Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the message I preached Sunday, 5/22 at St. Timothy and St. Mark Lutheran Churches . The scripture text was  John 16:12-15 . Today’s gospel text made me scratch my head. Today, we celebrate the Holy Trinity, but this passage’s emphasis on the Holy Spirit sounds more like Pentecost. After digging a bit deeper, my light bulb came o n. Jesus taught his disciples about the role of the Holy Spirit in relationship to the Father and to himself. Just as the Christian life is all about relationship to God, relationship to each other and relationship to our community, so the Holy Trinity lives and works in relationship and community. In the final verses of today’s gospel, we get a clearer picture of this text’s bearing on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Jesus taught his disciples that the Holy Spirit does not act independently of the Father or the Son. The Holy Spirit glorifies Christ and only reveals what comes from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is n

 On Sunday, 11/29, we had something very different as part of our service at St. Timothy , there was a wedding. It fit in beautifully with worship. This is the sermon I preached on 11/29, the first Sunday of Advent. The text is 1Thessalonians 3:9-13 . The turkey was carved and eaten on Thanksgiving and we are still eating leftovers. Before we even ended that day of thanks, the world started nudging or should I say shoving us into Christmas shopping. But today is the first Sunday of Advent, a time that we pray along with Paul that all our waiting for God be characterized by lives of gratitude, love and blamelessness. What a sharp contrast to what our culture expects of us at this time of year: we came, we saw, we bought. The Thessalonian church, was living a life that sharply contrasted to the society around them. They were a young church and they found themselves in the midst of persecution for their faith. The believers had begun to follow a new King and were seekin