Cross Marks

Biblical Text: Mark 8:27-38
Full Sermon Draft

Luther put the cross as one of his seven marks of the church. Jesus made exactly that lesson out of Peter’s confession. What is the first place you go to if you want to understand the Christ? The cross. Anything else is Satan, or the things of man. This deeply Lenten sermon reflects on that centrality of the cross, and what it means for our lives that God is most clearly seen in suffering, shame and death.

The music on the recording is the Lenten hymn O Lord Throughout These Forty Days sung by our Children’s Choir. (Note here that that congregation sang this same hymn last week. Kids quite young, my Ethan is 5, can participate in worship quite well.)

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Winter is Coming

Biblical Texts: Mark 1:9-15, James 1:12-18 and Genesis 22:1-18
Full Sermon Draft

The texts for the first week of Lent in year B are distinctive and rough and play on each other in my reading. The central concern is testing. This sermon, following James, attempts to create a distinction between temptation and testing. It then looks at the testing of Jesus and the testing of Abraham as examples of standing under testing. The parallel is OT Israel who strayed under their testing in the wilderness. The application section then looks at a couple of example of modern day testing at the hands of ISIS. It ends by making a comparison between a spirituality that survives the Winter vs. the seemingly sunnier spirituality that ultimately fails in the cold winds.

The opening hymn is Christ the Life of All the Living (LSB 420) which is a classic Lenten hymn emphasizing exactly our wintery reliance on Christ alone. The choir echoes after the OT lesson with teach me your ways Lord. I didn’t get recorded, but after the sermon we sang one of my favorite hymns that captures this wintery Spirituality, Rise! To Arms! With Prayer Employ You (LSB 668). Our effort is not to moral perfection but to prayer. Of course part of the greatness is the chance to sing the hymn tune Wachet Auf.

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Transcendent – Sign and Reality

Biblical Text: Mark 9:2-9
Full Sermon Draft

One of the things I think is constant in our experience is a desire for the transcendent. I’ll use as a quick definition of the transcendent something that is larger that we are. Augustine recognized this in his phrase “we are restless until we find our rest in you”. The biblical text is the Transfiguration, a direct experience of the transcendent and the reaction of Peter. What the sermon attempts to do is first demonstrate that we aren’t any different. We long for transcendence and we cling desperately to its signs. It does this primarily by looking at pop music which in my head expresses openly our common longings. The second step is to point out what actually happens on the mountaintop. Jesus is left alone and the voice says listen to him. Instead of clinging to the fleeting signs of transcendence, we have the reality, Jesus Christ. And his words tells us where we can find him. We are restless until we find our rest in him.

The hymn of the day captured in the recording points at one of those places we see face to face: Lutheran Service Book 631 – Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face. All the words and some history of the hymn are here. Here is the LSB link which has an extra verse and is set to an interesting/different hymn tune compared to the most standard.

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That is why I came…

Texts: Mark 1:29-39, 1 Corinthians 9:16-27, Isaiah 40:21-31
Full Sermon Draft

The collection of texts assigned for today stuck me this week as wanting to talk about preaching. Jesus confronts himself with a question, what is the chief purpose of his ministry? And his answer set the paradigm of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is not one that is advanced as the kingdoms of this world. Instead it is preached; it is proclaimed.

So, this sermon is a basic statement of the power and purpose of preaching. And the source of all preaching which is never the preacher, but the one who commands the message.

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Celebrity Jesus

Biblical Text: Mark 1:21-28
Full Sermon Draft

The text is Jesus’ exorcism of a unclean spirit in the midst of the synagogue. But the tension in the early part of the gospel of mark is between the reality of the messiah and the fame. Every time after Jesus expels a demon or does some work of power his fame spreads. This sermon playfully looks at this exorcism at a meeting of celebrity. It then juxtaposes our fame mentality against the reality that Jesus chose – the cross. That fame mentality seeps into our lives deeper than we think. And the freedom of the cross is more real and costly than we imagine.

Recording note: I have left in two hymns. The first is the introduction hymn which if you are asking what the real “Reformation Hymn” was I have to put up Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice (LSB 556). A Mighty Fortress is what we think of, but Dear Christians reads like Luther’s testament. Listen for all the demonic/Satan/spiritual evil language which seemed appropriate for a lesson with an exorcism. The Listen for Luther’s proclamation of the gospel. The second hymn is our children’s choir with an Epiphany Hymn Come Thou Bright and Morning Star. Within the sermon there is a play on words with Star (Celebrity), Morning Star (Lucifer) and Morning Star (Jesus). Come our real morning star.

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Three Comparisons

Biblical Text: Mark 1:14-20
Full Sermon Draft

The text is the emergence of Jesus after the arrest of John the Baptist and his calling of disciples. This sermon looks at three sets of comparisons encouraged in the text by their juxtaposition: Jesus and John the Baptist, Andrew/Peter and James/John, and Jesus and his disciples. Each comparison increases our knowledge of God and the path of discipleship. The sermon explores those especially the role of courage in the life of discipleship.

A note on the recording: I’ve included a couple of musical pieces. Our Choir sang an infectious newer hymn, LSB 833 Listen, God is Calling. It has a dramatic African Call/Response structure. I’ve been looking for about three years for a chance to get it into the service. It is just not something that a congregation can take on cold, but the choir sounded great. The second hymn is LSB 856 O Christ, Who Called the Twelve. It also is a newer hymn with some amazing depth paired with probably a familiar tune, Terra Beata formally, but I know it as This is Our Father’s World. (And I am still convinced that the theme song running throughout the Lord of the Rings movies is inspired by this hymn tune. At every moment of near despair, Frodo or Sam remember the shire and this theme plays in the background.) Both of these hymns are great additions to a Lutheran Congregation’s Hymnbook.

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We Have Found Him

Biblical Text: John 1:43-51
Full Sermon Draft

This is the season of Epiphany, after Christmas but before Lent. It has been my experience that the Epiphany lessons for each year have a separate theme. Some years focus on the light aspect. This year is discipleship. We get a steady stream of conversion and following Jesus accounts. The text for this week is Philip and Nathanael. What this sermon explores are the doctrines and attitudes contained in Philip’s assertion to Nathanael, “We have found him”. The idea of who finds who is taken up in the Christological section. The text and Christian doctrine asserts that Christ finds us, yet we tend to talk like Philip in the active voice. Call it the paradox of the election and conversion. The second doctrine is the order of the titles: Kind of Israel, Son of God and Son of Man. The son of Man, the new Adam, is the one of greatest theological importance. That is the one that defines the others and that angels attend.

The attitudes examined are contained in what Jesus praises in Nathanael – one without guile.

We conclude with the idea of discipleship as a continual coming to see. One day we will see clearly.

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Heaven Torn Open

Biblical Text: Mark 1:4-11
Full Sermon Draft

The text and the church occasion is the baptism of Jesus. This sermon uses as a theme what Mark says happened at the beginning and at the end of his gospel – Heaven Torn Open. First at the baptism when Jesus becomes willingly the new Adam, taking our baptism. Then at the cross, when the veil to the holy place is torn open. Jesus counts himself with us sinners, so that we might be counted in the holy place. He doesn’t abandon or crush his creation, he redeems it.

I wish I had caught a good recording of the hymn post the sermon. It is LSB 404 – Jesus Once with Sinners Numbered. It is a great hymn and spot on. Here is a link to someone with a great voice singing it.

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The Problem of the Will

Text: Luke 2:40-52
Full Sermon Draft

The text is the boy Jesus at the temple. It is the only picture we have of Jesus and his family between the infancy narratives and the Baptism by John. In it Jesus interacts with two groups, the teachers in the temple and Mary and Joseph. What this sermon does is ponder how Jesus reacts to each and how he addresses different problems in the Christian life. It uses Jonathan Haidt’s work as an entry point. Connects that to the Reformers view of fallen man and then to how Christ heals the fallen mind and then the fallen will.

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Spiritual and Religious

Biblical Text: Luke 2:22-40
Full Sermon Draft

The text is the presentation of Jesus and the purification of Mary. It is a text deeply rooted in the religion of Israel. It is also with Simeon and Anna a text populated with the advent of the Holy Spirit. What the sermon does is look at what happens when we treat the Spirit and Religion as either/or instead of both/and. From Anderson Cooper and Gwenyth Paltrow to Anna/Simeon as models for the church.

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