Biblical Text: Luke 11:1-13 Ok, I start off with something a bit hokey – Tony Stark/Iron Man – but this is about Fathers and Sons. (And yes it includes daughters, but the language we are given in Father.) The Lord’s prayer in Luke is a revelati

Contemplated Action

Jul 17th, 2022 17m 35s

Biblical Text: Luke 10:38-42 The text is Mary and Martha which is usually taken as a compare and contrast of two symbols. Martha representing the active life and Mary the contemplative life. But I think that is a bit facile. And I’m basing that

The Old Old Story

Jul 12th, 2022 20m 56s

Biblical Text: Luke 10:25-37 The Text is the Good Samaritan. When you are preaching on such a story you really have to be content with telling the old old story. And as a Lutheran that Old Old story is captured in this incredibly compact story

70 or 72? Call, Authority and Mission

Jul 3rd, 2022 23m 31s

Biblical Text: Luke 10:1-20 The text is Jesus sending out the 70, or is it the 72? That is one of the few textual questions of the New Testament. Which like all textual questions is ultimately unanswerable. It becomes a matter of faith. But if

Among the Tombs

Jun 19th, 2022 25m 7s

Biblical Text: Luke 8:26-39 The Gerasene Demoniac is one of those stories that is so vivid for me it stands a proof of the rest of the biblical story. Nobody could make it up. And it is such a perfect living symbol that only God could be behind

Solid Spiritual Words

Jun 12th, 2022 20m 50s

Text: The Athanasian Creed It was Trinity Sunday. Probably the one Sunday a year where I don’t have a very specific biblical text as the basis of the Sermon. That’s ok, because the Creeds in the Lutheran tradition are part of the Confessions, s

Spirit Power: Courage, Teaching, Peace

Jun 5th, 2022 23m 1s

Biblical Text: Acts 2: 1-21, 22-47, John 14:23-31 This Sunday continues a couple of series. It continues our study of the book of Acts even if we have been “jumping around” in that book. This sermon ends up following up on last week. If last we

Courage of the Spirit

May 30th, 2022 30m 25s

Biblical Text: Acts 1:1-26 This Sunday on the church calendar – the 7th Sunday of Easter – to me is the strangest one in the entire calendar. The sermon gets into that a bit, so I won’t spell it out here. But sitting between The Ascension and P

Discipleship Itinerary

May 22nd, 2022 20m 42s

Biblical Text: Acts 16:6-15 The text as I read it had two parts. The first being something of a travel itinerary. And it was travel that was done under some uncertainty and stress. First Paul wanted to go West, but the Spirit stopped him. And h

Spirit Led Change: Vision, Experience and the Word

May 15th, 2022 25m 52s

Biblical Text: Text: Acts 11:1-18, John 16:12-15 Change in the church is always a contentious issue. But even Jesus assumed that it would happen. And the book of Acts gives an example of a significant change. What these biblical texts give us i

Hearing the Voice of the Shepherd

May 8th, 2022 26m 8s

Biblical Text: Acts 20:17-35 This Sunday is typically “Good Shepherd” Sunday. The Gospel text comes from John 10. The key verse of that being “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” The first reading assigned in from the

Living Signs

May 2nd, 2022 23m 51s

Biblical Text: Acts 9:1-22 This sermon takes on a topic that is probably a little far afield for most Lutheran churches, conversion. And in thinking about conversion we have to think about things above and things below. What I mean by that is w

All the Words of Life

Apr 24th, 2022 29m 21s

Biblical Text: Acts 5:12-20 The assigned texts for the Sunday’s after Easter this year selectively read through a couple of books. The Epistles are coming from the book of Revelation. At least right now I’m trying to write about those in the we

Today is Different (Easter)

Apr 19th, 2022 16m 28s

Biblical Text: Isaiah 65:17-25 The inspirations for this sermon were the Isaiah text, Chrysostom’s Easter sermon and a common conversation we have in confirmation class on the distinction between mercy and grace. Easter is grace.

Good Friday 2022

Apr 16th, 2022 1h 2m

The service is a Tenebrae, which means there is a dowsing of the lights after each of the seven readings until the we are in darkness at the end. It is a moving service in person. I’ve left the recording complete. In most of the service posts I

Maundy Thursday

Apr 15th, 2022 33m 8s

Biblical Text: John 13:1-20, 31-35 Maundy Thursday, at least when I do it, is usually about the institution of the Lord’s Supper. This is still that, but this year I picked the alternate text. This text is the foot washing from the Gospel accor

Three Ring Failure

Apr 10th, 2022 33m 42s

Biblical Text: Luke 23:1-56 It was Palm Sunday which has morphed into the Sunday of the Passion. The Triumphal Entry is the Gospel of the Day in Advent 1. Maundy Thursday (the institution of the Lord’s Supper) and Good Friday (the crucifixion)

A New Thing; Do You See It?

Apr 4th, 2022 24m 46s

Biblical Text: Isaiah 43:16-21, Luke 20:9-20 The parable of the wicked tenants always feels a little like an overdetermined dead letter. Even the Chief Priests understood that Jesus told it against them. The Salvation History understanding is n

Only Sons

Mar 27th, 2022 27m 30s

Biblical Text: Luke 15:1-32 The text is possibly the most famous biblical text of all time, Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. But there is a problem with that. There is also 2000 years of piety around the text. Sometimes piety is a great thin

Becoming Fruitful

Mar 20th, 2022 21m 10s

Biblical Text: Luke 13:1-9 (Ezekiel 33:20) This sermon addresses something that I think we all are falling into wrongly and that is judging people by group standing. With God there is no collective righteousness, neither is there collective dam

The Will of Jerusalem

Mar 14th, 2022 21m 32s

Biblical Text: Luke 13:23-30, 31-35 The text for the 2nd Sunday in Lent is the short 2nd part, Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem. But that part is so intimately connected to what came before. It is a meditation and instruction on salvation and will.

The Devil’s Playbook

Mar 6th, 2022 27m 30s

Biblical Text: Luke 4:1-13 The lesson for the first sunday of lent is an ancient choice, the temptation or testing of Jesus. For a long time it was taken as an excuse for preaching fasting. Jesus fasted, so should you. The problem with that is

Ash Wednesday 2022

Mar 3rd, 2022 15m 19s

Biblical Text: Jonah 3:1-10, 2 Peter 1:2-11 Justification from Jonah, sanctification from Peter. Ash Wednesday as something of a yearly reboot of the Christian life. A life which starts in the ashes and proceeds through incorporation into Chris

Prayer, Transfiguration, Exodus

Feb 27th, 2022 23m 57s

Biblical Text: Luke 9: 28-36 Luke’s account of the Transfiguration is interesting. You have to pay close attention to how he tells it to pick it up, but I believe if you do you get rewarded for it. This sermon meditates on three of those intere

Measure by Measure

Feb 20th, 2022 29m 23s

Biblical Text: Luke 6:27-38 The text is part two of “The Sermon on the Plain”, Luke version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. And what this sermon (and last week’s) encourage is what seems to be a specific audience shift in the way Luke present