Claimed, gathered and sent

 This is the message I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church and St. Mark Lutheran Church  this past Sunday, 1/24. The text is 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a .   Paul writes that we are all "baptized into one body" v. 13.There is tremendous diversity within the groups Paul mentions--some of which are expected, such as Jews and those who are free. But God and Paul also include Greeks, who are Gentiles and slaves who are complete nobodies. And yet, in the waters of baptism, they are made new and become part of the body of Christ. Even from the beginning of the church, God included outsiders in his body. Baptism is the great equalizer that destroys the walls that divide people. Everything in today's epistle is based upon and grounded in baptism. As Lutheran Christians, we emphasize that all we do in life flows out from our baptism. Martin Luther wrote:1 C "Therefore every Christian has enough in Baptism to learn and to practise all [their] life; for ...

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...