New Wine

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.

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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.

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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.

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The One About a Three Legged Pig

051825 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Acts 11:1-18; (Revelation 21:1-7)

The text of the sermon is largely Peter’s vision of the heavenly tablecloth descending which ended up at Gentile Pentecost. It’s a story about ceremonial laws – clean and unclean – and how they play no role in the Kingod of God. Now most of us probably don’t think we have ceremonial laws which is crazy. Because we are constantly making clean and unclean distinctions. And constantly making new ones. They are much easier to render judgement upon. What this sermon does is two things. It attempts to teach some distinctions in the law: moral, civil and ceremonial. And then it proclaims like Jesus to Peter, “what God has made clean, do not call common.” For God made all things good. And Christ is remaking all things. Our clean and unclean distinctions, our ceremonial laws, better not get in the way of the Work of God.

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153 Large Fish

050425 sermon Download

Biblical Text: John 21:1-19

I think this is about calling. And for me I’d take it as calling in the broad sense. We all know there are things that we should be doing. And the very bedrock it is answering the question who am I? and whose am I? If we answer those calling then is being true to ourselves. The text is the contradiction of what happens when we ignore the calling (nothing) and what happens when we follow it (the grace of God.) It is also about things that stand in the way. Sometimes those are small things, like being hungry. Sometime those are huge things, like betrayal. This sermon is a meditation the weaves back and forth between Peter and the disciples and ourselves and how we deal with calling and the things that get in the way. And how Christ helps in all these things.

Recording note: the first 15 secs of the actual sermon sound bad. My microphone was muted at the board. So I amplified the ambient recording. After 15 secs the mute was taken off and it sounds much better.

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Mission and Witness

042725 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: John 20:19-31, Acts 5:12-32

The second Sunday of Easter, the end of the octave of Easter, is always the appearance to Thomas. And for most of my life this has been the Sunday to talk about doubt – doubting Thomas. Which I happen to think is a terrible reading of the text. Sure, Thomas doubts, but Jesus’ words to him are a gentle rebuke. Something like, “Thomas, stop being a fool, and believe. Do you really know these 10 so little that you think they’d lie to you about something like this?” If you want to talk Dark Nights of the Soul go read Job or Ecclesiastes or maybe even Paul on his fellow Jews. But Thomas is about mission. “As the Father sent me, I am sending you. Receive the Holy Spirit. Forgive Sins.” This is about the mission of the church in all times and places carried out through Word and Sacrament. And the first lesson of the day from Acts is a perfect example.

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Perplexed and Running

042025 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 24:1-12

Happy Easter. Luke loves to juxtapose two groups, often male and female. And it is no different here at the Resurrection. Often it is for two ends of a spectrum. Sometimes it is to show different reactions to the same proclamation of the Word. Today the women and Peter are juxtaposed (with the apostles being an indeterminate group). The Word is the Resurrection. Both believe, but their starting place is much different. Their starting places just might be the extremes of the people showing up for Easter Services.

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A Good Friday Tenebrae Meditation

041825 Good Friday Sermon Download

Good Friday service as I run it most years is a reading by the congregation of the passion story in the gospel of the year broken into seven parts, usually: Gethsemane Betrayal, Jewish Trial, Peter’s Betrayal, Pilate, Herod, Crucifixion, Burial. After each reading there is an appropriate hymn, a short meditation, and the dowsing of the light. It’s a guided contemplative service. Every year for me as a preacher this is typically the toughest service. Those meditations have to be tight. My normal Sunday sermons runs 1500 words or around 12-15 mins. When I do occasional or midweek preaching, or the Pastor’s Corner articles, I aim for half that length. Both of those have some room to develop an argument and provide examples. Maybe even on the longer one a tangent not fully explored but offered. The Good Friday meditation is aimed at 300 – 400 words. It is a work of compression. One image, one thought, right to the point. And it needs to be emotionally obvious such that examples aren’t needed. That said, this series of seven such mediations felt right.

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Overlapping Kingdoms

041325 Sermon Download

Biblical Texts: John 12:12-19 (Palm Sunday), Luke 23:1-56 (Passion), John 18:28-38 (unread, but referenced)

It was Palm Sunday also known as the Sunday of the Passion. It’s the first Sunday of Holy Week. The passion account is given its own days the week on Thursday and Friday, but the church has cycled through periods of greater focus on the Palms and periods of greater focus on the Passion. (They 1960’s/70’s were probably a high water mark on the Palms. Growing up I never remember hearing the Passion on a Sunday. But Good Friday in those days was almost as well attended as Easter.) I’ve found the juxtaposition of the Triumphal Entry and the Trials is fruitful in preaching and meditation. (And this Hymn – LSB 444 – is the perfect bridge.)

The day structured like that is about The Two Kingdoms. The City of God and the City of Man. The Kingdom of the Right ruled directly by Christ and the Kingdom of the Left ruled through mankind. And what we call politics is often just life in the overlapping of the Kingdoms. This sermon meditates on those two kingdoms. How Christ rules the Right directly. And the responsibilities of the Left and living in the overlap for Christians.

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The Spectacle

040925 LMW5 sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 23:26-56 (Concentrating on v48)

The full text was the crucifixion, but Luke gives us the scene through multiple pairings of people. He calls is “The Spectacle” which is something pulled from the world of Greek Theater. That world had two forms: tragedy and comedy. And Luke’s pairing of folks to me displays what kind of Spectacle they thought they were in. And Luke’s account places us as watching the Spectacle. With the question, what are we watching? The Sermon hopes to orient us toward a proper viewing of Holy Week.

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