The Alien Work

Biblical Text: Luke 12:49-56

The Gospel lesson for the day often gets put in the “hard saying of Jesus”, but Jesus doesn’t think it belongs there. At least if I’m reading it correctly, he is amazed that we can read the times. And what are those times? They are times of division. The Word of God is proclaimed. That Word does not return empty. It accomplishes what it goes out for. But that purpose ends up being a division. The intention or desire of the Word is the proper work of God. God wishes to “help, save, comfort and defend” his people. But God has not created robots. We have the agency to reject the word. In which care that Word accomplishes the alien work of God. That alien work is the work of the outer darkness.

It is that division of the ages that is taking place today in this world. Christ did not come to bring peace to this world, but division. Because his proper work saves us from the devil’s kingdom. But many will reject that work and demand the alien work be applied to them. The peace comes when the work is completed. It’s a passage for us to understand this existence. To not give up hope. As long as there is breath the Word might accomplish its proper work. But we should not lose heart seeing division. The division is in fact proof of the power of that Word.

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The Raven

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Biblical Text: Luke 12:22-34

I’ve never really found belief in God to be that big of a problem. A materialist philosophy is so obviously full of holes it requires more faith than any of the world religions. But a base belief is God doesn’t really buy you much. It answers a bunch of questions that ultimately don’t mean much to you personally. It just moves you onto the questions of the character of this god. Is he a Loki trickster? Is he a god that requires child sacrifice? Is he the Calvinist God who would condemn billions on hell without a chance to demonstrate his grace? Or is he the God the prophets proclaimed – slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love?

The Gospel lesson is Jesus in prophet mode. “You are worth much more than birds.” He’s proclaiming the steadfast love of God for his creation. Which still brings on the question, how do we know? We know: 1) because the life of Christ fully reveals the love of the Father. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. 2) because we have faith and that faith endures and hopes and is not put to shame. If you put that faith in the things of this world, it never returns anything. If you put that faith in god, he gives you the kingdom.

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Dividing the Inheritance

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Biblical Text: Luke 12:13-21 (Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-26)

This is a stewardship sermon, but I don’t think it is the common stewardship sermon. It is both more aggressively local than most I’ve given or heard, while I think also being more about the spirituality of money that is universally applicable. The specific situation of our congregation might or might not be shared, but the self-examination called for, and the opportunity of the gospel offered is the same everywhere.

The gospel lesson starts off with a familiar complaint, “tell my brother to divide the inheritance.” Even if we ourselves have not been there, we know that spot. And Jesus has two responses to the man. The first is that Jesus is not that man’s judge in this. What providence has given to each of us is up to us to use. But Jesus’ 2nd response points to the spiritual trap of money or hoards of money. There is a point where the money and vocation that providence has given us to support this body and life, to thank God and to help our neighbor becomes our life itself. Our lives become more about collecting than about caring.

I can’t call it a universal law, but everywhere a church has a budget problem, there is a law issue and a gospel promise. The law issue is too many people are living on the wrong side of that trap line. They are laying up treasure for themselves and not being rich toward God who has given it to them. But the gospel invitation is to bring it in. You can look a Haggai 1 and Malachi 3 for the OT examples. The sermon text has all the references. But that is exactly what God says. Bring in the full tithe. Test him in this. See if He doesn’t open the heavens with blessings or everything needed. That isn’t the prosperity gospel. The sermon gets a bit into why not. It is simply what God says. Bring it in and watch the Kingdom move, both in your congregation and in your own life.

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Knowing God

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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.

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One Thing’s Needful

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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.

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You Get What You Need

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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.

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On the Ministry – Augsburg 5

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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.

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What is God doing?

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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.

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Defeated Legion

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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.

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Knowing God

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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.

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