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“Great Is Thy Faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-33)“Great Is Thy Faithfulness”: The hymn our choir sang earlier and which we all will sing at the end of this service--this is definitely an appropriate hymn of thanksgiving and praise on this Day of Thanksgiving. How true are the words of the refrain: Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed Thy hand hath provided; Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me! And since today is the Day of National Thanksgiving, we can also say the same thing about the Lord’s blessings on...

“Transferred to the Kingdom of His Son” (Colossians 1:13-20)Have you ever been transferred? People get transferred or relocated due to their work from time to time. The transfer can be a good thing or a bad thing; sometimes it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Just this past Friday, the third baseman for the Cardinals got transferred from St. Louis to “Los Angeles of Anaheim.” There will be plusses and minuses in this for Mr. Freese. On the downside, he won’t be a hometown hero out there, and the team he’ll be playing on is not as good as the...

“The Day Is Coming” (Malachi 4:1-6; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-28)“The Day Is Coming.” “The Day Is Surely Drawing Near.” What day am I talking about? Thanksgiving? No, nobody cares much about Thanksgiving anymore, except for eating turkey and watching football and getting a head start on . . . Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday, the big shopping day of the season--now that’s a day that lots of people get excited about! But no, that’s not the day I’m talking about. Oh, OK then, Christmas, that must be it. Only 37 shopping days left till Christmas! The...

“The God of the Living and the Sons of the Resurrection” (Luke 20:27-40)In these days of November, as we near the end of the church year, our thoughts turn to the end times, the return of Christ, and, as we just confessed in the Creed, “the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” Our Scripture readings during these weeks reflect this emphasis. So it is with our lessons today. In particular, I want to direct our attention this morning to the Holy Gospel for today, from Luke 20, where Jesus speaks of “The God of the Living and the...

“Who We Are and What We Will Be” (1 John 3:1-3)Today as we observe All Saints’ Day, we look back and remember with thanksgiving the saints who have gone before us, who now rest from their labors and are with the Lord. We look around us, and even though we cannot see them, we know that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses to the faith, all of us united in the one great communion of saints, the whole church on earth and in heaven. And we look ahead, we look forward with hopefulness to the day...

“A Reformation in Catechesis” (John 8:31-36)“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” This is the word of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he spoke in John 8:31-32. His word is truth, and this truth sets us free. Free from all our sins, and from our slavery to sin. Free from the burden of the law, which would crush us with its demands we can never meet. Free from our bondage to death and the grave, free to live forever. Yes, “if the Son...

“A Parable of Persistent Prayer” (Luke 18:1-8)The parable Jesus tells in the Holy Gospel for today, from Luke 18, is traditionally called the Parable of the Importunate Widow. “Importunate” is an old-timey kind of word. It means “persistent in making a request,” even to the point of becoming something of a bother. And that would describe the widow portrayed in this parable. She was importunate. She was persistent in her seeking justice from an unjust judge. And Jesus is saying, through this parable, that this is how we in the church should be--importunate, persistent. Thus our text today is “A...

“Mercy for the Marginalized” (Luke 17:11-19)The Holy Gospel for today from Luke 17, about the cleansing of the lepers, happens to be the assigned Gospel for the Day of Thanksgiving. And that makes sense. Jesus’ words about the one who came back to give thanks make it a natural for that occasion. But this text also shows up as a regular Sunday reading during the three-year lectionary, and thus it appears today. So this morning we’ll take a slightly different approach to this text than we would on Thanksgiving. Today we’ll emphasize the text’s theme of “Mercy for the Marginalized.”...

“Faith for Living in Community” (Luke 17:1-10)In our Gospel reading for today, from Luke 17, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and he is giving instructions to his disciples. At first glance it may seem like these are just several disconnected sayings strung together rather loosely. First there’s something about woe to anyone who causes a person to sin. Then there’s something about forgiving your brother. Then there’s a request about increasing our faith and Jesus’ response about faith like a mustard seed. And then there’s something about unworthy servants who only do their duty. Now all this could...

“St. Michael and All Angels: Messengers, Worshipers, Warriors” (Revelation 12:7-12)Today in the Christian church year is the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. It always falls on September 29, and since this year that date falls on a Sunday, that’s why we’re celebrating this festival today. Angels, thus, will be topic of this sermon: who they are and what they do and why we thank God for them. And we’ll even get into who this mysterious figure St. Michael is a little bit. So with that by way of introduction, we begin our theme today, “St. Michael and All...

**SNIP** I said yesterday at a press conference on this subject, I said: unless we – it was in Houston, I go to mass wherever I go, and at the pulpit, the priest said, in Houston, Texas – not one of your liberal bastions – he said: ‘I think it’s important for people, not just to come to mass on Sunday and pray, but when they leave here not to prey on people.’ And it isn’t exactly what they are doing: preying on people.

“Managing the Master’s Money” (Luke 16:1-15)Do you remember the name Bernie Madoff? He was in the news a few years back. Bernie Madoff was the investment-firm guy, the money manager, who, over the years, defrauded his wealthy clients out of billions of dollars--that’s “billions” with a “b.” Madoff made off with billions--for a while, at least. He finally was caught, and he’s in the jailhouse now, awaiting his release in the year 2159, when he will be 221 years old. But Bernie Madoff had to have been a rather shrewd character, he must have had something on the ball, to...

“Sound Doctrine: Law and Gospel” (1 Timothy 1:5-17)Today begins a series of weeks in which the Epistle comes from Paul’s two letters to Timothy. Paul we know, but who is this Timothy? Timothy was Paul’s younger assistant who often traveled with him and whom Paul would sometimes have oversee things in places while Paul was off elsewhere. This is the case when Paul writes this first letter to Timothy. Paul had gone off to Macedonia, and he had Timothy remain in the big city of Ephesus, in western Asia Minor. Ephesus was a very important city for the whole region....

Circuit Pastors' Conference Tuesday, September 10, 2013 “You Shepherds, Hear the Word of the Lord” (Ezekiel 34:1-24)The readings for this coming Sunday in the three-year lectionary are perfectly suited for preaching to a bunch of pastors. All the readings concern the role of a shepherd caring for his sheep. In the Holy Gospel, from Luke 15, Jesus compares himself to a shepherd who goes to find a lost sheep. This fulfills the prophecy of Ezekiel 34, the Old Testament Reading, in which the Lord says that he himself will search for his sheep and seek them out. Even the Epistle,...

Justin Bieber, 19-year-old pop music star, was apparently so moved by a sermon preached by Pastor Carl Lentz at Hillsong NYC church on Sunday that the Canadian recording artist "broke down." "Love to my guy @carllentzNYC for the amazing sermon at church this morning. Love you man. I broke down today. Thank (you)," Bieber tweeted Sunday night, adding a smiley face. The award-winning recording artist also uploaded a photo of himself and Pastor Lentz to his Instagram account that same evening, writing, "Love you bro" as the caption. Bieber has long been open about his Christian faith, and previously referred...

“Philemon: The Gospel Transforms Relationships” (Philemon 1-21)Today I’m going to preach to you an entire book of the Bible. In fact, you already heard an entire book of the Bible as one of our readings today. Well, almost. You heard 21 out of the 25 verses that make up Paul’s Letter to Philemon. Philemon is one of those little one-chapter books that we have in the Bible. There are five of them: Obadiah in the Old Testament, and Philemon, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude in the New Testament. Now even though Philemon is a very short epistle, there’s a...

“The Great Reversal: The Humble Exalted” (Luke 14:1-14)Up is down, and down is up, in the kingdom of God. Or so it seems sometimes. Actually, the kingdom of God is all about turning things rightside-up. It’s just that rightside-up may look upside-down from our cockeyed perspective. From God’s perspective, though, the way things are in his kingdom is just right, the way things ought to be. Such is the case with our text for today, the teaching of Jesus that we find in Luke 14. Here Jesus makes one of his many paradoxical statements, which he seems to do all...

“Strive to Enter through the Narrow Door” (Luke 13:22-30)Do you ever wonder about who all will be saved? When people die, and when this world comes to an end, how many will make it into heaven? How many will end up in hell? And on what basis? “Pastor, what about people who did the best they could? What about people who never heard the gospel, like in Borneo or Papua New Guinea? Will they get in? If they don’t, how is that fair? What kind of a God would send anybody to hell? If that’s the God of the Bible,...

“The Miracle of Faith” (Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-16)Sometimes I think about the impossibility of faith. I mean, if you stop and think about all the things that are working against faith, it’s amazing that any of us have it. To believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ and all that that involves, to trust in the goodness and the promises of God, in spite of all that would cause us to not believe--it’s simply amazing. And so today we’re going to talk about “The Miracle of Faith.” Consider our Old Testament lesson for today, from Genesis 15. It relates a...

“Where Is Your Head At?” (Colossians 3:1-11)“Where Is Your Head At?” That, basically, is the question that comes out of today’s Epistle reading from Colossians 3. There St. Paul puts it like this: “Seek the things that are above,” and “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” On things above, or on things on earth? Where is your head at? Today God’s Word would direct us to set our minds on things above. Our text today will tell us where not to set our minds, where we ought to set them, and...