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)
Archive for the ‘Lent Sermons’ Category
The Temptation of Jesus
Sunday, March 1st, 2009Remember
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009Text: 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…)
Hosanna!
Sunday, April 1st, 2007Text: 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.
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Before Abraham Was, I AM
Sunday, March 25th, 2007Text: 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…)
Passover Prediction: A New Moses
Sunday, March 18th, 2007Text: John 6:1-15
Date: Lent IV + 3/18/07
This is Laetare Sunday, “Rejoice” Sunday: “Laetare Jerusalem,” “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her.” With the lightening of Lenten purple to a rejoicing rose hue, it is a little like a rest stop about halfway along the freeway in the long, forty-day penitential journey of Lent. We could also call it the original Mother’s Day according to a related ancient tradition that, on this day, Christians would make a return visit or pilgrimage to their “mother church” where they were baptized. More important than where you were baptized, however, is what happened then and there. For there and right then God claimed you for his own, washed you with his forgiveness, dressed you in the white robes of Christ’s own righteousness, made covenant-promises with you of eternal life and equipped you with the mighty gift and “shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” [Ephesians 6:16 (ESV)]. It is that struggle and battle of faith that we’ve been hearing about in these Sundays in Lent, beginning with the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, then the testing of the Canaanite Woman’s faith and, last week, the accusation that Jesus was in league with the devil. Today, with the account of the feeding of the 5,000 in the wilderness, we are to learn the real difference faith in Jesus makes both when we are confronted with our daily trials but especially when the question is about our eternal destiny. For a lot of times we have our priorities backwards, fretting more about daily bread and less about being saved from sin and death. As a wise Christian man once said, “Our chronic weakness is not that we expect too much from God, but that we trust him for too little.” (more…)
Life Line
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007Text: John 15
Date: Lent Midweek III + 3/14/07
We are still in the Upper Room with Jesus. It is the Passover, the night in which he was betrayed. But this has been a Passover like no other. Some mighty strange things have happened. First was the embarrassment of Jesus doing what we knew one of us ought to have done, washing the feet before coming to the table. Then were the usual prayers and the recitation of the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt and the Passover meal. But even then we are still wondering what Jesus meant when, before supper, he gave us the bread and said, “This is my body,” and, after supper, the third Passover cup of wine, saying, “This is my blood.” We still don’t know where Jesus had Judas Iscariot hurry off to. Then Jesus talked about going away somewhere where we can’t go. Anyway, when he said, “Rise, let us go from here” (John 14:31) we all got up from the table. But before we left he had a few more things to say as we stood around him.
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, even as Jesus had promised, some time later John wrote down Jesus’ words. We now hang on those words. We read and reread and hear them again and again, because he was there telling us ahead of time what our situation would be after his death. Two things. He told us how we must and would ever remain in connection with him and he with us and, secondly, how the world around us would continually be hostile toward us because of our connection and loyalty to him. (more…)