Tag: Promise

Easter Mystery

The great truths of any faith are always a mystery.  What do I mean by that?  What is a mystery?  I’m not thinking of Scooby Doo and the mystery machine, nor Sherlock Holmes or your favorite writer.  Those are all mysteries that can be solved.  A fact is hidden that the investigator can reveal by the end of the book or episode. No, the mystery of a faith is something that is already completely revealed.  It has been revealed before the face of all people. The mystery of a faith is something that can be intuitively understood.  It makes complete sense, and yet is non-sense. Our minds can’t really process it.  Even though we might see it. 

The sacraments are such mysteries.  Water, bread and wine do amazing things. And we can see what they do in the lives of the faithful.  But do we really understand how the Spirit hovers in those waters?  Can we really grasp how we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ?  We recognize the body of Christ. Comprehend is a different matter.

The greatest of these mysteries is the resurrection. We all have an intuitive grasp that death is a horror, an enemy, not natural. As much as the materialists of our generation want to say that death is a natural part of life, it isn’t. It’s part of the life of sinners. It is part of life in a cracked world.  But death is not a rightful inhabitant.  But how do sinners combat their just penalty?  “For in Adam we all die.” (1 Corinthians 15:21).  God in his great mercy has sent us a champion. “In Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:21). 

Staring directly at the mystery is tough.  Mysteries are singularity events. We can’t really penetrate them in themselves. How exactly God and man together is one Christ is the mystery of the incarnation. You can meditate on Christmas forever and not understand it. But it speaks to our souls.  You can stare at the empty tomb and not understand.  But it breathes hope.

Isaiah captures that hope so well.  The promise of the new heavens and the new earth (Isaiah 65:17). For that is what the resurrection is, the first fruits of the new creation. And in the new creation, “the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” It’s a common question about heaven “what about those who aren’t there?”  Or, “what about fill in the blank of something that meant so much here?” They shall not come to mind.  Why?

Isaiah’s answer I think is simply the reality of the resurrection shall turn this broken creation into Paul’s light momentary affliction. “I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people.” If God is glad, can we be anything but? “No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.” And Isaiah goes on to list things that are sadly too common – not mysteries at all in this world – that shall not happen in the new.  “They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity (Isaiah 65:23).” The teacher of Ecclesiastes – all is vanity – shall be out of work.  And the wolf and the lamb shall graze together.

We see the effects of the mystery.  Even now we can see the mystery at work.  Name another place outside the church that gathers together such different people. But what we see today is nothing compared to that day.  The day that the last enemy is destroyed forever. Have a blessed Easter. 

Patience, Love and Promise

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Biblical Text: Luke 20:9-20

Of all the genre of biblical literature I think we hear the parable the worst. Maybe that is in line with how they were originally told. When asked Jesus said he spoke in parables “so that they may hear and never understand. (Matthew 13:14).” We either think they are too easy and we walk away with a dead letter. Or we try and make them way too complex looking for esoteric meanings. There is usually nothing wrong with the too easy, except that they just become cute stories with no current relevance. The too complex is usually heretical. They do require some meditation. And they are usually a little more challenging than just a cute story. The parable here is of the wicked tenants. The sermon has quick examples of too easy and too hard. But what most of the parables want to tell us is what the Father is like. And in this case it is about the patience, love and promise of the Father. The parable tells us how the vineyard runs. And leaves us in the vineyard. Leaves us with the question of if we would stay in the vineyard, or will we too lose it.

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Christmas Eve 2024

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2024 feels like to me the year gambling took over everything. That’s something of the theme of this homily. It is possible to look at the biblical story through gambler’s eyes. It’s even on old tradition in Pascal’s wager. But that really isn’t the biblical story. It is not a gamble, it’s a gift. It’s the will of God that you are his child. The child in a manger is not God rolling the dice over your soul. He is the light in the midst of the darkness. He is the love of God for you. Evermore and Evermore.

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Them Bones

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Biblical Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14

The text is one of the most famous in all of scripture – Ezekiel’s Dry Bones. It’s famous, because of how it works on the heart if you allow it. If this field of scattered bones is the whole house of Israel, if the chosen people can come to this, what about us? And you’ve got to think about it because the Spirit takes you there and places you in the middle of it. And God asks you the question, “Can these bones live?”

Ezekiel has a reply, not an answer. The answer is God’s. But it is not the easy triumphalism we want. Nor is it a counsel of despair. It is a promise. It’s the Word proclaimed. This sermon hopefully opens the heart and lets that work on it.

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Promise, Fulfillment, Praise

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This sermon first examines what a blessing is. Elizabeth blesses Mary, and she blesses all those who believe the words of the LORD. A blessing is far more than fortune or well-wishes. A blessing is a form of promise. And it is that promise that is part of a cycle of the Christian life. Promise gives way to fulfillment which brings about praise. Promise, fulfillment and praise is something like vocal round in the Christian life. It starts with one, and the praise of one might become the promise of the next who hears. The great crescendo of that is the promise of the resurrection. This sermon attempts to place us in those blessings and that praise.

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By Means

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Biblical Text: Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-21

We talk about the sacraments as “the means of grace”, in the everyday world we might refer to someone as a person of means, but I don’t think we really know what that word – means – means. Nor do we really plumb its depths. We don’t for two reasons. The first is that most of us are secular. We have buffered ourselves from what what Nicene Creeds calls the invisible creation. Not that it isn’t there and doesn’t effect us, simply that we deny it, usually with some fantastical pseudo-science. Although for me the best denials are the straight up “didn’t happen, who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes.” The second though is a spiritual reason. We think we want God to act immediately. We think we want the lightning bolt. This sermon is an exploration of God working through means and or reactions to that fact.

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Impermanance, Anxiety and the Hairs of Your Balding Head

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Biblical Text: Luke 21:5-28

What do me mean when we talk about last things?  There of course is the very literal, but other than 10,000 mile stuff, Jesus really doesn’t answer that.  Because that is not what we are talking about.  What we are talking about is impermanence and our anxiety caused by that impermanence.  And that is was Jesus goes after.  Even these “noble stones” of the temple will come down.  This thing that centers our identity will fail.  All earthly props will give way.  And Jesus goes on to name them.  And then he gives us a promise.  “Not a single hair of your head will perish.” 

You have both the knowledge and the promise.  The knowledge that yes, the world is impermanent.  Don’t place your faith in it, in any part of it.  The promise that there is a permanent thing, and that you are already a part of it.  The Kingdom of God is coming with power and great glory.  So straighten up an raise your heads.  Because this is your redemption.  This is your hour.

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A Thrilling Voice is Sounding?

Biblical Text: Luke 3:1-14

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Advent 2 is John the Baptist week.  (Advent 3 would be as well, but that week typically gets taken up by the Children’s program.)  And I think that both the Baptist and his message are a little tough for us to understand, although I think we are probably approaching the time and place where they shouldn’t be.  They used to require imagination, but the sermon will attempt such imagination is becoming reality.  My opening question for you would be: What might make you listen to a street preacher?  For I think that is akin to what John is, except that he is wildly popular.  That is the space you have to get into to understand the Baptist – where a street preacher is popular.  This sermon attempts to paint that picture.  It also attempts help us grasp that it isn’t the street preacher antics that make John unique, but the place and the message.  Come ponder just what it might the way straight, to raise up the valleys and level the hills, to do so from the desert, to do so with a Word.

Recording Note: The Choice sounded great this morning and I got a good recording, so their piece is in the recording between the OT lesson and the Epistle.

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God’s Good Order

Biblical Text: Mark 10:2-16 (Genesis 2:18-25)
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Reflecting Chesterton, it isn’t that Jesus’ teaching on marriage and sexuality is hard to grasp and not worth the time, it is that it is easy to grasp and not desired to give it the time. The teaching is real simple. Marriage is a first thing; sexuality is part of marriage. It is the desires of our heart that wish to make marriage one potential form of a sex life. It is the desires of our heart that take God’s good order and wish to remake it in some other design. This sermon has three parts. The first is an examination of the heart, “where does sin come from?” The second is an examination of Jesus’ teaching from the text and also how it is taught clearly through the church’s wedding liturgy. The last part is an attempt to reconcile “what do we do” when we are so far away from that teaching.

Worship Note: I haven’t been leaving in the music sections as much because the recordings haven’t been as good. I’m not sure this one a great recording, but I want to mention the hymn. It was our opening. I’ve moved it to the end in the recording. LSB 858, O Father, All Creating. It is a marriage or wedding hymn, but we so rarely sing at our weddings anymore as they are special occasions and not congregational celebrations anymore. This particular song is not so specific to a bride and groom standing before the gathered as to prevent general use. It appropriates a good hymn tune familiar from The Church’s One Foundation. And the text well celebrates both the biblical foundations and directions of marriage, and the prayers that we would ask of God for our individual marriages. And our organist had a wonderful introduction.

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