Sermon for Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Luke 24:1-12

Sermon Theme:  “A Truth Great Enough to Split Your Head Open”

(Sources:  Brokhoff, Series C, Preaching Workbook; Emphasis Online Commentary; original ideas; Christian Easter Jokes; Online about “John Chrysostom”; Concordia Pulpit Resources, Vol. 22, Part 2, Series B)

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

One Easter, a priest and a taxi driver both died and went to heaven.  St. Peter was at the Pearly gates waiting for them.

“Come with me,” said St. Peter to the taxi driver.

The taxi driver did as he was told and followed St. Peter to a palatial mansion.  It had everything you could imagine, from a bowling alley to an Olympic size swimming pool.

“Oh, my word, thank you,” said the taxi driver.

Next, St. Peter led the priest to a rough old shack with a bunk bed and a little old television set.  “Wait, I think you are a little mixed up,” said the priest.  “Shouldn’t I be the one who gets the mansion?  After all, I was a priest, went to church every day, and preached God’s word.”

“Yes, that’s true,” St. Peter replied, “but during your Easter sermons people fell  asleep.  When the taxi driver drove, everybody prayed.”

I think all of us who are pastors fear that our Easter sermon will put the congregation to sleep.  When my daughter Rae Ann was a little girl, she loved to watch Mr. Rogers on TV.  One day Mr. Rogers taught the kids the meaning of the word “soporific,” which means “causing sleep.”  When he asked his TV audience to make a sentence with soporific, Rae Ann said out loud, “My pastor (this was before I became a pastor) — my pastor is soporific.”

It’s amazing how many pastors actually dread the task of writing an Easter sermon, and not just because we fear it might put the congregation to sleep.  For all of us, it’s probably the most difficult sermon of the year to write.  Why?  Because Easter is the most important day, the most important festival of the entire church year; Easter is everything!  Easter is what Christianity is all about, and human words cannot fully convey a reality that exhausts the power of human vocabulary, nor can the mind adequately grasp the divine mysteries of the Resurrection! Continue reading →

Sermon for Palm Sunday, March 20, 2016

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Texts:  John 12:12-19 and Philippians 2:5-11

Sermon Theme:  “Going Down to Go Up”

(Sources:  Emphasis Online Commentary; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Brokhoff, Series C, Preaching Workbook; original ideas; Online Short Christian Jokes and Funny Stories; Concordia Pulpit Resources, Volume 26, Part 2, Series C; Online “Straight from the Donkey’s Mouth”; Halley’s Bible Handbook)

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Palm Sunday is like celebrating the victory before it happens, and Easter Sunday is celebrating it after it happens.  In between the two, there lies the crucifixion, which lodges inside us today like tears ready to be poured out on Good Friday.

No doubt that’s why the Lectionary makers designate this Sunday as both “Palm Sunday” and “Passion Sunday,” and why some pastors read the Triumphal Entry Gospel text, others read the Gospel from the Passion History, and some read both.

It’s the same reason we began our service today by waving palm branches and singing loud Hosannas, and will close by singing “Beneath the Cross of Jesus.”  We realize there is no Resurrection without the Crucifixion.  Palm Sunday is a taste of victory before THE victory!

During his sermon on Palm Sunday, one pastor left the pulpit and walked down the aisle, waving two or three palm branches, trying to get the people excited about the triumphal entry.

To further stir up some zestful Palm Sunday enthusiasm, he asked folks in the pews to shout out things like, “Praise the Lord!,” “Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord,” Hallelujah, the Lord comes,” “Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest.”

“Just shout it out loud!” he told the congregation.

Immediately, a small preschool child stood up and shouted, “I want to go home!”

That’s just the opposite of another kid on Palm Sunday.  Five year old Craig had to stay home from church on Palm Sunday because of a stomach virus.  His father stayed with him, but the rest of his family went to church.  When his mom and his brother and sister got home carrying palm fronds, he wanted to know what they were for.

“People held them over Jesus’ head as He walked by,” his mother explained.

“Wouldn’t you know it!!  The one Sunday I miss church, Jesus shows up!” Continue reading →

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

March 13, 2016, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Philippians 3:8-14

Sermon Theme:  “Nobody Is Perfect, So Leave Me Alone!”

 (Sources:  Brokhoff, Series C, Preaching Workbook; Emphasis Online Commentary; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Anderson’s Cycle C Preaching Workbook; original ideas; Online Funny Christian Jokes; www.goodreads.com)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

           All theologians agree that no one is perfect except God.  However, there was one nine year old Sunday School student who did not agree with her teacher’s assurance to the class that God can do everything.

When the child shook her head, the teacher asked her, “OK, so tell me what can’t God do?”

“He can’t please everyone,” came the reply.

While it is true that no one is perfect, except God, and that we are saved by grace through faith alone, not by our own works, spiritual perfection must still be our goal.  It would be foolish to think, “Well, I’m saved by grace through faith alone, Jesus gives me His righteousness, so I can just do whatever I please, — sin big,  because forgiveness is easy!”  I hope no one thinks like that!

It is true, however, that many members of many congregations hold their pastor to a higher level of perfection than they hold themselves to.  Recently, a computerized survey taken among numerous congregations turned up some incredible expectations member have of their pastor.  When they put together all the things expected of the perfect pastor, these are the results they came up with:

The perfect pastor preaches exactly 12 minutes.  He frequently condemns sin, but never upsets anyone.  He works from 8 a.m. until midnight and is also janitor for the church.  He makes $60 a week, wears nice clothes, buys good books, drives a very nice car, and tithes half his income to the church.  He is 28 years old, but he has been preaching for 30 years.  He is wonderfully gentle, never stressed out, and always eager to take your advice.

He gives himself completely but never gets too close to anyone to avoid criticism.  He speaks boldly on social issues, but never becomes politically involved.  He is active in ministry to the teenagers, and spends all his time with senior citizens.  He makes 15 daily calls to parish families, visits shut-ins and the hospitalized regularly, spends all his time in evangelism to the unchurched, and is always in his office when needed.

Those were the results of an actual survey.  Like God, the pastor must be perfect.  Yeah, right! Continue reading →

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 6, 2016, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Sermon Theme:  “You Can Go Home Again”

(Anderson’s Cycle C Preaching Workbook; Emphasis Online Commentary; Emphasis Online Illustrations; original ideas; “Money Jokes,” Reader’s Digest; “A Far Country,” thattheworldmayknow.com; Online map of Judah, Galilee, and the Decapolis)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Attitudes about spending money encompass all extremes.  There was a local charity in a fairly small community that was supported by just about everyone.  Everyone, that is, except the local Bank’s President.  So the Director of the Charity decided to give the Bank President a call one day.

“Our records show you make $500,000 a year, yet you haven’t given one penny to charity,” the charity director began.  “Wouldn’t you like to help the community?”

The banker replied, “Did your research show that my mother is ill, with extremely expensive medical bills?”

“Um, no,” mumbled the director.

“Or that my brother is blind and unemployed?  Or that my sister’s husband died, leaving her broke with four kids?”

“I . . . I . . . I had no idea,” stammered the director.

“So,” said the banker, “if I don’t give them any money, why would I give any to you?”

“It’s all about money, isn’t it,” a parishioner said to me one day.  I took it that she meant the church was all about money.

“No, it’s not,” I replied, “people are about money!”

I grew up in a Lutheran congregation of frugal, old-time German-Americans, many of whom were born in the Old Country.  Their non-German neighbors considered them the most frugal people they knew, — a pretty strong opinion considering that everyone had just come out of the Great Depression, a time when frugality was a necessity.

While the story of the Prodigal Son is a much-loved parable by most Christians, my childhood congregation did not like it for two reasons: one, because they thought the boy’s father was foolish and irresponsible to give away inheritance money before his death, and two, squandering money as the Prodigal son did was the worst of all sins.  It was right up there with murder.  You could forgive your son for a lot of things, but wasting money was not one of them.

Having said that, I would add, we have to approach the Parable of the Prodigal Son with caution and insight.

In searching through Bible Commentaries, it’s amazing how many different approaches to this text students of the Bible have taken:

It’s about forgiveness; it’s about unconditional love; it’s about greed; it’s about being able to go home again; it’s really about the older brother who was Pharisaic; it’s about sowing one’s wild oats; it’s about an over-indulgent father.

Before we join the numerous message-finders, we need to begin with the bottom line:  this is a really a parable about God and sinful man.  The Prodigal son’s father represents God, and the Prodigal Son is a symbol of us.  We have to approach the story with that truth in mind. Continue reading →

Sermon for Third Sunday in Lent

February 28, 2016, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Luke 13:1-9

Sermon Theme:  “The Mystery of Suffering and the Tragedy of Inertia”

 (Sources:  Anderson’s Cycle C Preaching Workbook; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Brokhoff, Series C, Preaching Workbook; original ideas; The Parables of Peanuts by Robert L. Short; Concordia Pulpit Resources, Vol. 26, Part 2, Series C)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

           Our short sermon text from Luke this morning consists of two paragraphs, each with an interrelated message.  The “mystery of suffering” is the import of the first paragraph, and the “tragedy of merely taking up space” is the intendment of the second.

Together they cover a lot of ground in terms of trying to understand the dilemmas of human living and the enigmas of God’s ways.  Just like the cartoons of Charles M. Shultz, the God and human life issues are at the same time both simple and complex.

I love the way Charlie Brown responds to Lucy van Pelt in one of the Peanuts’ strips.  Charlie and Lucy are walking together when Lucy asks, “You know what your trouble is, Charlie Brown?”

Charlie keeps walking without saying anything, so Lucy continues, “The whole trouble with you is you don’t understand the meaning of life!”

Charlie stops, turns around, looks at Lucy and asks, “Do you understand the meaning of life?”

Lucy replies in a loud voice, “We’re not talking about me, Charlie Brown, we’re talking about you!”

In another Peanuts strip, Snoopy suffers one of those calamities that sometimes happen in life.  His doghouse burns down.  As Charlie, Lucy, and Snoopy stare at the charred ruins of Snoopy’s doggy home, Lucy exclaims, “So your house burned down!  So what?  A little tragedy now and then will make you a better person!  Man was born to suffer!”

Charlie turns away in disgust and says to Lucy, “He’s not a man. . . . he’s a dog.”

“The theology is the same,” Lucy shouts back at Charlie, throwing up her hands as Snoopy lies down on the burned out remains of his doghouse.  He looks up at the sky and says, “I don’t believe it.  Dogs were born to bite people on the leg and to sleep in the sun!”

Even for a dog, Snoopy’s doghouse burning to the ground wasn’t comparable to the disasters mentioned in our sermon text, — the tower of Siloam falling down and killing 18 people or Pilate’s massacre of folks in acts of worship.  Nor to the even more recent tragedies like Hiroshima, the Holocaust, the 1976 earthquake in China, or the Twin Towers collapse after the 9/11 terrorist attack. Continue reading →