Sermon Audio, 3/17/2013

Fifth Sunday of Lent, Lectionary Year C

Isaiah 43:16-21

On Saint Patrick's Day we were blessed with the opportunity to baptize a family of three, two young adults and a six-month-old baby. It was pretty awesome, and that's the context for this sermon.

Sermon Audio, 3/10/2013

Fourth Sunday of Lent, Lectionary Year C.

Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32

The story known as the Prodigal Son. Such a familiar story to so many, yet there are always new ways to hear it. How can we be the prodigal church?

OR

In which I attempt to embarrass myself by singing Journey in the course of a sermon. (Mission accomplished!)

OR

In which I admit my unhealthy bias toward firstborn children (Lord, have mercy!)

Sermon Audio, 3/3/2013

Third Sunday of Lent, Lectionary Year C

Isaiah 55: 1-9

We read this passage from Isaiah 55 every year at the Vigil of Easter, as one of the great Hebrew Scripture stories of God's mercy and faithfulness through all of human history. Set alongside such rich, popular tales as the creation story, Noah and the flood, crossing the red sea, Ezekiel's dry bones, and Daniel's friends in the fiery furnace, what is it about this Isaiah reading that makes it an annual requirement at our most sacred gathering of the year?

Note: I think this sermon starts off slow but turns awesome toward the end. 

March 2013 Newsletter Article

Lutheran Church of the Savior newsletter article for March, 2013

My song is love unknown,

my Savior’s love to me,

love to the loveless shown that

they might lovely be

Oh, who am I that for my sake

my Lord should take frail flesh and die?

-          Samuel Crossman “My Song Is Love Unknown,” ELW 343

In the heart of our Lenten journey toward Jesus’ death and resurrection, I can’t help but pause and recognize what God has done for us. I’m generally pretty pessimistic about human nature. As many, many people have heard, one of my favorite sermon refrains is, “People are people, and people are dumb.” I mean this as a humorous way to point out something much darker, lifted up again for me this week in a blog post by The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of my very favorite writers.

In discussing the history of racism in America (found in this article, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/a-flawed-america-in-context/273546/, which I highly recommend), Coates notes that “the history of white racism and its attendent victims is horrifying, but it should be seen in scale.” He then quotes at length a history of the 30 Years War written by C.V. Wedgwood, in which Wedgwood describes the thousands of starving people dying in the streets, resorting to eating rats, raw horse, and even human flesh. The 30 Years’ War was Europe’s most deadly until the 20^th century, and it is the war that made Lutheranism possible in its wake. If you claim either Lutheran identity or white western European ancestry, this war is your history. It certainly is my history.

Sermon Audio, 2/24/2013

Second Sunday of Lent, Lectionary Year C

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

I'll finish this month's preaching the way I began it, by talking about how God is responsible for God's work. This story of God's covenant with Abram/Abraham is one of my favorite in all Scripture. God walks between the animals, in one of the most surprising and grace-filled stories around.

Sermon Audio, 2/17/2013

First Sunday of Lent, Lectionary Year C

Luke 4:1-13

In the wilderness, Jesus went through what we go through. What does our wilderness time look like?
A bit of the devil as Harry Potter's Lord Voldemort, plus this sermon contains a bonus rant against my current #1 pet peeve, the cliched "You come into this world alone, and you go out of this world alone." I can barely begin to tell you how much I think that phrase is a harmful lie. I must've been cranky that day.

Sermon Audio, 2/13/2013

Lutheran Church of the Savior - Like our new page on Facebook!



Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Ash Wednesday doesn't really make sense. We mark our foreheads with ashes, a public sign of repentance, and then we hear Jesus' words in Matthew telling us, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.” What are we doing?