McLean-DeWitt Wedding Homily

Text: Colossians 3:14 (1 Corinthians 13:1-8, Colossians 3:12-17, 1 John 4:16-19)
I’m sure that people who live there get tired of it, but living in Orlando, FL you are ground zero of magic. And magic is something that we are very attracted to, it is whimsical and surprising. But more than that it is immediate. It is like our cell phones. It offers the idea of instant attainment. Especially when it comes to love. Swipe left/swipe right.

But if we listen to the Apostles in the texts you chose, they don’t describe love as a state, but as a virtue. More than that, the highest or the unity of the virtues. And virtues are not things instantly attained. Virtues are acquired by practice and living. How does one become patient? By being patient. How does one become kind, by practicing kindness, especially in hard cases. Now there might be some natural capacity or attraction that starts us on the path to virtue. Love might start out as chemistry and romance. But to have love, we practice it – hourly and yearly.

And marriage is the primary vocation where we practice it. It is patient and kind, does not envy or boast, is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking. It is clothed with compassion and humility and gentleness. It doesn’t fear. The things life throws at us, more true in married life, bring those temptations daily. We practice living love.

We practice not strictly by ourselves, because the perfect love of Jesus Christ has already triumphed. We have been loved perfectly first, so we are enabled to live and practice love to our spouse and our neighbor.

Today, you stand here in faith saying I believe in that love. We will mutually live and practice that love. We will develop that virtue. And we do that, so that 50 years hence, on that golden anniversary, you can look at each other, no longer in faith that love never fails, but in knowledge, deep in your bones, that love never fails. Because you lived it. Your lives have become a witness to the love that never fails. Amen.

The Deceitfulness of Wealth/Jesus Loved Him

Biblical Text: Mark 10:17-22
Full Sermon Draft

This sermon explores two items wrapped by a question. The two items are: 1) the biblical view or warnings about wealth and 2) What it means that Jesus looked at the rich young man and loved him. Neither of these two things are as popular sentiment would have. This sermon attempts to instruct or correct that sentiment. What those two subjects are wrapped in is the question of the good. Not really what actions are good, because that is known defined by the law. The question is one of recognition, do we see Jesus as good? And do we recognize that God alone is good. The offer to the man to sell everything might sound like a law, but it is pure gospel. It is the offer of joining Jesus on his walk. Yes, the walk right now is toward the cross, but it is also heavenward, toward treasure in heaven. Our use of wealth is one way we are invited to participate in the kingdom now.

This text is also only half of a full section. The gospel assigned for next week continues in a similar vein but focusing less on our call and more on God’s action.

Musical notes: 1) The recording includes our choir’s first piece of the Season. 2) I’ve included the hymn after the sermon Lutheran Service Book 694 – Thee Will I Love My Strength My Tower.

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Fruitful Friends

Biblical Text: John 15:9-17
Full Sermon Draft

The text is a continuation from last weeks Gospel reading which has Jesus declare “I am the true vine”, but here Jesus drops the metaphors and talks very plainly. The Christian life starts at a very simple point – God loves you. It has as its goal something likewise simple – fruitful living. Jesus ties these things together here. The Gospel, God’s love for us, take precedence as we are declared his friends. We are no longer slaves to the law, but friends. Love first. But it is directed love. A love directed toward fruitfulness which is defined by the commandments. What does love look like? When a friend gives his life for another. The Christian life has a cruciform shape. But it is a life of invitation into communion with God. It is a call to a life of prayer and a life of love.

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Of Wolves and Shepherds

Biblical Text: John 10:11-18
Full Sermon Draft

There are certain biblical images that are ingrained in our heads just from cultural osmosis. Even at this late date, the Good Shepherd is one of those images in the larger culture. I feel okay saying that because even Hollywood called a CIA movie staring Matt Damon The Good Shepherd recently. The movie didn’t do so hot and I can’t recommend it, but they expected the Biblical allusion to have enough currency to use the name. But what I am always amazed at when the lectionary throws up one of these common images (one portion of John 10 with shepherd images is always on Easter 4) is that the common gloss on the text is at best half the story. In the case of the Good Shepherd we jump straight to Calvary. In theologically squishy places the Good Shepherd is the perfect image to pitch Jesus the great teacher or a Unitarian all loving spirit. But the text itself is intensely Trinitarian as it is about the relationship between the Father and the Son. The Son is the Good Shepherd and not the hired man because he shares the love of the father for these sinful oblivious sheep.

But the metaphor goes beyond that gospel image. Love is defined as aligning yourself with the Father’s commands. Love is defined as putting yourself between the sheep and the wolves. It is defined contrary to the hired man who does what it natural. When you see the good shepherd, when you comprehend in a meaningful way the gospel, at that point you are no longer a sheep. You have a choice – hired man or good shepherd. It is the first real choice in your life, and it is also one that the sheep are oblivious to. Don’t expect applause. Except from Father and Son. This sermon attempts to proclaim that love of the Good Shepherd and give it some form of what it really looks like in the Christian life.

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The Love of God Creates

Biblical Text: John 3:15-21
Full Sermon Draft

My Daughter had an interesting assignment this week that merged in with the Gospel Text. The text includes John 3:16 of course, the “gospel in a nutshell”, but that never gave the passage around it (or the whole discourse with Nicodemus which is comes from) due credit. Yes, we are saved by the love of God, but there is something dangerous in our natural understanding of that. The things we naturally love all lovely, or as the sermon will start out with, they have something that attracts us to them. God’s love is not given to things naturally attractive, but creates what pleases it. In out case, in the case of the world that he loves, the love of God justifies sinners through faith in his Son. The love of God changes us and invites us into the light. And such love is reflected through the cross. This world that loves darkness might not recognize that as love. It is not lovely in itself, but it is the love God, and the love of the Christian working in God.

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Cross Marks

Biblical Text: Mark 8:27-38
Full Sermon Draft

Luther put the cross as one of his seven marks of the church. Jesus made exactly that lesson out of Peter’s confession. What is the first place you go to if you want to understand the Christ? The cross. Anything else is Satan, or the things of man. This deeply Lenten sermon reflects on that centrality of the cross, and what it means for our lives that God is most clearly seen in suffering, shame and death.

The music on the recording is the Lenten hymn O Lord Throughout These Forty Days sung by our Children’s Choir. (Note here that that congregation sang this same hymn last week. Kids quite young, my Ethan is 5, can participate in worship quite well.)

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Christmas Day 2014

Full Sermon Draft

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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The Kingdom Bill of Rights – All Saints Celebration

Biblical Text: Matthew 5:1-12
Full Sermon Draft

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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Parabolic Questions

Biblical Text: Matthew 22:1-14
Full Sermon Draft

The text is the third parable in a row that Jesus has told to the Chief Priests and the Elders in the temple. By this time the meaning at the time of telling is obvious, but the question is what does it mean on the other side of the parabola’s line of symmetry.

This sermon, with the help of Augustine and Gregory the Great, stakes out what it means for the church. In particular it looks at three things: 1) Where are we confronted with Jesus today?, 2) What do we take the wedding garment as? and 3) Do these things themselves point to something greater? Along the way we tackle a few other modern questions that cling to this parable.

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The Gut-Check of Discipleship

Bibical Text: Matt 10:21-33
Full Sermon Draft

The text is part of what is called the missionary discourse. Jesus is sending the twelve out to proclaim the kingdom. As part of that sending are some stern warning about persecution. Right next to those stern warnings are some of the most treasured expressions of believers about the love of God. What this sermon attempts to do is demonstrate how this functions as the gut-check of discipleship. Luther explains the first commandment as “we should fear, love and trust God above all things.” The gospel is proclaimed as what the disciple is encouraged and expected to believe about Jesus: about the place of a healthy fear of God, but the primacy of trusting God and his demonstrated love for us in Jesus.

The recording begins with one of my favorite hymns in Lutheran Service Book (LSB #933 – My Soul Rejoices). It is a versification of The Magnificat or song of Mary. We used this as our Hymn of Praise this morning.

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