Prepare Ye

It's been a while. I mean, a really long while. For those who regularly still have checked this, wow. Since you're probably friends, gee, get a life. If this shows up on a feed reader, you probably forgot about this blog. I did. The last real post from me goes back to March of 2011, and was about waiting for ELCA Regional Assignments. I think I stopped blogging because I was "concerned" about the wonderful Synod staffs & congregations sniffing this out and hitting the big DENIED button.  Well, too late. Since that last post , I got assigned to Region 5 (Illinois, Indiana, the UP of Michigan and Wisconsin). Then I was called to the North West Synod of Wisconsin. I flew out to meet the Bishop & the Synod staff on my birthday. Got profiles of the churches which eventually called me.  Just before graduation, on the day I was putting on my play, "Four Voices, One Passion" (I'll get back to that in a future post), my mother was hospitalized.

This is the text of my sermon for Sunday, December 23, and was based on the Magnificat. I don’t think many of us in the Lutheran tradition, or in any of the Protestant traditions, really think about Mary. The Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, seems to be the, I don’t want to say possession, but she belongs to the Roman Catholic tradition. There, she is venerated. She is prayed to. She is considered to be the co-redeemer of humanity, along with her son, who is also the Son of God. She is asked to intercede on our behalf. We don’t feel we need to ask anyone to intercede on our behalf when we can pray directly to God. We can ask Christ directly for forgiveness. We don’t have to ask Mary or any of the other saints to intercede for us. So we tend not to think of Mary very much. Sure, she’ll be the focus of some hymns and carols during Christmas. We will thank her for telling Jesus to turn water into wine at the wedding in Cana. We feel for her when we hear the lesso

This is the text for my Christmas Eve sermon. I am focusing on Joseph and Mary and leaving the rest of the Birth Narrative to Christmas Day. My texts for this sermon are Luke 1.26-38, Matthew 1.18-25 and Luke 2.1-7. You may be thinking, Pastor, where’s the rest? Why are you stopping there? Where are the angels Harking? The shepherds shepherding? The Wise Men? The little drummer boy? Where is the rest of Christmas?? Relax. It’s still there; except for the drummer boy. The harking angels and shepherds are still there in Luke’s Gospel, and I’m going to talk about them tomorrow morning (9 a.m. at Our Savior’s and 10:45 at Emmanuel). As for the Wise Men, we celebrate their visitation to the newborn Christ on Epiphany, which is Sunday, January 6 (9 a.m. at Our Savior’s and 10:45 at Emmanuel). But tonight, I want to focus on this tiny family, Mary, Joseph and their newborn bundle of joy, Jesus. I imagine them all huddled together; Mary looking adoringly at her baby, Joseph lo

This is my sermon text for my Christmas Morn sermon. I used Luke 2.8-20 as my text. Shepherding was not a glamorous vocation back in the single digit years. It was often the job of last resort. If you couldn’t do anything else, become a shepherd. You didn’t really have to learn a skill, just to count. You must be willing to chase off, and sometimes fight off, wild animals. You had to be willing to spend a LOT of time outside. But one of the things about being a shepherd was that you were exempted from attending worship. By spending all of that time outdoors and around animals, they were unclean by the laws and traditions of the day. As being ruled to be ‘unclean,’ they were not allowed in the Temple or synagogues until they proved they were clean to the rabbis and chief priests. Experts believe that many shepherds felt that if they were not wanted by God, or more accurately, God’s representatives, then they did not want to have anything to do with God.

This is my sermon text for January 13, celebrating the Baptism of Our Lord, and focusing on the Gospel text from Luke (Luke 3.15-22). Have you ever lived in the shadow of someone? Have you ever been known as “so-and-so’s brother or sister?” Or “Aren’t you what’s-his-name’s kid?” Has your identity been wrapped up in your relationship to someone else? It has to be incredibly frustrating. It’s bad enough when you have to live with what you have done and the reputation you have earned based upon your own actions. But when you have to try to live up to, or not live down to, what someone else has done, that is a challenge. As an only child, I didn’t have to deal with that, but I can imagine the frustration if you’re one of the youngest in the family, and on the first day of school, the teacher refers to one (or several) of your older sisters and brothers. Whether good or bad, you realize that you aren’t being looked at for your own merits, but rather, people’s percept

This is my sermon text for January 6, celebrating the Epiphany of Our Lord, using the Gospel text from Matthew (Matthew 2.1-12). The Teaching Moment I refer to is a minute or two I take during the service to point out something that normally wouldn't fit well into my message. Usually, it is about one of the other lessons, but here it comes from the Gospel lesson. In my Teaching Moment ( see the bottom of this post ), I gave you five pieces of information about the Wise Men, and pointed out things we think are there, but really are not. We’ve heard the   story so often we “know” what is there. We will always think of there being THREE wise men. You have too many mental impressions for me to undo with one little message. But now I want you to look and think about that text again, but now looking at the big picture. What is going on here? In Luke’s Gospel, the birth of Our Savior Emmanuel is announced to shepherds by the hosts of heaven. God specifically sent God’s mess

I had been posting sermon texts at my other blog, A Sower Went Out to Sow, which I created for a class back at The LTS. I had been planning on letting this blog, just fade away. But Sow & Sow has been uncooperative, so I have come back here. I'm going to repost what had been at Sow & Sow, and that may be the one to just fade away.   This is my sermon for February 3. We celebrated the Presentation of Our Lord (even tho that was 2/2) because it allowed us to hear almost all of the Nativity from Luke. So the focus of my message was from Luke 2:22-40 . While we were down in New Orleans for the National Youth Gathering, we got to hear a LOT of great music. Every night in the Superdome, where I understand there is a football game being played later today , a band of musicians set the tone for the evening. They rocked. They played of mix of contemporary Christian music, ranging from slower tempo worship songs to blasting our up tempo rocking praise anthems. We heard eve

This is my sermon text from the 1st Sunday of Lent, February 17, focusing on Luke's telling of the Testing of Jesus (Luke 4.1-13). The man is sitting alone at his local bar. He doesn’t come in there too much; enough so that the wait staff recognizes him, but they don’t know his name or what “the usual” is. But this day, they’re finding out. Because he’s ordering a lot of it. He’s not making conversation. He’s not watching TV. He’s just sitting there. While they don’t know the details, they know what is going on. He’s just got bad news. They don’t know the specifics: is it his family? His job? Investments? Right now, he feels totally alone. His world has been turned upside down. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know who to call. He doesn’t know where to go. So he finds a place to be, just for a while, just long enough to figure out, “Now what?” That’s when he’s vulnerable. That’s when the next voice in his ear can swing the whole thin