Category: Epiphany Sermons

Text: Mark 1:29-39
Date: Epiphany V + 2/8/15

This is the sixth time we are hearing from only the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel this year. And we would hear the remaining paragraphs of this chapter if the Epiphany season were one week longer this year. Here we see Jesus beginning His earthly ministry. Baptized by John and tempted in the wilderness (of which we will hear on the First Sunday in Lent), Jesus is introduced to us by Mark as the incarnate Son of God who comes preaching, teaching, healing and casting out demons. This is what Jesus came to do, namely, to restore the fallen, dying, sinful creation to God’s original design, holy, pure and living. But this was only the beginning. Continue reading “Unwearied Grace”

Text: Mark 1:23-28
Date: Epiphany IV + 2/1/15

Conversion from sinner to saint, enlightenment from unbeliever to believer happens in different ways to different individuals; different yet the same. No one has the ability to come to faith in God on your own. God must first come to us. And He has. When He sent His Son into our flesh, being born of a woman, the ancient doors of heaven, previously barred because of our sin and death, were flung open. In Jesus of Nazareth the heavens are opened to all. Christmas was such a joyful event that even the world gets into the act to a certain extent. We’ve seen those doors dramatically ripped open at our Lord’s baptism, the Spirit resting on Him and the voice of the Father from above. Today we see the awesome power of the open door of heaven as Jesus casts out an unclean spirit from a man; a pretty dramatic event if you stop to ponder each detail. St. Mark tells us how the people at first “were astonished” at Jesus’ teaching. Now he says “they were all amazed,” asking, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” Continue reading “Nothing New”

Text: Mark 1:14-20
Date: Epiphany III + Conversion of St. Paul + 1/25/15

Interesting studies at this year’s Theological Symposia at our Fort Wayne, Indiana seminary! We heard presentations thinking about “culture,” and specifically the culture we find ourselves in today. Things change! So we gather here today to hear how the Gospel of Jesus Christ (“the same yesterday, today and forever,” Heb 13:8) and our call to follow Him and to testify or witness to Him to the world that is now around us is, on the one hand, the same as it always was, and yet how that call and following and testimony and witness and the world has changed and is changing. Continue reading “The Heavenly Call”

Text: Matthew 17:1-9
Date: Transfiguration + 3/2/14

“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5). “But no! Wait a minute! That light! It’s too bright! That light is scary!” Like Isaiah cringing in the corner of the temple when he saw the Lord, so the three disciples on the holy mount fell in fear with their faces to the ground. But the title of our consideration this morning is from the old fifteenth century hymn for the Transfiguration Caelestis Formam Gloriae translated O Wondrous Type! O Vision Fair in our hymnal. Another translation is:

An image of that heavenly light,
the goal the Church keeps ay in sight….[1]

Or by John Neale:

A Type of those bright rays on high
For which the Church hopes longingly….[2]
A wondrous “type” is any earthly person or image pointing to a greater heavenly reality, “those Old Testament persons, institutions, or events that have a divinely intended function of prefiguring the eschatological age inaugurated by Christ.”[3] “No,” Jesus says to the terrified disciples, “Rise, and have no fear.” Why not? Because “when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.” Continue reading “O Wondrous Type”

Text: Matthew 5:33-48
Date: Epiphany VII + 2/23/14

Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. We have been hearing our Lord Jesus Christ revealing that light, the gospel, the heart of God’s good and wise Law in His words on this mountain. Today He leaves us with the challenge “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The word He uses here doesn’t mean flawless or sinless, however. Teleioi. It is the same word He will use as His last word on the cross, tetelestai, “it is finished” (John 19:30). So here He is saying of you, you must be finished, completed, made whole. It is the present tense of our daily sanctification just as St. Paul wrote, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). The writer of the letter to the Hebrews uses the same word when he encourages us saying, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:1-2). So today Jesus is speaking about your new person, the new Adam which is perfect because it is the perfect Christ living in you. Continue reading “Christ the Perfecter”

Text: Matthew 5:21-32
Date: Epiphany VI + 2/16/14

“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Is. 2:5). That walk and that light begins, says St. Matthew, with the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” says Jesus as He begins the sermon with the Beatitudes. At first it sounds so nice, so comforting. But all too soon it begins to sound more like condemning Law, demands laid down as qualifications for entry into the Kingdom of God. It sounds like Law because our first reaction is to despair, for we are not and cannot adequately be “poor in spirit,” “meek,” “merciful” or “pure in heart.” We know our sin and weakness. But through these very same words the light of the Lord shines as Jesus reveals that these are not qualities expected of you but qualities given you by a gracious and merciful God, by faith, faith in Jesus, Jesus Christ the Revealer. Continue reading “Christ the Revealer”

Text: Matthew 5:13-16
Date: Epiphany V + 2/9/14

As we continue to encourage each other on our journey of faith and life, saying, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord,” suddenly today Jesus stops, turns to us and counters, saying, “You are the light!” Today God’s Word wants to turn you into a “Lib.” No not a political or social “liberal” but a disciple of Christ the Liberator. On the one hand, by our baptism into Christ and by faith in Him alone we have been liberated from sin and death and have the sure promise of resurrection and eternal life. On the other hand we are called to live as if we have been liberated, no longer enslaved to sin. St. Paul urges us on as he wrote to the Ephesians, saying, “this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:17-24). Continue reading “Christ the Liberator”

Text: Matthew 4:12-25
Date: Epiphany III + 1/26/14

Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. But what or who is that light? It is Christ. It is Jesus—Him who at Christmas the prophet and the Evangelist had us call Emmanuel, God with us. Continue reading “Christ the Light”

Text: 1 Corinthians 1:2
Date: Epiphany II + 1/19/14

We have celebrated the incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the arrival of the Son of God in our flesh and blood. In His Baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River He thereby intimately identified with us sinners thus beginning His salvific journey. As with two of John’s disciples to begin with Jesus has also come to us and invited us to follow Him. In the beginning of that following we, as with the first disciples, are mysteriously, maybe even unknowingly as with infant baptism, drawn to the Savior even though we don’t know completely what it will mean to be his follower, his disciple. Continue reading “Called to be Saints”

Text: Genesis 1:1-5
Date: The Baptism of Our Lord + Epiphany I X 1/8/12, 1/12/14

“The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters” (Ps 29:3). Another psalm says, “When you send forth your Spirit, they are created” (Ps 104:30). Today we are called to attend to the Voice, the Waters, the Spirit, and creation. When Jesus, the Word of God from the beginning, stood in the water of the Jordan, He set apart all water so that when the Word is in the water of Holy Baptism we are born again, created anew.

At creation the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, “hovered over the face of the waters” while “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep” (Gen 1:2-3). The creation of the universe, of “the heavens and the earth,” took place at the mere urge and will of the goodness of God. Then, at the speaking of God, “And God Said,” time was created first as, without source of a sun, light and darkness mysteriously alternated. God so loved the world that He declared it all good. So is the mystery of the creation of all things, the Spirit, the Voice and the waters.

The Holy Spirit hovered over waters again, over the face of the Jordan River, and descended on Jesus of Nazareth at His baptism by John. And there again was a voice from heaven. A new creation was thus inaugurated to replace, or rather, renew the old that had become disjointed, disfigured, corrupted, sick and dying of sin, for God still so loved the world. Jesus’ baptism was to fulfill all righteousness. It was to take His place, shoulder to shoulder along side of us in this world as our substitute, as our Savior. As on the evening and the morning of Day One of creation God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, so on this day, God said, “You are my beloved Son” and the redemption, the recreation of the world was begun.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters, and when He sends forth His Spirit, creation happens.

God’s act of creation was an act of pure grace reflecting His very character. Not only was the light “good,” even the darkness was good. After creating time, over six days God ordered the elements and then vegetation, sun, moon and stars, living creatures of the air and the sea and everything that creeps on the ground and finally man. And the thing is, first, it all happened by His mere speaking things into existence and, second, it all was very good.

Even after the fall into sin, however, much of the goodness of God’s handiwork remains. The main difference now is rebellious, destructive, corrosive evil and sin defaces and destroys, infects and kills. There were no cemeteries before sin entered the world. Now they are piled on top of each other the world over. All have sinned therefore all die. But death was not in God’s original plan and creation of grace. Still God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt 5:45); “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people” (Fourth Petition). But, after all, “life is more than food, and the body more than clothing” (Lk 12:23).

Because of sin now darkness is where evil hides. Because of sin we have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:25). We confuse God with His creation, life is emptied of the Spirit and we do not hear the Voice, the life-giving Word of God.

When the voice spoke over the waters of the Jordan that day and the Spirit descended on the Son of God in the water, the trajectory was set for Him and for us. For Jesus it meant, first, the defeat of the devil’s temptation by the power of the Spirit and the Word. Then He preached and proclaimed good news, “liberty to captives and recovering of sight to the blind” (Lk 4:18-19). In His preaching, teaching and healing He brought the recreating grace of God to hungry, dying souls. Finally, He destroyed death itself as He allowed it to win over Him on the cross and in the tomb. Yet because of His pure holiness He nevertheless burst forth in glory from the tomb thus ending death’s reign. Now all who believe in Him are delivered from death to eternal life.

And how are we to believe in Him? There is no philosophy, theory or myth concerning the beginning of faith. Only mystery. Faith is itself the creation of God when the Holy Spirit hovers over baptismal waters and the voice says you are God’s beloved. You do not claim God as much as He claims you, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” In Christ not only the seven days of God’s original creation is redeemed but also you have come to the eighth day, the eternal day, the day of resurrection, light and life. For, it is “according to his promise that we are now waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13; Rev 21:1).

The voice of the Lord is over the many waters: at creation, at the Jordan River, at the font of your new birth. When God sends forth His Spirit, creation happens. Praise God for His good gift of life—created, restored, to be resurrected by grace. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.