Category: podcast

Answer Me (Testify to the Mountains)

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Biblical Text: Micah 6:1-8

This text is one that is often appropriated for its final verse. And honestly I hate most of those appropriations. They rip it out of its context and turn it into a pure law. You better walk humbly with God, usually meaning adopt my entire ideological program, or let me tell you. But the context is pure Gospel. In seven verses everything that God does for us is placed before us. God calls on the heights and the depths to testify to this. And he calls on Israel to answer him. Which they do, with what I take as true contrition. And that verse that so often gets changed into law in the service of our desires? It is God’s absolution. What do we do? From this day walk rightly.

On a personal note, I love preaching on the Old Testament. Maybe I’m odd, but it always feels so much more present to me. I get it. Of course we Christians read the OT through the NT lens. But to me what the NT represents is largely the OT books of Exodus and Joshua. The rest of the OT is our lives. Where Israel struggled and failed are good lessons for our learning.

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Learning Repentance

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Biblical Text: Matthew 4:12-25

The text is the calling of the first disciples from Matthew’s Gospel, two sets of Brothers – Andrew and Peter, James and John. And right before that calling you have Matthew’s summary of the Preaching of Jesus, at least in the days in Galilee, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” So, the sermon’s main concern is the idea of discipleship. What does it mean to follow Jesus? And a big part of that answer is to learn the meaning of repentance. This particular sermon walks through what I tend to think is the modern church’s biggest problem – worldliness.

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The Logic of Sacrifice

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Biblical Text: John 1:29-42a

John the Baptist points at Jesus and says “Behold, the Lamb of God.” This sermon meditates on the meaning of that phrase. First thinking about the logic and meaning of sacrifice, which oddly has both left our world and in coming back in all kinds of ways. It thinks about how that logic of sacrifice doesn’t really work, at least not with how God has provided the lamb. The last point it contemplates is what happens when we find what we are seeking and it is the lamb of God.

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Let It Be So For Now

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Biblical Text: Matthew 3:13-17, (Romans 6:1-11)

The occasion on the church calendar is the baptism of Jesus. If we stop and think about it, the baptism of Jesus doesn’t make sense. It is one of those moments that just feels wrong. Even John the Baptist gets this in his reply to Jesus. Jesus replies in two ways: a) let it be so for now and b) to fulfill all righteousness. This sermon explores how and why Jesus undergoes a baptism of repentance through his answers to John.

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A Gifted Star (Epiphany)

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This is an Epiphany sermon. It riffs on the idea of “wise men”. The fact is that in the story there are a lot of men who would be considered wise, but are fools for various reasons. It is only when we are gifted stars to guide – the wisdom of God – that we wind up at the manger.

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Companions of Christ (The Holy Innocents)

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Biblical Text: Matthew 2:13-23

This is a Christmas Season sermon. The Christmas season is not something that stops on Dec 25th. It is also not something that came for universal hygge or general comfort. It came for peace on earth, and the world is not going to give that peace without a fight. This is a serious sermon about a serious topic which only finds its resolution is one place, the resurrection.

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A Great and Mighty Wonder

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Biblical Text: Hebrews 1:1-12

The assigned reading for Christmas Day from Hebrews is an interesting one. It is the start of an argument why Jesus is greater than the angels. The background of the argument is that angels took on an outsized role in the popular piety of the intertestamental period. You could almost say that the angels had been turned into idols. The writer of Hebrews was concerned to make an argument to compare the surpassing worth of the Son to the angels. It is an argument for the right ordering of our loves and right worship. The sermon attempts to get us to contemplate what we have placed where the 1st century Jews had placed angels. And how we worship aright.

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Christmas Eve 2022 (Light of Grace)

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The service itself was a very traditional lessons and carols. This sermon didn’t really focus on any one of those texts but upon the themes they present as what the light could mean. The sermon speaks for itself I think more than any summary I could give it here.

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Brother’s Return

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Biblical Text: Micah 5:2-5a

Our final midweek for 2022 Advent. The passage from Micah recalls two big OT themes that will be brought to fulfillment or fruition at the advent of the messiah. The First is God’s choosing the least. The second the return or the ingathering of those who have been let go. This homily attempts to place those before us so that we might have faith in the claims of the eternal peace also brought by the messiah.

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Two Smoldering Stumps

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Biblical Text: Isaiah 7:10-17

Matthew asserts that the Virgin birth of Jesus is the fulfillment of this passage in Isaiah. Now, when a New Testament author points at an Old Testament text, he’s pointing at the larger story. The larger story that this sermon tries to preach is the story of three generations of Judah’s kings – Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz. How do we get to the prophet Isaiah telling Ahaz to ask for a sign? The story has surprisingly deep resonance for our situation today. Ahaz’s abominations and his refusal to see the signs are very similar to ours.

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