Text: Matthew 16:13-19
Date: Sts. Peter & Paul, Apostles Day + 6/29/14
What a change! What a change for the man named Saul to suddenly, miraculously change from being a leading persecutor of the Church to an apostle and preacher of Jesus and leading evangelist to the Gentiles. We have heard that he had to undergo a certain amount of examination and acceptance by the Church in Jerusalem but finally was accepted. Continue reading “Preaching Jesus”
With Paul Manz, Organ Lofts of Europe tour, 1971
Text: Matthew 10:5a, 21-33
Date: Proper 7A – Pentecost II + 6/22/14
The season of the Time of the Church, these green Sundays after Pentecost, picks us up today with proper 7 and then throws us right into the struggle of living the faith in the Church Militant. The title “Church Militant” refers to what we’re going through right now, living by faith and not by sight, living, as Luther put it in his famous hymn, “though devils all the world should fill.” We are encouraged in our struggle, however, by our unity with the Church Triumphant, those saints who have gone before us, we therefore being “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” as the letter to the Hebrews says it, cheering us on as it were to “run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:1-2). In the Church Militant we live by faith on the promises of God still in the midst of a world not only separated from God by sin but actively at enmity with and antagonistic toward God their enemy and aimed at those who claim to believe and represent God, aimed at us. As St. Paul says today, the world and those who belong to it let sin “reign” in their mortal bodies, to make them obey their passions (Rom 6:12). The world of unbelief does not understand that “the wages of sin is death,” and does not believe or know that “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). The world doesn’t think of sin but that death is just a normal part of life and that “eternal life” or salvation is had not as a free gift but as something you must earn by your good works. Continue reading “Our Light, Our Shield, Our Peace”
Text: Matthew 28:19
Date: The Holy Trinity + 6/15/14
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. What? What is in the name of the Trinity? Who? Who is in the name? What’s missing in that oft repeated sentence is a subject and a verb. Therefore it is an incomplete sentence. Many a pastor has felt it necessary to “remedy” this by saying something to the effect, “We make our beginning in the name….” Well, in a certain way they’re right. Left unsaid, however, is our beginning of what? So the idea still remains incomplete. Continue reading “An Incomplete Sentence”
Text: John 7:37-39
Date: The Day of Pentecost + 6/7/14
This is the day we celebrate the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’ disciples on the Day of Pentecost. To be sure the Holy Spirit had already worked repentance and faith in their hearts. They had come to Jesus; or rather Jesus had come to them and called them to follow Him and believe in Him. They had already experienced the working of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, minds and lives. But now, on the Day of Pentecost, they were to receive the Spirit for a larger purpose, the purpose of being enabled to witness, to testify, to evangelize, to preach and to teach others of Jesus Christ. How many others? As Jesus said at His Ascension, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Like tsunami waves in the ocean that witness, that Gospel has come to our shores, our families and our hearts. In other words this event extends to this very day. In this sense we could say, today we celebrate the birthday of The Holy Church Throughout the World. Continue reading “Rivers of Living Water”
Text: Acts 1:12-14
Date: Easter VII + 6/1/14
This is that “strange” Sunday between our Lord’s Ascension into heaven and His sending of the Holy Spirit ten days later on the Day of Pentecost. We return to the upper room with the disciples, the same room in which Jesus washed their feet, predicted the betrayal of Judas, and instituted the sacrament of His body and blood ending with His “High Priestly Prayer” which we heard as today’s Gospel reading. The common theme of today’s readings is the Lord’s prayer for His disciples, “that they may be one” (John 17:11) and St. Luke’s observation in our first reading that “all these (were of) one accord,” “devoting themselves to prayer.” Continue reading “All With One Accord”
