination and relegates the call to nothing. Others fall in the ditch on the left. They reduce the ministry to the priesthood of all believers. Everything rests on the call, and we all have a call in that priesthood. And they ignore the entire biblical history of those set apart – like Jesus sets apart these 72 – sent to the towns and villages of Israel. The Augsburg Confession I believe presents is rightly. The ministry exists for one reason, to continue to proclaim the gospel – “Peace be to this house.” Because this is how faith is created, but the proclamation that comes from outside of us. Christ came from outside of our world to proclaim the nearer Kingdom of God. And he sent folks to proclaim that. And he continues to send folks into the fields to proclaim that. In one sense the tools are completely inappropriate for the task. The sermon elaborates. But the Word creates exactly what it intends – faith.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

What is God doing?

062925 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: 1 Kings 19:9-21

Our lectionary tends to skip texts with a bent to violence or martial images, like Elijah and the Prophets of Baal. It feeds us the sad sack Elijah in the aftermath. Now, there is a defendable reason for this, but you can’t really get to it by skipping. Because we all want the fire from heaven. And when the fire from heaven doesn’t come, or when Jesus rebukes you for asking for it as he did in the associated Gospel lesson for the day, we lament, we ask “why?”

The why’s largely remain God’s. He doesn’t really answer why. He redirects us to what. He will listen to the lament. He asks Elijah twice for his litany of lament. Why does it always work this way? And then God turns him to the What. Elijah, the question is not why God does something, the question is What is God doing. And in ask What we also get our invite to see it and participate. The Kingdom of God certainly comes without our prayers, but we pray that it comes to us also.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Defeated Legion

062225 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 8:26-39

In the church year it is the start of the long green season. What I mean by that is the altar colors are green for the non-festival half of the year. And the lessons go back to some semblance of a continuous read through the Gospel (Luke this year.) And where we get dropped in the story is at the end of the Galilean ministry. (The sermon expands on that a bit.) Specifically, Jesus has started to make the moves that Luke often emphasized, which are those of Gentile inclusion. He tells the disciples to set sail across the Sea of Galilee for the other side where they are met by a demon possessed man. A man who represents the Spiritual state of the gentile world. The sermon develops how this man in many ways also represents the Spiritual state of Our World: shameless and death seeking. Which are the hallmarks of demons. Yet Christ has crossed the divide. And Christ has come to save. And the demons have no power over him. In fact he commands them. And He has set us free from our bondage to sin and death to live. The question the text leaves is with is represented in the characters: How shall we live? And that is the last movement of the sermon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Knowing God

061525 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

The Sunday is Trinity Sunday, so we recite the Athanasian Creed and the theme of the Sunday is possibly the hardest one in the church year. If you want to know someone what a wise person would do is say look at what they do. And most Sundays follow that advice. We preach about God by what he has done for us or through his saints. But Trinity Sunday tends to be more philosophical, addressing the desire to know God in himself, or in the interior life. That is the normally the realm of the mystic. The rest of us are given solid words in the creeds. But this sermon – thinks about a few places where God has revealed his own inner life. First, God does wish to be known. Folly beckons you into the dark and secret places, but wisdom cries out from the hills, the crossroads, the gates. Wisdom can be found wherever you are. And wisdom is a reliable narrator. The relationship between Father and Son – between God and Wisdom in Proverbs – is this cycle like breathing of delight and rejoicing. And it is that interior life – of delight and rejoicing – through Christ that we are invited to take part in. Our humanity in Christ has been taken into God. Christ delights in the Children of Men, and we return in rejoicing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

New Wine

060825 sermon Download

Biblical Text: : Acts 2:1-21

The day on the church calendar is Pentecost, which is the 3rd most important church festival after Christmas and Easter. Although Pentecost is kinda the Rodney Dangerfield of Church festivals. It gets no respect. Although it does get the great and rare liturgical color of Red.

Wine, even the phrase “new wine” is an important image in the Bible. That phrase “new wine” is used by some in the crowd on the first Pentecost to describe what is happening right in front of their eyes. The scoffers say the disciples are “full of New Wine.” Now that claim in absolutely false in the what that they mean it, that the disciples are drunk. But they are “full of New Wine” in a divine way. The Spirit of Christ has descended upon them. The promised power from on high. This sermon meditates on what that means. It spends some time thinking about ways that claims about new wine might be abused – in line with how the Old Testament prophets could talk. It also seeks to define – in line with Peter’s Pentecost sermon quoting one of those prophets – what the actions of the Spirit, the New Wine in proper use, does.

How do you recognize the “New Wine?” It is for everyone. It allows all to understand the Word of God. And it testifies the apocalyptic reality that God is making you new, and will bring that to completion. When you see these things, you are seeing the New Wine in action.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Times of Transition (Liminal Times)

060125 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Acts 1:12-26

The original idea for this sermon came from the strange day on the liturgical calendar – Easter 7. It is past Ascension Day, so Jesus is no longer with the disciples in the flesh. But it is not yet Pentecost where the Spirit comes and empowers the work. What do you do when one chapter has closed, but another has not yet opened? That is what this sermon is about reflecting on the passage in Acts in this time of transition.

Following the Apostles there are three things. The first is to close one chapter and prepare for the next. There are a bunch of things that travel under closing a chapter and the sermon meditates on those a bit. By preparing for the next it is largely the work of keeping the eyes open for things that will need to be done and people entering life. The second thing is to be constant in the Word. This is how we seek the face of God who will open that next chapter. The final thing might be the toughest, but the most necessary. Walk out in faith. You don’t get to live in the transition time, although we often try. You have to move in faith into what God has prepared.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Ask

052525 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: John 16:23-33

On our current calendar it was the 6th Sunday in Easter. The old calendar used to call is Rogate, which is Latin for ask or even beg. The gospel lesson for the day, centering around Jesus saying “ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be complete,” has been the text since at least the 8th century. This sermon opens with a bit of memory about older forms of congregational collective asking. Both practical asking and spiritual asking. And then it transitions into a meditation on prayer – the way we ask. It is cribbing from Luther’s postil sermon for this day where he holds there are five necessities to prayer: promise, faith, specificity, soul need, and the name of Christ. You find 4 of those easily in the text. It is that soul need that is an interesting add by Luther. It is not that I disagree with the great man. (I better not, I just preached it.) But soul need as I hope the sermon makes clear, is the difference between my wishing and my praying. I wish a lot of things, but are they the deep needs of my soul? If they are not, they are not prayer. And it is prayer that Jesus promises is heard. Ask. Ask and you will receive. And you joy will be made full.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download