Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the message I preached on Sunday, 11/15 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church and St. Mark Lutheran Church. The text is Mark 13:1-8.  Our world seems to have gone right off the rails. Crazy and awful things are happening everywhere; we have massive swings in the weather, huge hurricanes and typhoons, a giant el nino in the Pacific, unprecedented climate change and upheaval in the middle east;   the latest of which is the 3 simultaneous terror attacks last Friday in Paris, France. When we see such images, don't we sometimes think, "Here we go again. When will the madness stop?"   It seems that today's gospel reading with its apocalyptic overtones is exactly what we need to hear. Apocalyptic describes the style of writing where the heavenly and earthly worlds seem fused. It's like the curtain in a theater being drawn back--and suddenly we see things that until now were hidden from view. Imagine a cosmic curtain, drawn back by an angel of God, that suddenl...

This is the message I preached last Sunday, 11/8 at St. Timothy and St. Mark Lutheran Churches. The text was 1 Kings 17:8-16. Fear is a powerful motivation in our world. Fear is used by politicians to obtain our votes, by the media to get our attention, by advertisers to sell us what we don't need. It's even used by TV evangelists to get our donations. What are some of the fears we face? One is scarcity, others could be hunger, thirst, loneliness, infirmity, homelessness and war. Scarcity can be described as the fear that we won't have enough or won't get our share. This false belief that having more money and stuff will save us, actually makes us slaves. Often, having less can free us to live by faith. The book of 1 Kings narrates history with the theology that God will bless the righteous and punish those who are unfaithful to the covenant. This is the promise that God will be the God of the Israelites and they will serve him and him alone. The prophe...

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...