A Question of Temptation

Biblical Text: Luke 4:1-13

It’s the first Sunday in Lent, so the text is the temptation of Jesus. This is one of those places where Jesus is demonstrated to experience everything that we do, except that he defeats Satan. Each of the three temptations are common to us. Temptations of the flesh, of the world and of Satan himself. And Jesus answers each one with the Word of God. So what you get is the rhythm of Word of God, followed by action (in this case the life of Jesus) that lives out that Word, which reveals the type of God that we have. The Word is the promise. And we all live by faith in that promise. Faith that Jesus has given to us his victory.

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Rightly Ordered Love

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Biblical Text: Luke 4:31-44

Having VP JD Vance quote the theological concept ordo amoris was at first just refreshing. But the more I looked at the texts for the week, which also included Paul’s song to love in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, it became something that the texts themselves spoke about. So this sermon attempts to talk about “rightly ordered love” or “the order of caring.” It also attempts to preach it from a specifically Lutheran law and gospel understanding. I wish I could summarize it for this better, but all I can really do is ask for 15 mins of your time. Give it a listen or a read.

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Jubilee

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Biblical Text: Luke 4:16-30

The text is Jesus preaching to his hometown at the start of his ministry. His sermon ends with their attempt to toss him off the cliff, so it is safe to say Jesus offended them. It’s a really tough text, especially for Americans, because it goes after the cult of fairness. God isn’t fair. God is graceful. And his grace comes where and when he wills it. So you get the fact of Jesus declaring “the year of the Lord’s favor” a Jubilee. And you get the fact that it goes to everyone. And you get the fact that the miracles and apostles and all the shiny things might not be for you. Because the deep fact is that God owes us nothing. And the more we might claim standing the worse we get. The God is gracious. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Part of that is the call to celebrate the grace received by others. The sermon explores that space. The space between grace and anger that mine doesn’t seem a much.

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The Devil’s Playbook

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Biblical Text: Luke 4:1-13

The lesson for the first sunday of lent is an ancient choice, the temptation or testing of Jesus. For a long time it was taken as an excuse for preaching fasting. Jesus fasted, so should you. The problem with that is we aren’t Jesus and we are probably not lead by the Spirit into such a fast. It is not that there isn’t a “Jesus as our example” in this text. Jesus sustains the testing of Satan. In his example we have the full devil’s playbook. This sermon spends some time on that. But the gospel message of the sermon is Jesus won. Satan had never lost a testing until that day. He’s never really won one since. Christ sustained the test and remained faithful. And we can hide ourselves in him. Everyone who calls on Christ is victorious. The victory over Satan is given to them by faith in the work of Jesus. This sermon proclaims that victory.

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He Came to Make Us Holy

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Biblical Text: Luke 4:31-44

The text details a Sabbath Day for Jesus in Capernaum. It is a day full of demons and healing. And what it makes completely clear is that the cosmic battle has come to earth. Christ has come to make us holy. The confrontation in the Synagogue with the demon sets the conflict. The demon thinks that “us” is mankind and the demons. The Holy One of God has nothing to do with that us. But Jesus rejects the demon’s definition of “us”. To Jesus us is God and man, God with us. And Jesus intends to make us holy. And he does this by His word. The sermon examines the authority of that word and what it calls us to be and do.

Receiving What has been Fulfilled in Your Hearing

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Biblical Text: Luke 4:16-30

The text is Jesus returning to Nazareth to preach in his home synagogue. His message in the first place is right in line with what they all hoped and expected. He announces that he is the messiah. He also describes what kind of messiah he is – one that is bringing the Year of Jubilee. That is on OT concept the sermon explains a bit. Jesus is our Jubilee. But his message in the second place is much tougher. So tough that the Synagogue of Nazareth, full of people who knew Jesus from childhood, wants to cast him over the cliff. The text says they are full of wrath as the words of Jesus. The contrast is Jubilee and wrath. And that is what is put before us. Which way shall we choose. God has given us the kingdom, and he’s given us the kingdom in times and ways he feels best. Do we live in wrath against God for any perceived slights, or do we join the Jubilee?

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Kingdom Walk (though the Test)

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Biblical Texts: Luke 4:1-13, Romans 10: 8-13

There is always a bit of a frisson when I have a text with Satan in it. Giving Satan a voice from the pulpit always feels like crossing a boundary. There is a bit of that in here. But the main contemplative point is how Law and Gospel are connected with an “and”. In this world you don’t get one without the other, although that is always the temptation. Satan’s temptations are to break the relationships that bind and order our existence. Sometimes that temptation is straight up to our sinful nature. Sometimes that testing is to the power of the ring. But however they express themselves, they are always a rebellion against both the grace and the order of God. He has a way that He desires us to walk. When we tell the Spirit, sorry, I don’t like that desert or those 40 days, we’ve gone off the path. This sermon meditates on how Jesus walked it for us (hence the closing hymn), and bids us to follow.

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Responding to the Authoritative Word

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Biblical Text: Luke 4:31-44

A quick note about this sermon. It is really a short one at the start, and then the rest. With NY State becoming an open infanticide state it was necessary to say something from the pulpit about this deep wrong. That is the short clear start.

The second part hopefully ties that in. The text is about the authoritative Word of Jesus. When He preached everyone recognized the impact of what he said. And that impact wasn’t really the healings or the exorcisms which were the signs and wonder. The impact was that His Word demanded a response. The text gives us three examples of responses. The sermon looks and them and how we respond in our lives.

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The Year of the Lord’s Favor

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Biblical Text: Luke 4:16-30

We are continuing through our Epiphany series which might be subtitled “seeing God”. The normal ways of seeing God that the Epiphany texts help us to see are Word and Sacrament. This text is no different in that, except this text asks the next question: what does seeing God mean for the one who sees? And Epiphany is always also a test. Do we believe? Do we trust the promises given in the Word of God and the sacraments, or do we demand what we take as greater signs? This sermon ponders Jesus’ reception in his hometown, and parallels that reception among those who have been made his family by baptism.

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Postmodern Ditches & The Narrow Way

Biblical Text: Luke 4:1-13
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The first Sunday in Lent brings the temptation of Jesus as the text. The text is usually turned into a moral lesson about knowing your bible. And there is some of that here. But as I worked through the text and the various inputs this week, that fit less and less easily. Especially given Luke’s text. The temptations come in a slightly different order here, and the Devil and Jesus flip-flop words. Jesus goes from “it is written” to “it is said” when the devil picks up quoting scripture. This is no sword drill bible quoting one-up-man-ship.

The postmodern world tells us that everything is interpretation. There are authoritative interpretations made so by power. There are deviant or subversive interpretations. But, there are no facts; there is no truth. In the first two temptations Jesus clearly refutes that as he both takes as true and binding the Word of God and refutes a power and authority’s ability to assert interpretation against fact. In the third temptation Jesus turns to the opposite problem. Instead of thinking that everything is interpretation, its opposite is often a too great a certainty. When the devil starts quoting scripture the temptation is to put a very precise interpretation on a poetic verse.

Applied to the modern church or would you have both the church that has abandoned the law because they hunger after the approval of the world, and you have the church that is uncomfortable with faith and hope and mystery. The narrow way lies between the two ditches. Letting the secret things be God’s, but claiming surely those things that have been revealed. Deuteronomy 29:29

This is an attempt to preach the text by connecting roots of post-modernism with how we see it playing out in events today. As such, as David Foster Wallace would once quip, I’m attempting to point out the water to the fish (what’s water?). It is preaching directly at a space that is probably never in questioned. As such it might have zoomed right past.

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