Trinity 20, 2024

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Last Sunday we heard about nakedness and clothing. There is the nakedness of man’s sin and shame, and the clothing of Christ’s righteousness, given in Holy Baptism. What we have at the end of today’s parable is a man who rejects that clothing. He refuses the wedding garment, he refuses Christ’s righteousness. He wants life, he wants the kingdom on his own terms.

The same thing is going on at the beginning of the parable. What is a parable? It’s a story with you in it. And in the Bible, it’s a story with Christ in it. If you get those wrong—if you mistake yourself for Christ—you’ll end up with a different kind of religion altogether….

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The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity 2024

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“I renounce Satan, and his works, and his pomps, and his worships, and his angels, and his inventions, and all things that are under him.” And after his renunciation let him in his consociation say: “And I associate myself to Christ, and believe, and am baptized into one unbegotten Being….”

“I associate myself with Christ.” Disciples of Jesus do not leave the world, but we renounce its prince—the devil—and we renounce its principles. We renounce lies, we renounce lust, we renounce licentiousness. We confess Christ, we practice charity, and we defy the demands of the world to worship the image of the beast....

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The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity 2024

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Jonathan Haidt’s important book The Anxious Generation demonstrates that smartphones and social media multiply anxiety. This is particularly true for adolescents. He’s right. Yet the problem of anxiety is not new. Tolstoy in the 19th century said, “Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.”

Election years exacerbate anxiety. But anxiety haunts the human experience. A little 4 year old spent Tuesday morning crying through morning prayer on the first day of school, right over there. Perhaps the mother was also weeping. Letting go of your child, whether for JK or her freshman year out of state, is fraught with worry....

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Trinity 26 (observed), 2023

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Children are “offered,” committed, handed over in Baptism. We hand our children over when we need help, when they need something we can’t do for them ourselves. You ever handed your child over to a surgeon? You hope you get him back, but there are no guarantees. In suffering and trial, God is teaching us to relinquish control, to hand over all our cares to Him….

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Invocabit sermon 2023

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Temptations are rarely grandiose. On occasion temptation to a front-page-headline kind of sin comes along. Most of our temptations appear as innocuous choices. Small, daily things tempt us to take baby steps away from God’s Word.

Frequently we should pray the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches us there to ask for help: “Lead us not into temptation.” This takes on urgency once we realize we are constantly under spiritual assault….

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The Baptism of Our Lord 2023

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When the Scriptures describe us as being in bondage to sin, it certainly includes the sins we commit - the twisted lusts within us and the things we do contrary to the commandments. But often the sins committed against us also hold us in bondage: when someone betrays us, when a friend you trusted doesn’t keep his word or is working against you. Perhaps you remember a cutting remark spoken against you even decades ago, but still it lingers in the mind, making you bitter, cynical. And so it’s not only the sins that we have committed, but also the sins committed against us, that need to be dealt with.

We would like justice. We want things put right. And sometimes, we want more than justice: we want revenge. For the person whose betrayal still stings, misfortune upon them would, we imagine, taste sweet to us….

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Seventh Sunday after Trinity 2022

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I’ve been listening to a lot of Miles Davis the last few years. He was a brilliant jazz trumpeter and composer who kept reinventing himself from bebop to cool jazz to funk to fusion. The seminal sound of film noir came from his score to Elevator to the Gallows, which he and his group played by just jamming while the film was playing. As far as music goes, he didn’t have many natural limitations.

I used to want to be a jazz musician. I can understand what’s happening, but to actually perform it like the pros, you need a mind that runs about 20x faster than mine. I spent years practicing, but I have too many natural limitations….

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Judica Sermon 2022

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“You are of your father the devil.” If we want the comforting words of Jesus to apply to us, we must first wrestle with the confrontational ones. “You are of your father the devil.” The words address the entire human race.

The first three Sundays of Lent show Jesus in combat with the devil, first in the wilderness temptations, then in two exorcisms. The fourth Sunday is a kind of interlude, with rose vestments and food in the wilderness. Now the fifth Sunday of Lent holds up a mirror and says, “If you want to know where the devil is busy, take a look at your own life.” …

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The Baptism of Our Lord 2022

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Jesus is the only real Somebody. The incredible scandal of His baptism is how He identifies with the nobodies, the bums, the morons, the sinners.

How can there be division—which is really competition—when there’s only one Somebody, one Lord, one Christ? Descending into the water, He is teaching us not to boast. There is no need for our worldly desires; no need to be counted wise by other people. No need for power, no need to be nobility, royalty – or in our context, celebrity….

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Circumcision and Name of JESUS

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“Eight days were completed.” Completed … or better, fulfilled. For this is no mere random passage of time. “The days were fulfilled” reveals the jurisdiction of God over all things. God is sovereign over time itself. This event, and every event recorded in Scripture, is governed by His plan.

We track the passage of time with calendars. Modern life requires us to juggle multiple calendars: civil holidays and tax deadlines; work calendars, school calendars, family birthdays and anniversaries. We Christians have our own calendar, often out of step with what everyone else is doing. The liturgical calendar reminds us that Christians are to be different.

We learn from the Gospels something about Joseph and Mary: they are pious. They follow the liturgical calendar, and they also conform their personal lives to what the Law of Moses expected, down to the day. “And when eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child, His name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.”

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