Mission and Witness

Biblical Text: John 20:19-31, Acts 5:12-32

The second Sunday of Easter, the end of the octave of Easter, is always the appearance to Thomas. And for most of my life this has been the Sunday to talk about doubt – doubting Thomas. Which I happen to think is a terrible reading of the text. Sure, Thomas doubts, but Jesus’ words to him are a gentle rebuke. Something like, “Thomas, stop being a fool, and believe. Do you really know these 10 so little that you think they’d lie to you about something like this?” If you want to talk Dark Nights of the Soul go read Job or Ecclesiastes or maybe even Paul on his fellow Jews. But Thomas is about mission. “As the Father sent me, I am sending you. Receive the Holy Spirit. Forgive Sins.” This is about the mission of the church in all times and places carried out through Word and Sacrament. And the first lesson of the day from Acts is a perfect example.

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Public and Private

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Biblical Text: Mark 1:29-39

In any religious life one has to make some type of decision if it is primarily a private thing or a public thing. In fact I’d go so far as to say the world wants to force you to choose. In the Pagan world all religion was public. You could believe anything you wanted, so long as you did the correct public rites. Today, the state would grant you freedom of worship, by which they mean you can do anything you want privately, but it better not affect your public life which must be lived as if you were an atheist. This sermon ponders that split through the how Mark depicts the ministry of Jesus leading up to an emphatic statement as to why Jesus has come out. We are obviously not Jesus, but this still has meaning as we sort our own religious lives out in private and in public.

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70 or 72? Call, Authority and Mission

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Biblical Text: Luke 10:1-20

The text is Jesus sending out the 70, or is it the 72? That is one of the few textual questions of the New Testament. Which like all textual questions is ultimately unanswerable. It becomes a matter of faith. But if you side with the King James Version and the manuscript that usually “wins”, 70 opens up a bunch of old testament references that could see their fulfillment in these 70. There is a tie in with Moses’ 70 elders who received a part of his Spirit. The fulfillment being the Priesthood of All Believers where Moses’ wish that all would have the Spirit becomes true. There is a tie in with the teaching authority of the 70 members of the Sanhedrin. The called and ordained ministry sent out with the authority of the Word. And there is a fulfillment of the 70 nations from the table of nations in Genesis 10. The proclamation of Jesus being sent to all the world.

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Among the Tombs

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Biblical Text: Luke 8:26-39

The Gerasene Demoniac is one of those stories that is so vivid for me it stands a proof of the rest of the biblical story. Nobody could make it up. And it is such a perfect living symbol that only God could be behind it. This sermon ponders the demonic for a bit and how at least compared to my childhood, it is so much more apparent today. We live among the tombs, in Phillip Rieff’s word, among the deathworks. But you Christian have been cleansed and put in your right mind. Which causes its own problems. We know the trouble of demons. We know we have enemies. And that our very existence reminds them that they have been defeated and their time grows very short. Yet Jesus bids us “go home and tell what God has done.” The right mind knows what kind of request that is. It also knows that our Lord is with us and does not ask more than he has given.

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Doctrine, Mission and the Experience of God

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Biblical Text: Luke 5:1-11

Those first two points have unfortunately become a polarity in the church. Yet they go together. One grows out of the other. The life of faith finds its start and its proof in obedience to the Word. The text is the amazing catch of fish, but you never get to the catch if Peter is not obedient twice to the Word of Jesus. But both the faith and the mission rest on the experience of God. This sermon attempts to experience along with Peter that presence of God through obedience to the faith and the call to mission.

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The Seed of His Teaching

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Biblical Text: Mark 4:26-34

All of Jesus’ parable to some extent are elaborations of the parable of the sower, at least his Kingdom parables. But I feel that is even more the case with the Gospel according to Mark. The Sower and the Soils is Jesus’ picture of the Kingdom in this world. The parables that are part of the text today are refinements or close ups of parts of that parable that answer some natural questions. The early part of this sermon sets that connection because the lectionary jumps right back into the gospel skipping the larger narrative parable.

The questions natural questions that might come up immediately are: 1) to what extent are we responsible for the growth of the seeds? and 2) when the seeds do grow what does it look like? This sermon looks at both those questions through the parables.

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The Spiritual Crisis of the Christ

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Biblical Text: Mark 3:20-35

I put the title as “the Spiritual Crisis of the Christ” because just the existence of Jesus and his claims puts everyone in the position of having to make a choice. The technical term for what I try to describe in the sermon is a Chiasm. It would normally be outlined or diagrammed as A B C B’ A’. The “C” part is the deepest and most important part. The truth of that “C” part ripples out in the B/B’ and A/A’ parts like a stone dropped in the water. The truth at the center is that we live in Satan’s house, but Christ has bound Satan and is stealing as many as he can from Satan’s Kingdom for the eternal Kingdom. That is the gospel proclamation. You have been freed from the bondage to Satan.

That proclamation is met by two levels of crisis. At the easiest level the claims of the Christ are just crazy talk. The claims demand that we re-order our most natural selves – like our family – around the His missional family. Of course it might not be family, it is really whatever we take as the core of our personal identity. This must be subsumed under the mission of Christ to be part of God’s family. The more dangerous level is when that crisis demands a resolution. When all our status and power are defined by the idols of our age and we are called to say what we believe about Jesus, and crazy won’t be enough. You will be called to call Jesus demonic, the adversary. And this is the unforgiveable sin, calling the Spirit a liar.

Because the Spirit testifies to the truth of Jesus’ claims. Are you going to call God a liar, or allow him to free you from the bondage that Satan has you in?

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Prophetic Rhyming

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Biblical Text: 2 Kings 2:1-12

The fancy word is typeology or archetype. The meaning is a person or character or action that is a distilled example of human experience. What makes the scriptures so powerful, at least if you catch the vision of them, is that the experience of Israel with GOD is the distilled archetype. The New Testament is THE specific example. The life of Christ is the fulfillment of all the archetypes, because in this one life we have God meeting one in on Christ. And seeing as our lives are conformed to his, they are going to rhyme with Israel’s experience. This sermon first looks at a couple of the rhymes of Elijah and Elisha in broad strokes. Then it looks at the specific call of our text and how our lives might rhyme with “the chariots and horsemen of Israel” and asks if we want them to.

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Swords and Rewards

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Biblical Text: Matthew 10:34-42

The gospel text today is the end of Jesus’ missionary sermon, and it contains one of the hardest sayings of Jesus. “I have have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” That is actually understandable from Matthew’s Gospel, which I hope the sermon brings to life. It is just that we are more used to Luke’s Christmas story. Understanding peace and swords is the first part.

The second part is about why anyone would take up the call and what that means. It is an expansion on what should be the greater phrase, but we go ho hum to “the one who received you receives me, and the one who receives me receives the one who sent me”. What that phrase tells us is that we get God. We get the Father. Our reward? God. That should be stunning.

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Come and See; Go and Tell

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Biblical Text: Matthew 28:1-10

The recording is the full (2nd) service. The resurrection account in Matthew has an interesting pattern. There is a “come and see” portion. The angel bids the Mary’s to come and see the empty tomb. Jesus greets them and they grab his feet. There is proof of the resurrection. “Come and See”.

The second part of the pattern is “Go and Tell”. The angel tells the Mary’s to go and tell the disciples. Jesus as bids them go and tell. When you have seen the power of the resurrection, go and tell.

The final part is the promise. “You will see him”. Today we see by faith, although it is not a faith without proof. The tomb was empty. Jesus had feet. Tomorrow we see.

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