The Ask

Biblical Text: Philemon 1-21, (Luke 14:25-35 as background)

The letter to Philemon is to me almost the proof of the entire bible. There is no way this letter survives without divine shepherding. And it carries the heart of the gospel in it. Faith that there is more than this. Faith that God will provide. The Love of the Saints. The centrality of the cross. How Christianity is not just a philosophy or a religion, but it is a confession that must be lived. How the living of that confession can deepen and is always unique. In the Sermon I use the phrase “The Ask.” If you’ve done sales, or leadership of any types, you know you eventually must get to the ask. Philemon is one story of the Gospel Ask. The promises are given. Are you willing to live them?

Wisdom Lit

One thing Lutheranism has always struggled with is the life of the Christian after their justification.  Luther opens this bottle of 100% grace.  A proof that strong had not been tasted since Paul wrote to the Galatians.  And it was a necessary slug. Christians were wandering around thinking that buying an indulgence would get them into heaven faster.  They were praying to relics and saints when prayer is only for God. They were doing what they could and then trusting God for the rest. Never stopping to realize that what we could do without God was nothing. If I have to do it, the work is never done.  But justification is God’s works. It is already done. I just need to believe it – faith alone.

The trouble soon manifests itself though.  How then do I live? And Lutherans have tended to have two answers to this.  The first answer is always a bit like the hippie-commie Acts 4 commune.  They all sold everything and held everything in common (Acts 4:32).  Live out of the freedom of the Gospel. And like hippies everywhere, they aren’t wrong, if we were living in the fullness of the Kingdom.  Unfortunately the story of Ananias and Sapphira comes next which makes plain both our sinful natures and the grace with which we trifle when we give such answers.. Most Lutherans reintroduce the law, something called the third use, as the way that God intends us to live. And this is not wrong.  The law is good and wise. The problem tends to be two-fold. 

Reintroducing the law after having the 200 proof grace feels like the morning after 200 proof slugs. But the greater danger is that we end up as lawyers back arguing points of the law and looking for ways we contribute.  And we lose the grace again. 200 proof watered down to traces.

Our epistle lesson for the day (Hebrews 12:4-24) – focusing on Hebrews 12:12-17 – addresses this problem as Wisdom Literature.  Wisdom Literature has always been trouble for the strict Lutheran Law-Gospel thinking.  Because wisdom does make demands.  Live this way.  “Lift up drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees (Hebrews 12:12).” It feels like the law. But unlike the 10 commandments which are equally applicable to everyone, Wisdom Literature is more guideposts. You are living in the freedom of the Gospel, but watch out for this.  As this it is less law, but more gospel encouragement.

“Make straight paths for your feet.” That is biblical talk that if you are feeling tired of carrying the cross, if the discipline of the Father feels heavy, walk in clear ways.  Simplify.  Do that “so that what is lame many not be put out of joint but rather be healed (Hebrews 12:13).” As one who has been limping around for a few weeks because I refused straight paths and things in my feet were put out of joint, I get it. Not every day is spiritual training day. Learn to recognize your pains.

The wisdom from Hebrews 12:14-17 is a bit more complex.  The tension in the communal Christian life is established between “strive for peace with everyone” and “and for holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” Striving for peace is easy if you forget about holiness. Just accept everything. But what that ends up doing is denying grace. Because the Christian walk is not about acceptance, but absolution. We all sinned and all have been forgiven.  And that grace puts us on the path of holiness. If we are all walking that path together, but there is one who is walking not through grace, but because their sin has just been accepted, that is the “root of bitterness.”  And I’ve seen this many times. The one denied grace realizes they are not walking the same path. And often calls attention to it. Those walking under grace will often turn and ask “what about that one?” The examples given are “the sexually immoral” and “Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal”.  That root of bitterness in other places might be called a scandal or a stumbling block. There is a great difference between welcoming the repentant sinner, and accepting those who despise and ignore the gathering like Esau or live proud public immoral lives.

200 proof grace is strong enough to absolve any sin. The wisdom is in how to drink it.

Onward Christian Soldiers: Martial Language

Biblical Text: : Mark 7:14-23, Eph 6:10-20, Onward Christian Soldiers

One of the things that largely disappeared from Christian vocabulary in the preceding couple of generations was martial language. There are some reasons. This sermon makes some guesses. But losing that language has cost the church dearly I believe. First, it is biblical. Using military words for the Christian life is all over the New and Old Testaments. The Epistle Lesson for the day (Ephesians 6:10-20) is just the most direct. And second, the Christian Life is the life of sanctification. And the life of sanctification is a life of stuggle against Satan, the World and our own sinful flesh. Now while pride might want us to use that martial language against Satan, the honest answer is that we are called most often to use it against ourselves. This sermon works on those themes, and it does it using the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers as the opening.

An Arizona Visit

I was sitting in my office fresh from vacation.  The translation for the week was done. I was trying to scrape the rust off the brain.  Half-heartedly skimming somebody’s commentary on the gospel of the week. When I felt a breeze.  But it wasn’t the AC kicking on and refilling the tubes.  Instead it was an old friend.

“Dr. Luther, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.  I got the feeling the last time we talked it might be the last time. And that was quite a while ago.  About 7 years”

“Seven years? You’ve got to remember, time for me isn’t quite linear anymore. Worms feels like yesterday.  So that little conversation of ours was just this morning.  But I did notice that you seem to have moved.  And not a small one.  You know, other than my trip to Rome, which was only about 850 miles, I don’t think I ever traveled more than 75 miles away from my hometown.  And you are sitting on the other end of a continent!  And it is hot.  Are you sure you didn’t move closer to hell?”

“Yeah.  That might have been an undercurrent in that conversation earlier this morning. Remember how von Staupitz sent you on that Roman trip. Said, ‘you need to see the city.’  Sometimes in our common work of the gospel you need to be somewhere else.  At least that is what we tell ourselves.”

“But it seems to have worked. The black dog was at your door last time, and I hear no barking now.  Although these little chats are never without purpose.  I don’t get released from Leo X and Charles V for chit-chat.”

“You are going to have to tell me about those chats.”

“You’ll get your own one day.  Mark 7.  That’s what you are pondering.”

“Yes. It is just so unnatural.  It is all law, but the law is usually natural. We call it cancel culture – driving out the unclean – but it is really larger than that. Parents spend inordinate amounts of time and money trying to control their kids peer groups.  Our own synod excommunicated a 20 year old recently, basically for hanging out with the the wrong sorts. All of that seems natural, like practical wisdom.  Hygiene.  Yet Christ says, ‘there is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him.’  And the received understanding immediately jumps to Jesus eating with ‘tax collectors and sinners.’ But this passage has been used to justify all kinds of terrible stuff.  Material that is clearly not good for anything, but the second you say so, somebody stands up and calls you a Pharisee or a legalist.”

“I did say the proper separation of law and gospel was the hardest skill in all of Christendom.  And the one most necessary.”

“Yes. And I don’t think we’ve done that right here in a long time.”

“Keep talking.”

“The context that Jesus is talking about is piety practices. Hand and cup washings, pledges to God, for lack of a better word ‘religious acts.’ Things that might have started out as helpful to faith, but have become the entire purpose replacing faith. Practicing magic. Virtue Signaling. In your day, indulgences, pilgrimages and relics.”

“Yes, those were big things in my day. But it isn’t like every age doesn’t have their own.”

“But ours are so strange. In the Epistle Paul talks about putting on the armor.  Know you are in a fight.  Yet the religious act of our day seems to be ‘strip it all off and walk naked, otherwise you don’t have faith.’  Any law is a bad law and contrary to the gospel.”

“You might have something there Brown. Continue.”

“The core seems to be ‘whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach.’  It is about the heart.  There are things from the outside that can enter the heart and displace true faith. There are also all kinds of things that exit the heart.  ‘Out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, etc.’  The breaking of the entire 10 commandments.  The heart itself is initially unclean.  But the Christian has had a new heart created in them by baptism and the Spirit.”

“Now you are dividing the law and the gospel. Can you bring it home?”

“The breastplate of righteousness.  The breastplate is what covers the heart.  Eating with ‘sinners and tax collectors’ will not make you unclean.  As long as it isn’t your heart that is desiring to join in ‘all these evil things.’ If your heart is acting out of faith it is protected by that righteousness and would not join in those works. Not all the demons could make you. You can stand in the evil day.”

“Ok, but haven’t you just made another religious work, Brown?”

“I don’t think so, because it is all borrowed armor. It is not our breastplate, but that given to us by Christ. It is not our heart, but the one created anew by the Spirit. We’ve been given these gifts not to bury them, but to use them. Not to discard them, but to wear them for the battle that rages.”

The great man walked out muttering something about it being too hot and Leo called. And then the AC kicked on flapping the pipes and jolting me from my seat.

Lamplighters

Biblical Text: Matthew 25:1-13

This parable – the 10 Virgins “all trimming their wicks” – is one that most modern Lutherans preachers hate I bet. At least if they are being honest about where their theology is at. I make a split at modern, because Luther himself had no trouble preaching its clear message. Its clear message, the clear message of all the end times sermons, is that sanctification is something that we are part of. The wedding feast? We don’t have anything to do with that. Jesus has paid the bride price and has prepared a place. Our justification is by grace alone in Christ alone. But Jesus consistently says “watch” or “prepare”. And the reason is that we can lose our salvation. In this sermon we can get so lost in the things temporal that we lose the things eternal. We become overcome with worldliness and forget to bring the oil. Because the one thing we know is that we don’t know when the Bridegroom comes. Making a quick trip to Wal-Mart won’t be an option. Have you lived the Christian life, or not? To many modern Lutheran ears that sounds like a betrayal of gospel. It isn’t. The betrayal is in not living it. In not preparing.

Recording note: the recording is an after the fact re-recording. Something happened with our recording system and the live version couldn’t be used.

Vineyards and Cornerstones

Biblical Text: Matthew 21:33-46

This parable of the wicked tenants as it is sometimes called feels very rooted in its specific history so much so that even through the parables were told so that “hearing they might not hear” the Chief Priests discerned Jesus told this about them. It is the summaries, conclusions or maybe so far as application that open up the parable beyond the Jewish temple leadership. In my reading Jesus gives three separate summaries.

  1. “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”
  2. “The Kingdom of God will be taken away and given to those producing its fruit”
  3. “The one who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces, the one the stone falls on will be crushed”

This sermon looks at each of those in progression and how the help us hear the parable for ourselves. The placing of the cornerstone is pure gospel. “God has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.” The second is the moral warning to watch. If you think the vineyard is yours to do with as you want, you might be killing the heir. The third thinks about our ultimate positions regarding God: ignoring such that we might trip over, set ourselves against him, or build on the cornerstone.

Matthew 18 for Dummies

Biblical Text: Matthew 18:1-20, (Ezekiel 33:7-9)

I started using the word clouds a long time ago for the image. Originally I thought it was artistic cute: a Word cloud for preaching the Word. But, as I made them I started to realize they did have something to say, and what they had to say too seeing a few. There was always the simple surface fact of the most commonly used words. Like above – Luther and Jesus. I learned and adapted over the years that if “God” was the biggest word, the sermon was probably too generic. I looked for Father or Jesus or Spirit to show up. But there are a variety of shapes that show up. The clouds that are dominated by 2-3 big words and everything else is small are usually the simplest. They tend to be more about proclamation. At the other end are ones like the above. There are lots of words that are large enough to be read, but none that really just pop. Those tend to be less pure proclamation and more teaching or invitation to ponder. The every Sunday preacher has to have a bigger repertoire than the occasional. The lectionary preacher even more so, if he wants to preach the text and not just what is on his mind that week.

Matthew 18 is a deeper text than we normally treat it. Depending upon if our preference is for Young Luther or Old Luther (listen to the sermon), we tend to reduce it to “The Process” for solving disputes in the church, or reduce it to the ridiculousness of even thinking about the law parallel to Jesus’ hyperbole about cutting off body parts. We aren’t going to do that and the Father would not want that, so thinking in sin counting terms must be just wrong. I hope that this sermon was an invitation to think beyond those simplistic reductions. The Christian Life has a simplicity to it, but those are caricatures. That simplicity is the one found on the other side of a complexity.

Be Jubilant My Feet

Biblical Text: Matt 10:34-42

The text is the end of Jesus’ missionary discourse which includes the line “Do not think I have come to bring peace, but the sword.” The time period is the July 4th weekend. So the general subject is going to be Christian Warfare. And by that I don’t mean such questions as can a Christian be a soldier or the au currant idea of Christian Nationalism. The sword that Jesus has come to bring is against the devil, the world and our own sinful nature. Those are the things that the Christian is called to fight against in that full armor of God. This sermon has an argument from the lessor to the greater. As Americans there are some historical things around July 4th that we would all agree with. But these are the lessor. If we agree and are willing to live in certain ways out of patriotism, how much a greater claim does the Kingdom of Heaven have on us?

Ash Wednesday 2022

Biblical Text: Jonah 3:1-10, 2 Peter 1:2-11

Justification from Jonah, sanctification from Peter. Ash Wednesday as something of a yearly reboot of the Christian life. A life which starts in the ashes and proceeds through incorporation into Christ to being part of the divine life.

Tribal Counsels

Biblical Text: Mark 9:38-50

The text for the day feels like one of those collections of aphorisms. The sermon attempts to place them within the larger gospel narrative. But then spends the majority of time meditating on how the aphorisms “those who are not against us are for us”, “if hand/foot/eye cause you to sin cut them off” and “have salt in yourself” provide a surprisingly robust practical guidance on the problems of division or tribalism. I don’t say easy to live, but understandable with some spine. They are not just a collapse into a limp toleration. Neither are they a simplistic dualism. They are a call to the sanctified life.