Author: Al

Text: Matthew 22:15-22
Date: Pentecost XXIII (Proper 24) + 10/19/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

It’s not enough, I suppose, that you have to put up with the daily barrage of political ads on TV and radio as we enter the final couple of weeks before election day, but that you then come to church and hear of a first century political group using similar hypocritical tactics trying to catch Jesus in a “Gotcha” moment to trip Him up. Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” And I suppose he could have just stopped there. I mean that’s where we usually stop, isn’t it, when we quote this verse in daily conversation? when we put the final touches on form 1040 and enclose the check, resigning ourselves to the fact muttering with a sigh, “render unto Caesar.”

The subject was taxes. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” ‘Seems simple enough. But there was more to it than that. There was more to the question and there was more to Jesus’ answer. And let me tell you right up front that those who want to draw a clear, clean line between the sacred and the secular are going to be frustrated. The coins belong to Caesar, so render unto Caesar. But it all—including the coins and Caesar—belongs to God, so render unto God. Life is not neatly divided between sacred and secular, but the secular is lived out within the sacred. Continue reading “Gotcha!”

Text: Matthew 22:1-14
Date: Pentecost XXII (Proper 23) + 10/12/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

This is a little bit of an unusual sermon because this is a little bit of an unusual text of scripture. Normally, though the two main messages we call Law and Gospel are intertwined and play off of one another in many and various ways, generally the Law part that unmasks us, that reveals our sin and our need for a Savior comes first so that the sermon ends with the Gospel part, God’s answer to our need. This text, however, the Parable of the Wedding Feast, while it seems to have a “happy ending” with the wedding hall filled with guests in verse 10, has an added post script, sort of like a “p.s.” at the end of a letter, ending our reading with a warning; actually a question because we’re not there yet, the stories of our lives are not completed yet, it is still possible for many to be added to the kingdom and it is still possible for you to fall away and to lose your salvation. I don’t know when the slang language of the street began using the prefix “dis” as shorthand for “disrespect,” but assuming you know that, the title of this sermon and the warning of this text is, simply, “Don’t ‘Dis’ the King.” Continue reading “Don't 'Dis' the King”

Text: Matthew 21:33-46
Date: Pentecost XXI (Proper 22) + 10/5/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

According to the Word of God we believe, teach and confess that each and every person is created by God. Oh, we know the human biological processes involved, and we cannot prove that there is some divine marker or evidence of God’s involvement. It is only because God Himself claims to be Creator that people who listen to God’s Word believe Him and claim that every individual, even those who deny it, or think it is somehow a matter of our “choice,” are, nevertheless, created by God.

Apart from God life can quickly be viewed as meaningless, a matter of chance or of only what you make it to be. But as soon as a person realizes God’s creative involvement, then comes the great question, “Why has God created me?” What is God’s purpose? What has God created you to be? And here we might think about vocation or our station in life whether that be as a child or a parent, a mother or father, a worker, a public servant, a physician, a musician…whatever. But underlying your vocation or station or situation in life is each and every person being a reflection of the glory of God. And so, regardless of our differences, every person is to reflect that relationship, as the catechism says it, of fear, love and trust in God above all things. Continue reading “What I Was Meant to Be”

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”

“Lord Over Death” by “the late” Rev. Allen D. Lunneberg

Text: Matthew 16:21-26
Date: Pentecost XVI + 8/31/08

In Saint Matthew’s Gospel we have seen Jesus bringing His disciples along the way to faith in Him by means of His teaching and His miracles. With every step forward He was revealing to them (and to us), little by little, the depth and the fullness of who He is and what He came to accomplish. On the basis of His words and works, thus far, when asked straight out, “who do you say that I am?” Peter confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16:16). It was a mighty confession of faith (and still is)—revealed to Peter (and to us) not by flesh and blood, that is, not by our puny mind’s logic or examination of the facts, but by the heavenly Father Himself, His Spirit working mightily through His Word. To call Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, is to acknowledge Him as God the Redeemer who has taken on our flesh and blood, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. To call Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, is to acknowledge that He came to usher in salvation in the Kingdom of God. To call Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, is to begin to understand the love of God for His world and everyone in it. But there’s more—because the salvation he came to bring us is for more than saving us from mere hunger as at the feeding of the 5,000, or from inclement weather as when He stilled the storm on the lake, or from sickness and suffering as with the daughter of the Canaanite woman, all of which is but the common lot of all in this sinful world. For, the love of God goes to the deepest recesses of our need. And that’s precisely the destination and destiny of the Christ, the Son of God. Continue reading “Lord Over Death”