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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Sacramental Life – A Maundy Thursday Meditation

John’s gospel is what is sometimes called thick. This is my attempt to ponder John’s Last Supper, which is a Last Supper and not one at the same time. The icon at the left is the footwashing. That is what John talks about when the synoptics relate the institution of the Lord’s Supper. This sermon meditates on how John captures the sacramental life: Baptism, Lord’s Supper and Confession in one scene. And then relates how we live that sacramental life.

Full Sermon Draft

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Legal Principles – Sermon on the Mount – part 2

Biblical Text: Matt 5:21-37

Full Sermon Draft

This is the second part of our reading of the Sermon on the Mount. (Here was the first.) In the text Jesus starts to confront the 10 commandments, and even more directly interpretations of them. What he provides is the authoritative interpretation of the law in the Christian life.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download