St. Mark’s Lutheran

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One little bit of widsom that stuck in my head is a maxim “preach Jesus – he’s preachable”. Its a pithy phrase that sums up Luke 24:27 and elsewhere. That phrase is easiest when you are talking about Jesus’ works and deeds, or when you are talking about the divine nature of Christ. It becomes much more difficult when you are talking mental thoughts or emotional feelings of Jesus. Everyone is happy talking about the love of God, but anger or desire tread on difficult ground. The preacher is climbing inside the head of the Christ – a very dangerous task. The text has the phrase – “He desired/wanted to pass by them.” And yet Jesus doesn’t do that, in fact the phrase is just odd as it is againt everything for which he was walking on the sea. The sermon works that out.

The only other thought thought in this vein has to do with what and how our adversary is attacking people today. There is a meme that each generation is tempted in specific paths. The task of the church and the preacher is to confront that temptation. The pressure on the church is to synchronize with or condone that temptation. The formula of Concord says something like that in Article X paragraph 4. I’m beginning to think that our modern temptation in many ways that we’ve forgotten what it means to be human. We have never been real good at parts of it (suffering, being created creatures, being both body and spirit), but never have we been so able to ignore or change our fundamental nature. Death is always held at bay until we have no time to prepare. We create special places and classes of people to segregate real suffering – like hospitals and doctors or government housing and social workers. We deny the spirit becuase it doesn’t conform to a test bench and so we become materialists. Our humanity is being limited and we are happily giving it away.

The counter to that is not the divinity of Christ, but His humanity. Jesus desired to pass by. Jesus desired to reveal the glory to his closest followers…but instead he climbs in the boat with them. A very human act in the middle of a calm sea of miracles.

Tags: Mark, Sermons, Spirit by Parson Brown
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Text: Hebrews 4:12-13

We are studying the book of Hebrews for about 6 weeks on Sundays. Last Sunday we read Hebrews 3:1 – 4:13 which is one sermon or section of the book. The theological start by the writer of Hebrews was an assertion of the superiority of Jesus as the son and heir compared to Moses as a faithful servent in the entire house. The implication was that if disobeidience to Moses brought 40 years in the wilderness and eventual death of that generation, don’t ask what disobeidience to Jesus would bring. Today! if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.

The last line is that the Word of God is living and active. The question I left the class with was how is the Word of God living and active in your life? Maybe I’m wrong, but the more I pondered my own answer to that question that more I thought that this is the key problem of the modern American Church. Too much secondary theology. Too much talk about the Word, and not enough Word itself. The Reformation understanding of preaching and teaching and the interaction of disciples was right there (Today!) was the Word of God. The Desert Fathers sought to apply the Word directly to themsleves. We moderns talk about the Word. We talk detached from it and at a distance. We are comfortable talking about the Word, but we rarely read it ourselves. That Word is living and active. The Spirit asks us to do hard things. We don’t like hard things. In this world where trust has been drained from almost everything, that is the challenge. Open up the Word and don’t read it at a distance. Put yourself in the story. Let the Word read you. Today! Don’t hardern you hearts.

Tags: Hebrews, Meditation, Spirit, Word by Parson Brown
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On reflection this might have been a better sermon for Trinity Sunday, but the text was John 15:25-26 and John 16:4-15 and that came up on Pentecost. The core statement is that we moderns just don’t biblically undertand the Spirit or the personhood of God. We push Father, Son and Spirit together into a giant gnostic generic Spirit-God. When you do that, your God ends up looking like you and not like He revealed Himself in the Scriptures.

Specifically the Holy Spirit is not a mushy person. His first job is to convict the world: To convict it of sin, convict it of true righteousness, and convict it of who is the judge. After that conviction, the Spirit leads His people into all truth. A great text pointing to law and gospel. First we are convicted by the law and then restored in truth by the gospel. The Spirit does this through His means of Word and Sacrament through that fuddy-duddy place called the church. The adversary tries to sow a bunch of FUD becuase we’ve mushed the persons together. He tries to get us to find the Spirit everywhere but right there in the Word and Sacrament to the point we often denigrate the gospel offer thinkning God can’t really be there. But God keeps his promises. He’s there in that Word, Water, Bread and Wine.

Tags: John, Sermons, Spirit, Word by Parson Brown
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Text: Hebrews 6:1-12

Hebrews is not a book for the lighthearted or the new Christian. Its argument is the centrality and sufficiency of Jesus Christ and it assumes a large background of knowledge about the OT and How God interacted with his people. The ultimate purpose as I’ve read it is to argue apathetic or stagnating Christians to a fuller living of the faith. Our text quickly reviews just what the writer takes as basics of the Christian faith: 1) Repentance, 2) Faith, 3) Baptism (i.e. ablutions), 4) Laying on of hands (ministry?), 5) resurrection of the dead and 6) eternal judgement. When you think about those things, they can all be intellectualized or made point in time events. A person can give assent to them (i.e. express belief in them) without attempting to live out that belief.

The background to the next portion is Israel on the verge of the promised land. They send out 12 spies. These are people who witnessed the Exodus and who stood at Mt. Sinai. They expressed belief in God and took part in the ritual life of the community, yet when they came back from spying out the land, they did not live out what God intended. (Numbers 13 – 14) And the punishment was death in the desert. Not a single person of that generation would enter the Promised land. The writer of the Hebrews says be careful that you do not receive the same fate. If you have been to the promised land, tasted the heavenly gift (forgiveness of sins), and turned away, there is no restoration.

This does not speak of sin and repentance, but the sin against the Holy Spirit – calling God a liar in his promises. Just how far can one go in apostasy before committing that sin? We don’t want to know. If you walk up to a cliff, do you want to find out where that tipping point is that throws you over it? Instead son’t be sluggish,”but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” Press on in the faith. Live and grow in the faith. Don’t map out that cliff edge.

Tags: Hebrews, Meditation, Repentance, Spirit, Witness by Parson Brown
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Text: Jeremiah 22:13-23

The Spirit of God is often pictured as the Wind. We do not see the wind itself, but we see its effects. The frightening thing about that what happens when we lose the ability to recognize the true prophetic Word from the wind itself? Martin Luther worried about such a happening. He would talk about it in his Freedom of a Christian saying, “there is no more terrible disaster with which the wrath of God can afflict men than a famine of hearing the Word…” Jeremiah has been speaking the Word to the Kings of Judah right before the fall of Jerusalem. God cries out, “I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, ‘I will not listen.’” The result is that the wind will shepherd all your shepherds. To Jeremiah, the Word of God is self authenticating. You know it when you hear it. Your only reaction is to repent and follow, or to deny it. As horrible as the call to repentance might be, being left without the Word is more horrible. It is not that you cease to have Spiritual things, but that you are shepherded by the wind. And that wind blows here and there, knocking things down and eroding the buildings. If we deny the Word, we reap the wind. The world is full of prophets saying ‘here it is’, or in Jeremiah’s vein, ‘Peace, Peace.’ And people without the sure Word get blown from this one to that one, but they never find it or receive peace. That is only found in the Sure Word of Jesus Christ. In Christ we find our rest from being shepherded by the Wind.

Tags: Jeremiah, Lent, Meditation, Spirit, Word by Parson Brown
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