Maturing Faith

Biblical Text: John 20:19-31

The 2nd Sunday of Easter always has the Gospel Text of the Apostle Thomas. There are two things that you can preach from this text. 1) The Office of the Keys. And I touch on that at the start. 2) Figure out something to say about doubt. And that is the tougher one. Mainline Protestantism – which the LCMS is both part of and not part of – for a generation plus has glorified doubt. Which is a terrible misreading of this text and what the bible consistently has to say about it. It is not that the Bible denies doubt. In fact as I’ll build in the sermon, it isn’t just Thomas. Everyone has some significant doubt. But doubt is a childish thing. If you are going to accomplish anything – if you are going to have life – you are going to have faith. They, faith and doubt, aren’t opposites. Doubt is a valid starting point that must give way when proof is offered. It could give way to knowledge. It could give way to accomplishment. It can give way to faith. Doubt is the starting childish position that matures into something real. The Introit for the day really starts off with the theme – “Like Newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.” (In Latin that is Quasimodogenidi, the famed Hunchback was born on this Sunday and so called Quasimodo.) Jesus tells Thomas to “stop being faithless and believe.” That is a maturing faith. One that stops with childish things and believes.

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Thank You St. John Chrysostom

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Easter is a day for pure proclamation. He is risen. Death and Hell have been defeated. And Chrysostom’s Easter sermon has been the model ever since he himself preached it in the 4th century.

This is mostly stolen with some adaptions for the texts we read today (Jeremiah instead of Isaiah) and for 21st century idiom. Which honestly I was surprised at how little of that updating there was. Sixteen centuries and half a world away, it still preaches.

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Seven Words (A Good Friday Meditation)

The recording is the full service. The service was a Tenebrae service built around the seven words of Jesus from the cross. The rhythm and theater of the service is Reading, Hymn (which in this case is three verses of a hymn each reading specifically designed for this service), a meditation and the dowsing of a candle (which you can’t see, sorry).

A meditation on the seven words from the cross ends up being a different animal than the fuller passion reading. You aren’t really telling the story or reflecting on any of the other characters. It is strictly about what is so important that Jesus says it to us while he is on the cross. I think you might find it surprisingly moving. I always have.

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For You…For Forgiveness (Maundy Thursday)

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Maundy Thursday in the Lutheran Tradition as I have learned it is about the Lord’s Supper. The entire service is built around remembering and celebrating the sacrament. This sermon to me is a meditation on that tradition as I have received it and attempted to steward it. It ponders the biblical reality of Judas at that table, with a contrast with Peter. After all, both betrayed Jesus. And it ends with simple proclamation. The tradition inherited is not complex. It leaves plenty of questions. Most unanswerable. But there is plenty for faith to grasp onto. Because this supper is for you. For Forgiveness. Even the worst of sinners find pardon here.

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Until He Was Glorified

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Biblical Text: John 12:12-19, Matthew 27:13-26, Refrain verse: John 12:16

It was Palm Sunday or these days also the Sunday of the Passion. The service is actually a bit of theater starting with a procession of palms. But soon after the service switches gears to the reading of a longer passion account. I’ll be honest here, the hymns of Palm Sunday carry it all. You can open with Jubilant All, Glory, Laud and Honor and continue in the same vein with Hosanna, Loud Hosanna. After you’ve read the passion sits a wonderful modern hymn No Tramp of Soldiers’ Marching Feet that makes that transition itself. Close with Ride on, Ride on in Majesty which ends on the eschatological notes that this sermon does. “Bow thy meek head to mortal pain, then take, O God, thy power and reign.”

The sermon is a study in contrasts. I like this one. Which honestly is rarely true. I’m too much of a perfectionist on somethings, but being an every Sunday preacher – and in lenten season much more than every Sunday – you can’t give each one the polish you might otherwise. But the inspiration comes from a note that John gives “His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.” Each of the contrasts of the procession of Palms and the Passion underscores the divine irony. The disciples don’t understand, Pilate doesn’t understand, the chief priests don’t understand, the crowds don’t understand, and there were are with all of them. We don’t understand, until we see him glorified. It was all written about him. It all happened to Jesus. But it is only after the resurrection that we might understand.

There is more in there as the sermon develops each contrast. And there is the final eschatological move. What we might foolishly have hoped for in that first kingly procession yet awaits. And that is the power and glory that we today so often dismiss. But that awaits for tomorrow. Today, the king comes humbly. Today, his throne is a cross. Today, he comes heart by heart in grace.

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Redemption Tour: The Annunciation

Text: Psalm 45

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Sorry about not having audio. It didn’t happen tonight. It’s the final Lenten Midweek. Next week is Holy Week. But the day, March 25, is a real festival day on the church calendar – The Annunciation. Which is a little weird for a Lenten series, but as I thought about it, not that weird at all. At least not for the Redemption Tour. Because it is right there that all the redemption starts. And that is what this sermon is about.

Lazarus, Come Out

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Biblical Text: John 11:1-48

The introduction on a non-essential point is too long. Although it does tie into the situation of the story – the power of eyewitness accounts. When Jesus raises Lazarus of Bethany, and that guy is going to be walking around Jerusalem on a daily basis, it moved the Chief Priest’s Jesus problem to a new level.

But as the sermon developed, it developed as a story of the reaction of three souls to the love of God. Because what happens with Lazarus – the entire story from when Jesus delays going until after Lazarus is dead until he calls him out of the tomb – is said to be for the glory of God and because God loves Martha and Mary and Lazarus. The disciples’ reaction is to avoid the life and death stuff, which the love of God is life and death stuff. Martha’s reaction is putting God on trial. Mary’s reaction is something like despair. And Jesus gives answers to each of these responses.

When the love of God is proclaimed and realized on our lives, we probably realize that the ways of God are not our ways. The ways of God include things like suffering. The ways of God in this world are under the cross. And I don’t think the text limits the reactions that our souls have to this, but it covers three big ones. And the sermon is an exploration of how God answers these complaints of each soul.

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Redemption Tour: The House of God

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This is something of the end of the Redemption Tour. We still have one more Lenten Midweek, but next week is actually the Annunciation, so I can tie it into the Redemption Tour, but the theme would change. These four weeks we’ve looked at specific things in the Christian life that get redeemed by it: worship, brotherhood, witness. The thing that ties them together is the Household of God. And the final version of that household of God is not made of leaves or sky or tent skins or stones. It is made of flesh. The living stones of the believers in Jesus. God has redeemed his House – You.

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Believing is Seeing

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Biblical Text: John 9:1-41

The Gospel of John is the upside down one. Water becomes wine. Good things do come from Nazareth. Messiahs are enthroned on crossed. And believing is seeing. The Gospel lesson text is often just called the man born blind. In my reading it is John’s living commentary on the Synoptics’ Parables of the Kingdom (Sower, Wheat and Weeds). What it leaves no doubt about is that God is at work in this world. He is at work constantly through his word both his direct proclamation and then through our witness. But hearts have two reactions: Belief and confirmed unbelief. And unlike the folk wisdom, what you believe effects what you see. If you want to see the work of God you have to believe his word.

This sermon contemplates that reality through two larger movements. The first being the Sovereignty of God behind Jesus’ answer “neither sinned, but the man was born blind that the works of God might be displayed in him.” The second movement being the crisscrossing directions of the lives of the man born blind and the pharisees who insist they see. Through both of those movements it is presented to us to believe, that we might see both God’s proper work and his alien work in our midst.

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Redemption Tour: Witness

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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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