Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the sermon I preached two Sundays ago, 1/10/16 at St.Timothy http://www.sttimothybemus.com/Church/Home.html and St. Mark Lutheran Churches . The scripture text is Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 . We celebrated the Baptism of Our Lord.  Today we celebrate the baptism of Our Lord Jesus. In Luke's gospel, the actual baptism itself is rather downplayed. Greater emphasis is placed on the events that took place surrounding Jesus' baptism. The purpose of this passage is to introduce and begin to answer the question of Jesus' identity and mission as well as to highlight the work of the Holy Spirit in anointing people for ministry. The passage itself is presented to us as a revelatory drama of Jesus' post baptismal experience. This drama consists of three parts: the heavens are opened, the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus and there is a voice from heaven. In part 1 of our drama-the heavens are opened. Here Luke repeats end time imagery about the coming of the Messia...

This past Sunday, 1/3, we observed Epiphany. I preached this sermon at St. Timothy Lutheran Church and St. Mark Lutheran Church. The scripture text is Matthew 2:1-12   What in the world is Epiphany and why do we celebrate it? Epiphany means "showing forth." It names the day that the church tells Matthew's story of the magi from foreign lands who follow the light of the star and "see" Jesus as Christ. This is important because this acknowledges that the greatest gift given by the God who comes down to be with His people, is to be shared by Jew and Gentile alike. The irony here is the wise men who were not Jewish scholars were the first to recognize the sign of the star in the sky and the importance of its meaning. It's commonly believed that the star would have also been seen in Jerusalem and Judea but somehow the Jewish scholars were asleep in the temple. Even if they saw it, they either ignored it or didn't look in the Jewish scriptures to find ...

This is the message I shared with St.Timothy Lutheran Church and St. Mark Lutheran Church on Christmas Eve, 12/24/15. The scripture text is Luke 2:1-14. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go..." Do we really miss the snow? Ray's hoping for orange trees to start sprouting in the front yard of the parsonage any day now. This is such a wonderful time of the year as we gather with family and friends. We love the music and the food and all those nostalgic things that make this time of year Christmas. Bethlehem and all its excitement with Jesus' birth seems far removed from our reality. We live in a world of materialism in which Christmas advertising begins around Halloween. By the time Christmas has arrived, we are already Christmased out. But don't let that stop you. There is good news here for us in tonight's gospel reading. Mary and Joseph too went home--they went to Bethlehem because of a decree issued by the...