Category: Sermons

Testing or Temptation

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Biblical Text: Matt 4:1-11

The primary text is traditionally called the Temptation of Jesus. It takes place right after his baptism and continues the theme of Israel reduced to one. When Israel fails in the wilderness, Christ succeeds. But, this sermon is about something I think is an important distinction that often gets lost in the modern church. It was important to me to figure out because Luther makes a statement in the Small Catechism that always seemed to fly in the face of reality to me, at least reality if you take the scriptures and the universal experience of the faith as witnesses. And you wish to take ordination vows seriously. Luther says “God tempts no one.” And that honestly felt like this polyanna-ish statement completely foreign to the great man who was always “calling a thing what it is.” So, this sermon attempts to talk about the difference between temptation and testing. And how we can affirm that God tempts no one, even if the answer to that 6th petition of the Lord’s prayer isn’t always positive in the short term. But the will of God is not for this moment alone, but to give you the eternal victory in Christ.

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Yawn

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:21-37

I’m going to pat myself on the back here. Takes some guts to title a sermon “Yawn”.

The text is what I usually call Jesus re-upping the 10 commandments, while turning them to 11 on the dial. And if you are reading them the interpretation is rather straight-forward. Having focused on the law last week, and given the basic understanding, I turned this week to how we receive Jesus’ preaching. The focus is on what I label the strangeness of Jesus. We are able to “Yawn” at reading something like “leave the altar immediately” or “cut the body part off” because it is old hat or because it doesn’t get past the surface that this is GOD ALMIGHTY saying this. 2000 years can make any claim venerable. Those hearing Jesus were hearing that claim for the first time. How strange. And it hit them with a crisis. Do you believe it? If you believe it, the preaching demands something deep. Something more than a “yawn.”

I might end this on a questionable story, but it comes from a group that is no longer yawning. Waking from our spiritual slumbers is first hearing anew the claim of messiah.

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Legal Recourse

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:13-20, Isaiah 58:3-9

I don’t do these types of sermons that often. Most Sunday’s I try and proclaim the gospel. That proclamation of the cross of Jesus for you is the primary job. But occasionally the text seems to call for a catechetical or teaching sermon. In this case the question both the OT and the NT passages want us to ponder is: What is the purpose of the law? And this is a very important teaching of the church that we have simply lost today. This sermon looks at the two ways the church can lose the true purpose of the law: works righteousness (over-playing the role of the law) and antinomianism (underplaying the role of the law). It then turns to the catechism and confession’s three uses of the law with a specific meditation on almost a precursor to the formal law, a 0th use or a an expanded 1st use. Why expanded? Because none of the teachers of the church could imagine a people rejecting the natural law at such basic points.

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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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