Competitive Suffering

Biblical Text: Luke 13:1-9, Ezekiel 33:7-20

The Gospel Lesson for the day is one of the great teachings of Christianity even though it is not explicitly in the creeds. It is one of the teachings that you won’t really find in world religions and goes contrary to our natural intuition. And that is its teaching about suffering. Our intuition and most of world religion teaching about suffering would fall under the idea of karma – “you get what you deserve.” That might be a little crass, the more refined teachings might allow for some randomness or spread over time, or multiple lives, but the gap between crass and refined isn’t that great. Nothing compared to Jesus outright rejection that suffering tells us anything about the status of an individual soul. Suffering in Christian thought, the kind the spurs thought – that of the innocent – is only good for two things. First the recognition of the general sinfulness of the world, and second as a sign calling for repentance. The cross, the place of the suffering of the truly innocent, is the ultimate call to repentance. It is also the place where we see the guilt of the entire world paid for. The Christian cannot look at suffering and derive a moral status hierarchy. Because we all deserve that cross.

Jesus proceeds to talk about fruitfulness. The parable he tells is mostly about a truer theodicy. God who is after repentance, faith and fruitfulness is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The soul is given plenty of time, support and chance by God. But if suffering cannot be used as an external sign of faithfulness and love. Fruitfulness can. The parable contemplates the soul planted in grace that bears no fruit. It just takes up ground. It is not works righteousness to encourage fruitfulness. The soul where repentance has taken root will produce the outward signs of faithfulness towards god and love for the neighbor. The sermon meditates on these two movements: suffering and fruitfulness.

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Agony of the Soul

031925 LWM2 sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 22:39-53

Sometimes you come up with something you really like. For example, this sermon. I think this is really good. Except that it might miss the time a bit. For a midweek meditation, it is probably a little too serious. I’m sure that agony of the spirit is a real thing. I’m not sure if our age experiences it. What we call agony is usually more a paper cut. But the image of Gethsemane, even if our agony between the Spirit and our Spirit doesn’t rise to the same level, it is still ours. And the promises are still given. The Angels are there. Prayer is available. The Will of God will be done.

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Fox and Hen

031625 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 13:31-35

Luke to me is a master of phrases that drip with pathos. By that I mean phrases that have entire Russian novels behind them. Phrases that church your guts with recognition. You know he was talking to eyewitnesses, and that he was a very good listener. He felt it with them. And the gospel text today has more than one of those phrases.

There is one about the time. We all have a fox like sense of low cunning. But that low cunning might put on Herod’s path, or there is a slight change it just might tell us what time it is. That the time is short – “today, tomorrow, maybe the third.”

There is one about being gathered, and refusing to gather. And there is one about houses left forsaken. That last one is the toughest one. I think I might have even hedged a bit in the sermon. A line or two I contemplated were just too tough.

But the sermon, if we have ears to hear, tells us who God is, and what today is.

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Table Definitions

Biblical Text: Psalm 113, Luke 22:1-38

031225 LMW1 Sermon Download

The Psalms for our midweeks this year are those traditionally associated with the Passover. The readings are going to be the passion story from Luke which is unique in many way. In this case around that Passover table, the disciples start to talk about “who is the greatest.” That conversation happens elsewhere in the other gospels. But in Luke it gives Jesus the opportunity at the table to define what his Kingdom looks like. The communions of the world are status-based hierarchies. The communion of Christ is based on service. And we are all assigned “kingdoms”, tables that are in communion with this one, if we wish to have our seat at that one.

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A Question of Temptation

030925 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 4:1-13

It’s the first Sunday in Lent, so the text is the temptation of Jesus. This is one of those places where Jesus is demonstrated to experience everything that we do, except that he defeats Satan. Each of the three temptations are common to us. Temptations of the flesh, of the world and of Satan himself. And Jesus answers each one with the Word of God. So what you get is the rhythm of Word of God, followed by action (in this case the life of Jesus) that lives out that Word, which reveals the type of God that we have. The Word is the promise. And we all live by faith in that promise. Faith that Jesus has given to us his victory.

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A Penitential Season (Ash Wednesday)

030525 Ash Wed Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Joel 2:12-19, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Ash Wednesday is the start of the Lenten season. Lent is a penitential season. Penitential related to penance has a few definitions. Roughly: a good one, one ruled out by the Reformation, and a weak decadent popular definition from that middle one. This sermon thinks its way through those definitions and invites you to take part in a penitential season. Neither decadently, nor in a way that loses the gospel, but in a way directed toward building up faith.

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Mountaintop Experience

030225 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: : Luke 9:28-36

The text is the Transfiguration. Liturgically the transfiguration is the end of the season of Epiphany. It stands as the ultimate revelation by signs and wonders of who Jesus is this side of the cross. As such it is the picture of the glory of God and direct experience of God now. It is a seeing. The problem is that seeing this side of the cross is without meaning. We might experience God, but what does that experience mean? Any direct experience of God can only be understood through or on the far side of the cross. Jesus is our Passover lamb first before we are brought to the promised land. This sermon is a meditation on all the ways that we desire and seek to see, when what we are bid to do by the voice of the Father is listen. We do not know God by seeing. We know God by listening to his voice.

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Good Measure, Pressed Down…

022325 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 6:27-38

Luke’s sermon on the plain – this text is the 2nd part of that – is his version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. And I know that it is the favorite part of the Bible of lots of preachers, but I think they like it for the wrong reasons. It gets used for all the wrong reasons. People quote it either thinking they are being encouraging, or to use it as a heat shield to keep on doing what they shouldn’t be doing. The first is preaching the law to the drowned man. The second is simply bad faith, or lack of faith. Luke’s version to me is turning the volume up to 11. And it does this for two reasons. The first should be as law applied against ourselves. Luke’s Jesus spells out how even sinners act. And we do. We also if we are being honest act worse. Jesus makes clear the meets minimum requirements of sinners. And we fall short. The second is the gospel reason. It makes clear the God we have. And the God we have does not act like us. The God we have is merciful. He loves his enemies, us.

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Hold Fast

021625 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: 1 Corinthians 15:1-20

Our Congregation this past week had a shock. Two wonderful members were killed in a car accident. One immediately and the other on the way to the hospital. It happened Wednesday morning and word started getting around by the evening and the following morning. The Pastor’s corner from this week, just below, directly mentions that. But I couldn’t ask for a better text for a sermon at such a time. We believe in the resurrection. Set everything else aside. This is the defining belief that Christians Hold Fast. Jesus is risen. And you will arise. Paul and all apostolic preachers proclaim that fact. The text also examines what would make that faith in vain.

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Go Fish

020925 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 5:1-11

The text is Luke’s version of the call of the first disciples. And the emphasis of Luke’s version is unique in my reading. Matthew and Mark emphasize the immediate authority of the call. But as we’ve been reading Luke 4 and Luke 5 we have been experiencing Simon’s encounter with Jesus. The end of these encounters is the call. That call comes after Simon recognition that Jesus was not just a teacher or a guru but LORD. And when you’ve encountered the living God there are some things that need to be sorted out. We in the church call this entire process discipleship. This sermon thinks about that.

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