Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church  for Trinity Sunday, June 12. The text was  John 16:12-15. Our gospel sounds more like Pentecost than for Holy Trinity Sunday. The gist is Jesus tells his disciples who the Holy Spirit is and what the Spirit does in relationship to the Father, himself and the church. We have all three members of the trinity involved in this passage. Jesus speaks of the Father, he is the Son, and we see the Holy Spirit’s work. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (v. 13) is the key to this text. This is not general truth, like the puffy clouds are cumulus clouds. He assumes the role of revealer of God, the Truth, as Jesus has made him known. As the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit is the Great Guide. The word for “guide” is a compound word from “way or road” and “to lead.” Literally, it means “lead in the way.” He guides God’s people, the church, into all truth. The Father speaks to Jesus, who speaks to the Sp

This is the sermon for St. Timothy Lutheran Church that I will be preaching tomorrow. The gospel text is Matthew 28:16-20. If you want to see a video of the sermon, press here .  Do you feel a bit off-balance? We just get used to all the news being about COVID 19 and now there is another hot topic. As Bishop John Macholz recently wrote: The  killing of  George  Floyd by policemen in Minneapolis continues to play itself out across my television screen as I watch it over and over again…out of a  place of deep sorrow and disbelief that this has happened again. Only a few days ago we watched videos regarding the killing of Ahmaud Arbery that took place in February and … only now being brought to light. And after Ahmaud Abery there was Breonna Taylor and last October … Atatiana Jefferson and before her was…a  long, long list of black and brown people whose  lives were needlessly taken by violence in a society that continues to not only remain broken but break even further. It may