The Reign of God comes… – Mark 4:26-34

Test for this sermon was Mark 4:26-34, a pair of parables about seeds.

This is an exerpt…
The Reign of God comes as an offense to the ways of the world. It comes small, when the world likes its rulers to come in pomp and circumstance. The reign of God grows silently and where God wants it, when the world likes things known and planned and controlled. The reign of God grows like a shrub, the mustard, something organic, where the world prefers things mechanical and controlled. That plant grows untended, where the world wants its order. And most offensively, the reign of God invites all the birds into the garden, where the world wants to keep the garden for a special and chosen few. The world cannot stop the reign of God. It has and will continue to grow large. The reign of God will mature and reach a harvest, a judgement. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come. But in that harvest, some will have chosen to weed their garden. The offense of how the reign of God presents itself – in a crucified savior, in a factious and often hypocritical church, in the foolishness of preaching and the mysticism of sacraments – those offenses to the world will cause some to dig out that mustard seed. They will reject the reign of God for that of the world – a world that is even now passing away.

Trinity Sunday – “Here I Am, Send me”

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The OT text for the day was Isaiah 6:1-8 but I lengthened it to Isaiah 6:1-13. Anything less felt like taking stuff out of context.

When you read the rest of that passage the first reaction is, “How did that get in there?” But without the rest you don’t get the gospel. Without the failure of the law, without the reduction of Israel to one, the seed in the stump, Jesus Christ, you don’t get the gospel. Sitting on the other side of Jesus we have something similar. Our call by Jesus is to pick up the cross and follow him. The call is not to victory and glory in this world. Salvation is free and clear – by grace through faith. What God is asking is for those who will jump up and down saying Here I am, send me! because they trust the one who saved them. Trust Him freely, even though crosses come first. Trust him knowing that placing your life into those nail marked hands is the only sure thing in this world.

Pentecost Sermon – “The Half-Known God”

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On reflection this might have been a better sermon for Trinity Sunday, but the text was John 15:25-26 and John 16:4-15 and that came up on Pentecost. The core statement is that we moderns just don’t biblically undertand the Spirit or the personhood of God. We push Father, Son and Spirit together into a giant gnostic generic Spirit-God. When you do that, your God ends up looking like you and not like He revealed Himself in the Scriptures.

Specifically the Holy Spirit is not a mushy person. His first job is to convict the world: To convict it of sin, convict it of true righteousness, and convict it of who is the judge. After that conviction, the Spirit leads His people into all truth. A great text pointing to law and gospel. First we are convicted by the law and then restored in truth by the gospel. The Spirit does this through His means of Word and Sacrament through that fuddy-duddy place called the church. The adversary tries to sow a bunch of FUD becuase we’ve mushed the persons together. He tries to get us to find the Spirit everywhere but right there in the Word and Sacrament to the point we often denigrate the gospel offer thinkning God can’t really be there. But God keeps his promises. He’s there in that Word, Water, Bread and Wine.

Sermon – Memorial Day – Two Kingdoms

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This is a sermon that I am probably too proud of. I have the feeling that is was a pastor’s sermon – that I was communicating with myself, but not too many others. But even with that, I still like it and here is why – it offers something for the head, the heart and the hands. It presented a common emotional question and answered it in both intellectual terms and emotional terms. It also managed to address a secular event and bring in a Christian framework. I think and feel that it was solid and balanced.

The theology was the two kingdoms. Jesus prays in the text for the Sermon (John 17:11-19) for his disciples “not to be taken from the world, but to be protected from the evil one.” The are not of the world, but they are sent to the world. Combined with the secular calendar Memorial Day and the Christian calendar Ascension Day, the question is why? Why if Jesus Christ is enthroned at the right hand of the Father do we still have days like Memorial Day? The temptation is always to theodicy, or explaining the ways of God to men. God is a big boy, he can explain himself. But he does explain how he works in this world most of the time – through us. In the Kingdom of Power or of the left, God works through means. What that mean is that the crooked timber of humanity provides the material of the Kingdom of Power. And that often results in evil as we go our own way. What we are assured of though is that the Kingdom of Grace, which is the Kingdom that Christians are citizens of, is only under God’s control and action. In Jesus Christ, God has done everything necessary for our salvation. So, we as Christians are in the Kingdom of Power, but we are not of it. We have a mission in it to proclaim the Kingdom of Grace – your sins have been forgiven in Jesus Christ.

The emotion is the just as we cause wars in the that kingdom of power, such as the carnage of the civil war, and carry their effects, so also did Jesus Christ. Jesus submitted to our justice, to the authority of the Kingdom of Power. God does not answer the why question, but he does ask us to have faith in him that He is in control and looking out for his Children. His deeds speak to why we should have that faith.

Mother’s Day Sermon

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Catching up from a new baby and a week of vacation still.

Sermon – “The Model Shepherd” – John 10:1-11

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Looking through law/gospel eyes the Good Shepherd and this passage is both severe and sweet. If you are in a position of responsibility here is the model. The two traits of that model are: 1) the model shephed lays down his life for the sheep and 2) the model shepherd knows the sheep. We all fall short of those. In carrying out our responsibilities we more often look like that hired man and occasionally we are the wolf. The good news is that we have a good shepherd. A shepherd that did lay down his life for his sheep, and a shepherd that knows us each by name and calls us. Christians may be scattered in many folds (nations, denominations, churches), but they all know the voice of the Good Shepherd. God, in his sovereignty, choose to be our Good Shepherd. We will lack for nothing.

The Holy Spirit must be at work. A sermon from the Gospel of John that – I think – made sense. I should mention two works that have been great in helping me understand John a little better. The first is William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible Series. It is hard to find a writer who packs as many insights and spot on information into a devotional format that does not take an expert to read and understand. If you are looking for a devotional book that is deeper than something like the portals of prayer, but not too long or technical, Barclay is a great place to start, and I know that the Henrietta library has several copies on the shelves. The second work is by the Roman Catholic scholar Raymond Brown. Father Brown would not be a layman or woman’s writer, although he is clear in his writing. He assumes a great deal of knowledge that the typical lay reader just wouldn’t have. There are also nagging questions about Father Brown’s “method” of interpretation. What I mean by method is that Raymond Brown is a critical scholar. To the critical scholar the text of scripture often becomes nothing more than a human writing. The doctrine of inspiration is often tossed out the window, especially when the text contrasts with what modern presuppositions (like there are no miracles) would say. Father Brown uses the methods of critical scholars, but one never gets the sense that he disregards the inspired nature of scripture. Given all those caveats, why am I mentioning this work? Father Brown was a profound and insightful guy. In the modern world, “the poisoned fruit of a poisoned tree” approach is not helpful, if it ever was. To speak to the modern culture that is critical and has torn down everything requires interaction and understanding of that culture. Raymond Brown does not run from that interaction. Much critical scholarship is sterile and fruitless. Raymond Brown’s is neither.

Sermon – Luke 24:36-49 – “Surpised by Joy”

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I was struck by the like from Luke 24:41 about disbelief because of joy. The personal context was the birth of our third child – Ethan Isaiah. The main reflection of the sermon is the way that we often pit happiness against joy, or substitute happiness for joy. The true Christian birthright is joy. Joy in plenty and joy in sorrow. Joy is eternal while happiness is fleeting. That is because the resurrection of Jesus, standing there in the midst of the disciples, points at the fact that death does not have the last word. All promise does not end in dissipation. Instead they find completion in the Risen Lord. We may not always be happy. I am not happy that my house in St. Louis has not sold, but I am still joyful. Changing diapers I’m sure is not anyone’s idea of happiness, but it is a joy.

Easter 2 Sermon – East and West

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I first should apologize for the hash this sermon was. The Gospel of John does that to me. I think I am going to swear off preaching on John for about 20 years. Maybe then I will have the wisdom to do it well.

I had been reading a book, partly for pleasure and partly to see what “pop spirituality” looked like today. I have a heavy tendency to be serious, or maybe that should be a serious tendency to be heavy in my reading. It is a stock joke in my family the books I bring to the beach. One year it was Modern Times by Paul Johnson and another Luther’s commentary on Galatians. Knowing full well that is not typical, every now and then I need to pick up something lighter. Usually that mean P. D. James or another mystery writer. Not this time. And that book got in my thought processes.

John reaches out of his story at John 20:30-31 and points at Jesus. Especially Lutheran, but Christian Theology and religion, is fundamentally outward focuses. Article 2 of the Augsburg Confession is Original Sin. The first T in Calvin’s TULIP is total depravity. Anything that comes from within us is corrupt and suspect. The wholly other God comes from outside of us, and through no merit or work of ours, saves us through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Christian life starts with that work of God and proceeds outword. God does not free us from ourselves to ponder our stomachs, but to tell others about the person of Jesus Christ. And that is what John does in those verses. He’s telling his reader the entire purpose for his writing is that you might believe in Jesus.

That pop spirituality book was Eat, Pray, Love. The path of the author is one fundamentally of Easter Religion or just what I would call the religions of the world. They all boil down to “if I do something hard enough (work/meditate/etc) then I will find and please God.” The further East you go, the more that religion turns one inward to the point of “finding the God within.” You are only guilty or lost or [insert bad feeling here] becuase your mind has separated you from the God-hood inside of you. Eat, Pray, Love beautifully/horribly captures this path. And that path is exactly opposite what the Apostle John says.

Kipling wrote the line – East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. In the globalized world unfortunately they do seem to meet, and with disasterous spiritual effects for those spiritually unprepared, like the author of Eat, Pray, Love.

Easter reflection – New Life on the Way

This morning, about 4 AM, my wife pushes me and says she thinks its time and adds she is having contractions about 4 minutes apart. At 4 AM when I heard that I was thinking more about how to deliver a child than driving to the hospital becuase this thing is coming now. The 4 minutes things soon subsided. She got up and made the proper calls and walked around and what were felt to be contractions subsided or at least slowed way down. (While daddy is running around throwing the necessary stuff in the car only to be told not just yet.) The labor pains are starting, but not 4 mins apart. New life is on its way.

That seems a little like the drawing near of the kingdom to us. We are all pregnant (Romans 8:22-23) and can feel the pangs of our future glory. Sometimes the kingdom is as near as a 4 AM wakeup call with contractions 4 minutes about. And sometimes it says not quite yet. Babies and God both have their own timing. The thing that we do not have to worry about is the end. Babies are born. The Kingdom will be revealed in our flesh just as it is now in Jesus Christ.

With that note, here is the Easter Sermon. It was a glorious day. The congregation even drowned out the trombone. He is Risen!…He is Risen Indeed. Alelluia!

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The Kingdom of David or the Kingdom of God – Mark 11:1-11 – Palm Sunday

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Mark’s Palm Sunday Text (Mark 11:1-11) ends oddly. “Jesus looked around and it being late went back out to Bethay with his disciples.” The donkey, the cloaks and the palms, the hosannas and the shouts, all end with a quick look around and a walk back out. The question to ask is who are we welcoming – The Kingdom/Son of David or the Kingdom/Son of God. The Kingdom of David restores and refreshes all the stuff that we like. To those hailing Jesus that day that meant kicking out the Romans, making all the nations bow to Israel, restoring the proper temple worship and priesthood. The Kingdom of David says “have it your way.” The Kingdom of God says “pick up your cross and follow me.” Welcoming the Kingdom of David is easy, but there is no life. The presence of the Lord has left the temple and razed it. The Kingdom of David is like a showy tree full of leaves or palm branches, but that never produces any fruit or coconuts. Are there any areas in your life where you are shouting hosanna for the coming kingdom of David – and you are missing the life, the drawing near of the Kingdom of God?