Ash Wednesday is the start of the Lenten season. Lent is a penitential season. Penitential related to penance has a few definitions. Roughly: a good one, one ruled out by the Reformation, and a weak decadent popular definition from that middle one. This sermon thinks its way through those definitions and invites you to take part in a penitential season. Neither decadently, nor in a way that loses the gospel, but in a way directed toward building up faith.
The text is the Transfiguration. Liturgically the transfiguration is the end of the season of Epiphany. It stands as the ultimate revelation by signs and wonders of who Jesus is this side of the cross. As such it is the picture of the glory of God and direct experience of God now. It is a seeing. The problem is that seeing this side of the cross is without meaning. We might experience God, but what does that experience mean? Any direct experience of God can only be understood through or on the far side of the cross. Jesus is our Passover lamb first before we are brought to the promised land. This sermon is a meditation on all the ways that we desire and seek to see, when what we are bid to do by the voice of the Father is listen. We do not know God by seeing. We know God by listening to his voice.
Luke’s sermon on the plain – this text is the 2nd part of that – is his version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. And I know that it is the favorite part of the Bible of lots of preachers, but I think they like it for the wrong reasons. It gets used for all the wrong reasons. People quote it either thinking they are being encouraging, or to use it as a heat shield to keep on doing what they shouldn’t be doing. The first is preaching the law to the drowned man. The second is simply bad faith, or lack of faith. Luke’s version to me is turning the volume up to 11. And it does this for two reasons. The first should be as law applied against ourselves. Luke’s Jesus spells out how even sinners act. And we do. We also if we are being honest act worse. Jesus makes clear the meets minimum requirements of sinners. And we fall short. The second is the gospel reason. It makes clear the God we have. And the God we have does not act like us. The God we have is merciful. He loves his enemies, us.
Our Congregation this past week had a shock. Two wonderful members were killed in a car accident. One immediately and the other on the way to the hospital. It happened Wednesday morning and word started getting around by the evening and the following morning. The Pastor’s corner from this week, just below, directly mentions that. But I couldn’t ask for a better text for a sermon at such a time. We believe in the resurrection. Set everything else aside. This is the defining belief that Christians Hold Fast. Jesus is risen. And you will arise. Paul and all apostolic preachers proclaim that fact. The text also examines what would make that faith in vain.
The text is Luke’s version of the call of the first disciples. And the emphasis of Luke’s version is unique in my reading. Matthew and Mark emphasize the immediate authority of the call. But as we’ve been reading Luke 4 and Luke 5 we have been experiencing Simon’s encounter with Jesus. The end of these encounters is the call. That call comes after Simon recognition that Jesus was not just a teacher or a guru but LORD. And when you’ve encountered the living God there are some things that need to be sorted out. We in the church call this entire process discipleship. This sermon thinks about that.
Having VP JD Vance quote the theological concept ordo amoris was at first just refreshing. But the more I looked at the texts for the week, which also included Paul’s song to love in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, it became something that the texts themselves spoke about. So this sermon attempts to talk about “rightly ordered love” or “the order of caring.” It also attempts to preach it from a specifically Lutheran law and gospel understanding. I wish I could summarize it for this better, but all I can really do is ask for 15 mins of your time. Give it a listen or a read.
The text is Jesus preaching to his hometown at the start of his ministry. His sermon ends with their attempt to toss him off the cliff, so it is safe to say Jesus offended them. It’s a really tough text, especially for Americans, because it goes after the cult of fairness. God isn’t fair. God is graceful. And his grace comes where and when he wills it. So you get the fact of Jesus declaring “the year of the Lord’s favor” a Jubilee. And you get the fact that it goes to everyone. And you get the fact that the miracles and apostles and all the shiny things might not be for you. Because the deep fact is that God owes us nothing. And the more we might claim standing the worse we get. The God is gracious. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Part of that is the call to celebrate the grace received by others. The sermon explores that space. The space between grace and anger that mine doesn’t seem a much.
I love this text – the Wedding at Cana – “the First of the Signs.” But I don’t find it easy to preach on. In some ways it is too deep. It captures the entirety of the biblical witness in one scene. It tells us everything we need to know about God in eleven verses. But it is exactly the beauty that adding words just takes away from. So this is something of a short list. As a Sign it tells us something about the heart and purpose of the God we have. 1) Just as marriage was the first thing instituted post creation in Genesis, so the first sign of the new covenant is an honoring of marriage. 2) Celebration and beauty have their place. Don’t let someone shame you out of them. 3) Grow in faith. Your God knows your lack and will certainly meet it. Let him know at be ready to do what he says. 4) With this God the best is always yet to come.
Biblical Text: Luke 3:15-22, Isaiah 43:1-7, Romans 6:1-11
The day on the church year was the Baptism of Our Lord. The theme of the readings for the day is officially baptism, but the real theme is Fire and Water. Which seemed a little on the nose for this week of the California fires. It was a week of too much fire and too little water. But what the readings would urge us to see is both what the fire manifests and the water that we have been given. All the world is on fire. We only occasionally recognize it. And when we do, we can’t lose the moment. Don’t lose the moment to ask for the living water. That’s what this sermon explores. Walking through the fire by means of the living water.
It comes from stanza 3 of Once in Royal David’s City. “For He is our childhood’s pattern.” That hymn applies it in the more common way that Jesus experienced everything we did. Which is meaningful for what the Athanasian creed would call “the assumption of the humanity into God.” That is Christ the new Adam who saves all humanity. But I think our Gospel lesson today asks us to think about that pattern in another way. How is this story of the late childhood of Jesus a pattern for our spiritual life?
I don’t think it is a shocking statement to say that spiritual maturity doesn’t move at the same rate as physical maturity. We can’t do anything about aging. But spiritual maturity comes about through trial. It comes about through learning to recognize the time. But also learning that unlike in mortal life which “flies forgotten as a dream” no time is ever really lost in Christ. Twelve year old Jesus is presented with a time. A Passover in Jerusalem leading to a highly flattering role as prodigy guru. Or a return to nowhere Nazareth in submission to parents. And in submission to a very different Passover in Jerusalem.
This sermon attempts to meditate on this pattern for maturity in the Spiritual life. The role of submission. Learning to know the time. Developing the heart to will the walk toward the cross. It is a very different sermon. It isn’t doctrinal, at least not in a typical dogmatic way. It isn’t straight proclamation of Christ, although that is present. It isn’t a sermon without it. It inhabits that space of practical theology. How does one grow in wisdom and stature and favor? You have to attempt to write something like this occasionally. But you are left with an awfully mystical feeling after. Because you don’t exactly know the reason why. They are mere containers for the Holy Spirit to do what He does.
