Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the sermon I preached last Sunday, Nov. 12 at St. Timothy and St. Mark Lutheran churches. The gospel text was Mathew 25:1-13 .   This wedding doesn’t sound like any we’ve ever been to in this country, does it? While we wait together in the sanctuary for the bride to come down the aisle, we have an idea of how long we will have to wait. We don’t sit there for hours. While living in the Holy Land, I was with a group of women who had the opportunity to wait together, not knowing exactly when the bridegroom and his men would arrive. We’d hear a sound. Excitement would fill the room. Maybe it’s him. Is it him? Someone would look to see. No, it’s not him. We’d wait longer and longer and longer. It seemed the groom would never arrive. Then there was a shout. There he was! Finally! Much like the bridesmaids in today’s gospel, we did not know exactly when the groom would arrive, only that he would. In biblical times, a wedding was about the communal celebration of the...

  This is the message I shared with God's people at St. Timothy Lutheran Church and St. Mark Lutheran Church on Sunday, 11/5/17. The scripture text is Matthew 5:1-12 . Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints. We remember those who have gone before us in the faith as well as the living church of Christ, God’s saints today. Then we get to today’s gospel reading, the Beatitudes, the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It all sounds so beautiful and churchy, but what does it mean? What does it take to be a saint and to be among the blessed of the Beatitudes? In my pre-Lutheran days, we used to talk about the Beatitudes being be-atttidues. It was how we were supposed to be! Others put the values of the Beatitudes off into eternity because of their difficulty, while others strive and strive to obey them because they are Jesus’ commands. Luther’s view concerning the Sermon on the Mount is that it represents an impossible demand, much like th...

Here's an article that's a great reminder for all of us:

This is the message I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church on Sunday, Oct. 29. The gospel text is John 8:31-36.   Today we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, a movement that not only impacted the church of that age, but all ages. What one word would you use to describe the distinctiveness of the Lutheran movement? Is it grace, justification, the good works we do through Lutheran Disaster Relief, ELCA World Hunger, or something else? These are all good answers, but they are not unique to us as Lutherans. The word freedom is the one most celebrated by Martin Luther. He was in bondage to a view of God as judge and went to great lengths to try to appease God by bringing his body into submission by extreme deprivation such as intensive fasting and beating himself with a whip. It was not until reading in the book of Romans of salvation by grace through faith that the burden of working to be saved was lifted from Luther’s shoulder...