Redemption Tour: Witness

Biblical Text: Psalm 81, Acts 7:9-10

We continue our Midweek Lenten Series – The Redemption Tour. This week the theme is redemption of our witness. The Acts text comes from Martyr Stephen’s sermon as he was being stoned. And the big question for Stephen in a strange way becomes the big question for the Apostle Paul, who as Saul was holding the coats and heard that word of the martyr. And I think it might just be a big question for us. It focuses on Joseph and his brothers. Those brothers, the founders of the tribes of Israel, rejected their brother and essentially killed him. He was sent to Egypt and a land of strange tongues. But God was with him and paradoxically it was their evil action that was turned to good and saved the entire world including them. And this is Paul’s wonder about his fellow Jews who would not accept the message of Jesus and killed him. His ministry was to the gentiles and it was saving the world. Would the Jews return. The American church has seen a good deal of the same rejection and honestly the attempts to kill the message of the gospel. And it is in a terrible shape. The gospel has gone to strange tongues. Will we return? God redeems the witness. The Word goes out and it does not return empty. It may not return as we wish, but we rarely know the whole story. Our call it to witness. God redeems it.

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Arranged Marriages

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Biblical Text: John 4:5-26

The title is kinda tongue in cheek, but if you get beyond the surface, not really. In the bible God consistently describes his relationship with his people in romantic and marriage terms, both Old Testament (the whole book of Hosea) and New Testament (Paul saying marriage is symbolic of Christ and the church). Also in the Bible scenes at wells are the Rom-Coms (cross references Rebekah and Jacob and Rachel). So when Jesus comes to a well by himself and a Samaritan woman comes along, it’s a biblical scene drenched in romance and marriage. And yes, we are not used to thinking of Jesus in that way, and as the scene plays out the flesh is not what it is concerned about. But it is concerned about the Spirit. It is concerned about what lord or gods or idols you might currently be married to.

And in the context of the Galilean ministry – the sermon describes the way that I typically take John as meta-commentary around Matthew, Mark and Luke – the question is that the arranged marriage to those who should have known is failing. The Jews will not accept Jesus. Will the Samaritans? The Gentiles? What does it mean negotiating a new arranged marriage? So the sermon ends up being a contemplation on the call to faith and what it means to worship God instead of the idols.

Comment: After service I received some interesting comments from some different people than normal. It struck a vein. I was happy with this one. But I was also quite afraid that the topic might be too – I suppose the word is – symbolic. Which is often my trouble with John because I think he’s taken – or been given by the Spirit – these actual events from the life of Jesus, but they are events that are themselves symbolic. It is something that I think artists tend to get immediately. There are just episodes in life that have endless meaning. (Pixar’s Inside Out would call them “core memories”.) They are endless wellsprings that we find ourselves returning to in order to understand ourselves. But the extent that “normies” do this or connect to life on the basis of story is different. I think it is a difference not of kind but a quantity. Normies are not as given to reflection as the artistic spirit. But there are still those “core memories.” So preaching about faith, conversion and leaving idols, behind a life events as symbols I was afraid it might be too many layers of inception.

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Redemption Tour: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

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Biblical Text: Psalm 133, Hebrews 12:22-24

We are continuing on the Redemption Tour – specific things that Jesus can be said to have redeemed from ruin. This week the topic is brotherhood. It’s a topic that gets demoted or devalued by our current “the future is female” culture, but it is a surprisingly strong biblical theme. Maybe it should not be so surprising as erasing biblical themes is what our entire culture is about. Although we are not alone in this. That has been Satan project all along, to erase the work of God.

While I was thinking about brotherhood or fraternity, I got to thinking about the French Revolution motto, hence the title. That is the opening to this sermon. And the overriding theme is that in our sinful quest for equality with God, we lost liberty and fraternity. In Christ those are redeemed, especially the fraternity. We will never have equality with God, but Christ is our brother.

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Are You Born Again?

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Biblical Text: John 3:1-17

I’m sorry, we had audio problems this morning. The audio recording of the sermon wasn’t good enough for me to really use. If I have a little time tomorrow I might do an after the fact recording. Which sometimes I hate Satan, because this one felt on fire with good material. The manuscript is never 100%. There is always something in the moment that is better. And a re-recording is never the same. An actual congregation just makes things live. The text has John 3:16, but the sermon and in my reading the text is really about the interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus. John 3:16 is a conclusion only earned in a very specific conversation. “Are you born again?”

And that question takes in baptism, faith and just who you think God is. Nicodemus’s last words in the middle of the story are “how can these things be?” As the sermon would develop, he’s got a very specific concept of God. A concept tied to the fleshy existence of the children of Abraham. Jesus challenges him and through him us to believe in the Spiritual God. The God who so loved the world.

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Redemption Tour: Worship

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Biblical Text: Psalm 50:1-15

I rarely do this. The sermon itself explains a bit more. But my Lenten Midweeks this year are going to be a Series. They will each be based on a Psalm. The general theme will be redemption. Each week will expand a bit how in Christ the specific part of our lives are redeemed. This week the Redemption Tour starts with worship.

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Lead by the Spirit

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Biblical Text: Matthew 4:1-11

I start this sermon with a little reflection on what I believe the purpose of preaching is – proclamation. And mention that I think this particular sermon does some of that, but it ventures a little more into speculation that normal. The text is the temptation of Jesus. In the lectionary it is paired with the Old Testament reading of the fall into sin. Which at least for me brings up the problem of Evil. Why is Satan allowed to do this? And extending further, why does he continue to have such reign. The sermon does eventually attempt an answer. Or at least it is my answer. And it is an answer rooted in a duality word – testing or trial and temptation. In the Biblical languages they are really the same word. It is in English they are different words. And it is that divergence that I think causes so much trouble with evil. We have a simplistic and rosy view of God who never brings the trial. How that trial is allowed to happen is often by evil. Satan surely means for us to die. But the time of trial for God has two potential outcomes. 1) We pass the test, but we pass it because we have grown closer to God and know how he carries us through. 2) We fail the test, but are then met with the grace of God to restore us. Evil loses either way when you are not just looking at temporal things but things eternal. The sermon develops that.

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He Knows Our Frame

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Biblical Text: Psalm 103:1-22

This is an Ash Wednesday sermon. Gave a version of this Valley Lutheran High School chapel earlier. Had to rework it a bit for the home crowd. Although the basic message is the same. Had to tweak some of the examples. They are both more numerous for an older crowd and they didn’t need to be as strong. Ash Wednesday is a unique day. I’m not sure any – other than maybe Good Friday, but the focus of GF is the unique God-Man, Ash Wednesday is on us poor humans – but I’m not sure any day gets closer to the weird consolation of the gospel. We are constantly striving for the glory story, the sermon the American Dream, yet that story is a single point. It is balanced on the tip of a pin. It is easy to undermine. The gospel is the admission that the glory story is an Empire of Dust, and that God loves you and has you anyway. He knows our frame and his steadfast love is from everlasting to everlasting. And you don’t get one pole without the other.

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Direct Spiritual Experience

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Biblical Text: Matthew 17:1-9

The text is the transfiguration. And I do think the sermon comes deeply from the text, but the subject is really from the disciples’ point of view. They have a direct spiritual experience at the top of that mountain. Now talking about such things might not we in the normal wheelhouse of an everyday suburban congregation, but it is more in the air than you think. The first part of the sermon reflects on how our longing for such an experience expresses itself all around us. The second part of the sermon reflects on the troubles of such spiritual experiences: they don’t tell us what we think they do, we think the experience is the point and seek to stay in it or repeat it, we interpret everything based on them. The third part hopefully resolves or answers those troubles. The voice from the cloud says “listen to him.” That is where it starts. And if we listen to Jesus, that voice starts telling us what to do with the vision. That is what this sermon is about.

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Getting Salty

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:13-20

As we dig a little into the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), the real start of the sermon after the poetic beatitudes opening, begins with the juxtaposition of salt and light. Standard parallelism would hold that these two images are supposed to mean the same thing. But I’ve honestly never really liked that, or at least I’ve felt they contained a bit more contrast. And the entire Sermon on the Mount to me is weaving of contrasts. What always made me think deeper is the note about salt losing its saltiness, while you can’t hide a city on a hill is part of the expansion on the light. There is a built in contrast. As it turns out, Luther’s reading is one of contrast. Now I can’t explain either why I never read Luther’s thoughts prior, or if I did why I dismissed them. It might have something to do with modern interpreters, including those I highly value, more or less dismissing Luther. But then that in itself is common. Over and over you find people dismissing Luther, but then he just resonates.

This sermon preaches salt and light as Luther would have it. The salt being the stinging but preserving function of the law while the light is the proclamation of the gospel of free grace. Both are good. But as Luther would say, we are often in trouble of losing our saltiness. And when we lose contact with the truth of the law, the gospel is placed under a bushel.

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You Are Blessed

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:1-11

The main text for the day is the Beatitudes, which are the opening lines of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The follow a rhetorical pattern common in the day: Blessed are a certain people, for they will get some reward. The rhetorical pattern was a way to introduce poetically what the good life entailed. The patter would often extol certain virtues. The problem with Jesus’ beatitudes is that absolutely nobody would base the good life on what he blesses. And since the entire sermon on the mount is something of a constitution for the Kingdom of Heaven or the People of God, when you hear the Beatitudes you really need to think about how they apply.

That is what this sermon does. As it moves into proclamation. I’d argue that only a Lutheran can honestly read them. Or someone who can rightly hear law and gospel. Because you can only hear the beatitudes and the rest of the sermon if you hear “the kingdom of heaven is yours.” It does not come to you by works. It comes to you in the poverty of your spirit. When you have nothing to offer, Christ gives it to you. The promises, the second half of each beatitude, are yours already. You are blessed to be able to do the first parts, because Christ has given you the second. Christ has given you the Kingdom

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