This sermon looks at the appointed epistle readings of the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. Each ponders in their heart the meaning of Christmas from a slightly different perspective: mystic, personal and kingly. It really is a riff of of my favorite Christmas Hymn: A Great and Mighty Wonder.
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This sermon is about our Candles and Silent Night ritual placing it within the context of the carols sung. It is not the ritual of earlier times, but it is beautiful and right and proper in its own way.
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That is the picture of the cast for our Christmas Pageant. We give the kids the full service on this day. So, the recording is not our typical sermon but our best recording of the play. The kids acted out and explain to us the Hymn Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
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Biblical Text: Luke 1:26-38
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We moved the Lectionary Readings up a week. Normally Advent 3 is John the Baptist 2, but our kid’s program is Advent 4, and skipping Mary for JB the sequel isn’t right.
This sermon starts out with the observation on the recent year of Bible movies and how they really just miss the boat. When you cast Batman and Maximus the Gladiator you are after action and conflict. Not that Bible stories are absent that, but for the faithful what appears like a leading man or woman is anything but. They are held in the divine passive. By faith God acts through them.
This is tied to the beatitude blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. That is the beatitude that is probably the most despised by the world. The only thing the meek get is abuse. Yet the bible puts forward Moses as the meekest man on the face of the earth (not a role for Christian Bale) and then you get Mary – most highly favored lady, in the words of the hymn The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came. It is meekness that makes way for God to act. And God acted in a might way through Mary bringing about the salvation of the world through the incarnation.
The application I tie this to is our general busy-ness, especially at Christmas. We are constantly casting ourselves as the action hero, not a meek role, and that casting leads to conflict. Mary response is not to jump into action but to ponder or to discern the greeting. And this greeting is not a dead letter, but echoes to another highly favored lady, the church. You have found grace. The Lord is with you. Rejoice, o daughter of Zion.
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Biblical Text: Mark 1:1-8
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You could say it is one of my pet theories of the bible – the order of seeing and believing. Most moderns would emphatically say that sight leads to correct belief. (And hence the high priests of modernity sneer at Christ.) I think the reality is that faith or believing comes first. What we believe about the world influences what we see. And let me extend that further, I think that having a solid ground (i.e. Christ/God) is very important to having a good grip on truth overall. Without Christ we are much more likely to see all kinds of non-truth as truth. (I get that from Romans 1 FYI.)
I don’t expound on it often because: a) the culture believes just the opposite so b) it is hard to get solid accepted examples for such a mystical point. But this sermon is an attempt at just that because the immediate past has three examples of belief influencing sight, some very poorly.
The core of the problem is that false belief is always an attempt to justify ourselves (and demonize the other). The secure ground is what John the Baptist proclaimed as the beginning of the good news – a baptism of repentance. God’s story refuses to divide us; we are all sinners. God’s story refuses to divide us; we are all saved not by our acts or the law but by the acts of God. God’s story isn’t pretty or immediately believable. It just happens to be true good news.
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Biblical Text: Mark 11:1-11
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This was the first Sunday in Advent which is a season of preparation, of preparation for receiving God. The first open reception of Jesus as the Christ as the King was Palm Sunday, and the triumphal entry has been the historic reading for the first Sunday in Advent for almost forever. When you read it from the Gospel of Mark, as we are doing this year, it reads as irony (in contrast to the moment of messianic fervor in Matthew). In Mark, that first time, nobody got it. They were all looking for the messiah, the king, and when he shows up, nobody recognizes him. Now I think you could say the inverse. Nobody is expecting the messiah, the king, and if you believe the Bible, when he shows up this time, everybody will recognize him immediately. That is the Kingly Irony.
This sermon looks at the way this irony continues in our lives and that irony is actually the extended offer of the grace of the King.
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Biblical Text: Matthew 25:31-46
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The last judgement text can give a Lutheran heartburn, primarily because it inspires the question in the title.
What this sermon does is attempt to put the last judgement within its context in Matthew. It seeks to stay within two guard rails in interpretation: being willing to say ‘I don’t know’ and letting the text tell us what it means. There are two important questions that this is applied to. 1) Who are all the nations? 2) Who are the brothers Jesus references? These two questions form two halves of an answer. They also help I think to answer that title question, or at least lessen its force. The sermon ends with three short applications for our life together.
If we are willing to narrow the scope of the what those phrases mean – which I believe is correct based on the Gospel text itself – we get both a more humble eschatology, a text that is encouragement instead of judgement, and a greater emphasis on faith and church life.
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Biblical Text: Matthew 25:14-30
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The response of the slave who was given 1 talent is remarkably relevant. He ends up saying three things.
1) He knows his master to be a hard man
2) The master will reap where he doesn’t sow
3) The master will gather where he doesn’t scatter
This sermon hazards an interpretation of those three things for our day. The first is a claim to know God. The second and third involve the claims of universalism, not my job and not enough given to accomplish.
The gospel response to all of these is “You know this, do you?” Jesus is the revealed God that we do know and instead of being a hard man he is the icon of love. He does sow abundantly through Word and Sacrament. And part of how He does that is scattering his people in the midst of the world.
Instead of the false beliefs that so much of today’s church is involved in, we would be better to recognize the gifts that have been given to us and get about the job we have been invited to join. That job isn’t always easy. It is a call to the cross. But Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him. Likewise we have the joy set before us.
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Biblical Text: Matthew 25:1-13
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The sermon text is the the parable of the 10 Bridesmaids. The title of this post comes from a comparison I make between the parable, a famous psychology experiment and the situation of the Christian life. If you know the test, it is done leaving a toddler with a marshmallow and a promise. The comparison is made in questioning exactly what type of test this is: willpower, trust, taste or just a cruel joke. I think those are how many people would categorize the second coming of Jesus: a test of holiness, a test of faith, a factor of election or just a joke. The parable would say simply faith. All fell asleep ruling out holiness. The Wise actively prepared ruling out pure election. The bridegroom promises return ruling out joke for those who believe. The over-riding point is faith, with a secondary point of the necessary things to remain in the faith.
And the that secondary point is sticky point. Nobody can share their oil. How you prepare, how you keep faith, is up to you. The church can point at wise ways. It can point at foolish ways or ways sure to shipwreck the faith, but nobody can give you their oil. You must live your Christian life.
Program Note: I’ve left in more than the typical number of hymns as they seemed to record well and were tight with the overall theme. The choir sings Rejoice, Rejoice Believers. I then at that end leave in the hymn after the Sermon and the closing hymn: Rise, My Soul to Watch and Pray (LSB 663) and The Church’s One Foundation (LSB 644) respectively. Take those two as a couple of the wiser ways of preparation.
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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:1-12
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Nurse Kaci Hickox is a fascinating sign, an almost perfect illustration of this age. What looks like heroic compassion combined with staggering amounts of narcissism and selfishness.
Keying off of her invocation of her rights, this sermon puts forward the beatitudes as a “Kingdom Bill of Rights”. Unlike our typical invocation of rights, which are always about justice for us, the Kingdom rights point always toward God or toward our neighbor. They are costly. They are love. And they are what Christ has done for us.
Being All Saints celebration, this sermon then meditates on how the saints serve the people of God as lights in dark places and tells the story of a couple such lights.
Note: the choir between the First and Second readings of the day is our Children’s Choir.
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