Tag: exodus

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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Tick-Tock Time

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Biblical Text: Luke 9:28-36
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Today was Transfiguration Sunday which is the last Sunday in the Season of Epiphany. Lent Begins mid-week with Ash Wednesday.

Transfiguration to me is a tough preaching assignment because it is fundamentally a visual experience. Parables are about words. Miracles are just as often about reactions to the happening. Both of those are easily pondered and preached in words. But with the transfiguration, it is an icon. What I mean by icon is that it is a picture that invites you to ponder fundamental reality, to contemplate and enter eternity. What this sermon chooses to ponder of that reality to time. We live, especially we moderns live, in a culture that at a minimum emphasizes tick-tock time. It sometimes goes as far as to deny there is anything but. But all icons are invitation to see beyond or underneath that press of the everyday. The transfiguration as the ultimate icon invites us to see all of eternity in one moment. The alpha and omega present on a mountaintop.

The sermon moves from the lessor to the greater. It posits hopefully a couple of more common icons in our lives that telescope time into an icon. Then it moves to the transfiguration. Finally it moves on to the demands and promises of knowing any icon. The what I put it here is that knowing eternity, we are freed to live in the moment. Not for the moment or obsessed with tick-tock time, but fully present in it. We are so freed to be truly present in good and ill because we are part of Jesus exodus. In Christ our time has been redeemed, reconnected to eternity. We have eternity, so we are free to enjoy time.

Worship note. Can I share a pet peeve? I understand the point of copyright. I believe that musicians and composers need to get paid. But copyright just kills the culture of hymns and sacred music. Here is what I mean. Today as a close we sang Lutheran Service Book number 416 – Swiftly Pass the Clouds of Glory. It is a very modern song. The text is copyrighted 1994; the tune (Love’s Light) in 2000. To me this hymn is one that I’d put in the list of all time greats that every Christian should know. Think Amazing Grace or A Mighty Fortress. The tune is gorgeous, contagious and singable. The words are deep, emotional and challenging. And part of the magic is that they fit together. That is a hymn that should be shared. I can’t. It’s copyrighted. Church music, like preaching, isn’t really a commercial endeavor. You do it for the good of the church.

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