Harassed and Helpless

Biblical Text: Matthew 9:35-10:20

It is very rare you stumble across something in translation that I’d describe as uniquely terrible. Words don’t just mean one thing. They have a range of meaning from hyper-literal to extremely metaphorical. You could also label them formal to slang, and general to specific. Most translation issues are more like “I think the translators were a bit to formal and general. The word in its original context is more specific – say raven and not just bird – and more colloquial – say it happened instead of behold.” And the translators would rightly point at their degrees and expertise and tell me to shut up. And this is part of the reason people migrate to different English translations. If you look at about 5 version you can get a sense of the range (say KJV, ESV, NIV, NRSV, NLT) because each of those translation committees tended to have their sweet spots. But occasionally you find something like “affliction” is Matthew 9:35 in the ESV. The ESV tends to default where possible to the KJV. But the KJV goes with sickness. The NLT illness. The RSV with infirmity. And the point in getting this picky is that affliction is something that comes from outside. The word itself, which the RSV gets, is something that comes from the inside, some softness, some weakness, an infirmity. And so you have two type of A to Z phrases. Jesus heals every disease (outside) and every infirmity (inside). And you have the people being harassed (outside) and helpless (inner strength).

And the gospel is that Jesus heals all of these. The Devil and the World might harass. Our sinful flesh makes us helpless. Jesus heals.

The sermon develops that insight.

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Provident Compassion

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Biblical Text: Matthew 14:13-21

The feeding of the 5000 is an easy jump to the Lord’s Supper, but in pondering it this week I wanted to focus on something a bit different. I’m still greatly worried about all of those online and the supper, so I wished to downplay that a bit. The latch for me was the specific situation in Jesus’ life. This is what happens immediately after the death of John the Baptist. Matthew is very clear about what Jesus wanted to do, and then what happened which is about 100% the opposite. It tells us something about the God we have, the inconvenience of compassion, and how God provides. Yes, part of how God provides is the specifics of the Lord’s Supper, but he provides so much more than that.

I’m convinced that more than a very OS daemons operate in the technology. It figures on a day that I hoped to address the online group a bit more explicitly the tech betrays us in a stupid way. But if I’m listening to my own sermon, out of meager loaves, the Lord provides.

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Tools for the Work

Biblical Text: Matthew 9:35-10:8

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The essence of the text is a list, a list of names. Sermonic suicide, right?

I think the list, when you add the stuff around it is more meaningful than that. And it goes right at our problems with evangelism. We grumble, we come up with all kinds of excuses why we can’t, why things are going good. We look at this text and say, “if you gave me those powers.” But that is simply a surface reading. Give is a good read. List out what the tools for the work of mission actually are. And then ask yourselves, are you willing to pick up these tools? That is what the sermon does.

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Choose Your Neighbor

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Biblical Text: Luke 10:25-37

Christians often talk about our freedom in Christ, or at least pastors do, but I’m not sure that we often talk about what the freedom actually is. If we do the farthest we often go might be our freedom from sin. Yes, Christ has freed us from sin. And that is something big. But I think borrowing the Apostle’s analogy, that is the milk of the Christian life. As one grows one needs to eat meat. And what is that meat, or at least some of it? We have not just been freed from sin and because of sin from death, we have also been freed from Satan and the powers and principalities. The Good Samaritan parable is a lesson in Christian freedom. We can be so bound in our identities, the laws, rules and chains of those powers, that we pass-by on the other side. Life – and the Lord who writes that life – presents us we many opportunities to exercise our freedom in being and becoming truly human. In becoming Christlike and triumphing over those powers. We can choose to be neighbors. We can choose to pay the cost of that. We can have our guts churned and be human. Or we can stay bound in identity chains. Christian freedom mean choosing to be a neighbor.

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Kingdom Feast

Text: Matthew 14:13-21
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After the last month of parables, today’s text was a shift to miracles. But the feeding miracles are almost a category of their own. The way I categorize miracles is typically: healings, nature or power, and restorations to life (I don’t use resurrection because that is a special term meaning the resurrection body which is no longer subject to death). All miracles reveal or invite us to ponder a specific part of who this Jesus is. Healings, like the man lowered in the house, invite us to ponder the Great Physician and how the one who can cleanse of of disease, more importantly cleanses us of sin. Those categorized miracles invite us to see how Christ has beat: the devil, the world and our sinful nature. The feeding miracles could by the nature miracle, but that is not the reaction of those who were there. Instead, the feeding miracles ask us to imagine how the Kingdom works in this world.

It works through compassion for those who might be our enemies. It works not through offering the world a worldly solution, but by offering Christ. It works not through direct power, but through means. The church or the disciple in this world is invited to follow Christ, and go and do likewise. This sermon explores that.

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Great Prophet or LORD

Text: Luke 7:11-17
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It was an full day at St. Mark yesterday – a baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and a resurrection text. You don’t get a better set up as a preacher than than. And it is one of those rare days that I was content. Oh, I could deliver it better. I’m sure there would have been words here and there I might change. But compared to most Sundays, I felt like this discharged the call of the office.

The hymns also supported the theme beautifully. The baptismal hymn was Gerhart’s great catechism hymn All Christians Who Have Been Baptized (LSB 596). The hymn of the day was the newer (i.e. since 2000) Water, Blood and Spirit Crying (LSB 597). Unfortunately neither of them have the texts in the public domain to link to. I have included in the recording our closing hymn Thanks to Thee, O Christ, Victorious (LSB 548). It is a hymn that ponders what had happened, and forms a very nice closing prayer for that service.

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