Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the sermon for St. Timothy Lutheran Church that I will be preaching tomorrow. The gospel text is Matthew 28:16-20. If you want to see a video of the sermon, press here .  Do you feel a bit off-balance? We just get used to all the news being about COVID 19 and now there is another hot topic. As Bishop John Macholz recently wrote: The  killing of  George  Floyd by policemen in Minneapolis continues to play itself out across my television screen as I watch it over and over again…out of a  place of deep sorrow and disbelief that this has happened again. Only a few days ago we watched videos regarding the killing of Ahmaud Arbery that took place in February and … only now being brought to light. And after Ahmaud Abery there was Breonna Taylor and last October … Atatiana Jefferson and before her was…a  long, long list of black and brown people whose  lives were needlessly taken by violence in a society that continues to not only remain broken but break even further. It may

This is the reflection on Sunday's gospel that was sent to the people of St Timothy Lutheran Church. Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20 16Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” These four verses are chuck full of so many things, but I want us to look at the second half of verse 17, “they worshiped him; but some doubted.” Apparently, you can still worship even though you have doubts. Something else I find interested concerning those who doubted. Jesus did not send them away. He did not reprimand them, but he commissioned them as

This is the sermon I'm preaching on Sunday, 5/31/20, Pentecost Sunday at St. Timothy Lutheran Church's Drive-In Service. The text was John 20:19-23.   Looking back, is this how we thought we would commemorate Pentecost this year? It’s normally such a celebratory time. After all, it is the Christian church’s birthday! We have a party! But not this year. Rather than a party, don’t we feel a bit like the captives in Babylon who cried out,  “…we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion…That’s where our captors demanded songs, sarcastic and mocking: Sing us a happy Zion song!’  Oh, how could we ever sing God’s song in this wasteland?” (Psalm 135: 3-4). Have you felt sometimes like this time of not being able to gather inside our church building being in a wasteland? A quiet Pentecost; not that of Acts 2, a riotous Pentecost party, given the time we are living in, given the deaths of so many in this year of Coronavirus, given the death of George Floyd and the re

Here are a few thoughts I have on this Sunday, Pentecost Sunday's gospel. What are yours? Gospel: John 20:19-23 19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  I love the gospel of John. One of my Greek professors in seminary warned all of us who chose this gospel to study and translate that we would regret it. I still am in love with John! John sets the stage for us in this way: following Jesus’ resurrection, the d

This is the devotion I sent to the people of St. Timothy Lutheran Church . With Pentecost approaching, our minds move to thoughts about that mysterious, hard to grasp Holy Spirit. We have a better handle on the Father and the Son, but that Spirit is something else again. You just can’t pin the Holy Spirit down. Even gender associated with the Spirit can’t be understood as with the Father and Son. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word for wind or spirit is feminine, so it’s completely proper to refer to the Holy Spirit as she and her, right? Ok, then we move to the Greek language in which the New Testament was written and what do we find? Feminine? No, neuter! In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is an “It.” Hmm, as Luther wrote, “What does this mean?” It means that the Holy Spirit has a nature that just refuses to be pinned down. When Jesus and Nicodemus were talking, Jesus put it this way, “’The wind [same word as spirit]  blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but

This is the sermon I'm preaching at St. Timothy Lutheran Church for our first Drive-In Service. We will be celebrating Ascension Sunday. The gospel text is Luke 24:44-53 . If you like, here is a video of the sermon.  There are three movements in today’s gospel: the past, (vv. 44-47), the promise, (vv. 48-49) and the “while you wait,” the meantime. Each has its role. In the past we find the foundation that connected Jesus’ followers with their history. For us, that is BC—before Coronavirus. We also have the promise of Jesus: the call to be his witnesses (vv. 48-49), which is the disciples’ future. That is when things will be “back to normal,” a future that we long for. The final section is “While you wait” or what to do in the meantime (vv. 50-53) (Troy Troftgruben, workingpreacher.org). This is where we find ourselves today. In this in-between time, don’t we long for the days of being able to come and go freely? Oh, if only we could just gather together like we used to! But w

Here are some thoughts on the gospel for Ascension, which we'll be using at St.Timothy Lutheran Church this Sunday. Gospel: Luke 24:44-53 44[Jesus said to the eleven and those with them,] “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”   50Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up int