Staying Awake – the role of Prayer and Transfiguration

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…But, isn’t Peter’s experience a little like our prayer life most of the time. We’ve been sleeping. Not paying too much attention to the wonders and sorrows around us. More concerned about filling our bellies, amusing away the time and getting a good night’s sleep. But then something changes…really quick. The veil of this existence is lifted for a time, and we are not prepared. An illness, or seeing the baby fall but missing most of the standing, or almost missing the opportunity of a Valentines day because we’d rather be miserable – and in desperation we say a quick prayer under our breath, trying to turn back the clock or keep things static. God, let them be alright. God, its good that we are here, let’s not change anything. We’ve been sleeping – and don’t know what we are saying to God…

Who’s standing next to you?


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…The real epiphany is not that God is the creator or that his Word is active and has power, but that He is right here with us. That God comes to be with us. And he says stop being afraid. Even if we didn’t get confused about God having authority or his Word being active – those things could frighten us. They frightened Simon when he realized who was there and active. Ask a muslim – is Allah a nice guy? Doesn’t matter. Allah is Allah, Allah does what he wills. Which could include casting us away. Jesus Christ, comes and preaches, and heals and eats with sinners. Sinners like Simon Peter who recognized God and asked him to leave afraid of what was next. Sinners like us who have trouble counting up all the ways we fall short every day. And God, standing right next to you says stop being afraid, I’ve got a job for you….

Who’s standing next to you? It makes a difference…

Synagogue and House – Responses to the authority of Jesus


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The gospels present everyone as recognizing the authority of Jesus. They all knew he was different. What they didn’t all do is react the same way. Luke portrays a difference in the Synagogue resposne and the response of people gathered in the house.

Our society places a high worth on work and money. So high that we have been willing to destroy or at least seriously lame our communities and social stuctures. We work 12 hour days away from where we live. When we return we don’t have the energy to do anything. So we make up words like quality time. Leaders are divorced from those ruled. Children from parents, neighbors from neighbors, family from family. All of this in the name of making a living.

If we are being honest, unless the peak oil scenarios are right and we are all forced closer to home by just being energy poor, this isn’t going to change any time soon.

Being the church will mean operating within those constraints. It also means pointing out the consequences of certain decisions. The distinctions that Luke calls out in the responses of two groups to Jesus are paradigmatic. The synagogue sits in wonder and makes reports, but fundamentally does nothing. Way too many of our churches are really synagogues. The houses respond in service and bringing all the wounded to
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A world divorced and divorcing itself from community creates a lot of wounded. The house has the cure. It may look like many of the churches are dying, but that is how God works. Things die, so that he can take the glory in bringing them back. The real choice for churches is do they want to rise, do they want to act like the house, or are they content being the synagogue and burying the dead?

Two things you might not associate…

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This Sunday there were two things going on. In our community, we had a baptism. In the larger world – the disaster in Haiti. We might not link such things, but the biblical answer is actually very close. The Bible talks about Baptism as being a dying and a rising. In Baptism we are burried with Christ so that we will also rise with Him.

There are some common refrains when looking at disasters – what did they do (a la Pat Robertson), why would god allow this (the agony of theodicy), or just how do I avoid them. Jesus is pretty clear in Luke 13:1-5. Sorry Pat Robertson, but disasters are not special judgement. That does not mean we don’t deserve them. Jesus’ answer is that it is only grace theat the whole world doesn’t get them. The entire world is that sinful. That response really answers the second – why would God allow if he was good? The answer is that a non-loving and graceful God would have destroyed everything long ago. Both of those answers are heavy on the law. They are good and true, but hard words for sinners.

The gospel is the answer to the last question – how to I avoid disaster? In this world, you really can’t. It is a fallen world that is groaning under that curse. But God came to share it with us and to redeem it. We pass through the disaster. In baptism, God pulls us through the disaster.
Putting on eternal eyes, this world is one big Haiti to God. It is one big disaster operation. And Baptism is the rescue operation. The hopeless, poor and defeated of this world, find the cure in the waters of Baptism. We die to this world, but we rise to the next through the promises of Baptism.

Sanctifying the Waters – Lk 3:15-22

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The text was Luke 3:15-22 which is Luke account of Jesus’ Baptism. I had three questions in this sermon. Why the silence? Why does Luke (or the other gospels for that matter) go from a 12 year old in the temple to this adult standing in the Jordan. This account is one of three things in all four gospels, yet they all “look away” and report this event very matter of factly. Think about that, there is a voice from Heaven, John the Baptist, the start of Jesus’ ministry, and a bunch of weighty theological stuff. And books dedication to a theological view, all look away, why? The last question that springs to mind is: where is the fire? John the Baptist promised a baptism of fire, what happened?

The answers are all tied up in the baptism Jesus got, which enables the one we get. His sanctified the waters for ours.

Why is it that you were seeking me? – Luke 2:40-52


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That is the question that Jesus, in his first words in the gospel, puts on Mary and Joseph. And it is rhetorical. It is posed not to get an answer, but to force us to answer it for ourselves. Why do we seek Jesus?

That is a sticky question theologically. This sermon posits that the deeper answer has nothing to do with us, but everything to do with Jesus. Why do we seek Jesus? Because we heard His voice. Because God calls us. Because Jesus is the only one who can forgive our sins. It looks like we are doing the seeking. It looks like we are the ones who “find Jesus” or “find our path”. Mary and Joseph look like the ones finding the “lost” Jesus. Perceptions are tricky. Jesus knew where he was and was at the correct place the entire time. Who exactly is the lost one and who is the seeking one?

Sermon – Christmas changes things…

Text: Luke 2: 22-40
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I don’t know what to say about this one. Just looking at the word picture above in comparison to almost any of the other sermons shows something is different. And that something different could be a very bad thing. The job from that pulpit is point at Christ as our salvation in as many verbal images as scripture allows. Jesus, Christ or God don’t appear in big words anywhere there. Probably the best thing that could be said is it is pietistic (and if you aren’t in the know on that word within Lutheranism it is one of those ill-defined put downs akin to calling someone a liberal in politics – it substitutes for argument). The pietist wears the heart on the sleeve and has a tendency to let the head go fuzzy. In the 17th – 19th centuries, to the hard headed Lutherans, the pietists were all law. They put the demands of piety upon you. This sermon does some of that – probably too much. Prayerfully the gospel was present.

Christmas – We know incarnations when we see them…

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Christmas. One of the two days of the year that you have to have a good message. (The other is mother’s day by the way. On Easter you are preaching to the congregation anymore. On Christmas and mother’s day you still get a chance to preach to the unconverted.) On top of being good, it has to be short. On top of being short it has to carry off a tone. Film makers do this by shooting specific places and then blurring or making crisp the picture. For example, if they want to paint a tragically romantic scene they might take a picture of a late autumn forest and blur it a bit. The same spot made crisp might convey instead of tragic romance a lurking dread. 10 seconds of such a picture sets the tone.

The audience is probably coming into the service either exhausted, angry, nervous, lonely, or annoyed. That is what we do to ourselves around Christmas. And the service in that frame of mind is one more thing to get through. The goal of the Christmas sermon (and the entire service) is to take people from that negative place, and to move them to a much different view of Christmas. To admit that this state I’m feeling right now is a result of how messed up the world actually is because of sin, and to rest in the fact that God has provided a savior. The tone should be one of a giant exhale.

This sermon didn’t pull punches. That is usually what the Christmas sermon does. It forgets the law. It goes along with the culture and the charade of a perfect Christmas. It talks of love and warm fuzzies, but without acknowledging the real state of people’s minds and why they are that way. That sermon fuzzes out the bad stuff and because of that can satisfy at the moment but is without merit. It is complicit is painting the Christ out of Christmas. This one didn’t pull those punches, but hopefully balanced it out with the gospel.

Sermon – A Lutheran Looks at Mary – Advent 4 (12/20/09)

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In defining ourselves, there are some things that we choose poorly on. The magnificat or Mary’s song is one of those things that gets overlooked by Protestants because we have a problem with Mary. Not specifically with Mary, but with where certain groups in the Roman church have taken her. Going back to Mary’s words in Luke hopefully helps us recover an important saint.