Delivered

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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Authority: Temporal and Eternal

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:1-12

The day on the Church calendar was All Saints (Observed). The day on the secular calendar is election week. It is a good time to talk about the Kingdoms of the Law and the Kingdom of the Gospel. And that is what this sermon does. It first talks a bit of doctrine. What does the church teach about authority? And the basic teaching is that all authority is God given. The real question is how it is used and how it is ordered. Rightly ordered authority places the temporal under the eternal. Rightly used temporal authority is used for the love of God and the good of our neighbor. But the role of temporal authority is primarily a curb (first use of the law). The role of gospel authority is to justify and sanctify sinners.

The sermon, reflecting on the beatitudes (the gospel text for the day), then tries to draw some applications for how Christians live in the overlap of both legitimate Kingdoms. And how our hope – realized by the church at rest, those All Saints we remember – is the perfectly sanctified sitting on the throne and the joining of the Kingdoms. Not yet, but soon.

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Young and Old Meditation on Re-formation

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Biblical Text: Matthew 11:12-19

Reformation Day has been a lot of things through the years. This sermon is a bit of a clip show (a new show that relies on past clips to carry some of the action). In this case I think there are certain sermons that can be preached from the various assigned texts for the day. And they slot into how the preacher or the age wants to think about Luther and the Reformation. Young and Old is a reference to young Luther – skinny, single, revolutionary, and old Luther – heavy, husband and father, re-former. Most of the potential texts, and the choice of Oct 31st itself, prefer young Luther – the great Romantic Hero. You can pick the firebrand of the angel with an eternal gospel from Revelation. You can go with the doctrinal sermon from Romans, the text Luther claimed as his evangelical breakthrough. Or you can be the liberation theologian and take John’s gospel and the “son setting you free.” Me, I like the Matthew 11 gospel reading. It doesn’t let you just choose Romantic Young Luther. You have to contemplate actually re-forming the thing you tear down. It is the experiential text of law and gospel. Not just the doctrine, but what it means to live it. And Luther lived it. He didn’t get lucky and die the great Romantic Hero. He had to be a re-former. This sermon walks through those “clips” and tries to claim something of the Reformation for us.

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The Eye of the Needle

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Biblical Text: Mark 10:23-31

These was our “stewardship Sunday.” If you are not familiar with those, they are the Sunday that we set aside to talk money. It is budget season. We ask our members to fill out pledge cards in this season. And typically the lectionary serves up a gospel lesson that is Jesus speaking about money or mammon or the like. This year the lesson in the aftermath of the “Rich Young Ruler” which was last Sunday’s lesson. Sometimes you might choose that week, but for me Jesus teaching his disciples after that encounter is more stewardship. And it opens with his blunt statement, “how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God.” And it mostly concerns the disciples reactions.

This sermon is built around those reactions, and how they are the ditches on either side of the narrow road concerning money. It imports what I think is the first strategy around Jesus’ clear saying which is just denial that we are wealthy. There are two ways we can understand our wealth. The first is simply we are Americans, which is a relative argument. But the deeper is an understanding of providence. And that understanding sets the table for the disciple’s more subtle ways of fogging up Jesus statement.

Those ways are our natural mistaken framing of what wealth is. We take it as reward, but it really is faith challenge. The second way accepts the framing of Jesus on wealth that we are entrusted with it for Kingdom purposes, but pridefully attempts to claim heavenly credit for doing what we are called to do. The sermon develops those ditches so that we might recognize them.

It then ends with the narrow road. How the cross of Jesus is the eye of the needle.

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Foxes and Hedgehogs

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Biblical Text: Mark 10:17-22

I think this text is a hard one for us to hear because we are so far at an extreme. The key verse that jumps out is that “Jesus loved the Rich Young Rule.” The key question to ask is how did Jesus love him? What I mean by that is how did the love of Jesus manifest itself. And the answers is rather straight forward. Jesus was a good teacher. And in this man’s case that meant holding up the mirror of the law. First he hold’s up the 2nd table, what we might call the basis of ethics. But the man’s problem, the man’s idol, is not ethics. The man’s problem is God. He does not love God above all things, and he is still looking for what he must do. Man has two typical solutions to this. We either create a false law that we can keep, or we excuse ourselves from the law because we are so special and God loves us. But the love of God, what Jesus shows this man, is to hold the clear mirror of the law up. And then we can learn that we cannot free ourselves from our sinful condition. That we cannot do anything. But that Christ has done it.

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Soften Your Heart

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Biblical Text: Mark 10:2-16 (Parallel Matthew 19:1-15)

Of all the ethical teaching of Jesus, this is probably the most consistently rejected throughout all time and space. And not because it is false, but exactly for the reason Moses felt moved to regulate it – “the hardness of our hearts.” The text in Mark and the Matthew parallel are first about divorce, but in Jesus’ teaching about divorce you have his entire sexual ethic. And he doesn’t ground it in any petty legalistic scheme or regulation. Jesus is not getting pulled into our Overton Window fights. His response is so far outside of acceptable opinion that even Jesus adds the note of despair, “Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

What this sermon attempts to do is build the case for receiving it, even if it convicts us. Grounded as it is in natural law it is part of the deep magic of this world. And the law is good and wise. If we conform ourselves to this, things go better. But that is still the law. Why we should receive it, even if we cannot keep it, is because the gospel itself is unthinkable without it. Marriage is the image, the icon, that is given of Christ and the Church, of God and his people. And Christ loves the church with his steadfast love, his covenant faithfulness. We don’t want a world where God can divorce his love. And we do not have one. Receiving this teaching is receiving the invitation to the eschatological wedding feast. We may never live up to it, we might be cracked icons, but the icon is always imperfect. The perfect itself will come.

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Dispatches from the Battlefield

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Biblical Texts: Daniel 10:10-14, 12:1-3, Revelation 12:7-12, Luke 10:17-20, Colossians 1:16

The day on the church year was the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, so we get to talk about the church year a bit and angels a bunch. For me, St. Michael’s Day is a report from the battlefield so that you might understand the terrain as you traverse it. And this sermon has three broad points about that report.

We live in a Spiritual reality – an invisible creation – some of which has been corrupted and remains at war with the true authority.

That true authority – Christ – has triumphed. That true authority loves you and has tasked his faithful officers, great and small to guard you.

Know that the time is short. Understand the Word. This battlefield world is passing away. And the peace of the world to come is coming into being. Rejoice that your names are written there.

Important things to remember.

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What Happened?

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Biblical Text: Mark 9:30-37

For me I feel like this sermon is slightly different. Sermons are this cycle of meditation from text to life to text to life. Most of mine start with the text. Back at the start of the week I translate everything. Try and discern what the text is talking about in some platonic way. This is always a little false because the bible, the sacred text, isn’t some hermetically sealed away thing. The text itself springs from some lived reality. But I try and answer the general drift. And then I start asking question of how does this intersect with life right now. It is in that intersection that dogmatic or theological questions can help shed light and be asked fruitfully. How is the law felt here? How does the gospel come to us? And eventually I have to move to preaching it. My general outline, which can be mixed around, but I tend to think the standard works best for preaching flow is the ancient four-fold meaning: Literal Text (which bounds things), Christological (what does the text say about Christ and how does it intersect with us), Moral (How then shall we live), and Eschatological (Where are we heading, or what is the promise we are living into). I usually craft an introduction last. Hopefully an artful open door into the meditation that follows.

But this sermon started with a conversation. The introduction is not a conclusion, but an honest inquiry. Hence it is a bit longer. And what follows is an attempt to give an honest answer. And that answer implies both moral and eschatological charges to those who would believe. The question was simply: What Happened? Longer: Why did the American church seem to break between the boomer and the X generations and continue to break continuity? That is tied into fears both in the current about viability and in the future about my kids and the faith. This sermon is an attempt to answer.

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God Revealed

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Biblical Text: Mark 9:14-29

The text is something of a famous one for the cry of the Father who has brought his demon possessed son to Jesus. “I believe, help my unbelief.” Springing off of that a couple generations of preachers obsessed over doubt. But I think most of those sermons were dramatically off in their focus of doubt. They typically accepted a materialist de facto atheist – an enlightenment project – framework and apologetically argued for God. The problem with all of that was they were arguing for the hidden god, the god we know nothing about. And honestly, if the choice is between a hidden god and no god, no god wins every time. But if you are preaching about doubt from this text, it is not about the existence of god. God exists. And he is on your case. In a million different masks he tells you that you are nothing. The hidden god is the god of power and majesty and we are but grass. The doubt is that god could ever care about grass. But the entire text is about the revealed God. Jesus came to reveal the heart of the Father. And that heart is that we are his children and he saves us from the fire. You would never ask the hidden god. But the Father of Jesus bids us ask, because he wants to demonstrate his love for us. And that is what the father does, “have compassion on us.” And Jesus does driving out the demon. And his summary to the disciples is “this kind only comes out with prayer.” It is not exorcism technology. It is getting the hidden god off our backs. Pray. Ask the Father of Jesus. You will see.

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Salvation: Vengeance and Recompense

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Biblical Text: Isaiah 35:4-7

“Say to those with an anxious heart…”. That is how the text starts. And I think that is just about everyone. We start off with a background level of anxiety. Like background radiation. It is just there. But we all have our own specific anxiety. And here is a word from God to exactly those with an anxious heart. And that word is “Be Strong! Fear Not!” The immediate response from the anxious heart might just well be “why? tell me why I should fear not?” And the text gives us one of God’s rare answers. God will come and save you. God will come and save you with vengeance and recompence. And that is what this sermon preaches. What is a salvation of vengeance and recompence.

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