Category: Sermons

Who is This?

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Biblical Text: Matthew 21:1-11

First Sunday of Advent. The text is always the Triumphant Entry – Palm Sunday. Now it could just be a replay of the previous Sunday’s sermon from Christ the King, but that misses the import of this procession. It is Christ presenting himself to his people. And I think parts of the opening of John’s gospel are a reflection on this. Historically, the King presented himself and his own would not have him. Christ continues to present himself to his people. And those who believe he gives the power to become children of God. What the procession does is show us just what kind of King this one is. The sermon does this by looking at three movements of the story: the donkey, the procession and the answers to “who is this?” The answers to that question are in the actions, and they are in the names. And then it is left on our hearts. Will we have this king?

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Thanksgiving 2025 – Common Grace

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Biblical Text: Psalm 104

Introduction

Blame my going to a Presbyterian associated school.  The Calvinists have a distinction that I do think is helpful that Lutherans tend to look askance at.  They make a distinction between common grace and saving grace. This is roughly what they mean by it.  Common grace is what it called providence.  “You given them their food in due season.” It is more than food.  You can call it any good thing that happens to this body and life. This is what Luther talks about in the first article. “He daily and richly provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.”  Saving grace is the creation of faith.  “When you send forth your Spirit, they are created and, and you renew the face of the ground.”  The Calvinists make this distinction because they will teach that while common grace is – common- given to everyone; saving grace is only given to the elect. Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.  This is something that Lutherans disagree with them about. God does not withhold his grace – common or saving.  It is just that it is easy to receive common grace.  When good things are given us for this body and life, nobody rejects them.  Saving grace is tougher. For it is universally offered, but few accept it. And the reasons for their rejection might be as many as there are human hearts. Although at the base of all of them is pride.

Common Grace

This is one of the reasons why Thanksgiving – even thought it isn’t a church calendar day – is the best American holiday. It forces us to consider exactly what Psalm 104 puts forth in its fullness. Sometime between the Turkey and the Dallas Cowboys it is worth reading the entire Psalm.  It is first and foremost a meditation on the common grace of creation.  The great and mighty LORD – “clothed with Splendor and majesty” – the one who “makes the clouds his chariot and ride on the wings of the wind.” – has “set the earth on its foundations, so that is should never be moved.”  That LORD “makes the springs to gush in the valleys…they give drink to every beast of the field.”  He “causes the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate.”  Including, “wine to gladden the heart of man and oil to make is face shine, and bread to strengthen man’s heart.”

And the psalm continues how everything in this creation is made to provide for man and beast alike. “The moon to mark the seasons, the sun knows it’s time for setting.”  The rhythms of life of labor and rest. It has all been given by God.  “O LORD, how manifold are your works!  In wisdom have you made them all.”  And it as that the Psalmist ponders the sea and all her creatures. The ships that plow the waves and leviathan who plays in it. The immensity of all of it.  And it is all for the creatures that God has made. That we might “receive our food in due season.”

The common grace of God is anything but common.  It should cause us to quake at how the one who made us all had provided it all.  And being humbled, we should give thanks for that common grace.

But we tend not to. We tend to take it for granted.  Or even worse, far from grace it is an entitlement. We deserve all that has been given to us.  From the Sun and Moon and Stars to our daily bread.  Only 1 of the 10 lepers – and that one a foreigner – returned to thank Jesus for healing. The Psalmist I think gets a bit of this.  When God ‘opens his hand, we are filled with good things.” We are happy to receive. But when God “hides his face, we are dismayed.” What the heck are you doing God?  Where is my daily bread that I deserve.  I can’t believe you would treat me this way.

But even the common grace – the providence – is not an entitlement.  It is grace.  We are receiving that which we don’t deserve. And we are receiving it from God who desires to give it to us.  So much that his bow marks the sky that seedtime and harvest will never again be done away with.  That the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

Saving Grace

The distinction is in how we receive it.

If we receive it as our due.  We have already received our reward. The 9 lepers were healed and supposedly lived out their lives. But these lives are eventually called back.  “when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.”

But God does not desire the death of man. He “sends forth his Spirit.” To create and renew the ground.  God send his Spirit with the invitation not to receive our due, but to accept the Grace of almighty God. We will certainly get out daily bread, but God wants to and has given us more.  He has given us His son.  And in Christ we are invited to the eternal feast day.

But it comes by grace.  We don’t deserve any of it.  Which is tough for pride.

Conclusion

The Psalmist, if you read the rest of Psalm 104, concludes with what our Introit brought to the beginning.  “I will sing to the LORD as long as I live, I will sing praise to my God while I have being.”

In this common grace I will return thanks. For I have not deserved it, yet the LORD has provided.

But even more, I have not deserved salvation, yet God has given it to us.  “While I have being” the psalmist intoned. And he does not presume, but even in the Old Testament there is hope. The Spirit creates and renews.  And we are the heir of that promise.  Not just of common grace.  Of a land flowing with milk and honey.  But we are the heirs of an eternal kingdom. Of a being that will not end.

For which we rightly give thanks and praise.    

A Strange Coronation

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Biblical Text: Luke 23:27-43

This was the Last Sunday of the Church Year, often called Christ the King Sunday. The sermon elaborates a little more on that source. But the three year cycle of reading in the year of Luke throws an oddity. The Gospel reading is the Via Dolorosa and Crucifixion. Why on Christ the King would we get this? The answer is that this is the coronation walk of the Universal King. The cross is the throne of the King in this world. The posting above the cross – “This is the King of the Jews” – INRI (iesus nazarenus rex iudaeorum in Latin, Pilate’s judgement, Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews) – is the divine irony. It is the sentence that the world gave; it is also the truth.

And on this walk and enthronement the King grants alms and blessings and benedictions. We also see the division, the judgement as it is actually carried out. For it is at the foot of the cross that the judgement takes place. Are we mockers? Or are we beggars?

That’s a bit of the sermon. Give it a listen for the elaboration.

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Hiding Behind Big Words

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Biblical Text: Luke 21:5-28

The text is Jesus answering the disciple’s questions on the end of the world. The sermon is an attempt to hear it. Because like the disciples we are often in so much shock and horror about the end of something we think is eternal that we can’t hear. Jesus put them into that shock with his answer about the temple – “not a stone will be left.” But then he tries to talk about what such an end actually means. The short answer is: 1) This is this world. These things have always been. Nothing here is eternal. 2) The end of a world is not the end of the world. 3) Don’t worry about the end because your life is safe with Christ regardless of what this old world does. 4) You won’t miss it. You don’t need to look for signs or guess the time. The Son of Man comes with power and great glory. Nobody will miss it.

Now the problem is that isn’t a good a story as “The Omen” or “Left Behind” or even “The Terminator.” And for a variety of reasons theologians and pastors try and hide behind big words. And in doing so, we tend to cede the ground to those horror stories. And instead of an apocalypse being a revealing it becomes a terror. Instead of the eschatological last things causing us to lift up our heads because our redemption draws near we run from one panic to another. But Jesus point is that we already know how it ends. Christ wins. Which frees us to live now.

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Power in the Name

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Biblical Text: Exodus 3:1-15

It was a fun service to plan. All the hymns of the day contained verse about the name of God (Holy God We Praise Thy Name, At the Name of Jesus, All Hail the Power of Jesus Name, Jesus! Name of Wondrous Love, Savior Again to Thy Dear Name We Raise.) That is quite the powerhouse Sunday of beloved hymns. And all of them are pretty solid on the theology. But the Text is when Moses receives the name of God. The first solid point is that god is not a name. God is a generic word for a category. And the ideas behind that category can be quite different. What Moses receives is the name. We usually say “I AM.” And that has all kinds of philosophical points. But it is first a name. And there is power in names. Not the least that you can drop them.

This Sermon is a reflection on the 2nd commandment (Do not take the name of the LORD in vain) and Luther’s explanation. It finds it’s practical points in our language, namely the causal use of things like OMG. And how OMG might not be that big a deal in itself. It doesn’t seem to trespass any of Luther’s explanation. But that is only because of how flippantly we use it. A deeper meditation would be how such flippant use of language – not just a generic category god – influences everything else we speak or hear. That is what this sermon wants to ponder.

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Walls of the Heart

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Biblical Texts: Luke 19:1-10, Isaiah 1:10-18

The liturgical calendar gets more than a nod here, this is All Saints (Observed). The hymns carry the heavy load, maybe more so this year as I chose the lessons for the regular Sunday instead of the All Saints texts. The same texts tend to get skipped year after year. In this case the story of Zaccheaus and a rather harsh sounding Isaiah text. But I picked them for what I thought is an important, but often ignored aspect of All Saints. The day is usually given over to the Saints at Rest. Let me explain three terms. You have the Church Militant or the Saints Militant which is you and me if you are reading this. You have the Church/Saints at rest who are those who have died in the faith. Eventually you will have the church/saints triumphant who are all the saints in the resurrection. For a protestant All Saints is typically the day to remember those now with Christ. But these lessons were perfect I thought to meditate on the Church militant, and maybe even more specifically from a Protestant perspective what makes a saint.

Zaccheaus is an interesting view. The sermon connects it to an Old Testament story that I put forward in typological fashion. How different walls need to come down to enter the promised land. The walls that make a saint are the walls of the heart. It is the call of Jesus, when we are up a tree, that tells us to come down and invites himself in. And Zaccheaus complies and receives him joyfully. The sermon picks up from there.

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Standing Before God

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Biblical Text: Romans 3: 19-28

I don’t often preach from the epistle texts. A part of that is that the Epistles typically lack a hard narrative. I think we as humans understand narrative – the story of a life. And we understand how God works in our lives through the narrative. The narratives that the apostles had were ancient Isreal’s, Jesus and their own. The Epistles end up being authoritative examples of how one does theology – how you proclaim doctrine from the narrative. In that way they are great at teaching, but at least to me less for preaching.

But today was Reformation Day (Observed). And there is a narrative – the story of Martin Luther and the Reformation – that ties directly into the doctrinal teachings of the Epistle lesson. This Romans passage on the Righteousness of God is what Luther was reading when he had his “tower experience.” That experience was when the gospel was cemented in his brain.

This sermon attempts to weave that narrative, and Paul’s doctrine together with how we might live our lives – how we might tell our own stories. How the righteousness of God comes to us. How it is the sure foundation. And How we might build on that.

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On Not Losing Heart (or Who you pray to and What you pray for)

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Biblical Text: Luke 18:1-8

As a Protestant I am tied to a doctrine of perspicuity. All that fancy word means is that the typical Christian is able to read and understand the scriptures. The intro to this sermon elaborates a bit, but the reason I was thinking about that is because this gospel lesson is one that I think pushes that border. The plain reading would be something like “go be a monk and pray all the time” or “pester God more.” But neither of those I’m convinced are what it is about. Instead, like all parables, it is first about who God is. It reveals God the Father to us. And second, it is a nudge toward what we should be praying for. I’ll admit that the second point is not as direct, but I still think that the typical Christian who has been catechized can see it. Because it hinges on what is justice. The woman demands justice against her adversary. And yes, we have temporal adversaries which is why we pray for our daily bread. But our real adversaries are those comic things: the devil, the world and our sinful nature.

This sermon is about praying and not losing heart – keeping the faith – that God will finally deliver us from evil.

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Problem, Solution, and Zombies

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Biblical Text: Luke 17:11-19

The text is the 10 lepers. It is the standard text for Thanksgiving for obvious reasons – the one who gives thanks. But I have to admit that most sermons on it feel like they miss the gospel. Or maybe I should just say they all assume the gospel. This sermon is as clear as I can make it from this text.

We have a problem. Our problem is a lot like leprosy used to be. A known march toward death that you can do nothing about and which separates you from everything you love. You could say we have a trinity of problems: sin, death and the power of the devil. And like the lepers we are left to plead, “master, have pity on us.”

We have a solution, and that solution is a universal one. Jesus has defeated sin on the cross. His resurrection makes a way past death. And he has bound the strong man – Satan – stealing us. The only revealed God ever who has walked in our villages and streets has freed us from our problems. All 10 lepers were healed.

The question is – How then do we live? One of the ten returned to give thanks. Our new life begins with thanks. Thanksgiving aligns us with our Lord and Savior Jesus. And that Jesus tells us to “rise and go our way, our faith has made us well.” Our way is now the way of Christ. We travel with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We walk with angels all the way. And we walk that way by faith. There are the zombies of our problems still out there – The Devil, The World and our Sinful Flesh. But that is what they are, zombies. We have been healed. And in faith we walk past.

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