When you can bear it…(The work and means of the Spirit)

Biblical Text: John 16:12-22, Acts 11:1-18
Full Sermon Draft

We had a little malfunction with our audio equipment this week, so the recording portion of the sermon is a recreated reading. The hymn and lessons of the day are from Sunday. It is interesting, just one of those coincidences, that the sound system chose this week to “pop”. I say that because with most of my sermons, later in the day or on Monday when I write this posting, I have the general feeling of: this phrase would have worked better, I missed that fertile preaching ground completely, nobody got that allusion, and the list goes on. This sermon, after struggling with the text most of the week, in between trying to put the right words together for a funeral I dearly wanted to honor, didn’t have many of those criticisms. If you were asking me to pick out pieces for the portfolio, this one would go in there. And the system just fails. One of those thin spaces where you might actually believe we are not fighting flesh and blood, but something darker.

The wordle picture above is all scrambled this way and that. I thought that is highly representative of how the Holy Spirit is taught. We are big on the Spirit blowing when and where he wills. There is definitely a mystery in how the Spirit acts, but there is an underlying solidity as part of the promise of Christ. And that is what I think this sermon presents solidly. The Spirit has a role and typical means. In Luther’s words the Spirit, “calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies”. The Spirit prepares us to bear the Word. The Spirit conforms us to the image of Christ. And until we are ready, when we can’t bear it, Christ does. It is not that the Spirit says something new, but that the Spirit enables us to hear the old old story where we are. And the Spirit acts through the same old old ways – Word, Sacrament (baptism), Repentance and Holy Living. Those are the means of the work of the Spirit. Not sexy, just true. When the Spirit comes, He will lead you into all truth.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Taking Stock of the Gift of the Vineyard

Biblical Text: Luke 20:9-19 (Hebrews 6:4-6)
Full Sermon Draft

There are some passages of scripture that are so resonate in the original time frame you wonder exactly how they apply to the people of God. The parable of the vineyard is one of those. The text itself even points at its being told against the Pharisees, Scribes the and the Priests. The entire parable also seems to be a synopsis of salvation history. How do Christians of today legitimately read and apply this parable? Is it possible or is it just something of historical interest?

I don’t think this is only of historical interest. If it was, why would it have made holy scripture? That is what Josephus and Eusebius are for. What this sermon does is take to core problem of the law in the parable and apply it to Christians today. The core problem in the parable is the unwillingness of the farmers, those who maintain the vineyard, to take the Word of the prophets and eventually the Son seriously.

There is a difference between the original farmers and the new ones. The original farmers leased the vineyard. They were bound by the law (a contract). But when the son came and died, and the vineyard was cleansed of the murderers, the new farmers were “given” the vineyard. Our place in the kingdom is not longer by a legal arrangement, but now it is by grace.

We are still sent the word. In the preaching and teaching of the church, in the scriptures, in the sacraments. In the parable words, we are still sent prophets. We are still expected to produce fruit. Not by contract law, but free offering. But the problem is that we neglect and abuse those prophets (word and sacrament) to the point that we might even kill the son. That is where the Hebrews verse comes in. I think to legitimately apply the parable today we are dealing with the 3rd commandment and Luther’s explanation. Do we gladly receive preaching and the word, or do we despise it and avoid it? For someone in the vineyard, the second is a very dangerous choice.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Ash Wednesday Meditation

Text: 2 Cor 5:20b-6:10; Psalm 51:1-12

“We implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God…we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain…behold, now is the favorable time, behold, now is the day of salvation.”

Not to receive the grace of God in vain, isn’t that a strange string of words? What does it mean to receive the grace of God in vain?

We are not talking about pure unbelief or the enemies of the gospel. They do not receive the grace at all but deny that it exists. Instead we are talking about someone who has received it, but it does no good, or it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. So what does the grace of God do?

It breaks down and it builds up. It kills and it makes alive. It cleanses and creates anew. Both the law and the gospel are a grace. By the law we know our sins. As the psalmist says, “I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me.” That is the peculiar grace of the law. But the overwhelming grace of the gospel follows, “create a clean heart….renew a right spirit…restore to me the joy…the joy of you salvation…uphold me with a willing spirit.”
So what does it mean to receive grace in vain? The core of it is to have heard the law, but never applied it to ourselves. Our ears have heard the 10 commandments. Our intellect has turned them over, maybe even memorized them along with a bunch of scripture and catechism answers. Our parents, physical or spiritual, have led us in green pastures. But the terror of that imposing law has never got to our hearts.

To receive it in vain is to receive the grace as if you don’t need it. To stand in the light of the law and think as the Pharisee, “Thank God I am not like that publican”. To stand in the light, and not see the darkness of our natural heart. To be put next to purity and think oneself not to shabby. To be shown just how lost we are, and not ask for directions thinking we are fine. We are rich, we have means, we have years, we will get out of this and be the stronger for it. We appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.

The entire passage, maybe like the ashes of today, might seem a little overboard. We implore…we appeal…behold, now….a second time, behold, now. To the one who receives in vain, why all the histrionics? We’ve got this under control, calm down. But we don’t. The proclamation over the ashes, dust you are and to dust you will return is true. We don’t have this under control. We can’t add a single hour to our given time. Yet, we can receive that in vain. Never let that sink into our hearts.

Yet God holds out his grace for us. He proclaims it in many and various ways – as Paul talks about in the rest of the passage. In Christ God has declared us reconciled. God has stopped counting. He’s drawn up unilateral terms of disarmament with the most beneficial terms imaginable. We get the kingdom, as long as we don’t think it is ours by right, it is only ours by grace. And now is the time to sign that peace treaty. Now is the time to let that grace move our hearts. To break our stone hearts…and to receive new clean ones.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God…now is the favorable time…a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Amen.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Preaching the Good News to the Poor

Biblical Text: Luke 4:16-30
Full Draft of Sermon

Following the season of Epiphany texts we’ve been looking at the ways that God reveals himself. We’ve structured it around what I’ve asserted is the question of the age: How do we see/meet God? Our culture and even many of our churches have attempted to claim or put forward an unmediated experience of God. And if we don’t have that direct access, then we turn away or search in another spot. The biggest problem with that is that God has promised to work, to be present, through means. The grace of God comes to us through the means of grace. The last couple of weeks were baptism and the Lord’s supper. This week was first confession and absolution. Those are the proclaimed word reduced down to their essence. Today, in your hearing, is the year of the Lord’s favor. The eternal Jubilee has been proclaimed by Jesus and the church has been proclaiming that release ever since.

The second slowly dawning epiphany that this should point toward is the false spirit nature of any movement or group that says you don’t need a church or a congregation. Because the church is the focus of those means. Where ever two or three are gathered, or as the text for this sermon says, it was Jesus’ custom to go to church on the sabbath. That is an anachronistic claim, the real word is synagogue, but it stands as the text shows the basic structure of that OT service. The synagogue was brought together around the word – written and proclaimed. The OT sacramental word was found in the temple. We are the inheritors of Word and Sacrament. God has always primarily worked through Word and Sacrament. It has always been grace, through means. Those means following Christ are found in what we call a church.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Choice Wine

Biblical Text: John 2:1-11
Full Sermon Draft

It has been a rough week at the Parson’s household. This is at best an unfinished set of ideas. The only thing I can say in its favor is the invitation to see. In the gospel of John, believing is seeing. What you believe is how you see things. The wedding at Cana is Eucharistic, having to do with the Lord’s supper, it is an invitation to see the reality of Jesus and the Kingdom in, with and under the staples of life – water, bread and wine. As we say after the institution, “welcome to the table of the Lord”. Cana is John’s invitation – the first of the signs – to see the omega, the telos, of where this is heading. The world is a comedy; it ends in a wedding with plenty of choice wine. More than enough. Filled to the rim.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

A Thanksgiving Homily

Text: 2nd commandment, Psalm 50:1-23, Luke 17:11-19
As Lutherans we rally around the small catechism, but there are some other catechisms out there. Rita Fedick brought an Eastern Orthodox one to bible study last Thursday. The Westminster Shorter Catechism – a Reformed work of the Calvinist strain starts off with a classic question and answer. What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. That answer captures a truth that humans have been fighting against since the start.

Our first and primary relationship, duty, orientation, end is toward God. Augustine would say, “our hearts are restless until they rest in you”.

And there are all kinds of diversions that we will come up with to deny that. From the simple – in the words of Billy Joel, I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints…to the complex, great theological constructs whose end is to say “God didn’t really say that” when the clear words of the Bible “are that”.

One of the most pernicious of those diversions is Psalm 50 or 9 of 10 lepers. “Not for you sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me.” The majority of the lepers went to the priests as Jesus and the law told them to do. And we should be clear here – God doesn’t say don’t do these things. The Psalmist doesn’t have God saying stop those sacrifices. Jesus tells the 10th leper to go. And elsewhere Jesus would say things like “you ought to have done [the tithe requirements] without neglecting justice and mercy and faithfulness”. Jesus was not against ritual itself – we baptize, we eat the Supper, we absolve sins, all at His direction. What he was against was magic by his name. The use of the name of God not toward our end…but toward our ends.

What you might be asking is how this eventually gets to a warm-fuzzy thanksgiving homily?

Well, I think it has to do with two types of stories we tell ourselves, a current kids movie and which of those two stories the best of American History likes to tell. One story we tell is the glory story. We’ve overcome, we’ve accomplished, by our knowledge, skills and abilities we’ve won the day and taken the medal.

There are traces of the glory story in American history. Anytime you hear Teddy Roosevelt talking about the man in the arena he’s telling a glory story. Both candidates in this past election like to tell glory stories. “I won” just might be the summarizing quote of a presidency. And Ayn Rand’s John Galt floated around team red. All narratives of glory.

Wreck-it Ralph, at the start is a simple glory, the Video Game Bad Guy Ralph wants to win a medal. And he’s told of a game where climbing and destroying things gets you a medal…two things he’s very good at. So he game jumps to “Hero’s Duty” and takes his medal.

The other story is the thanksgiving story – the one about grace. It would be easy to tell a glory story about the pilgrim’s journey and how they overcame oppression and won their rights and land by their heroism. But that is not how they talked about it. From the letters of Gov. William Bradford of Plymouth Colony talking about the first Thanksgiving…”And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.” Likewise in 1789 after the Revolutionary War and the Adoption of the Constitution, a glory story might be in order. But the act of the inaugural congress, proposed by Rep. Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, reads “to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God.”

Just to let you know that our fundamental arguments haven’t shifted that greatly, the act was originally opposed in Congress for three reasons: 1) Rep. Aedanus Burke of South Carolina objected on the grounds that a Thanksgiving was too European. He “did not like this mimicking of European customs, where they made a mere mockery of thanksgivings” 2) Rep. Thomas Tudor Tucker, also of South Carolina, raised two further objections. “Why should the President direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do?” he asked. “If a day of thanksgiving must take place,” he said, “let it be done by the authority of the several States.” And 3) Proclaiming a day of Thanksgiving “is a religious matter,” he said, “and, as such, proscribed to us.”

As with things of grace “the Thanksgiving resolution passed—the precise vote is not recorded.” President Washington issued the proclamation starting with these words, “Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God…”

As for Wreck-it Ralph, I’ll just say it has a great ending that is in perfect accord with the last verse of Psalm 50 – “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me, to the one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God”.

Glory stories are tempting, but they are ultimately hollow. Glory fades. That was not our end. Our end is to glorify God. “I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” is what the psalmist records.

The call of the gospel is to give thanks for the salvation of God. To order our ways rightly, in accord with the way we were created. We were created to tell stories of grace – stories of the deliverance of God, of the salvation of God…or as the Westminster Catechism would say of the enjoyment of God forever. Because unlike glory which fades, God’s grace in Jesus Christ is eternal. Amen.

The Elder’s Turn

Biblical Text: Ephesians 5:22-33
Full Sermon Text

I was on vacation this Sunday, so our Elders filled in. One elder in particular, Dr. Warriner, you will hear on the podcast delivering the sermon.

I didn’t want to appear like the biggest chicken selectively picking the week of one of the toughest texts to modern ears to be on vacation, so I ghost wrote it. I would make a lousy speech-writer. I’m too much of a narcissist to get into someone else’s voice. Anyway, the text is St. Paul on marriage. The attempt is to find the grace in tough words.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Walking in Hope

Text: Ephesians 4:17-5:2
Draft of Sermon

From Pentecost (50 days after Easter) until the first Sunday of Advent (4 Sundays before Christmas) the church is in what used to be call ordinary time. Others labeled it the time of the church. I offhandedly call it the green season. That is because the color that is on the altar for the entire season is green. By Advent you are ready for the blues or purples and then the whites and reds of the festival season. The thought that ties them all together is that now is the time of grace. The tree is green now.

One of the features of the lectionary (the assigned readings (and introits, prayers and psalms)) during the green season is a straight reading of some of the epistle lessons. This year one of those letters we read is Ephesians. This sermon is the fifth in the series (started July 15th). If I was to put a subtitle on the Letter to the Ephesians is would be Walking in Hope. Much of the earlier letter and sermons hung on the Hope portion. The lesson this week turns to walk the walking look like.

And Paul treats the walking in two ways: 1) what a false walk looks like (Paul would say, “walking how the gentiles do”) and 2) what walking in the Spirit looks like. Paul is very clear and this should be a great help to Christians today when so many are saying walk in many different directions. Anytime you are talking about what a Christian walk looks like it runs the risk of being turned into a law. But it is exactly the sickness of the time that calls for the explicitness. In any explication of how we should live there is an element of the law. If we are honest examining ourselves, we know when we don’t measure up. Even Christians need that to drive us toward and remind us of our hope – the gospel of Jesus Christ. The walk breaks us. And when the walk breaks us, when we die to the that walk on our own, is when Jesus is able to replace the heavy yoke and give us his light one.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Every Spiritual Blessing in the heavenly realms

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14
Full Draft

The textual basis for this sermon is one long sentence. The English translations break it up because that is good English. But what it does is miss the catechism like effect as the clauses build up. The core sentence is short and clear – God be Praised. The rest of the text reads like Paul starts asking questions and answering them in phrases and clauses attached to that simple sentence.

Which God? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. A Very specific one. One that you know.

Why praise? Because he has already blessed or praised us with EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING.

What are these blessings? You were chosen to be Holy and Unblemished before the foundation. And not just that but you have been adopted into the family of God. You are part of the Royal ruling family.

How was this done (after all I don’t think I did anything)? You didn’t. It was through and in and because of Christ. First by his blood. Redeemed by the blood. Second you have been enlightened with the wisdom and insight of his grace to know the mystery.

What is the mystery? The cross primarily, but also the resurrection and the ascension (i.e. the Lordship). These things which have been hidden in plain sight.

How do I know this? You have been sealed with the Spirit which is the down payment. Outside of the revelation of Christ and the illumination of the Spirit the mystery would remain. But you have it right now.

Why has He done this? For the Praise of the glory of his grace. We are that praise. Our lives, our walks, our confessions and our worship. God be praised.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Walking the Right Way

Text: Mark 3:20-35
Full Draft

This past Sunday we sang one of the most haunting hymns in the Lutheran Tradition – I Walk in Danger All the Way. It is one of those songs where the melody is clear and rather light, but the words are deep. It has a history within the LCMS as it was sung on the floor of a Synodical convention after a particularly ugly fight. My guess is that those there took the wrong message from its words. If I was picking my 10 favorite, this on has a place on that list. But we rarely pick it for the congregation because I think the words are just too far removed from comfortable American middle class existence. We live a daily existence that is largely materialist. Rarely do we give a nod to spiritual things outside of maybe Sunday mornings or that odd deja vu/coincidence. The third stanza talks about death. That is breaking the rules in the United States. It takes those three stanzas to make a turn and the fourth starts to remind us of the gospel. Basically my gut tells me when I have the congregation sing it, in one sense I’m putting falsehoods on their lips. Not that the words are false, just that we don’t feel them.

So what does that have to do with the sermon. Well, that hymn is a hymn of spiritual maturity. The text is a call to belief, and not just to belief, but discipleship. It presents us with three groups of people and puts on Jesus lips the challenge to do the will of the Father. The text doesn’t use the metaphor, but the disciple Walks with the Lord. And that is not always easy. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death (stanza 3), but we fear no evil (stanza 5). The mature Christian will accept that walk.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download