Month: September 2008

Text: Matthew 21:23-32
Date: Pentecost XX (Proper 21) + 9/28/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

This Gospel today couldn’t have happened at a better time when candidates are bending and twisting their words in order to lure the larger vote totals in their favor in the up coming elections. Moistening the finger and checking which way the winds of political opinion polls are blowing is not the invention of twenty-first century or even American society. This parable, spoken in the Jerusalem temple in the very Holy Week when Jesus would be crucified, spoken to those who would turn the tide of popular opinion in a few short days from “Hosanna” to “Crucify Him” appears on the surface to speak of only two responses to God’s offer of salvation, either one of saving faith of of damning rejection of Jesus. But, as we shall see, there are two other unspoken responses possible. Continue reading “According to the Latest Poll….”

Text: Matthew 20:1-16
Date: Pentecost XIX (Proper 18) + St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist Day + 9/21/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Peace be to you and grace from Him who freed us from our sins.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

As a preacher myself, I don’t get to hear a lot of other preaching as you would probably guess. And when a preacher does get to sit and listen to a sermon preached by someone else, you can imagine the temptation to criticize the sermon along the way (I wonder where he’s going with that, I would have said such and such, I would have said it this way or that, I wouldn’t have said that at all). Preachers need to learn how to listen to sermons just like everyone else—as a workshop of the Holy Spirit working through and in and around the particular words preached to speak to people in His own way.

Last week I got to listen to a sermon on videotape. The preacher was filling in for someone else and I don’t know his name. It was Father’s Day. So the sermon, based, I think, in the Old Testament reading for the day, was basically God’s design and advice for how to be a good father. The further the sermon went, however, I became increasingly disturbed because I began to lose hope that he was actually going to get around to preaching the gospel. As practical, helpful and understandable as it was, he never did preach the gospel. As close as he got was God as the example of fatherhood. I even began to feel a little guilty that I’ve never preached a sermon as practical and as helpful as that. But that’s because I’ve always and still believe that I am called to preach the gospel. The gospel is not just good advice or models of virtue given for us to imitate. The gospel is the word given only for people who have and admit that they have screwed up, blown it, failed, who have sinned and lost, or nearly lost, all hope. Continue reading “That's Not Fair!”

Text: Matthew 18:21-35
Date: Pentecost XVIII (Proper 19), Holy Cross + 9/14/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Peace be to you and grace from Him who freed us from our sins. In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

So central to the Christian faith is the forgiveness of sins that it is the one petition in the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus expands on in the Sermon on the Mount, saying, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14-15). That strange statement is not to say that the forgiveness of your sins depends upon your forgiving others but rather that if you do not know how to forgive others it can be questioned whether you know or possess God’s forgiveness at all. Continue reading “Forgive and Forget?”

Text: Matthew 18:1-20
Date: Pentecost XVII (Proper 16) + 9/7/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Peace be to you and grace from Him who freed us from our sins. In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.

The lectionary has us skip a chapter of Matthew’s Gospel because we celebrate and hear Matthew chapter 17 with its account of the Transfiguration of Our Lord on the last Sunday after the Epiphany each year just before entering the time of Lent. So the last thing we heard was the mighty confession of Peter upon which Jesus said He would build His Church, and then Jesus’ prediction of His coming suffering, death and resurrection, and the call and invitation for anyone who would be a Christian, who would “come after me,” as He said, to deny self, take up your cross and be following Him.

That coming after and following Jesus implies that He is leading us somewhere and that we are not there yet. The Christian life is a journey marked and experienced and recognized not by signs of accomplishment, glory, triumph or success but by the way of the Cross, of suffering, of faith, endurance and hope. It is, as Luther put it, an existence of “already, not yet.” The way of faith is a dangerous way because, all along the way, it is possible for you to fall away, to lose your place in the kingdom. Continue reading “Conversion”