Claimed, gathered and sent

  This is the sermon I preached Sunday at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The gospel was Matthew 20:1-16 .  “It’s not fair!” How many of you, who are parents, aunts and uncles, anyone who has had anything to do with children, have heard these words. Our goal is to explain to the child why something can't be done. That may help, or it may not. God doesn’t play fair, at least by our standards. As we look at today’s difficult, startling parable, we may respond like the early workers, like children. Maybe we are those called later in the day, who embraced faith later in life.  There are two main parts of this parable: the hiring of the workers and then the paying of the workers. From the beginning, just the way the parable plays out lets us know that something is up.  For one thing, it would be unusual for a landowner himself to go hire workers. Why didn’t he send someone else? Throughout the day, he goes four times to hire workers. Palestinian workers in Palestine go to s...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, Sept. 17 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Matthew 18:21-35.  Last week’s gospel was about forgiveness, and I’m calling this week’s Forgiveness 2.0. Jesus focused last week on individual relationships and this week, he highlights forgiveness and the community of faith, beginning with fellow believers.  When Peter asks Jesus if seven times were enough to forgive a repeat offender who asks for mercy, he thought that was an incredibly large number. For the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, three was considered the most that forgiveness should be sought. Peter was being quite expansive with seven. How does Jesus respond? Seventy times seven! Yikes! That’s a new way to look at forgiveness in relationships.  Jesus tells a parable about what forgiveness looks like in the kingdom of God. In some ways, the king can be a picture of God. The first issue dealt with is the erasure of debt (v. 27). The slave had incurred an incredi...