Biblical Text: Zephaniah 3:14-20
The third week of Advent is often labeled Gaudete, Latin for Rejoice! It’s a command word. But commanding someone to rejoice is a non-starter. True Joy is pulled out of us. It is the natural reaction of the loved seeing the lover. This sermon reflects on these themes and how God coming from outside of us brings for that Rejoicing.
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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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Biblical Text: Malachi 3:1-7
This is the second midweek advent service following the theme of “Behold”. If week one the “behold” told us to look closely at the promise itself, this week’s text is more about how that promise is fulfilled. The Lord comes to his temple usually following a messenger. This homily attempts to “behold” those messengers in our day.
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Biblical Text: Matthew 3:1-12
John the Baptist expresses some clear expectations of the messiah. As a prophet he is concerned with the now. The Kingdom is near and God is acting now. This wants to think about like between the two advents, which is life in the now…and the not yet. Because everything that John the Baptist expected Now didn’t reach immediate fulfillment. This sermon attempts to proclaim the now that started with the first advent while acknowledging (and saving a bit for next week) the not yet.
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Biblical Text: Jeremiah 33:14-16
I haven’t done advent midweeks for a long time, but I like this short homily. What does God want us to look at?
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Biblical Text: Isaiah 2:1-5, (Romans 13: 8-14)
It is the first Sunday in Advent, the church new year. Advent is a season set aside to prepare for Christmas. Like the secular New Year that looks backwards and forwards, Advent as a season looks at the past and then toward the future. At least for me its overriding theme is about Hope. The Bible is a book grounded in our human reality. If you think GRR Martin is salacious, read the Bible. Although the players in that Game of Thrones have reasonable motivations behind actions. In the bible the motivations are as often as not that we are just sinners and like sinning. And that we are all in this Empire of Sin. Advent is about the hope, the rebellion of the Kingdom against that Empire. The downfall, already accomplished and yet to come, of the tyrant and the coming of the Reign of Justice and Peace which is founded on love. Things are broken, but there is a New Hope.
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Biblical Text: Deuteronomy 8:1-10
A short homily for a thanksgiving sermon that asks what are we giving thanks for? Certainly, for our daily bread which in this land we have an abundance, but also for “every word which proceeds from the mouth of God.” We give thanks for this body and life, which should lead to thanks for the much greater grace we have been given in Jesus.
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Biblical Text: Luke 23:27-43
I don’t think we moderns understand what the word King means. The last Sunday of the church year is often called Christ the King Sunday. King is one of the three offices that are ascribed to Jesus – prophet, priest and king. But we don’t know what that word means anymore, especially if we are basing it off of our images of the modern British monarchy. This sermon attempts to think through what King means and how it might effect our lives.
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Biblical Text: Luke 21:5-28
The last two Sundays of the church year usually are given over the “last things”. The old word for last things is doomsday which is just Old English Judgement Day. The text for this week is Jesus talking about the Temple. That temple represents everything of the Jewish world. Everything it meant to have a Jewish identity was tied up in that temple. And Jesus is just going to walk out of it. The disciples try and call him back to it. “See the marvelous stones and the offerings?” Jesus replies not a stone will be let on top of another. The entire Jewish identity will come down. That causes shock and two questions from the disciples.
This is remarkably relevant to our situation today. We are lost in conversations about identity. We build identities on some good things, some pretty lies, and some sins. Even the good things can be an idol in the Temple. This sermon thinks about doomsday, identity and the two questions the disciples asked.
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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:1-12
How we use the word saint in the English language has a couple of meaning that are somewhat contradictory. This All-Saints Day sermon ponders those categories of saints a bit and then turns to who and what Jesus calls blessed.
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