Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, 12/3/17 at St. Timothy and St. Mark Lutheran Churche s. The text is 1 Corinthians 1:3-9.    Imagine that you spent a year and a half getting a new church up and running. When you left to work with other churches, the church was growing. Leaders were emerging and the congregation seemed healthy. All was well. Then a delegation from the young church arrives. They bring word—via a letter—and that letter carries bad news. The church is fighting. There are visible factions. Some are in danger of returning to their old lives to serve their former gods and to resume life as they once knew it. Others are lording their so-called knowledge over those whom they deem weaker in the faith. The weaker members are being intimidated by some of the stronger, more experienced believers. This resulted in some being anxious about their own status before God and they were apparently confused about the second coming of Christ. Class divisions are even evi

This is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy and St. Mark Lutheran churches on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2017. The text is Matthew 25:14-30.     Last week when the church council met, one of the topics we discussed was stewardship, since it is that time of year. Upon reading today ’ s gospel, my reaction was, “ Oh good! This is about stewardship! ” Well, the more I studied, the more I realized that stewardship, as we envision it, is not the thrust of what Matthew is saying to us.    Looking at the cultural context, let ’ s see if we can get a handle on what this parable is about. First of all, what is a talent? Doesn ’ t talent mean that someone can sing or dance or do stand - up comedy well? Isn ’ t that why we have shows like “ America ’ s Got Talent? ” In Jesus ’ time, a talent was not an ability, but rather a very large sum of money — between 75-96 pounds of silver. One talent was equal to 15 years of a laborer ’ s wages. Five talents would be more than a lifetime ’ s