Hidden in Plain Sight

Biblical Text: Matthew 11:25-30

The lectionary had us spend three weeks on the Missionary Discourse, Jesus sending out the apostles. But the gospel according to Matthew never really gets around, unlike Luke, to telling us the response of the Disciples. What we do have is Matthew Chapter 11 which really is the varied response of people to the preaching and teaching of Jesus in the Galilean ministry. The easy gospel is at the end of the lesson, but the real question is what is the context of that statement. And the context is everything that happens is in the will of the Father. Everything that happens is through the Work of the Son. Everything that happens is due to the inspiration of the Spirit. The yoke is easy and the burden light, because God has revealed himself and his love for us. The hard part of that revelation is that it is hidden in plain sight. It is wrapped not in power and glory, but the cross. The demonstration is the resurrection, but that is proclaimed for belief. We have the testimony of the Apostles in the Scripture. We can see it all, but only by faith. Which means the reception or response is variable.

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A Simple Story

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Biblical Text: Matthew 28:1-10

I love the Easter story in Matthew. It is just such a living memory. Not that the other Gospel aren’t, but as this sermon starts out, the meaning you attach to a story changes, deepens, layers, over time. The resurrection in Matthew is such an early memory. The meanings haven’t really started to accrue. It’s just bragging, let me tell you what happened. That’s what this sermon attempts to do. Tell the story. Invite you to the meaning slowly.

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Remembrance and Proclamation

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Text: Catechism Christian Questions and Answers 13-16

This is the 4th Lenten Midweek service. We have been working our way through the Christian Questions and their answer from the Small Catechism. These Questions and Answers are a model of “fitting preparation” to receive the Lord’s Supper. To me they run in expanding cycles. The first cycle is the simple proclamation of sin and salvation. The second cycle expands on that from the creed. This third cycle is very Lutheran. It always goes back to faith, but it also is not afraid to ask the question “why should or do I believe this?” The Lutheran understanding of the faith has an answer. That answer might not be satisfactory to all, but it has the advantage of being how the Bible talks about the origins of faith. And it has the advantage of being grounded in the cross. We remember and proclaim the cross as the ground of our faith. This sermon meditates on that.

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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.

Feet on the Mountain

Biblical Text: Isaiah 52:7-10
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Christmas Day is always a smaller, more intimate time. Sometimes I wonder what it was like when that was not the case. But anyway, the sermon attempts to honor that. It is less a polished piece of rhetoric and more a personal message. An end to Christmas reflection for those who mostly have been on this church service tryptic (advent 4, Christmas Eve, Christmas day) in two days.

I’ve left in our opening hymn (A Great and Mighty Wonder) which the sermon owes a debt too, and our close, Away in a Manger. The simple invite to keep these things and ponder them in our hearts.

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Stay in the Boat

Biblical Text: Matthew 14:22-33
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Recording note: I had to rerecord the lessons, but the sermon is live. It is a skinny recording this week, sans the music, for that remix reason.

The point of a church is to make disciples. To make disciples is more complicated than it might sound. The hard truth is that Jesus was never about just getting someone to recite a creed (as important as it might be) or say a prayer (as meaningful as it can be). The disciple, as the reading from Romans would highlight, is someone that has “the word near you, in your mouth and in your heart”. The disciple is someone who has made the faith given to the apostles their own. To do that requires a work of the imagination. Sadly, it is that very imagination that I think our modern world fails at. If the ancient heresies were due to over-active imaginations, the modern are due to a lack. If they thought there was more in the text than actually there, we think there is much less. Ours is a spiritual poverty.

This sermon is an attempt to encourage the imagination of discipleship. The text is taken as a surprisingly deep, yet easy picture of the Christian life. There are two images, Peter getting out of the boat and Jesus and Peter getting in the boat, and then one image of narrative conclusion. All applied to our lives, to build up live in the boat.

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Pronouns

Biblical Text: Acts 2:1-21 (Genesis 11:1-9, Acts 2:22-41)
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Pentecost, especially in the readings this year, is a day about language. For all we depend upon it, language is something that we don’t really think much about. We let writers and preachers do that. But if we don’t have the language for something there is a question how long it can actually exist, or if we can truly experience it. That is one of the spurs for stealing words from other languages – to experience and describe experience more precisely. One of the deep lessons of Babel is that when language breaks down, that is God’s punishment. Babel is God’s Punishment, Pentecost is God’s salvation.

The Jewish Pentecost was the receiving of the law at Sinai. That is the start of our salvation. It starts to make things clear, but the law itself has no power. That is this later Pentecost, when the Spirit is poured out.

The title comes from the diagnosis of a Babel and a call to a new Pentecost.

Our concluding Hymn is my favorite Pentecost one. LSB 500, Creator Spirit, by Whose Aid. The text is an ancient chant from the 8th century that comes to us through John Dryden the English poet. It displays both a sacramental view of the world and worship. At the end of verse two: Your sacred healing message bring, to sanctify us as we sing. But the jewel of it for me is verse three in how it describes the work of the Spirit abiding in us.

Your sevenfold gifts to us supply
Help us eternal truths receive
And practice all that we believe
Give us yourself that we might see
The glory of the Trinity.

Through the working of the Spirit, through His sanctification, we receive the eternal truth which is Jesus Christ. Receiving Christ and repenting, we then seek to follow him, to put into practice the love we have been give. And we do this because of our hope in the resurrection, that we might see the Trinity face to face. Just a beautiful hymn that maintains a bit of its chant origin.

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Resurrection Certainty

Biblical Text: Luke 20:27-40
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The first part of this sermon is a little snarky-er than usual. Sometimes you read something that just makes you want to say “well, what did you come out to see(Luke 7:24)”. Or in most cases it is more akin to desiring to say something like – well, I can’t refute your experience, and a bunch of people are harmonizing with you, but c’mon, grow-up, actually crack a book, or stop beating up on straw-men and turn to the real sources.” Beating up on American Mega-Church culture and feeling burned by what is obviously a 10K gold earring destined to turn your lobes green as if it were Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin or even Wesley shouldn’t be taken seriously.

But we are reaping the 30 years of that culture in the American church, so we have to. 30 years of shininess distracting from the deep wells. 30 years of assuming the gospel. 30 years of emotionalism (what the reformers called enthusiasm). And we have a bad hang-over or have trouble walking a single block, let alone picking up the breastplate of righteousness, because we are so out of shape. So we have to take it seriously. But that makes me snarky.

After getting that out of my system, the answer is the same as always. Ad fontes, returning to the sources, listening to the voice of Jesus. And the first word that needs to be heard is the gospel proclamation of the resurrection. Can these bones live? Absolutely. Because He is the resurrection. This is what Jesus does.

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Christmas Day – Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem

Biblical Text: Isaiah 52:9

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A prize goes to the first person who is able to identify the hymns referenced in the sermon. As to the Sermon, proclamation gives way to praise, especially when the mystery is so great.

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Standby by for some Announcements…

Sermon Text: Luke 1:26-38
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I’m not sure why but Advent 4 (Mary’s week in the lectionary) and Thanksgiving are probably the two occasions that I almost always feel real good about the sermon. On firm Lutheran grounding I’d just say that they are opportunities to proclaim a very clear gospel. In my theological understanding I’d say they are times that give themselves to Christology – and the gospel is first and foremost a proclamation of Christ. If I was being a little more spiritual and sentimental (or Roman Catholic) – I’d say an extra measure of the Spirit is given to preachers talking about Jesus’ mom or eucharist/thanksgiving. Whatever the reason, this a sermon that all I can really say is take a listen…

If I don’t get back here this week, I hope to see you at Christmas Eve or Christmas day services. If you are a remote reader/listener, Merry Christmas and please find a church to celebrate Christmas with this week in your hometown.

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