Lamplighters

Biblical Text: Matthew 25:1-13

This parable – the 10 Virgins “all trimming their wicks” – is one that most modern Lutherans preachers hate I bet. At least if they are being honest about where their theology is at. I make a split at modern, because Luther himself had no trouble preaching its clear message. Its clear message, the clear message of all the end times sermons, is that sanctification is something that we are part of. The wedding feast? We don’t have anything to do with that. Jesus has paid the bride price and has prepared a place. Our justification is by grace alone in Christ alone. But Jesus consistently says “watch” or “prepare”. And the reason is that we can lose our salvation. In this sermon we can get so lost in the things temporal that we lose the things eternal. We become overcome with worldliness and forget to bring the oil. Because the one thing we know is that we don’t know when the Bridegroom comes. Making a quick trip to Wal-Mart won’t be an option. Have you lived the Christian life, or not? To many modern Lutheran ears that sounds like a betrayal of gospel. It isn’t. The betrayal is in not living it. In not preparing.

Recording note: the recording is an after the fact re-recording. Something happened with our recording system and the live version couldn’t be used.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Alpha and the Omega

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Revelation 7:2-17

In the Church Year the Day was All Saints (Observed). What is a saint is a little bit different from one tradition to the next. The Roman Catholic tradition a saint is only someone that the Papacy has recognized as “experiencing the beatific vision” (i.e. we know they are with God and not in Purgatory or Hell because reasons.) So All Saints becomes a catch-all feast of the recognized saints whose own day has not been celebrated. No other tradition has a formal recognition process. The Orthodox, Saints are first the martyrs, and then those recognized by public acclimation and what used to be called “the cult of the saints.” Protestants, including Lutherans here, use the term closer to how it is used in the bible meaning all the faithful. One of Luther’s slogans is simul justus et peccator, at the same time saint and sinner. That really describes us – the Church in Warfare. Or following the text of the day, the church in the midst of the great tribulation. The church at rest no longer has that problem with sin. What All Saints becomes in the Lutheran tradition is a celebration or remembrance first of those who have recently died in the faith but also of the great cloud of witnesses in general.

This sermon and the text from Revelation is a look at that great cloud from two directions: the beginning and the end – the alpha and the omega. John’s vision is a vision of All Israel, all believers in all times and all places. The first part is the sealing by God of his own before time. The last part is the outcome of that sealing at the end of the age. The time in between is the tribulation, the time under the cross. What Revelation does so well is comfort. Yes, we are in the tribulation. But you have been sealed by God in the blood of Christ, and he will bring you through it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Reformation Conundrums

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Romans 3:19-28

Reformation Sunday in a Lutheran congregation can have three flavors. Vanilla is a simple celebration. We assume that everyone knows the greatness and key points of the Reformation. We just celebrate it. Chocolate is to complicate that celebration. You do that by asserting that we don’t know it or we’ve lost the Reformation script or something about it is no longer relevant. This sermon has at least a scoop of Chocolate. Strawberry is the last and a little rarer flavor. It is an attempt to make us feel Luther’s anfechtung, his problem with sin and righteousness. If you can do that, you don’t have to worry about he Chocolate, because it is immediately relevant. This sermon is an attempt at a lot of strawberry. It is an attempt to rip away the veils of the age that hide the same problems Luther wrestled with. They are there. Our veils just worked for a while. So do the veils of the Papacy for a while before Luther.

The primary veil that we depend upon can be summarized in the word acceptance. We treat acceptance as the gospel, when it is no gospel at all. Acceptance doesn’t desire or achieve righteousness. It just overlooks sin. The Gospel is absolution. The sin is no more because we have been given the righteousness of Christ. This sermon attempts to take off the veil and encourage the reception of righteousness from outside ourselves.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Render to Caesar

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Matthew 22:15-22

“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” is one of the most quoted saying of Jesus. But I’m convinced that 99.9% of the time it is quoted, we quote it terribly wrong. We use it to let ourselves off the hook on our duty. That is the essence of the trap they were laying for Jesus. Which side of this divide are you on Jesus? And whichever side he is “on” he’d lose the crowd from the other side. They marveled at his answer. Not because it was simply a rhetorical masterpiece of weaving between two poles. We hear politicians daily attempt that, maybe monthly do it successfully. But those are always like the apocryphal saying of Barack Obama – “my superpower is that people hear what they want to in my words.” When Jesus said this what they marveled at was how it convicted everyone. Jesus isn’t on any of their sides. He’s the King of the Reign of Heaven. This sermon attempts to restore some of the marvel of that saying.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Worthy

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Matthew 22:1-14

The Gospel text is the parable of the Wedding Feast. It immediately follows last week’s text – the wicked tenants. So they are covering some of the same territory, but this one expands on the tenants in two ways. First, it answers what is counted as the wickedness. In the wedding feast is it described as being unworthy. And it is simply dishonoring the King and his son. The second way it expands is the Wedding Feast parable continues to add how the new tenants or the second invitees are both called and treated. And it is this second part that is the most important for the church. This sermon meditates on both the lessons of former Israel for us, and for what is called from us to be worthy. Or maybe the best way to put it is how are we not unworthy? Which is everything to do with the wedding garment.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Vineyards and Cornerstones

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Matthew 21:33-46

This parable of the wicked tenants as it is sometimes called feels very rooted in its specific history so much so that even through the parables were told so that “hearing they might not hear” the Chief Priests discerned Jesus told this about them. It is the summaries, conclusions or maybe so far as application that open up the parable beyond the Jewish temple leadership. In my reading Jesus gives three separate summaries.

“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”
“The Kingdom of God will be taken away and given to those producing its fruit”
“The one who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces, the one the stone falls on will be crushed”

This sermon looks at each of those in progression and how the help us hear the parable for ourselves. The placing of the cornerstone is pure gospel. “God has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.” The second is the moral warning to watch. If you think the vineyard is yours to do with as you want, you might be killing the heir. The third thinks about our ultimate positions regarding God: ignoring such that we might trip over, set ourselves against him, or build on the cornerstone.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

A Better Story

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Matthew 20:1-16

Pay attention to the stories people tell you over and over. They are telling you about themselves. The stories that we as Americans tell over and over right now are toxic. They have erased the old stories. Their only fruits are division, death and lethargy. This sermon is about a better story. It is a story that Jesus tells about the Kingdom, which of course is a story about himself – God. And it is a story full of mischievous life. There is always work in the Kingdom. The pay is unfair, but always right, and better than we deserve. Go work in the vineyard. You won’t regret it. You won’t regret an identity built on this story.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Seventy times Seven

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Most of the parables tell us more about God – Father, Son or Spirit – than they do about us. The stuff they tell us about ourselves we already know, like that we are prone to insane double standards. Like, I never have to pay my debts, but you, pay it right now. What the parable of the unmerciful servant tells us is that staggering amount we have been forgiven by God, and how God did that while we were still trying the play the con on him.

The difficult thing that this sermon attempts however briefly to think about is what is demanded of disciples in this world. The radical forgiveness of Jesus is required of us for those within the church. That is Jesus’ answer to Peter, “seventy times seven”. That is the moral lesson of the parable. “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had on you?” To fellow disciples we must practice forgiveness. The question then extends to the world? And this is where you cross into the imitation of Christ. We are not the messiah. On the one hand radical forgiveness of the world is not required and may not be wise. On the other this is the model of Christ and it is an open and costly road. Such forgiveness as Christ is an act of faith that the Father repays.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Matthew 18 for Dummies

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Matthew 18:1-20, (Ezekiel 33:7-9)

I started using the word clouds a long time ago for the image. Originally I thought it was artistic cute: a Word cloud for preaching the Word. But, as I made them I started to realize they did have something to say, and what they had to say too seeing a few. There was always the simple surface fact of the most commonly used words. Like above – Luther and Jesus. I learned and adapted over the years that if “God” was the biggest word, the sermon was probably too generic. I looked for Father or Jesus or Spirit to show up. But there are a variety of shapes that show up. The clouds that are dominated by 2-3 big words and everything else is small are usually the simplest. They tend to be more about proclamation. At the other end are ones like the above. There are lots of words that are large enough to be read, but none that really just pop. Those tend to be less pure proclamation and more teaching or invitation to ponder. The every Sunday preacher has to have a bigger repertoire than the occasional. The lectionary preacher even more so, if he wants to preach the text and not just what is on his mind that week.

Matthew 18 is a deeper text than we normally treat it. Depending upon if our preference is for Young Luther or Old Luther (listen to the sermon), we tend to reduce it to “The Process” for solving disputes in the church, or reduce it to the ridiculousness of even thinking about the law parallel to Jesus’ hyperbole about cutting off body parts. We aren’t going to do that and the Father would not want that, so thinking in sin counting terms must be just wrong. I hope that this sermon was an invitation to think beyond those simplistic reductions. The Christian Life has a simplicity to it, but those are caricatures. That simplicity is the one found on the other side of a complexity.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Labor Day

Full Sermon Draft Download

Biblical Text: Matthew 16:21-28

I suppose I should have used a title like “The Labors of Christ”. The text is what happens immediately after Peter’s confession of Christ. You have a confrontation over what that word means. Peter thinks it means something very earthly. Jesus corrects him. And then he invites everyone to see his definition. What is Jesus’ definition of the Christ? Suffering, death and resurrection. How are we invited? To pick up our cross and follow. Why would we do this? It is the only way past death. It is the only way we keep our life, to lose it. This is how God works. This is the labor of the Christ seen through the things of God, not the things of man.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download