Funeral Sermon for John Vaux

Biblical Texts: Deuteronomy 29:29-30:5, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 24:36-44

Introduction

One of the questions that I like to ask the gathered family when planning a funeral is “what is your favorite memory of the deceased?” You often hear the things that eulogists will say. But there are also people who might not be willing to get up in a pulpit who will share memories in that more private space.

And the answers that I heard regarding John spoke about his faithfulness as a Father and a Husband. The Husband part might have included stories before the wedding, but stories that pointed to loving care. Stories like pushing a girl he was sweet on with a broken foot up and down hills. Stories like figuring out how on 9/11 to get away from the Pentagon that they had somehow accidentally stumbled toward. Stories of cross country moves and the reality of a fully wired house that makes sure the doors are locked for you in case you might forget. That loving care persists.

People often make fun of Fathers in our day. And one of the ways they do it is by making fun of Dads only having kids to continue being childish. But in a religion that includes the saying “if you do not receive the kingdom like a little child you will never enter there in”, we should be careful with that. That type of fatherly loving care is different. Maybe you liked football and your child likes soccer. As it was explained to me, John “learned to love” that new game. He loved big words, something that I could certainly relate to. But that might be an example of the love moving the other way and his children flexed that vocabulary. And Fatherly care extended to doing new things together. When so much of live just unhealthily shut down in the pandemic, John recognized how it wasn’t good, and hit the road RV’ing. There were lots of such stories of Fatherly direction and shared loved. Teaching to drive with a stick shift of all things. Developing an artistic talent through magical dragons. Boardgames, puzzles and intricate builds from clocks to a Lego millennium falcon. Maybe childlike, but far from childish.

Text

Traditionally, one of those Fatherly loving care things is ensuring a foundation to answer big questions. Moses captures the deep reality of our existence. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God.” And those secret things are usually the “why?” questions. There are things that we just can’t answer from knowledge. But Moses continues, “the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” There is the Fatherly loving care. The things that have been revealed to us, are also for our children. And that Fatherly loving care teaches those revealed things.

For Moses that is the centrality of the LORD your God. We all wonder out, like prodigals. But when you hear the voice call, obey it. “Return to the LORD your God, you and your children…with all your heart and with all your soul.” The LORD your God is a Father who lovingly gathers and provides. “He will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed.” That is part of the revealed things. God’s love for us. Love for us as a Father.

Part of the secret things is our time. Not just our time but the world’s time. “As in the days of Noah.” We know the flood is coming. And even if it isn’t THE flood, we know out person day of reckoning is coming. But we do not know that day it will begin to rain. We do not know the day or the hour. These are the secret things.

But in God’s Fatherly care it has been revealed to us that this need not be our destruction. Noah entered the ark. And Luther’s baptismal prayer reminds us “God preserved Noah and his family, 8 souls in all.” That Ark today that has been revealed to us is that baptism. A baptism that John shared.

That ark today that has been revealed to us is what the Apostle Paul write – “having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through Jesus Christ.

That is the foundation to answer big questions. That is the Fatherly loving care of the LORD our God. Christ died for us defeating sin and ultimately death, for death could not hold Jesus. He’s risen.

Our day and hour? The secret things. And those secret things, whatever our age, sneak up on us like a thief. But the loving care of Jesus and the Father is that this has been revealed to us. That “whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.”

We live with God through faith.

We live with those awake or asleep, with what the creed calls the communion of saints.

We live with them in love and in that hope Paul preaches, and Moses spoke of, that we still reveal to you today. That God gathers his own in Fatherly love. And that today is the day of grace to hear his voice and follow, with all you heart and with all your soul. Amen

Vineyards and Cornerstones

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Biblical Text: Matthew 21:33-46

This parable of the wicked tenants as it is sometimes called feels very rooted in its specific history so much so that even through the parables were told so that “hearing they might not hear” the Chief Priests discerned Jesus told this about them. It is the summaries, conclusions or maybe so far as application that open up the parable beyond the Jewish temple leadership. In my reading Jesus gives three separate summaries.

“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”
“The Kingdom of God will be taken away and given to those producing its fruit”
“The one who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces, the one the stone falls on will be crushed”

This sermon looks at each of those in progression and how the help us hear the parable for ourselves. The placing of the cornerstone is pure gospel. “God has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.” The second is the moral warning to watch. If you think the vineyard is yours to do with as you want, you might be killing the heir. The third thinks about our ultimate positions regarding God: ignoring such that we might trip over, set ourselves against him, or build on the cornerstone.

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A Better Story

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Biblical Text: Matthew 20:1-16

Pay attention to the stories people tell you over and over. They are telling you about themselves. The stories that we as Americans tell over and over right now are toxic. They have erased the old stories. Their only fruits are division, death and lethargy. This sermon is about a better story. It is a story that Jesus tells about the Kingdom, which of course is a story about himself – God. And it is a story full of mischievous life. There is always work in the Kingdom. The pay is unfair, but always right, and better than we deserve. Go work in the vineyard. You won’t regret it. You won’t regret an identity built on this story.

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Seventy times Seven

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Biblical Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Most of the parables tell us more about God – Father, Son or Spirit – than they do about us. The stuff they tell us about ourselves we already know, like that we are prone to insane double standards. Like, I never have to pay my debts, but you, pay it right now. What the parable of the unmerciful servant tells us is that staggering amount we have been forgiven by God, and how God did that while we were still trying the play the con on him.

The difficult thing that this sermon attempts however briefly to think about is what is demanded of disciples in this world. The radical forgiveness of Jesus is required of us for those within the church. That is Jesus’ answer to Peter, “seventy times seven”. That is the moral lesson of the parable. “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had on you?” To fellow disciples we must practice forgiveness. The question then extends to the world? And this is where you cross into the imitation of Christ. We are not the messiah. On the one hand radical forgiveness of the world is not required and may not be wise. On the other this is the model of Christ and it is an open and costly road. Such forgiveness as Christ is an act of faith that the Father repays.

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Matthew 18 for Dummies

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Biblical Text: Matthew 18:1-20, (Ezekiel 33:7-9)

I started using the word clouds a long time ago for the image. Originally I thought it was artistic cute: a Word cloud for preaching the Word. But, as I made them I started to realize they did have something to say, and what they had to say too seeing a few. There was always the simple surface fact of the most commonly used words. Like above – Luther and Jesus. I learned and adapted over the years that if “God” was the biggest word, the sermon was probably too generic. I looked for Father or Jesus or Spirit to show up. But there are a variety of shapes that show up. The clouds that are dominated by 2-3 big words and everything else is small are usually the simplest. They tend to be more about proclamation. At the other end are ones like the above. There are lots of words that are large enough to be read, but none that really just pop. Those tend to be less pure proclamation and more teaching or invitation to ponder. The every Sunday preacher has to have a bigger repertoire than the occasional. The lectionary preacher even more so, if he wants to preach the text and not just what is on his mind that week.

Matthew 18 is a deeper text than we normally treat it. Depending upon if our preference is for Young Luther or Old Luther (listen to the sermon), we tend to reduce it to “The Process” for solving disputes in the church, or reduce it to the ridiculousness of even thinking about the law parallel to Jesus’ hyperbole about cutting off body parts. We aren’t going to do that and the Father would not want that, so thinking in sin counting terms must be just wrong. I hope that this sermon was an invitation to think beyond those simplistic reductions. The Christian Life has a simplicity to it, but those are caricatures. That simplicity is the one found on the other side of a complexity.

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Labor Day

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Biblical Text: Matthew 16:21-28

I suppose I should have used a title like “The Labors of Christ”. The text is what happens immediately after Peter’s confession of Christ. You have a confrontation over what that word means. Peter thinks it means something very earthly. Jesus corrects him. And then he invites everyone to see his definition. What is Jesus’ definition of the Christ? Suffering, death and resurrection. How are we invited? To pick up our cross and follow. Why would we do this? It is the only way past death. It is the only way we keep our life, to lose it. This is how God works. This is the labor of the Christ seen through the things of God, not the things of man.

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Who Do You Say I Am?

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Biblical Text: Matthew 16:13-20

This sermon is an attempt to talk about what it means to convert – to come to an authentic faith in Jesus Christ. There are three parts to the sermon. The first part is simply a reflection that the way the church converted people for a very long time was baptism, Christendom and Christian families. For all the worries over cultural Christianity (paging Soren Kierkegaard), it was a lot better than the worries. But big chunks of Christendom let it go. And so the church is confronted with a different type of conversion problem. What is necessary to bring a pagan into the faith. The second part reflects on Jesus’ initial question and the disciples answers. “Who do people say that I am? John the Baptists, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” This is Jesus as true man. The convert has to have a sympathy with Jesus as true man. But that isn’t the fullness if it is necessary. The third part reflects on Jesus’ refinement of his question. “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter’s answer “you are the Christ the son of the living God.” That is an encapsulation of the need to confess that Jesus true man is also true God. This also includes the wrinkle that we can’t force this recognition. “Blessed are you Simon bar-Jonah…”. Conversion is a work of preparation that the church needs to be about. But conversion is also solely the work of the Spirit.

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Reconciling Canaan

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Biblical Text: Matthew 15:21-28

Recording note: there are a couple of rough things. 1) We were still having some trouble with the sound system. We’ve got a temporary cheap mic while the good ones get fixed. The result is louder and just higher pitched fake sounding. 2) I was under the weather. You can probably hear the scratch in the voice. Sorry.

That said, I tried to say something meaningful with this sermon. I’m not sure I accomplished it. But it comes down to two things: 1) The church has a calling to be The Church to all peoples. That starts with Jesus being the messiah who comes from the Jews, not the Jewish messiah. While things like nation, people, tribe and language are important enough they have signifiers in the eschaton, they must be secondary to our unity in Christ. 2) Making these things clear – as Jesus does in this text – is often contrasting the good with the nice. Sometimes pointing out ugly things isn’t nice. Getting to reconciliation required a cross, not something nice, but it is on Good Friday.

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Good Omens

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Biblical Text: Job 38:4-18

There are two amazing things about Job. The first one is that it unapologetically holds that God owes us nothing. You can go so far as to hold with Job himself, “the LORD gives and the LORD takes, blessed be the name of the LORD.” If it comes from God, we owe him praise, whatever it is. The second amazing thing is that God allows himself to be called as a witness. He is not mute in his glory. This sermon is a pondering of a God who offers a justification for himself without ever abandoning the fact that He owes us nothing.

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Abundance

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Biblical Text: Matthew 14:13-21

Do we go out to the desert anymore? I don’t think so. I think we do everything in our power to avoid time in the desert. Of course we just end up in a desert of distraction then. That’s part of the meditation on the familiar passage of the feeding of the 5000. This sermon is a meditation on the abundance that God provides and the ways in which He provides it. It looks at three images from the scene: the location, the rarely provided inner thoughts of Jesus, and the provision of abundance.

I’ve learned over the years that trying to grade sermons is impossible. Oh, you can grade them as pieces of rhetoric, but then they aren’t just pieces of rhetoric. Your worst sermon I guarantee is the one someone walked out with their lives changed. It isn’t you. Whatever scraps you brought the Spirit worked. I’ve come to two ways of thinking about grading. The first is preaching intent crossed with baseball. The every Sunday preacher has a variety of things they have to do. Not everything is going to be a homerun. Sometimes you climb into the pulpit with the intention of a single, of moving along the runners. (This is usually a teaching sermon.) Some weeks the text is obscure enough that getting a walk is good. And some weeks you better get that extra-base hit. Of course, like in baseball, unless you are Barry Bonds on PED’s, you might not get on base. And the reception in the congregation is probably everything from HR to K. The second thing is always did you find the core of emotion in the text. If you didn’t the best you’ve got is a walk. I say all that merely to say, I liked this one. I think it is workman-like as a piece of rhetoric. There is only one phrase that feels more than average and even then it is probably one of those darlings that you are supposed to kill. But as a sermon, it touches the bases.

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