Allen Lunneberg

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Text: Mark 10:32-45
Date: Lent V + 3/29/09
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

I love the picture and note of solemnity with which St. Mark paints the opening scene of today’s Gospel. For we are, as the first disciples, on a journey. “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem.” We are on a road, the road of discipleship, that is, of learning, always learning, learning that to follow Jesus is filled with amazing twists and turns, some at God’s direction and intervention, some not; following in the Way of faith verses fear—there is a lot for faith to believe and plenty of things that make us afraid. “They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.” We join the ranks of trembling, fearful saints marching behind Jesus. And that’s the one, most important detail we missed in the middle: “Jesus was walking,” not behind them, or beside them, but “ahead of them.” Jesus leads the way because He knows where He is going and He knows where we are going, and He knows what lies ahead for Him and for us. “Christ leads us through no darker rooms than He has gone before.” (more…)

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Text: John 3:14 / Numbers 21:4-9
Date: Lent IV + 3/22/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

“Take the snakes away,” the people said. “Lord, take the snakes away,” prayed Moses on behalf of the people. But the Lord didn’t take the snakes away. Instead He gave them the antidote for the deathly venom, if they would only look and receive and believe and be saved. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived. But why go to all that trouble? Why not just take the snakes away?

‘Been bitten, lately? (more…)

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Date: Lent I + 3/1/09
Text: Mark/Matthew Temptation account
Guest Preacher: Rev. Thomas W. Dunseth, Deaf Missions
Ephphatha Deaf Missions; Detroit, Macau (China)

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Text: Genesis 3:19
Date: Ash Wednesday + 2/25/09

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These words summon us to the holy season of Lent. These forty days are to be marked by “remembering.” Specifically, we are to remember two things. First, our mortality and sin—both our solidarity with the whole human race all the way back to Adam, and our personal participation in the death march called sin as it continues to work itself out in our lives. Dust recalls God’s ownership of our very lives, and it also recalls the price of our sin and separation from God—the dust of death. But if that were all we are to remember, what point would there be in it? This season is for Christians, and for those preparing to enter the Holy Christian Church through Holy Baptism. Therefore, having remembered our need—our need for the forgiveness of sin, life and salvation—we are to remember all the more the history of what God has done for us and for the whole world in the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. (more…)

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Text: John 12:12-19
Date: Palmarum Sunday + 4/1/07

      He arrived just as he was supposed to arrive, just as it had been written by the prophet Zechariah. “Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” (Zech. 9:9). So here he is. And at first it appeared that they remembered this prophesy because they went out and greeted him with the kingly shout, the words of the Psalm, “Hosanna!” that is, “save now,” “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Psalm 118:25-26). They even called him “the King of Israel!” But John tells us it wasn’t a cry of faith at all. He tells us “His disciples didn’t understand these things at first.” John should know for he was there. Furthermore he says the real reason why the crowds went to meet him was only because they had heard of his most incredible and final miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead. So it had to be either faith in the Word of God being fulfilled or some other enthusiasm at work because Jesus looked like anything but a king. Earthly kings come riding into town on a powerful galloping steed with impressively dressed saddles, girths and browbands, accompanied by a military entourage, with uplifted fist receiving the accolades of the crowds. Well, the accolades were there, but Jesus rode slowly, bareback on a young donkey of all things, not even acknowledging the crowds. “Lowly,” “humble,” that’s the way of the kingdom of God.
(more…)

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Text: John 8:42-59
Date: Lent V + 3/25/07

     There are three main things in this Gospel appointed for Judica, the Fifth Sunday in Lent sometimes called Passion Sunday. And they are these: “Whoever is of God hears the words of God;” “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death;” and “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” It starts with the importance of hearing God’s Word. For apart from God’s Word the inherent disorder, chaos and confusion of life as we know it only increases and we remain only in the realm and under the control of the devil. The devil, being “a murderer from the beginning, having nothing to do with the truth, the liar and father of lies,” convinces us of the lie that we are hopeless against the inequities and unfairness of life, and worse, that we go down to our last gasp of death cursing God for his righteous decree that the wages of sin is death. Our only hope, then, is not the devil nor in any power in ourselves, but only in God if, indeed, God is at all for us, in our corner; only if it is true as he said through the prophet Ezekiel, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” [Ezekiel 33:11 (ESV)], and, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). It is only in Jesus Christ that the sinner can discover that God is love, that He is for us and not against us, that He has not written His world off in wrath but, rather, has written His Word in grace and in the flesh and blood of the Incarnate Word, Jesus our Savior for the life of the world. (more…)