Wild Animals

Biblical Text: Mark 1:9-15

The text is the Temptation of Jesus in the gospel of Mark which is different than the others. The introduction to the sermon runs down some of those differences. And this sermon then in very specifically framed around the what those unique parts of Mark’s telling are. I know that the others Matthew/Luke often get told as a “how-to manual” for temptation and testing. Which I think is completely wrong. One, we are not Jesus. Two, Satan is so much smarter than us. Getting into a bible quoting contest with Satan means we most likely lose absent the Spirit giving us the words. No, it is Mark’s account that I believe is a picture of the Christian in testing or temptation. Your God has to be big enough for the Spirit to lead you out into the wilderness. That testing or temptation is like walking with the Wild Animals. The sermon elaborates a bit here. But we also walk with angels all the way. The Kingdom of God is always near. Even in the midst of testing. The Spirit does not desert us in the desert. The angels are ministering. Repent and believe.

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Testing or Temptation

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Biblical Text: Matt 4:1-11

The primary text is traditionally called the Temptation of Jesus. It takes place right after his baptism and continues the theme of Israel reduced to one. When Israel fails in the wilderness, Christ succeeds. But, this sermon is about something I think is an important distinction that often gets lost in the modern church. It was important to me to figure out because Luther makes a statement in the Small Catechism that always seemed to fly in the face of reality to me, at least reality if you take the scriptures and the universal experience of the faith as witnesses. And you wish to take ordination vows seriously. Luther says “God tempts no one.” And that honestly felt like this polyanna-ish statement completely foreign to the great man who was always “calling a thing what it is.” So, this sermon attempts to talk about the difference between temptation and testing. And how we can affirm that God tempts no one, even if the answer to that 6th petition of the Lord’s prayer isn’t always positive in the short term. But the will of God is not for this moment alone, but to give you the eternal victory in Christ.

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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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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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Winter is Coming

Biblical Texts: Mark 1:9-15, James 1:12-18 and Genesis 22:1-18
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The texts for the first week of Lent in year B are distinctive and rough and play on each other in my reading. The central concern is testing. This sermon, following James, attempts to create a distinction between temptation and testing. It then looks at the testing of Jesus and the testing of Abraham as examples of standing under testing. The parallel is OT Israel who strayed under their testing in the wilderness. The application section then looks at a couple of example of modern day testing at the hands of ISIS. It ends by making a comparison between a spirituality that survives the Winter vs. the seemingly sunnier spirituality that ultimately fails in the cold winds.

The opening hymn is Christ the Life of All the Living (LSB 420) which is a classic Lenten hymn emphasizing exactly our wintery reliance on Christ alone. The choir echoes after the OT lesson with teach me your ways Lord. I didn’t get recorded, but after the sermon we sang one of my favorite hymns that captures this wintery Spirituality, Rise! To Arms! With Prayer Employ You (LSB 668). Our effort is not to moral perfection but to prayer. Of course part of the greatness is the chance to sing the hymn tune Wachet Auf.

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What Temptation Tells Us About the Good Life

Biblical Text: Matthew 4:1-11
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~~We had a technical mishap, so I’ll re-record the sermon probably tomorrow.~~

Sermon Uploaded, although no hymn or biblical text preceding, so you might want to read the biblical text on the temptation of Christ.

I’m not sure there is a bigger divide between the orthodox faith and modernity than on the direction of the good life. Modernity in its many forms points you inward to finding your best and authentic self. In this sermon I pick on Maslow’s hierarchy and the idea of self-actualization, but there are other theories that say similar things. The faith has always said roughly three things: 1) your natural self is deceived or blind and couldn’t know what the good life is, 2) the good life revealed in Jesus is directed not toward self-actualization but toward God and neighbor, and 3) we are given eyes to see through the work of Jesus and the Spirit primarily through the revelation of the Word. The temptation of Jesus, as this sermon will proclaim, is part of the defeat of the devil for us, and a revelation of the road we also must face and walk.

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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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Temptation…the terrible feeling of aloneness

Biblical Texts:Mark 1:8-15, Gen 22:1-18, James 1:12-18
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The first Sunday in Lent. All the texts are about testing or temptation. And If you are listening it is hard to read the testing of Abraham and then read James right after it. There would seem to be a contradiction, and its about something as important as the nature of God. Does God test/tempt? James says don’t say that God does. Abraham is told by God to take Isaac. Jesus is thrown into the desert by the Spirit. Luther, he of calling James an epistle of straw, sides with James in the Catechism. “God tempts no one.”

I think that is something that gets held in tension. Its something we probably don’t see clearly right now. And the overwhelming feeling felt in the texts and often in out lives is of being alone or being abandoned. We might have to live in the tension in the difference between the words testing and temptation, or that awful dodge God allows but doesn’t cause, but the feeling of being alone can be resolved. God has been abundant in his mercy so that you are never alone. The specifics on that are in the sermon…

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Circuit Meeting

March 8, 2011 – Circuit Meeting

This is the sermon delivered at the pastor’s meeting. If you heard the transfiguration sermon below, it is similar, but modified in a couple of ways for the audience. 1. I brought in the text for this coming Sunday hopefully to give the pastors a step or a bridge on this week’s meditation. (They really fit together, but that was something that got cut on transfiguration day as too confusing. The pastor’s have the advantage of holding both in their heads.) 2. The application is mostly reworked. Where the congregation sermon focused on individuals being open to the transfiguring grace of God, to the pastors the charge was both personal and as shepherds of congregations. 3. The personal story was ditched in favor of a tie into a presentation title given by the District President.

In one way, audience matters a lot. In another, the gospel is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow. The best parts of these sermons probably could have been boiled down to a couple of paragraphs. But I like hearing my voice. Just kidding, a little. What I do think is that this sermon given to the pastors is probably a better fit of message and audience. I was probably thinking a little too much about this one when I was composing Sunday’s.

True Story

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…That lostness in our culture. The fragmentation and the pain caused by it. The anxiousness and distrust and conflict. Understandable – we’ve misplaced God’s story.

But today, and this season of Lent, are your chance to reclaim it. Find who you are in God’s story. You are a chosen person. You have been called out of the darkness and into the light…