Allen Lunneberg

Text: Matthew 1:23
Date: Advent IV + 12/23/07
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

My only brother was born (nearly ten years before me!) on December 25. As Christmas and Birthdays are both occasions for gift giving I always wondered if as a child he ever felt short-changed because of that. Or was it I that felt a little jealous because he got the extra attention at Christmas? Honestly, I don’t remember feeling jealous. (He happened to call me this past week and so, all these years later, I asked him about that. He said, the interesting thing was that everyone was concerned that everyone else would combine Christmas and his birthday, so everyone tended to provide double gifts. It was quite a “racket”!)

I mention this to draw your attention to a similar double-celebration for your congregation, The Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word. In Europe it is a long tradition to celebrate not only a person’s birthday but also his or her name day. The reformer Martin Luther was named Martin because he was baptized on St. Martin of Tours day, November 11. So, St. John’s Lutheran Church would celebrate their name day on December 27 for St. John, Apostle and Evangelist, Trinity Lutheran churches on the variable dates of The Holy Trinity, St. Matthew’s on September 21 and so on. So it would seem most appropriate for the Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word to celebrate as your name day the festival of the Incarnation or Christmas! And what does the Incarnation say about a congregation called by that name? (more…)

Text: Matthew 3:1-12
Date: Advent II + 12/09/07
Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Any preacher of the Gospel (if he is really preaching the Gospel) will inevitably get himself into trouble. That is, he gets himself in trouble primarily when and because the gospel challenges peoples’ presumptions and expectations. People have all sorts of presumptions and expectations, especially at this time of year, concerning what Christmas is all about. What is most challenging for the preacher is that without an awareness of sin, our innate separation and alienation from God, there can be no Gospel, which is always and only the Good News of reconciliation with God, salvation from sin, death and the devil through the forgiveness of sin. You know the scripture that says, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12). The two edges of that sword are called Law and Gospel. The Law hurts. The Gospel heals. The Law of God comes to reveal our waywardness and sin, the cause of all separation and death, to show us our helplessness and need for a Savior. The Law says “you have sinned and your sin separates you from God; your sin is killing you; and worse than that, you are helpless to fix that, to save yourself.” Only then does the Gospel make any sense as it proclaims and gives deliverance and salvation through the forgiveness of sin all for the sake and by the power of Jesus Christ crucified and risen again.

The season of Advent should be such a challenge to our presumptions and expectations. In its hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping and decorations and traffic and mood music in December every year in our country, the world at least still acknowledges that there is some deeper, inherent religious significance to Christmas, witnessed by the broadcasting on Christmas Eve of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols over the radio from Cambridge, England now for 78 years, and Roman Catholic masses from Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago and the Vatican in Rome; not to mention that Christmas is one of the only two times each year many people darken church doors. Many Christians like to try to remind people, “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” but even that may not grab anyone’s attention. (more…)

Text: Matthew 1:18-21
Date: Vigil of Christmas / Advent 4 + 12/24/06

      I don’t know which is the greatest mystery—the cosmic transaction of holiness for sin and sin for holiness that took place in those dark hours on the cross of Calvary on Good Friday, or that God should take on our human flesh in the first place in dulci jubilo, “in the quiet joy” and incarnation of the Son of God as the Son of Mary. Indeed, you cannot have one without the other. For it was necessary that God become a Man in order to provide the one, perfect sacrifice beyond our ability, to atone for the sins of the whole world, for the life and salvation of the whole world. But to speak of our Lord’s earthly ministry as “necessary,” and to explain his sinless life, his atoning death, his resurrection triumph over the grave and ascending to the right hand of the Father—to “explain” the Gospel is not necessarily to believe it, and much less to adore it. As the hymn says it, our noblest work is to adore! [LSB 811:2] (more…)

 

 Standard Podcast [11:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Text: Matthew 11:2-10

Date: Advent 3 + 12/11/05

      A news reporter is expected simply to report the news, to document the facts in an objective way. When a news reporter becomes part of the story, however, or becomes the story him or herself, the original story gets skewed or lost and news turns into editorial, opinion about the news rather than just the news itself. The news was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The news anchor Walter Cronkite cried on camera. The news was the resignation of President Nixon. But suddenly everyone knew the names of the reporters Woodward and Bernstein.

      The Good News (the Gospel)—what I’m supposed to be telling you here—is supposed to be about Jesus Christ. But today the reporter, the one sent to prepare the way, John the Baptist, becomes the news, the focus of attention. Jesus asks the crowds, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see” when you went out to see John? He gives them two wrong answers—a reed shaken by the wind or a man dressed in soft clothing. And then he gives them the right answer: a prophet! (more…)

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Text: Luke 21:25-33

Date: Advent 2 + 12/10/06

      Today Jesus tells us about signs appearing in the sun and moon and stars that forecast his second advent or coming on the Day of Judgment and deliverance. As the angel said, when Jesus ascended into heaven and a cloud hid him from his disciples’ sight, so he will come again as you have seen him go. Today Jesus says he will come “in a cloud with power and great glory.” In this last public discourse before his Passion, Jesus gives his disciples some final words to help us prepare “to stand in the presence of the Son of Man” on the Last Day. In fact, this is the goal of Luke’s entire gospel. The words of Jesus, which he says will not pass away, accomplish what Luke promised Theophilus in the beginning, “that you come to recognize completely the reliability concerning the words by which you have been catechized.” (more…)

Text: Luke 4:14-22
Date: Wednesday in Advent I + 12/6/06
Zion Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Detroit

      This week of the First Sunday in Advent Holy Church has begun again to tell the whole story of salvation. Though it takes six months from Advent through Pentecost just to sketch the details of our Lord’s earthly ministry and another six months to draw out the implications of it, there is one main theme, one fundamental truth, one purpose whether we speak of Jesus as the Babe of Bethlehem, the preacher of Galilee, the miracle-worker of Capernaum, the sacrificial Lamb of Jerusalem, the risen Lord on a road to Emmaus, the ascending King of Bethany, or the Lord of heaven and earth who will return on the Day of Judgment, and that is, as we Lutherans have said it, “the justification of the sinner by God’s grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ.” In a word, salvation—salvation from our captivity to death, the blindness of sin, the broken heart of separation from the God of life; salvation to be the people of God. This is the significance of our Lord’s first Sabbath day sermon in the synagogue of his hometown of Nazareth. When he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, he carefully turned to the place we today call chapter 61, reading it as the grand summary of everything he was about to preach, teach and perform from beginning to end. (more…)

 

 Standard Podcast [10:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

      Once again we are given the grace and the mercy to say “Happy New Year” as Holy Church marks the passing of days with the Divine Agenda of telling the Good News, the story of the salvation of the world, to the world in an orderly way for all to hear. From the Advent anticipation of prophesies fulfilled, to the Christmas crisis of the incarnation of the Word made flesh, to the Epiphany lightshow of our Lord’s earthly ministry, to the Lenten litany of His passion, the Easter emancipation of resurrection, and the Pentecost proclamation of the Spirit, we mean to reveal the true meaning of the passing of days. We begin again to tell the whole story, the really good story of new life even as our old, tattered 2006 calendars are nearly filled with the record of an aging year, the old story of our broken promises, devastating reverses, the dark turns of life incessantly marching to a destination we either deny or ignore. This story, God’s story, means to say that death no longer has the last word and that life has been restored. (more…)