Claimed, gathered and sent

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, August 25, at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text is John 3:1-10. What is there about the night that invites questions and concerns? We lie in bed and thoughts swirl around in our heads—all the things we worry about. Did I turn the light off in the kitchen? Then the ponderings morph into more serious issues. My friend with the recurring cancer—will she be alright? What about all the sickness going around? As we age, will we outlive our money? Are we worrying too much or too little? It was the night that called Nicodemus with his questions to go to Jesus. In the dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus, the two are just not on the same page, but appear to be talking past each other. Nicodemus is thinking and speaking concretely, while Jesus is responding spiritually, talking about what the kingdom of God looks like. It’s a birth from the top down, being “born from above” (v. 7). This is the formation of an alternative society, re-defini...

  This is the sermon I preached on August 5 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Revelation 3:15-16. Today's reading from Revelation leaves out a lot, such as which church Jesus is talking to. It is the church of Laodicea, which in that time meant not one group of believers that gathered, but all of them in the area. A letter such as this would go to one church, then the next, and so on until all the churches had an opportunity to read it.  In Revelation, Jesus has messages for seven churches. Only one of the seven, the church in Philadelphia, has no negative remarks made to it. The others are all a mix, except for Laodicea. Jesus addresses the last of the churches, and there is nothing positive to be said about them. Jesus' words to his church in Laodicea sound harsh, and they are. But we need a bit of explanation about the matter of being lukewarm, not hot or cold.  We tend to think of these words in terms of one’s enthusiasm for Christ and the gospel. However,...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, August 4 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The text is Luke 2:41-52. This month, all the texts I’ll be preaching from are in the New Testament. Today’s is from the Gospel of Luke. The title is “G is for Growing Up.” And who might we be referring to?  We have, in today’s gospel, our sole encounter and picture of Jesus as a boy, a twelve-year-old boy. Like any boy of that age, he could be precocious and at the same time disobedient. What, you say? Jesus, the Son of God, disobedient? Yup! Joseph and Mary were faithful Jews. They went up to Jerusalem every year for the Passover, one of the pilgrimage feasts. That was no easy feat. Travel was considered dangerous, so people traveled in groups. It would have taken them four or five days to get to Jerusalem from Nazareth (R. Alan Culpepper, Luke, New Interpreter’s Bible). So many days out of one year just for travel time to celebrate this feast. But they were faithful, godly people.  Th...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, July 28 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text is Exodus 1:15-22.  P is for Puah. She is one of the two Hebrew midwives mentioned in today’s story in Exodus. “Exodus calls only a handful of women by name: Shiphrah (the other midwife) Yocheved, Zipporah, and Elisheva. But there are other women: Israelite, Egyptian, Amorite, Hittite, Hivite, Perizzite, Jebusite and Canaanite women without whom the story of Exodus…the story of God…our story cannot be told” (Wilda Gafney, Womanist Midrash).  During that time and throughout much of the time of scripture's writing, women were considered to be nothing. Yet, the names given to the two midwives are significant: Shiphrah means “beauty” and Puah can mean “to gurgle or murmur”- like a baby, (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible). It was clear that these women were well-loved, despite their gender.  Here we have two gutsy gals. Don’t you love the way they go head-to-head with Pharaoh? Altho...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, July 21 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The text is Genesis 50:15-21. J is for Joseph. Families are complicated. Jacob, Joseph’s father, doted on Joseph. Jacob had a coat of many colors made for Joseph. He was clearly his father’s favorite son. His brothers had reason to be jealous! And Joseph wasn’t perfect, either. He also told them about the dreams he had, showing him in a superior position over them. It is not a smart thing to do. How could Joseph be so forgiving? These are the brothers who threw him into a pit, and sold him to the Egyptians because they were jealous of him.  None of us is perfect. Joseph was forgiving, but first, he put his brothers to the test when they were reunited. He accused them of being spies. He put some of them in prison, as well as testing them in other ways. “It is not until the brothers ‘pass’ all of the tests that Joseph finally breaks down, weeping ‘so loud that the Egyptians heard it,’ and finally...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, July 14 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The text is Genesis 32:24-28.   Jacob was a piece of work. His name means “he cheats” or “he steals.”  At birth, as one of a set of twins, Jacob grasped his brother's heel, hence the name Jacob, which can also be translated as “supplanter.” Throughout their lives, Jacob was always trying to get the upper hand. He even went as far as tricking his father into giving him his brother's blessing, which went to the eldest. Esau was born first and would receive the inheritance, but Jacob wanted it all. As we read throughout Genesis, Jacob's adventures and misadventures should change him, but he is still Jacob—who cheats and steals and is the supplanter—until... this rich story of an encounter with a man. Or is it? Beginning with a puzzle from previous verses: why does Jacob go to all the trouble of crossing the river with his wives and children, only to head back across it to spend the night alon...