Category: Festival Sermons

Text: Isaiah 40:1-5 (Luke 1:57-80)
Date: Nativity of St. John the Baptist + 6/24/12

Since today happens to be a special festival of the church year our lectionary insert turns our attention from the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost to The Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Again the church year attempts to imitate the exact amount of time in the historical record as John the Baptist was born six months before Jesus. So today is exactly six months before Christmas! Of course, as you may have noticed, not exactly! For this is the 24^th of June and Christmas is the 25^th of December. The best explanation of this I found lies in the supposedly Roman way of counting the calendar which proceeds backward from the “Kalends” or “first day” of the succeeding month. It was chosen to celebrate Christmas on Octavo Kalendas Januarii, or “the eighth day before the Kalends or first day of January.” Well then, St. John’s Nativity was put on the eighth day before the Kalends of July. The difference, of course, is, whereas there are thirty-one days in December there are only thirty days in June. So counting back eight days from July first brings us to today, June 24^th! (So what? So I just found that interesting, that’s all). Continue reading “A Voice Cries—a Little and a Lot”

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 200^th 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”

Text: Jude 3
Date: Written on Walther’s 200^th Birthday, 10/25/11 + Reformation Day (Observed) + 10/30/11

In this 494^th celebration of the 16^th century Conservative Reformation of the Church by Martin Luther, we do so this year with special attention given to him who is the founding father in the 19^th century of our confessional fellowship, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, on the 200^th birthday of Pastor Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther. He was not originally designated to be a leader by those who emigrated from Saxony in Germany to this country as was “Bishop” Martin Stephan. But he was blessed by God through his study of Scripture, Luther’s writings and the Lutheran Confessions and his own experience in the Germany in which he grew up, after Stephan’s demise to emerge as the one needed to gather the members of their community around the Word of God to settle the questions concerning their standing before God as faithful members of Christ’s Church on earth. He became pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Louis, Missouri, first president of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and first (and third!) president of (as we were originally called) The German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States (Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio und Andern Staaten). Continue reading “Truth”

Text: Acts 6-7
Date: St. Stephen, Martyr + Christmas I X 12/26/10
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

It may seem strange, even odd, that on only the second day of our joyful celebration of Christmas the liturgical calendar seems to want to dampen our spirits with three days marking the histories of the deaths, today the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr both in will and in deed, then tomorrow St. John, Apostle and Evangelist, a martyr only in will and not in deed as it is said he died a natural death in Ephesus ages 98 years, and finally The Holy Innocents, those baby boys in the region of Bethlehem who were murdered by Herod’s forces as he tried to wipe out the threatened rival called the newborn King of the Jews, martyrs all in deed though not will. However, as with the Church’s commemoration of all the saints, these days are said to be the actual day of their deaths, or, better, their “heavenly birthdays,” all of which, of course, preceded the Church’s choice of the twenty-fifth December for the celebration of the incarnation and birth of Christ. Yet whether by happenstance or some other plan this fact does call us to remember that the true celebration of Christmas, much less of any part or doctrine of the Christian Gospel, must be done in faith. Such faith needs to be confessed before one another and the world. And the record of the New Testament and the saints and martyrs teach us that such confession of faith will always be an offense and challenge to the world of people who do not accept salvation as a gift of God but prefer to attempt to be saved, if at all, by the accumulation of their own good works. Continue reading “Stephen, Full of Grace and Power”

Text: Revelation 7:15
Date: All Saints’ Day (Observed) + 11/7/10
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

I need to apologize, right off the bat. As I approached preparation for All Saints’ Day this year I checked my calendar and my sermon from last year and realized that at that time, Sunday, November 1, 2009, I hadn’t yet even given one thought to the possibility that I would be losing Alice in little more than a month. So this is the first All Saints’ Day following the reality that my dear wife is now among those safely sheltered in the presence of Christ. We heard Revelation 7:15 say of those who have gone before us, “they are before the throne of God…and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.” Continue reading “Sheltered by God's Presence”

Text: John 8:32
Date: Reformation Day + 10/31/10
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

On Reformation Day every year we celebrate the 16^th century awakening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ which had become grown over like a neglected lawn, grown over, defaced, covered up, even rejected by the confusion of Law and Gospel. Christianity was identified not by the freedom of the forgiveness of sins by God’s grace through faith in Christ alone but by the myriad of laws and rules one must follow and then never being sure that all of your sin has been atoned for. It took the angel of Revelation 14, a messenger of the eternal gospel in the person of the otherwise obscure Augustinian monk named Martin Luther to rediscover, publish and teach the true, pure Gospel. Contrary to uninformed opinion, Luther never intended to “start a new church,” but only to correct abuses, mow and trim the lawn so to speak, uncover and recover the Gospel. Admittedly, that meant eliminating things that were contrary to the pure Gospel. It meant some surgery deeper than many including the Pope were willing to undergo. Finally, Luther and his followers were left to believe and preach and teach officially rejected by the church. The so-called “Lutherans” continued to consider themselves good Catholics, even better Catholics. That’s when the old Catholic Church became the Roman Catholic Church. As long as any identified with the Pope in Rome, they remained apostate to the truth of the pure Gospel. Continue reading “Dare to be Lutheran”

Text: Matthew 5:1-12
Date: All Saints Day + 11/1/09
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI
In Memoriam: Ronald Archie Smith, August 12, 1939—June 11, 2009; Paul O. Manz, May 10, 1919—October 28, 2009.

“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. Continue reading “Superman”

Text: Romans 3:28
Date: Pentecost XXI + Reformation Sunday + 10/25/09
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

When the Apostle Paul wrote, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom. 3:28), he was speaking, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the whole Church of Jesus Christ. Now, on Reformation Day it’s too easy especially for Lutherans to attempt to confiscate or kid-nap these apostolic words to serve as a protest against other Christian denominations as if the Apostle were saying, “For we LUTHERANS hold this-and-that” over-against the Papacy on the far right or the Reformed on the far left. As true as that may be, there were no Lutherans or so-called “denominations” when Paul wrote those words. There were those already, however, who were allowing the innate legalism of our common, fallen, sinful nature and spiritual blindness to get in the way of the Gospel. The “we” in “we hold that one is justified by faith” are all those who hold to the pure, central Biblical doctrine of the Gospel of salvation, the justification of the sinner by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, apart from works of the law. This is no new teaching of the 16^th century but the apostolic Gospel from the beginning. Continue reading “This We Believe”

Text: Matthew 5:1-12
Date: All Saints’ Day (Observed) + 11/2/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Living in the northern hemisphere as we do, this time of year even meteorology and the changing weather help to turn our thinking and our mood to the subject of the end times—the end times of our lives, of our world and the only thing in God’s plan of salvation left to happen short of further conversions, as we confess of our Lord in the creed, “He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.” Maybe it is in part to encourage us to hang in there, to persevere and endure that, once a year, we pause to remember all those who have gone on before us with the sign of faith, all the saints who from their labors rest while we continue to feebly struggle. Some of the saints are well known and famous, many more are not. And as we imagine in our minds eye St. John’s vision of “a great multitude that no one could number…standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,” maybe we see some familiar faces among them, a departed mother or father, a departed child, brother, sister, uncle or aunt. I’m tempted to imagine also the faces of those who nobody but their angels have ever seen, those countless millions (!) never given the chance to live outside their own mother’s womb. As with the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, unwitting martyrs for Christ, who more than they are the “poor in spirit,” the “meek,” or those “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” who now are the possessors of the kingdom of heaven, the heirs of the new heavens and earth?

The saints are all those forever blest with the gift of eternal life and salvation. The eternal blessing of salvation is only for those who by faith before the world confess Christ as Lord and Savior. They are forever blest because the name of Jesus is forever blest—forever blest as the only “name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus is the key to understanding the blessedness of all saints and the blessed text from the Sermon on the Mount commonly called the Beatitudes, the Blessings. Continue reading “Forever Blest”

Text: Revelation 14:6-7
Date: Reformation Day (Observed) + 10/26/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Christians, at least traditionally or historically, do not call attention to themselves. We do not brag, we are to always take the humbler part. As St. Paul said it, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5). For instance, for this reason in church we rarely applaud the choir or the musicians (or the pastor, for that matter) for their part in the Divine Service (at least not right at that moment), because their part is not intended to be as much a performance for us as it is an extension of us in our worship and thanksgiving to God.

Nevertheless the tradition has been that we quite freely call attention to and brag about other people especially for their part or role in our common witness to and praise of Jesus Christ. Continue reading “That Highly Illumined, Angelic Man”