Great Expectations

Biblical Text: Luke 24:13-35
Full Sermon Draft

The text is the Road to Emmaus. Luke likes road trips. Chapters 10 through 19 are known as the road narrative as all the action is suppose to take place while Jesus is walking from Galilee to Jerusalem. The Emmaus Road I think is Luke’s poetic description of the Christian life. I don’t comment on in in the sermon, but imagine Luke himself for a moment. He interviewed all these people: Peter, John, James, Mary, Paul. All these people who knew the physical Jesus and testified to the resurrected Jesus. Luke knew him through them, and through the breaking of bread.

Life is full of expectations. The road to Emmaus present in the sermon is how we have wise expectations instead of foolish ones. The main part of that is recognizing Jesus. And we are given to recognize him in the Sacrament and the Scriptures – Word and Sacrament. Our life here, after that recognition is a walk toward the New Jerusalem. Now the walk and the witness, next year in Jerusalem. And as on of the metaphors has it in the sermon, next year happens. I’m a Cubs fan. It does.

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Witnesses to Easter

Biblical Text: Acts 5:28-42
Full Sermon Draft

This is typically the Thomas Sunday, but the first lesson from Acts just struck my imagination too well this year. Gamaliel’s tolerance and wisdom typically gets pride of place, but I think that discounts Saul in the background. The sermon attempts to tell both the foreground story of Peter preaching repentance to the High Priests who a month ago crucified Jesus and the background story of Saul (soon to be Paul) who wouldn’t listen to his teacher’s advice. The point of preaching, of Peter’s and of ours, is repentance and salvation. It is not justice or balancing the scales. It is not getting back at anyone. It is simply repent and believe. That repentance is a gift. It is part of faith. Caiaphas or Annas, the High Priest, heard the preaching and knew what was going on, but they did not repent. Saul, did not repent, yet. The call of those who have repented is to be witnesses to Easter. Pray for the repentance of the unbeliever while bearing the cross for those who won’t, yet. In this we witness to Easter and the Great Easter to come in the resurrection of all flesh.

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A Singular Occurance

Biblical Text: Matt 28:1-10
Full Sermon Draft

I forget where I heard it but I heard a great quote recently. “It is not that people don’t believe in the resurrection, it is that they don’t believe it happened only once.” Or something close to that effect. This Easter Sunday sermon takes a look at what resurrection really means and how it is part of our existence contrasted to apparently both popular and elite understanding. The primary touchstone is that it is not generic resurrection, but it is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Resurrection is in Christ.

Worship Note: You can’t really capture Easter Service on a recording. The Spirit might work in different tongues, but recorded is not something that captures him all that well. I’ve left in our Choir’s piece, the Easter standard Christ the Lord is Risen Today. I’ve also left in the closing hymn Now All the Vault of Heaven Resounds, LSB 465.

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Seven Words – A Good Friday Meditation

Full Draft

Our Good Friday service tonight differed from our normal community reading of the passion story. Our choir took on the task of Carl Schalk’s Seven Words from the Cross. That piece formed the reading. It was followed by a short meditation on those words and then a congregational response in the form of LSB 447, Jesus in Your Dying Woes, which is a form of the Seven Words devotional itself. One of the seven candles are put out after each of the words. The recording is the full service.

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Maundy Thursday – Confessional Address

Full Draft

The Confessional Address in the title was something we as a congregation heard at the start of the service. If you have a Lutheran Service Book you can see one very much like it on pg. 290. These things as the sermon will say used to be standard in communion services. They would be prior to the Lord’s prayer and remind all what and why we are doing in the Lord’s Supper. Seeing as the entire point of Maundy Thursday is to receive Christ’s mandate, whether that is taken as “love one another” or “do this in remembrance” it seemed a good liturgy to use and understand.

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Messiahs – Tyrants and True (Palm/Passion Sunday)

Biblical Texts: Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday Matthew 21:1-17, Matthew 27:32-66
Full Sermon Draft

Have you ever been in a situation where you knew exactly what was going to happen, what was going to happen was a travesty but the desires of everyone involved are just too set in stone? Every action and reaction is a cruel inversion of the claims of those doing them? That is Holy Week. The desires of the Galilean crowds, the desires of the Jerusalem priests and the desires of Rome are locked into a danse macabre . The thing about the dance of death is that it reveals all of our follies. All of our false pieties and crass ambitions are laid bare and open for us to see. Those groups dancing 2000 years ago desired messiahs not very much different from those we often desire. Jesus exposes them, and defines what the messiah is. The sermon explores our false messiahs and how they tyrannize us, and the freedom the true King offers us.

Worship note: I’ve left in a bunch of music this time. The hymns for Palm Sunday are probably the greatest in the hymnal. Between the palm and passion lessons the choir sings a pretty arrangement of the Palm Sunday Hosanna. The Hymn of the Day was LSB 444, No Tramp of Soldiers Marching Feet, a modern hymn which keys off of Pilate’s ironic words in the gospel of John “behold your King”. Truer words were never spoken that came off a tongue so false. The closing hymn, LSB 441, Ride on Ride on in Majesty, also beautifully connects the Palms and the Passion.

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Wrath for Trust

Biblical Text: John 11:1-46
Full Sermon Draft

The text contains a couple of staple funeral texts. They are more than that, but it is that connection that is part of this meditation. The greatest of the “I AM” statements is the first text – “I am the Resurrection and the Life”. The shortest verse in the bible, “Jesus wept”, is the second. Both of these are part of the larger story of Martha, Mary and Lazarus. And the repeated line is theirs. “If you had been here, our brother would not have died.”

This sermon is a personal reflection on those words. I hope that it carries the gospel.

Worship Note: Two points. First, we got our new organ this week. I believe you might he a much clearer sound. Second, today was a good day to sing some of the great Lenten hymns. The one I left in the recording is LSB 435, Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain. I believe it carries the themes of resurrection and the life, a God who keeps his promises.

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The Moral Calculus

Text: John 9:1-41
Full Sermon Draft

The question of suffering is one of the constant ones of modernity. The curmudgeon in me wants to draw a graph showing interest is the problem of suffering going straight up over time and actual suffering has gone down over the same time, but a smart person once told me that “yes, suffering may be comparatively less, but it is still mine.”

The disciples ask a question that is full of assumptions about how God and the moral calculus works. Jesus’ answer bears directly on suffering, and gets to the heart of the gospel. The moral calculus doesn’t balance. At least not how we think. This sermon attempts to examine that fact in the light of Jesus who says “I am the light of the World”.

I’m not going to add more other than say give it a listen.
Worship note: I left out the hymns primarily because the sermon and Gospel lesson are longer than normal and I try to keep the total recording time around 25 mins or less.

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Thirst

Biblical Text: John 4:5-26
Full Sermon Draft

The gospel lessons for Lent this year are coming from John and they are emphasizing some of his vibrant characters. Last week was Nicodemus. This week is the Samaritan woman. Next week is the man born blind. These are archetypal meditations. That doesn’t deny their reality has happenings, but in this March Madness season they are the “one shining moments”. We’ve all had them. Those moments that explain so much else. Our problem is we rarely realize it at the time or even close to it. It is only on reflection and meditation that they become clear. And even then it is a personal truth, not Truth. With John as sacred scripture we have Truth.

Thirst is a subject that John’s Jesus talks about three times. Here at the well. He will connect it to the bread of life in John 6:35. And then on the cross. When Jesus talks thirst, he is thirsty to find those the Father desires. He is thirsty to give the gift and reveal himself, to give the spirit and show himself the truth. Jesus slakes our thirst, but he remains thirsty until the Kingdom. He is always thirsty for the lost and lacking to find the well.

Worship Note: I’ve left in our opening hymn, LSB 602, The Gifts Christ Freely Gives. It perfectly sets the tone based on the text. Christ talks about the “gift of God”. Those gifts are revealed throughout his life and empower the life of the church. We sang vs. 1,2,4,5. Another thing that the song reminds me of is the importance of that flesh and blood congregation where those gifts are found. You are invited.

The Gifts Christ Freely Gives – Lutheran Service Book 602

1 The gifts Christ freely gives
He gives to you and me
To be His Church, His bride,
His chosen, saved and free!
Saints blest with these rich gifts
Are children who proclaim
That they were won by Christ
And cling to His strong name.

2 The gifts flow from the font
Where He calls us His own;
New life He gives that makes
Us His and His alone.
Here He forgives our sins
With water and His Word;
The triune God Himself
Gives pow’r to call Him Lord.

4 The gifts are there each day
The holy Word is read;
God’s children listen, hear,
Receive, and they are fed.
Christ fills them with Himself,
Blest words that give them life,
Restoring and refreshing
Them for this world’s strife.

5 The gifts are in the feast,
Gifts far more than we see;
Beneath the bread and wine
Is food from Calvary.
The body and the blood
Remove our ev’ry sin;
We leave His presence in
His peace, renewed again.

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A Man of the Pharisees, A Ruler of the Jews

Biblical Text: John 3:1-17
Full Draft

This has been a strange 8 days with a Sunday in the middle. The church lost power for most of three days (Wed-Fri) due to a windstorm. Personally I was bedridden sick Friday night until I forced myself up Sunday morning. And then Tuesday and Wednesday we’ver have over 2 feet of snow and been snowed in. Wind, plague, snow and bitter cold, I asked our secretary this morning if Friday was scheduled for the earthquake.

So, buried literally under snow and figuratively under a week worth of work, including tracking and arranging a new date for the delivery of our new organ (did I tell you that was supposed to arrive last Wednesday), I am just getting to the sermon file. Of course the recording line gets real silent at the end of the gospel reading. So, no musical stuff. Also the sermon recording might be a little rough as occasionally not even amplifying brings the sound. (I’m thinking I moved a little far away from the mic at those moments and it got lower clipped.)

It is a shame, because it is one of the greatest texts of the bible. And being under the weather for final editing, I’m short. No hinting or sneaking up on the point. No padding or weak attempts at story telling or making relevant. Just expository. Christ for you. Fitting of John 3:16-17

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