Month: November 2011

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He Came Down to Save

Text: Isaiah 64:1-9
Date: Advent I + 11/27/11

“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down,” the prophet Isaiah leads God’s people to pray. But it is only when God seems far away, out of reach in the distant heavens that the heavens need to be rent, that the separation between us and God needs to be torn apart. Because we cannot hope to ascend to God, He must “come down” to us. I used to wonder why, on the First Sunday in Advent, we would hear the Gospel reading that “belonged” to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. After more than four decades I think I finally figured it out. On Palm Sunday, when we begin Holy Week, we are the more aware of our hypocrisy (or should be!), the hypocrisy of our, first, cheering with the crowds, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed,” indeed (Mark 11:9-10). But then in a matter of days we hear our voices joining the same crowds jeering, “Crucify him, crucify him” (Mark 15:13-14). But the Hosanna cheer and cry and the words of blessing are appropriate at every Sunday eucharist and throughout our lives especially as they express the heart of repentance and faith and hope in God. Today we begin a new Church Year with that season of hopeful anticipation. Continue reading “He Came Down to Save”

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Your Turn

Text: Matthew 25:31-46
Date: Last Sunday of the Church Year + Proper 29 + 11/20/11

On the Last Sunday of the Church Year we are interested in “the bottom line,” the answer to the question, “what’s it all about?” It is another way to ask about our destiny, the End Times, the Last Day, the Day of Judgment. Continue reading “Your Turn”

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Get Ready

Text: Matthew 25:14-30
Date: Pentecost XXII + Proper 28 + 11/13/11

It is the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, the next-to-last Sunday of the Church Year. As you would expect, therefore, the lectionary readings have become particularly urgent concerning “the times and the seasons” and especially the last day of the Lord when He will come, as St. Paul said today, “like a thief in the night” (1 Thess 5:1-2).

The clouds of judgment gather,
The time is growing late;
Be sober and be watchful,
Our judge is at the gate. (LSB 513) Continue reading “Get Ready”

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Rest

Text: Matthew 5:1-12
Date: All Saints’ Day (Observed) + 11/6/11

All Saints’ Day originally came to be when the calendar began to be too full of names of those Christians who have died and gone before us through death and the grave into the everlasting arms of our Savior. We continue to remember the most famous of our forebears, the prophets and apostles and martyrs and teachers of the Church from Biblical times even to our own more local saints as we observed last Sunday on the 200th birthday of Pastor C. F. W. Walther. Then we remember the even more local saints as we may speak of a sainted pastor or teacher, mother or father, wife or husband, sister or brother, or (God have mercy) son, daughter or grandchild. It is only natural, good and right that we remember those who have gone before us with the sign of faith on the anniversary of their death (their “heavenly birthday”) and more often. Because in the early centuries the numbers increased into multitudes, All Saints’ Day became the day dedicated to the remembrance of, you guessed it, all who have gone before us. In German Lutheran or Evangelical tradition the day has become known as Totenfest, “toten” meaning death. Continue reading “Rest”