The Kingdom Bill of Rights – All Saints Celebration

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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Vision and Endurance – An All Saints Meditation

Biblical Text: 1 John 3:1-10
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All Saints on the Christian calendar is a “High Holy Day”. In Roman Catholicism it has a very clear purpose – the remembering of All Saints which are those who have official church recognition. In Lutheranism, or Protestantism in general, it sometimes seems to be a day looking for a firm meaning. Some Lutherans just bring over the Roman Catholic idea which they are free to do following the Augsburg Confession article 21. Some, perhaps most, let it pass without mention other than singing the Hymn For All the Saints, which is one of the strongest in the book. As such it can be a gauzy day sometimes bordering on ancestor worship. My take has been to turn All Saints into a festival of the church akin in Pentecost with a slightly different focus. Pentecost tends to focus on the Work of the Holy Spirit which often turns to missions. All Saints turns more to the result of those missions – the life of the body of the church. The hymns hold before us mostly the vision of either the church at rest (those who have died) or the church triumphant (the New Jerusalem). The missing element is often the church militant i.e. us. So that is what I try to do with All Saints, remind or meditate on the now and the not yet of the life of the church. Now we are the Children of God. But the fullness of the Kingdom is not yet made manifest. Not even for the Church at rest who continue to ask “How Long?” (Rev 6:10). The goal is to see the unity of the church in Jesus Christ.

This sermon, because it is John I grumble, flips the normal outline. Paul and Lutherans are much more comfortable experiencing our fallen nature and sin and looking to Christ as our savior. A progression of law to gospel. John holds a vision before our eyes. We are now the children of God. Any troubles we have, the existential problems that cause Paul and Luther anguish, are mere trifles to John and that vision. He doesn’t deny them, but each time turns our eyes back to the prize which is God. That is what this sermon attempts to do. And that view might actually make more sense for a day when you are admitting new kids to the sacrament. With Paul or Luther, once you find a solution to the existential problem, the pressure can be off so to speak. (Insert joke about confirmation and bats.) With John we are never at the manifestation of the vision in this life. We experience the now and the net yet of the Christian life more fully. The joy which is now ours and the pain of it not yet being completed.

So, I’ll admit this is dense, but I also think it is worth of listen or a read. The saintly calling of vision and endurance in the midst of the great multitude.

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Zombies and Saints

Biblical Test: Matt 5:3
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Zombies are real, I see them every day. In fact I am often one myself. Until I can put down those appetites and rest. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who recognize their inability to fulfill their appetites…theirs is the the Kingdom of Heaven. Want to get the full story, read or listen to the sermon.

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The Communion of Saints

Sermon Text: Matt 5:6, Rev 6:10, Rev 7:9, Lord’s Prayer, Apostles Creed, All Saints Day
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A Lutherans we are trained to think in terms of paradoxes in tension. Here is what I mean by that. The big tension paradox is law and gospel. The law kills, yet is necessary to show us the gospel which makes alive. The gospel without the law just confirms people in self-righteousness. Think the self-esteem movement of today. That is the perfect example of gospel without law. It essentially says that God accepts you just the way you are. Used in the context before the law, that is deadly and leads to a bunch of the dysfunctions we see in our culture today. Likewise the law without the gospel doesn’t work. For a while you get better people as they struggle to keep the law, to be holy. But eventually they figure out it is a rigged game. Hey, I can’t do this!?! That is the proper place for the gospel message of God accepts you through Jesus Christ. Law and gospel go together and the Lutheran emphasis at least in America has been on the proper distinction between Law and Gospel. That is the name of Walther’s LCMS-famous book.

And that works and is true if your primary goal is salvation of the individual. And don’t get me wrong, that is important. But the gospel is about more than my personal Jesus. The gospel is the proclamation of Jesus as Lord. The gospel is the proclamation of the resurrection of all flesh. And when you are proclaiming that – that is law and gospel at the same time.

In this sermon I’ve got a section that I labeled gospel in the text. First it is all scripture. Second it is a listing of the question of the prophets and martyrs – “How long?” How long until the church or people of God is perfected? How long until the martyrs receive justice? How long until the Lordship of Christ is acknowledged by all? To the believer that is pure gospel. The Spirit has already called us by the gospel, enlightened us with His gifts, and placed us on the walk of sanctification. We struggle now and long for that day when we don’t. How long is a cry for justice. For God to act. But that same proclamation if you don’t have faith in the work of Christ is either just lunacy or stark terror. The same proclamation works as law. Either it is dismissed as not applicable. (If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves – 1 John 1:8). Or it should strike us to the core. What if that is true? What if Christ is Lord, and I don’t acknowledge that? What does this Lord want?

The same words, the proclamation of Jesus is Lord is either the most consoling Gospel or the most damning law at the same time. The saints share a communion of hearing that proclamation as Gospel and longing for the day when the church at rest and the church militant are joined in the church Triumphant marching after the King of Glory.

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Why Some not Others…

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It is hard talking about this one. Because there is no real answer other than prayer, which I desperately beg of you to do.

In that vein, this is Anselm of Canterbury which happened to be the prayer of the day in my prayerbook…

Blessed Lord and Savior who has commanded us to love one another, grant us grace that, having received your undeserved bounty, we may love every man in you and for you. We implore your clemency for all; but especially for the friends whom your love has given us. Love them, o fountain of Love, and make them to love you with all their heart, with all their mind and with all their soul, that those things only which are pleasing to you they may will and speak and do. And though our prayer is cold, because our charity is so little fervent, yet you are rich in mercy. Measure not your goodness to them by the dullness of our devotion; but as your kindness surpasses all human affection, so let your hearing transcend our prayer. Do to them what is expedient for them, according to you will, that they being always and everywhere ruled and protected by you, may attain in the end to everlasting life; and to you, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and praise forever and ever. Amen

All Saints – Two Calendars telling a story

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Let me just say two things about this sermon: 1) I really hate it as a sermon. I think it misses the audience, doesn’t point to Christ enough, lacks a real solid textual foundation and doesn’t have the unity of message it should have. 2) I think some of the parts of it by themselves are bleeding raw and cut right to the heart of life. Modern life has lost the saints and the One who makes them and as a result is childish and soulless. We can’t see the problems even though they are right before our eyes. Being a Christian is a call to a life with a larger canvass, not a safe harbor.

Any sermon is a balance or weaving of separate threads. I have a comfort zone being very textual. In my own walk I can’t get over the fact that God speaks in this book, and I want to know as much about it as possible. That comfort zone moves through to application. Basically I have about five outlines: Very simple text-application, a little more complex 4 pages outline with the four pages being trouble in the text, gospel in the text, trouble in the world and gospel in the world (the individual pages can come in any order, when they are text, text, world, world it reduces to text-app), a three point outline (have something to say and say it well, or if you took debate/speech this tends to be a classic argument outline), a question and answer outline, and a refrain structure (multiple images or examples from life that end with the same biblical refrain). All of those outlines are about relating the text we are reading to our lives, or in reality relating our lives to the text. You could say I’m usually about trying to get people to let the biblical text read their lives. This sermon had a different basis in that the liturgical day (All Saints Day) was really the theme. Textual exposition was greatly reduced and the theology of being a Saint was brought forward. The general outline was compare and contrast – living life and interpreting reality from a secular veiwpoint alone (living with a calendar that only has Halloween) and living life with a church calendar (living with All Saints). Instead of being textual this sermon was theological and thematic.

It needed to be better.