Claimed, gathered and sent

  This is the sermon I am preaching tomorrow at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text is Revelation 7:9-17 . I am a saint and so are you! Today is All Saints Day, ALL SAINTS : those who have gone before us into the church triumphant and those still living--all of you in our parking lot [toot your horns!] and in our sanctuary, and those unable to attend. Did you know you are saints? You may not feel like it and that’s ok. Martin Luther wrote that we are simultaneously saints and sinners, in other words, a mixed bag. That gives me hope when I mess up and helps me to not be so harsh in judging others. In John’s vision, we don’t find a mere handful of people standing before the throne of God and the Lamb. There is a “great multitude.” This multitude was innumerable, uncountable. Today, there are those whose faith is so exclusive, with such a judgmental God, that there are more outsiders than insiders, while our God of mercy and grace has this great throng before h...

This is the sermon I preached on All Saints' Sunday, 11/3/19 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Ephesians 1:11-23 . On All Saints’ [Sun]day, it is not just the saints of the church that we remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives who, one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, and whom we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own [says Frederick Buechner in The Sacred Journey]. Today’s second reading is telling us that all we need to know to be a saint we find in Christ. The fabulous, flowing language sweeps us away as we hear about all the wonderful things Paul asks God to do for the saints of Ephesus. This letter was meant to be circulated to other churches as well ...

  This is the message I shared with God's people at St. Timothy Lutheran Church and St. Mark Lutheran Church on Sunday, 11/5/17. The scripture text is Matthew 5:1-12 . Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints. We remember those who have gone before us in the faith as well as the living church of Christ, God’s saints today. Then we get to today’s gospel reading, the Beatitudes, the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It all sounds so beautiful and churchy, but what does it mean? What does it take to be a saint and to be among the blessed of the Beatitudes? In my pre-Lutheran days, we used to talk about the Beatitudes being be-atttidues. It was how we were supposed to be! Others put the values of the Beatitudes off into eternity because of their difficulty, while others strive and strive to obey them because they are Jesus’ commands. Luther’s view concerning the Sermon on the Mount is that it represents an impossible demand, much like th...

This is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy and St. Mark Lutheran Churches on Sunday, 11/1, All Saints' Day. The text was Rev. 21:1-6a. Our reading from Revelation is one of the last chapters in Revelation. It is like the unexpected twist at the end of a good mystery story. After all our talk and concern about "getting to heaven," in the end, heaven comes to us. Should that really surprise us? After all, in Christ "the Word became flesh and lived among us" (John 1:14). God is the God who always comes down. The book of Revelation uses apocalyptic or end time imagery to express the terrifying situation of the early churches at the time when the Roman Empire required the worship of the emperors as gods. It also conveys the faith that God is their ultimate salvation. God's action of renewal includes 3 aspects: Location--the new Jerusalem, the presence of God with God's people and the demise of death itself. The first aspect of God...