Claimed, gathered and sent

  This is the sermon I preached Sunday at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The gospel was Matthew 20:1-16 .  “It’s not fair!” How many of you, who are parents, aunts and uncles, anyone who has had anything to do with children, have heard these words. Our goal is to explain to the child why something can't be done. That may help, or it may not. God doesn’t play fair, at least by our standards. As we look at today’s difficult, startling parable, we may respond like the early workers, like children. Maybe we are those called later in the day, who embraced faith later in life.  There are two main parts of this parable: the hiring of the workers and then the paying of the workers. From the beginning, just the way the parable plays out lets us know that something is up.  For one thing, it would be unusual for a landowner himself to go hire workers. Why didn’t he send someone else? Throughout the day, he goes four times to hire workers. Palestinian workers in Palestine go to s...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, Sept. 17 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Matthew 18:21-35.  Last week’s gospel was about forgiveness, and I’m calling this week’s Forgiveness 2.0. Jesus focused last week on individual relationships and this week, he highlights forgiveness and the community of faith, beginning with fellow believers.  When Peter asks Jesus if seven times were enough to forgive a repeat offender who asks for mercy, he thought that was an incredibly large number. For the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, three was considered the most that forgiveness should be sought. Peter was being quite expansive with seven. How does Jesus respond? Seventy times seven! Yikes! That’s a new way to look at forgiveness in relationships.  Jesus tells a parable about what forgiveness looks like in the kingdom of God. In some ways, the king can be a picture of God. The first issue dealt with is the erasure of debt (v. 27). The slave had incurred an incredi...

  This is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church this past Sunday. The text is Matthew 18:15-20. People are difficult, aren’t they? Relationships are troublesome, at times. It is often those we love the most who hurt us the most. We are most vulnerable with them, and then we get stomped on. Do I sound pessimistic? Sometimes our experiences make us this way. I could, like most of us, list a whole host of hurts and disagreements, but what does God have to say about it all? In the e-ministry, I shared the story of how there was some division within a small group of friends, pastors at that! One of the ladies is very loving and concerned about everyone, but in her desire to help, can be pushy. I need to tell a story about a previous time we got together for dinner. It was when we were experiencing an abundance of smoke from Canada. This particular friend always wants to eat outside. Well, the air was so thick with smoke, that none of the rest of us wanted to. She was the...

This is the sermon I preached today at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The gospel was Matthew 16:13-20.   Caesarea Philippi is beautiful. It is lush and green with a spring that is a source for the Jordan River. Situated at the foot of Mt. Hermon, which is the only place in the land where you will find snow, in which my then young children played.  It is not by accident that Jesus and his disciples find themselves there. Pastors Eric Fistler and Robb McCoy describe the scene:  Caesarea Philippi, [is] home to all sorts of crazy, pagan, awful stuff…our world, …our country, …our community, [can make us] feel overwhelmed and disgusted.  Even at those times, our job as a church is to confess Christ… whether it is popular or not…our confession…is that he is the Christ, the anointed savior, son of the living God. (Pulpitfiction.com) Martin Luther's view of the situation is this: Jesus takes occasion to reveal himself to the apostles. He shows what Christ really is, how we shal...

This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, Aug. 20 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The text was Matthew 15:21-28. What’s wrong with Jesus? He just doesn’t seem like himself, does he? Of course, he recently lost his cousin John to a terrible death. He has been trying, not very successfully, to get some downtime by himself. Was he just having a bad day?  We’re used to our Lord being moved with compassion for the crowds. Here, he initially ignores a woman's cries and doesn’t answer her. When he does answer her, it is to inform her that he was only sent to the Jewish people. Ouch. She was hopeful, but she is not qualified to have her prayer answered. Then, to make matters worse, Jesus calls her a dog. There’s no way to soften this insult. Children and dogs do not get the same food.   A non-Jewish foreigner, the woman is one of Israel's traditional enemies.' They worshiped the false god Baal. (The Jewish Annotated New Testament). And yet, this unnamed woman knew enough of Jesus...

  This is the sermon I preached August 6 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The passage is Matthew 14:22-33. The Sea of Galilee is not a sea. It is a lake, often called Kinneret. It is larger than Chautauqua Lake, but not a lot. The word, translated ”sea,” could also be translated “Lake.” Given the storm we find the disciples in, it’s no wonder translators opted for “sea.”   The sea was understood to be a living, chaotic, potentially deadly spirit (David Ewart, holytextures.com). And it was between 3 and 6 am when Jesus was walking toward the disciples. How would you feel? Don’t things always seem worse in the middle of the night? And in a storm? The disciples were frightened. Scripture says they were “terrified” when they saw Jesus walking in the storm on the sea. The word used here for “terrified” can also be used to describe a sea that has been agitated and stirred up. In other words, the disciples' inner state is now a perfect reflection of their outer circumstances (Ew...

  This is the message I preached on Sunday July 30 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 . So… I have to admit that when I first read this gospel passage, I thought, what in the world am I supposed to do with this? I did a bit in the e-ministry, yet found that I could not morph that into a sermon. We’re not going to do a flyover of all five of these parables, but are taking two that are similar, yet have differences as well, the treasure in a field and the precious pearl. The purpose of parables is to shake people up with the unexpected. They are to afflict the comfortable; being thorny and disturbing. We are not to walk away from parables saying, “Oh, what a nice story.”  How are these two parables similar, how are they different and what does that mean for us? Professor Amy-Jill Levine writes: The parables share common ideas, characterizations, and results. Both depict a person who sells all that he has to purchase something desired. Both also...