God, You Cannot Be Serious

Biblical Text: Habakkuk 1:1-2:4

I think this longer passage – the lectionary as read cuts out important parts – is one of the most important in the bible. At least to the curious. Habakkuk the prophet has had it. He asks the question that I think many people do when things are going well, “God, where are you? Why do you do nothing?” And unlike most places, here God responds. He is doing something. He’s sending “the Chaldeans.” Now the Chaldeans are just code for Assyria/Babylon/Persia, the great power that takes Israel into exile. And God elaborates on who they are. It is what God often does, set one evil against another. But we don’t like that. The prophet doesn’t like that. He pushes back at God a second time. “Really, that is what you want me to go preach? Babylon?” And God answers one more time. And he makes clear what he is after – faith.

This sermon sets Habakkuk’s story in the light of Adam, Eve and the Old Snake. What Satan is always pitching in knowledge. “You will know.” It is not that God won’t grant knowledge, but that knowledge from God comes at the appropriate time. When we have the wisdom to handle it. Satan doesn’t care the damage it leaves. The “Violence”. The “Justice perverted.” But God does this because he is not really about knowledge. He wants us to have faith. He wants us to trust Him. And that is the second answer. Habakkuk, write the vision. It’s the same vision as always. The promise of Christ and his kingdom. And its the promise, “It will come. Wait for it. The righteous live by faith.”

On a rhetorical note, these sermon gets a little hot. To me it was meant to match the prophet’s complaint.

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What is God doing?

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Biblical Text: 1 Kings 19:9-21

Our lectionary tends to skip texts with a bent to violence or martial images, like Elijah and the Prophets of Baal. It feeds us the sad sack Elijah in the aftermath. Now, there is a defendable reason for this, but you can’t really get to it by skipping. Because we all want the fire from heaven. And when the fire from heaven doesn’t come, or when Jesus rebukes you for asking for it as he did in the associated Gospel lesson for the day, we lament, we ask “why?”

The why’s largely remain God’s. He doesn’t really answer why. He redirects us to what. He will listen to the lament. He asks Elijah twice for his litany of lament. Why does it always work this way? And then God turns him to the What. Elijah, the question is not why God does something, the question is What is God doing. And in ask What we also get our invite to see it and participate. The Kingdom of God certainly comes without our prayers, but we pray that it comes to us also.

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Are You The One?

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Biblical Text: Matthew 11:2-15

The second and third Sundays in Advent are always John the Baptist Sundays. The third one in year A – Matthew’s year – is one of my favorite texts to preach from. Why you ask? Because I think it is a text that gets emotionally to the core of what many Christians feel, but we are usually scared to read it that way. We are too protective of the saintliness of biblical characters. And beyond getting to the core of what we feel, Jesus’ answers are profound in two ways. Jesus does give us the promise, but that promise comes in the very specific form of the crucified one. We get no other messiah. The text is a challenge to the hearers, both to the faithful like John who might not understand, and the crowds who might be pondering the message.

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Authority of the Cross

Biblical Text: Luke 20:9-20
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All of Chapter 20 in Luke is Jesus teaching on proper authority. It is set in the conflict between Jesus and the Temple, and this text is the parable that Jesus uses as the loadstone of the entire teaching. You find true north in regards to authority by pondering this parable.

It happens to be a fortuitous text as the political season moves in strange ways this year. It also comes up at the same time as a situation I have been pondering simmers. This sermon attempts to think through the text and those situations. What it emerges with I hope is a picture of what authoritative leadership looks like. In this world authoritative leadership looks like the cross.

I don’t bring it up in the sermon itself, but Luther once attempted to talk about the marks of the church, how you would find it. His biggest mark was the cross. You will know you’ve found the church when what you are looking at bears the cross. It is only that type of authority and leadership – a leadership that is directed toward God and neighbor willing to bear the burden – that is truly fruitful.

I hope that this is helpful in your meditation. Also, I want to add a note about the recording. This is a re-recording after the fact, because the recording at the time something went wrong. Which is a shame, because the choir sounded wonderful, and we sang one of my top-5 hymns. LSB 423, Jesus Refuge of the Weary. The words are by the original Bonfire of the Vanities Girolamo Savonarola. The author is a cautionary tale. He rose is acclaim and fortune castigating a corrupt authority. He was later hung and burned at the same time. I believe the text of the hymn comes from his prison meditations. It might not be true, but I hear the confession of a man who got lost but came to see the cross anew. A historical support for the limits I attempt to point out in the sermon.

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From the Days of John Until Now

Biblical Text: Matthew 11:12-19
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There are two lectionary gospel texts for Reformation Sunday. This is the alternate text. It is actually my favorite because I think it reminds us of something necessary. The nature of the Kingdom here is not one of apparent power and victory. The Kingdom is comes in weakness. It is often veiled. It is violated, and violent men seize her. Yet the victory is won. Christ is risen, and there is always an angel with that eternal gospel. You might have to go to the wilderness to hear it, but the Word remains.

Recording note: I’ve left in the Hymn of the Day which was Lutheran Service Book #555 – Salvation Unto Us Has Come. A Mighty Fortress is often considered The Reformation hymn, but my money is on this one. We sang the odd verse which tell the full story of grace. I also left in the concluding short Hymn, God’s Word is Our Great Heritage, LSB 582. I think if Luther was around to say what the purpose of the Reformation was, 500 years later removed from the arguments of the day he would say what this hymn does. We have been given and entrusted with the Word. We betray the Kingdom if we forget this.

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