The One About a Three Legged Pig

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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Patience, Love and Promise

040625 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 20:9-20

Of all the genre of biblical literature I think we hear the parable the worst. Maybe that is in line with how they were originally told. When asked Jesus said he spoke in parables “so that they may hear and never understand. (Matthew 13:14).” We either think they are too easy and we walk away with a dead letter. Or we try and make them way too complex looking for esoteric meanings. There is usually nothing wrong with the too easy, except that they just become cute stories with no current relevance. The too complex is usually heretical. They do require some meditation. And they are usually a little more challenging than just a cute story. The parable here is of the wicked tenants. The sermon has quick examples of too easy and too hard. But what most of the parables want to tell us is what the Father is like. And in this case it is about the patience, love and promise of the Father. The parable tells us how the vineyard runs. And leaves us in the vineyard. Leaves us with the question of if we would stay in the vineyard, or will we too lose it.

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Jesus’ Quiet Confidence

040225 LMW4 sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 23:13-25

We are continuing our midweek read through the passion story. And we are up to the trials of Jesus. In Luke there are really two phases. The Jewish trial ends when Jesus answers the Chief Priests questions. That is the last time that Jesus Answers anything. Jesus is completely quiet with Pilate and Herod. And it is interesting how in Luke Pilate is the chief arguer for Jesus. His failure to me is like one of the visual trick pictures that have two images in one. That’s where this meditation starts.

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Father’s Welcome

033025 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

The parable of the Prodigal Son is the text. It remains one of the few biblical stories in common purchase. Which is good because at it most simplistic it is the Old Old Story. It is the pure gospel of the Father’s Welcome. But Jesus’ parables are always deeper than the simple application if we are willing to ponder them a bit. This sermon is an attempt to do that. Starting with the fact that the Bible doesn’t seem to like eldest children. There are three main points:

The Providence of God is for everyone. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.
There is only one way into the Father’s house, as a son.
The feast is going to happen, the question is if you are there. (And to be there means to live as a member of the household whose currency is love.)

Give it a listen and think along with it. I could be wrong, but we tend to emphasize the love of God, but we don’t really think about the means. We think about it as some generic force that has no implications. But the parable brings one son back, but at the end leaves the son who had never left outside the festival tent.

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