Our Christmas Eve service is the popular lessons and carols. I’ve included almost all of it in the recording, so the sermon part is about 30 mins in. That part encourages us to think about the parts of Christmas we hear most keenly. Do we hear the cultural detritus that is now passing away, or do we hear the evermore and evermore?
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Biblical Text: Micah 5:2-5
The curse and blessing of a liturgical church. When everybody else has already moved on to Christmas, maybe they’ve been on it for a month, we are still in Advent. The day is often given over to Mary and the magnificat. There is a great recording of our choir singing one of those here. But I’ve been spending time with the minor prophets this season. We’ve been taking them in bible class, and I felt I had to bring one into the pulpit. One more day of blue and purple. One more day of the penitential and the hopeful. Grant me 15 minutes of Advent on this 4 Sunday of the season. We’ve got a bakers dozen for Christmas starting tomorrow.
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Advent 3 at St. Mark’s is the Children’s pageant. On the old calendar it would be Guadete Sunday meaning rejoice. It would after be a mini-Christmas or feel like it. You light the pink candle on the Advent wreath. If you were at the Cathedral they might even have rose altar cloths and stoles. Not being the Cathedral we have a pink candle. And given societal changes, like an entire family not being in one congregation any more whether due to moves or disruptions, things that put demands on families need to be done outside of prime time. So while my childhood pageants were on Christmas Eve, ours are on Advent 3. My message before the children does some of that reflecting – a bit of nostalgia – before hopefully putting a good frame on the kids presentation. What Child is This was the theme. The answer is king and savior, but also ours. We can proclaim Christ, but it does no good if we don’t welcome him in our hearts.
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Biblical Text: Luke 3:1-14
Advent 2 is John the Baptist week. (Advent 3 would be as well, but that week typically gets taken up by the Children’s program.) And I think that both the Baptist and his message are a little tough for us to understand, although I think we are probably approaching the time and place where they shouldn’t be. They used to require imagination, but the sermon will attempt such imagination is becoming reality. My opening question for you would be: What might make you listen to a street preacher? For I think that is akin to what John is, except that he is wildly popular. That is the space you have to get into to understand the Baptist – where a street preacher is popular. This sermon attempts to paint that picture. It also attempts help us grasp that it isn’t the street preacher antics that make John unique, but the place and the message. Come ponder just what it might the way straight, to raise up the valleys and level the hills, to do so from the desert, to do so with a Word.
Recording Note: The Choice sounded great this morning and I got a good recording, so their piece is in the recording between the OT lesson and the Epistle.
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Biblical Text: Luke 19:28-40
Full Sermon Draft
The image and the reality is all over the new and old testaments. We pray for it constantly in the Lord’s prayer. But moderns have no idea what the world King means. We don’t have a good concept what it means to receive one. And even the examples that we have, like the Queen/King of England, are not what we are talking about. When those places use the world or the thought King they don’t mean a statutory figurehead. They mean a real one. One like a lion, however nice they might be at play, all you can think is “those claws, those claws”. This sermon is an attempt to recover some of that meaning. It is also an attempt to understand how this King is still different that all the others. And finally it is an attempt to understand how we receive a king – here in time and their in eternity as Luther would explain the Lord’s prayer petition.
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Biblical Text: Mark 13:24-37, (Isaiah 51:4-6, Jude 20-25)
Full Sermon Draft
I hope this sermon was not a snore. It is one of those that I think is operating at a very simple level, but also I hope operating at a much deeper level. The very simple level is: a problem, a solution, and a wait. This world wears away. Good news, it will end. Until then we watch, never becoming too attached. The deeper level is the juxtaposition the title. Today, this world is an impermanent dwelling that holds within it the permanent. The core of many of the temptations of the devil, the world and our own flesh is that we trade that eternal element for some promise of immortality. I will give you all the kingdoms of the world if you worship me. The glory and fame of all the world can be yours, if you give up eternity, seeing the true God. The sermon attempts to think about this in our vampire stories – the literary example of immortal characters who are caused pain by the eternal or things that contain hints of the eternal. I think there is a great and fruitful contemplation in that juxtaposition of eternity and immortality. We watch because we are looking for eternity while spurning the flimsy offers of immortality.
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Texts: Psalm 104, Luke 19:1-10 Small Catechism 4th Petition
Happy Thanksgiving y’all. For me Thanksgiving ends up being a meditation on Divine Providence. Here is this year’s. Hope you have a wonderful day and plenty of reason to recognize and give thanks.
Biblical Text: Mark 13:1-13, Hebrews 10:11-25
Full Sermon Draft
This sermon is a meditation on how and what we assign meaning to. Luther in assigning meaning to the first commandment said whatever we fear, love and trust the most is our God. We all have “wonderful stones”, things we have assigned meaning, things we expect to last, that have or are often in danger of becoming our idols. We trust those stones more than anything else. Jesus’ words to all such stones – even ones that once contained the glory of the living God – is that they must come down.
For me the strongest competition to the cornerstone of Jesus Christ might be labeled an anti-stone. We’ve learned the lesson that all such temples made with hands come down. But what we then trust most is absurdity. It is a fool’s game fearing, loving or trusting anything. So we trust nothing. That likewise is a false path. Jesus says “watch lest someone lead you astray.”
But living based on trust – based on faith in Christ – in the middle of a world that is hostile to such a life is not an easy walk. As our opening hymn, the hymn I left in the recording at the end puts it, “I Walk in Danger all the Way“. The Apocalyptic accounts remind us who has it all in his hands. Yes, we walk in danger all the way, but our walk is also heavenward all the way. And along that walk we have help – like the Angel Michael from the OT lesson. We also have the examples of our Lord and the great cloud of witnesses. The Christian life is not the easy one. It is an examined life for wonderful stones that have become idols. It is assailed by temptations of shelter that are not. But it is a true life. The one who perseveres will be saved.
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Biblical Text: Mark 12:38-44
Full Sermon Draft
The big think event for this week would or should have been peace. This was the 100th anniversary of the WW1 Armistice. The text for the week was the widow’s temple offering. And we had a local congregational fact of passing a budget and the fact of stewardship.
The through line that I worked on in this sermon was this. Jesus points out the Widow as an example of faith. Her faith went in two directions. First she found what happened at that Temple to be meaningful. She supported the temple not because of the great stones that her mites wouldn’t do anything to support. She supported the temple because that is where she found the mercy and peace of God at. He faith also went outward in the fact that this God who had provided this peace was not limited to the temple, but would bestow his providence in her life. She offered the whole of her life because he trusted the promises of God which she had experienced there. In our world there are lots of things that want to say they provide peace and security. But the truth of all of them is that peace is not something we can create or every maintain. Peace is a gift of Almighty God. The history of the 20th century and the American experience of the 21st is proof of that. I didn’t include it here, but echoing Lincoln, it is beyond out ability to hallow. The only thing our great stones – our monuments – can do it point to the greater peace. And seeing that greater peace is acting as the widow. It requires faith. Specifically it requires faith in the other one who would give all he had to place the new cornerstone of the living temple – Christ. This sermon uses the example of a WW1 memorial cross that is currently under assault for exactly what it does – point not to the Armistice peace which soon failed but to the greater peace of the one who hung on the cross. The test of that peace then becomes are we willing to live out of it. Do we trust the providence of God like the widow? Or do we measure our peace and security like the others bringing their offerings. How do you measure the peace that Christ has given? Do we recognize its worth, or begrudge its price?
Probably tried to do too much. But it is a much more complex and messy answer I think. It is the mystery of faith and its sustaining in this world.
Worship Note: LSB 787, The Temple Rang with Golden Coins, is lovely simply hymn that walks the sermon through line very closely. It was our hymn of the day. I have included it at the end of the recording as a conclusion.
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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:1-12
Full Sermon Draft
Who is a Saint is an interesting question. The typical answers I think fall into three categories.
a) Anyone we loved who has died. This is the generic or default answer. It is either just being nice or an unthinking universalism.
b) All those who have faith in Jesus. This the “Protestant” answer.
c) Those displaying heroic virtue. This is the “Catholic” answer.
All of these are bad answers, and all of them have a bit of the Truth. On All Saints Day (observed) this sermon attempts to ponder that question and why each one of those is a bit wrong. It also attempts to think about what a better answer would be. It then encourages us to take action in our lives. The theological engine is the distinction that Luther drew between passive and active righteousness. Passive is our righteousness before God. Only God can make saints. Active is our righteousness towards our neighbors. A tree, or a Saint, is recognized by their fruits. The sermon attempts to hear and sort and apply the word to our lives in Christ.
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