Claimed, gathered and sent

  This is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church on Dec. 8. The text is Luke 3:1-6 .   Do you ever wonder who is who as you hear a list of strange names like the one in today’s gospel? What a cast of characters! All the important people are represented, the largest group being the political leaders, followed by religious leaders.  Last of all is John the Baptist. He was the son of a priest named Zechariah. Reading about John, we discover that he too was miraculously conceived and God made great promises about his life through prophets in the temple.  Luke did not set the births of John the Baptist and Jesus in some mythological never-never land, but took care to place them in a specific historical period (during the reigns of Augustus Caesar and Herod the Great). Here, thirty years later, as their ministries begin, he describes the historical situation at length. Perhaps he is not only making sure that the Word of God comes into particular places and t...

This is the message I preached Sunday, Dec. 5, 2021 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Luke 3:1-6 . Who is this John and what is his message and what does it have to do with me? Every second Sunday of Advent we meet up again with John. He is prominent in all four gospels. What   more is there that we can possibly learn from him? What does God want to say to us this week, in this place, through this gospel passage?   Let us pray. Lord, when we encounter the same characters at the same time each year, we may groan, “Not John the Baptist again!” Open our eyes, our hearts and minds to all you have to reveal to us today through your word. Amen.   Luke begins his story of John by anchoring it in time and space, in history. We have a proverbial gallery of luminaries, first the secular, political rulers, then the religious leadership.   However, after our list of luminaries, we find these words, "…the word of God came to John son of Ze...

This is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church on Sunday, 12/9/18. The text was Luke 3:1-6 We have in the very beginning of today’s gospel a list of 7 rulers of that time. Imagine these verses as a movie in which we see the known world, the center of which is Rome and we slowly zoom in – but not where we expect. Now , who of all of these does God choose? Emperor Tiberius-nope Pontius Pilate—nope Herod-nope Philip-nope Lysanius-nope Anna’s and Caiaphas-nope John…yep…wait…who? Once again, God chooses the most unlikely candidate in the most unlikely place. After all, Judea, in which were Jerusalem and Bethlehem, was a mere backwater of the world and John the Baptist was a nobody. But what God is doing through him will affect everything—even up to the emperor. In this list, we also have a foreshadowing of what was to come in Jesus’ confrontations with Annas and Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate. This, after all, is the world of a God who is completely involved i...

Here are some thoughts I shared regarding this Sunday's gospel for Advent 2.  This was sent to the people of St. Timothy .  SCRIPTURE FOCUS Gospel: Luke 3:1-6 1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene,  2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.  3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,  4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.   5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;   6 and all f...

This is the message I shared on Sunday, 12/6 with St. Timothy Lutheran Church and St. Mark Lutheran Church. At St. Timothy, two young men had their first communion. They are referenced in the message. The gospel is Luke 3:1-6. Is it just me, or do you hear music in your head when you hear these words, "Prepare the way of the Lord?" For some of us, it's from Handel's Messiah. Others may think of Godspell or some other music. After hearing this list of names that are foreign, it's nice to land on a phrase that resonates with us. We know some of these names--like Pontius Pilate and Herod. It seems Luke floods us with a list of the high and mighty of that day. There are a couple of reasons for that. Luke is careful to place John in secular history as well as religious history. Luke supplies these names to set the time of Jesus' life and death in a historical framework. We know when John began his ministry and from that, when Jesus' ministry began. I...