Rejoice! You’re Invited to the Wedding

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This is midweek advent 2 and for us the last of the Advent midweeks this year. A Short Season. Part of that is we are going caroling next week. I ran with LCMS worship’s themes for the season this year. And they did what most LCMS products do. They gave you two hours of stuff for something you want around 25 mins. That is much better than the flip which is 10 mins of content and you’ve got to fill an hour. (There is a reason BigEva places go through the refrains of the worship songs multiple times.)

The biggest problem for me with jumping off of someone else work – something I rarely do because of this – is connecting the theme and material to the lives of the people present. If I was only teaching the scriptures this wouldn’t be a problem, because most study of most things isn’t practical. You learn calculus because “it’s the next thing” not because you’ll employ it in the job. And the dirty secret of education is that the things we label least practical – say literature – are the stuff that is real. And preaching is supposed to be real. Theology is for everyday living. The bridge here is two fold. We all have piety practices and a shared one in advent is the candle wreath. There are lots of meanings given to each candle. And older form of that piety that we connect with theological virtues connected with the 4 last things: death, judgement, heaven and hell. And the Wedding Feast is the biblical picture of Heaven.

The text, the parable of the wedding banquet, establishes a contrast between the invitation to the wedding and what those who refuse to go do instead and the outcome of the choice. It is the contrast between tragedy and comedy. The invitation you have – Come to the Wedding Feast – tells you about this life. All Comedies end in a wedding. The road may be laughter and tears and cringe, but it ends in love.

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Advent Apology

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Biblical Text: : Luke 3:1-20

I’m using apology above in the original sense – a defense, an argument for something, in this case, Advent. Advent is something that has largely gone missing from the US culture. To the extent that the pressure is on churches like ours that have it to say why. This sermon spends a little time in reminiscence of how Advent disappeared. But, it spends most of its time on why Advent really is a necessary season. Of all the seasons of the church year, Advent carries with it the themes most aligned with the Christian life in this world: hope, longing, preparation. John the Baptist stands in the lectionary as the character that we must go through. You can’t get to the manger without hearing the forerunner. And he’s got a couple of messages. One is apocalyptic and the other moral. This sermon develops those for the listener’s Christian life.

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Gospel Time

As the days get shorter, 15 days until the winter solstice, my mind always returns to contemplation of time. Maybe it is the hymn planning. “Of the Father’s Love begotten, e’re the worlds began to be…”. The advent ones are all about waiting and coming. The Christmas ones are about “the golden hour” or “see, the gentle lamb appears, promised from eternal years.” It is a season that compresses time and space. I was looking at photo of myself holding probably 1.5 year old Anna in winter finery and a red hat on the way to church asking “where did those two people go?”

We tell narratives. We like to connect those moments. That guy on the porch with his young daughter with snow around is somehow connected to this guy with an adult daughter sitting in the desert. And it is not that our narratives are wrong, but that there is always some trouble with them. One of the biggest binaries is probably people who tell decline narratives vs. people who tell progress narratives. Did you get kicked out of Eden at some point in the past and have been tumbling down ever since? Or are you the type to tell the story of advancing from victory unto victory each step getting better? The long arc of the universe bending toward justice.

The gospel this church year is Luke’s. And Luke’s gospel is really volume 1 with Acts being volume 2. Luke-Acts has a long history of being read as the progressive march of salvation history. From Jesus to the 12 to the 120 gathered at the ascension to the 3000 at Pentecost to the entire world at Paul takes the gospel to Rome. But there are always troubles with narratives, especially progress narratives. Without revelation how do we know that the “progress” is really the work of God? We know that Luke’s is, because it is revealed, but ours? What about the lean years and troubles, do those times not count? What about people who get in the way, are they enemies to be thrown down? Are you sure enough to do that?

I’m not tossing away salvation history with its narrative and numbers. The bible does tell a narrative of the people of God. But the way we move through time, the way we think about time, does not always match up with the way God talks about time. We live in tick-tock time and occasionally feel the golden hour. We live in time that is often one thing after another, but occasionally we are struck like the food critique in the Pixar film Ratatouille, old cantankerous and alone Anton taken back in a moment to his mother’s table and the best food he ever had. Or like Scrooge seeing his younger self as Old Fezziwig’s and the mistake of letting his love go. That appointed time, that golden hour, that time of apocalypse, of seeing.

The gospel works on appointed times. The Kingdom of Heaven draws near. It invades our mundane time and redeems it. It creates beachheads in space. Times of refining. Times of celebration. Times when you know like Jacob waking up from the ladder that “the LORD is here.” “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar…(Luke 3:1)”. When this old world was tick-tock-ing along like is always does, “the word of GOD came to John the son of Zachariah in the wilderness…prepare the way of the LORD.” And that Kingdom breaks into our mundane time and space and claims it. Because once you’ve seen it, you know. The veil has been lifted. “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Not in some narrative of salvation history. But long after my skin has been destroyed – after I can no longer connect 30 year old me with whatever age me and the narratives I tell myself no longer make sense even to me – long after that, “yet in my flesh I shall see God (Job 19:26).” The crooked shall become straight, and the rough places plain.

Rejoice! The Lord Has Made His Home With You

Biblical Text: 1 Chronicles 16:1-36

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This was the first Midweek Advent service of the season. The Theme of all of them is Rejoice! This specific one looks at a text a guarantee you have not spent time with. It is David moving the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem from Chronicles. There are lots of interesting things about this story. The sermon mentions a few of them, but it leaves those for you contemplation. Because the main addition of Chronicles in this regard is the re-worked Psalm of David. It gives us a couple of reasons to Rejoice: the works of God and the name of God. The works of God point us to who God himself is. That Ark that is moving is the summary of the works. It is the proof that God has made a home among his people. What the Tabernacle or Temple hides in the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament when God makes his home among his people in the flesh. The incarnation of Jesus Christ.

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The King’s Peace

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Biblical Text: Luke 19:28-40

This is the first Sunday of Advent and the Gospel text is always Palm Sunday – the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The theme or motif of the day is the Advent or Coming of the King. What this sermon takes up is our distance from even the idea of a King. What does it mean to have a King? What are successful Kings? And how is the Kingdom of Heaven different from all those?

The core of being a king is to reign. But there are many ways that reign is established, justified and judged. The Reign of Jesus is specific in two ways called out by the crowds. It brings peace and it brings glory to the highest. This sermon develops how we live in that peace and how we can recognize and join in the glorification.

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Thanksgiving 2024

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I keep trying to do Thanksgiving justice. I don’t think I ever really do. The sermons where I give in to just quoting old American Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations I think are better. They at least remind us of who we used to be. This sermon isn’t terrible. I think if I ever crack the sermon I want to give it is going to be something like this. It is on the difference between the glory story and the grace story. If you are telling the glory story, you can’t be in Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving only comes to those who received the grace. Part of the problem is that starting with this week the job has 4 hard deliverables a week. And you just don’t have the contemplation time. Part of the problem is that I try and limit occasional sermons (i.e. non-Sunday mornings) to 8-10 mins. Which means you can’t really develop anything. And the normal texts for the day – the 10 lepers with 1 returning to give thanks – have a whole lot else going on. This one is working more with Cain and Able and Psalm 50. That psalm is the key. I return to this theme about every 7 years to fight it out once more. This is better than the last one. Anyway. I hope you all had wonderful Holidays.

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Return of the King

“And this the name by which it will be called: The LORD is our righteousness.” – Jeremiah 33:16

The first Sunday of Advent always seems out of place to me and I’m not exactly sure why. The primary gospel lesson assigned has always been Palm Sunday. It is the Advent of the King. I think it might be because the Pastor I had growing up always switched the lesson up. If my memory is still working, I tend to remember a couple of Apocalypse Sundays. And there is an alternate text given. It could also just be that as an American, speaking about Kings seems foreign, maybe traitorous. We are citizens, not subjects. But the Advent Palm Sunday is about all the legends of the Return of the King and a dwelling of peace.

In the Old Testament you can talk about three covenants. (Well, there is a 4^th, but that one with Noah is something of a prefigurement of the three. Noah receives the promise of no more floods which can only be received by faith. And immediately after men have no faith and start building the Tower of Babel. Noah also receives a bit of the law in regards to killing men and animals (Genesis 9). And according to the apocryphal book of Jubilees that Noahide law had six of the 10 commandments.) The three primary covenants are the one of Faith through Abraham, the law of Sinai through Moses, and the promise of a King with an eternal throne through David. The old testament reading for this Sunday (Jeremiah 33:14-16) reminds of all three covenants. “At that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

We have a natural sense of justice. Those Noahide laws, the 10 commandments, are a revelation of the natural law. A major part of the purpose of a King is to execute justice. But a King is also called “Your Grace.” Not only executing justice, the King is to execute righteousness. And it is that grace, that righteousness which is tougher. We have no true innate sense of righteousness. We only know it when we see it. And even then in our fallen condition don’t always see it let alone desire it. Because right now, to fulfill the law and justice, the cross is our righteousness. Our King took his own punishment. The LORD is our righteousness that he might treat us by his grace.

On that first Advent the King came to execute righteousness. “In those days Judah will be saved (Jeremiah 33:16),” But we await the return of the King. “In those days….Jerusalem will dwell securely.” We know the law, but the devil the world and our flesh are still too much with us. Our righteousness and salvation are sure in Christ, but what we will be has not yet appeared. We walk in danger all the way. The stewards can be faithless. Tragedies befall kingdoms of this world. We long for the righteous branch. We wait for the King to approach Jerusalem once again. And to enter that heavenly city, where the righteous might dwell securely under the eternal throne.

It’s Camelot and Gondor and Rome and Constantinople and Shang-Ri-La and Atlantis and Avalon and every legend, but made real. The LORD becomes incarnate. The LORD has raised up a righteous branch for David. The LORD keeps his promises. His covenants are true. The King shall come when morning dawns. And he shall execute justice and righteousness. And we shall dwell securely under his throne.

Keep Awake

Biblical Text: Mark 13:24-37

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The last Sunday of the Church Year. The gospel reading was the second half of Jesus’ Apocalypse. It is in this part that I think Jesus is doing two things. First he is more fully answering the disciples two questions. After shocking them with the revelation that the temple would be destroyed, the disciples asked two questions. 1) When and 2) What are the signs? There is a base sense that everything Jesus says can be taken as answers to those questions. The second thing that Jesus is doing is letting that destruction of the Temple – the End of A World – stand in for the End of The World. And the reality that Jesus is revealing is that we all meet the End of A world. This sermon expands on that. Those experiences he calls the tribulation. “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened… (Mk. 13:24 ESV).” After the tribulation comes the end. We ask for the signs in the hope of skipping or mitigating the tribulation. But that isn’t what it is for. The tribulation is there so we might learn to trust God and his faithfulness. The sermon also expands on that. Instead, how do we live in such times? Jesus ends his apocalypse with the parable. “A man is going on a journey, and he leaves his servants in charge of the house, each to his own work…”. How do we live? We do the work of the house. When Jesus says stay awake, that is what he means. The sermon also expands on this, that we might stay awake.

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Proper Wonder

“Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath…- Isaiah 51:6”

Every landscape has its own features that if you look at them – see them – cause you to fall into wonder about time and distance, about how short and small are yours and how long and far is the earth. As a child of the Midwest being able to stare into the distance and see all the way to the horizon. Growing up on the Mississippi, and having known a kid swept away by the river, its power unknowable. The age of the Allegheny mountains worn down and centuries of mines that haven’t come close to exhausting the supply. And when moving out to Arizona, seeing actual mountains for the first time gave new meaning to the call for the mountains to fall on us. I remember the feeling driving through them up to Las Vegas for a baseball tournament. How the mountains, if they even noticed the cars traveling like ants through them, must be chuckling at all the hustle. They were there before anything and would outlast everything. And then you lift up your eyes to the heavens and consider the time span it took for the light of many of the stars to reach us, lengths so long that you have to make up words – light-years, parsecs – such that you can fool yourself that you comprehend what you are thinking about.

God tells his people to look at these things. Feel those feelings. And then He says, “for the heavens will vanish like smoke, and they earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in a like manner (Isaiah 51:6).” As magnificent and eternal as the material world looks, to God is it temporal. Nothing more than smoke that blows away. A favorite garment that eventually becomes threadbare and hole-y. That is not only the way of all flesh, but of all matter. It is here for a time. But that time is nothing compared to its purpose.

The purpose of the material is so that we might understand the glory and righteousness of God. “My salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed (Isaiah 51: 6).” Our souls which are still able to be struck by the time and distance of the heavens above and the earth beneath are able to learn through them about the one who supports them all. We are able to know that God is just and his law has gone out from him, and that his law is a light to the peoples. (Isaiah 51:4). We are also able to know, because He took on our flesh, He entered our material, that His salvation has gone out. And that salvation reaches as far as the coastlands (Isaiah 51:5). The coastlands, which to the hill people of Judea were Tarshish, the unimaginable ends of the earth, hope in the LORD. The coastlands are part of the covenant.

It is the last Sunday of the Church year. The long green season is at its end. The colors go blue or purple next week. Another cycle of fast and feast begins. In the midst of the hustle of the next month, take a minute to lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look – see – the earth beneath. Let the natural wonder come. But then let that wonder attach to what it all gives witness to. The one who made it all. While thus they sing your Monarch, Those bright angelic bands, Rejoice, O vales and mountains, and oceans clap your hands.

Delivered

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Biblical Text: Mark 13:1-13

We are in the last two Sundays of the Church Year. The Gospel readings for those Sundays are usually given over to Jesus on the Last Days or The Apocalypse. And compared to how folk American Christianity treats the Apocalypse, a Lutheran approach is quite different. Apocalypse originally just meant a revealing, a lift in the veil. And that is what the apocalypse of Jesus does. It reveals the way of the world.

Jesus’ apocalypse always starts with the disciples pointing at the temple and the great stones. The 2nd Jewish temple was one of the wonders of the world. Their point it out is pointing out something like the tower of babel. Look at this thing that “we” did. Of course in the preceding stories that take place in the temple courts, Jesus reveals everything that those beautiful stones cover over. And the revelation to the disciples is that not one thing will be left. All of the glamour of the world, every spell it casts to distract from its sin caused rot, will be exposed and destroyed.

The sermon I said it very Lutheran. There is a law reason and the gospel reason for the revelation. And that is what this sermon explores. How the apocalypse delivers us. Delivers us from the glamour. Delivers us to the authorities. Delivers us to our callings to witness. And ultimately delivers us.

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