Claimed, gathered and sent

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, August 25, at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text is John 3:1-10. What is there about the night that invites questions and concerns? We lie in bed and thoughts swirl around in our heads—all the things we worry about. Did I turn the light off in the kitchen? Then the ponderings morph into more serious issues. My friend with the recurring cancer—will she be alright? What about all the sickness going around? As we age, will we outlive our money? Are we worrying too much or too little? It was the night that called Nicodemus with his questions to go to Jesus. In the dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus, the two are just not on the same page, but appear to be talking past each other. Nicodemus is thinking and speaking concretely, while Jesus is responding spiritually, talking about what the kingdom of God looks like. It’s a birth from the top down, being “born from above” (v. 7). This is the formation of an alternative society, re-defini...

  This is the sermon I preached on August 5 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Revelation 3:15-16. Today's reading from Revelation leaves out a lot, such as which church Jesus is talking to. It is the church of Laodicea, which in that time meant not one group of believers that gathered, but all of them in the area. A letter such as this would go to one church, then the next, and so on until all the churches had an opportunity to read it.  In Revelation, Jesus has messages for seven churches. Only one of the seven, the church in Philadelphia, has no negative remarks made to it. The others are all a mix, except for Laodicea. Jesus addresses the last of the churches, and there is nothing positive to be said about them. Jesus' words to his church in Laodicea sound harsh, and they are. But we need a bit of explanation about the matter of being lukewarm, not hot or cold.  We tend to think of these words in terms of one’s enthusiasm for Christ and the gospel. However,...