Sermon for Christmas 1

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the First Sunday after Christmas, December 30, 2018.

God’s Christmas Gift List
Colossians 3:12-17
(Other Readings Appointed: Exodus 13:1-3a, 11-15; Luke 2:22-40)

Those of us who have lived here in the DC Area have at one time or another heard one of the many 60-second messages produced by Pastor Lon Solomon from the McLean Bible Church. He always seems to have a message which is thought-provoking, yet I think most of us only really remember his closing tag line, “Not a sermon, just a thought.” So as I was preparing for the message we would reflect on together this Sunday after Christmas, I’d like to paraphrase Pastor Solomon a little by saying that I would like to share a thought that can become a sermon.

So, here’s the thought. Now many of us have gotten through Christmas gift shopping and gift giving, we’re pretty much done with our Christmas lists. At this moment, we’ve moved beyond the conversation of “What do you want?” to “Did you get everything that you hoped for?” And with that, depending on what we received, we’re either excited to tell everyone who asks all the neat things we got, or we might say in a Charlie Brown sort of way, “I got socks”.

Read Full Post »

Sermon for Christmas Day

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord during the Christmas Day Festival Eucharist, December 25, 2018.

A New Birth: His and Ours
Titus 3:4-7
(Readings Appointed: Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-12; John 1:1-18)

Sometimes ideas and thoughts that come to a preacher for sermons appear in what can be the strangest places; and what became today’s Christmas sermon is no exception. Last September, (yes, I was thinking about today’s sermon that early), I had discovered in the multitude of channels that is cable television that I could watch programs from JBS—the Jewish Broadcasting Service. And so I found myself listening in on the Rosh Hashanah services from Central Synagogue in New York City. What was interesting was learning how the numbering of years in the Jewish calendar is based on a reckoning of the number of years since the creation of the world. So with the celebration of the New Year, most of the preaching in these services revolved around thoughts of renewal and new beginnings, seeing a New Year as a “personal restart” of creation and life—themes which we even see in our own keeping of New Year, especially when we start dropping slogans like “New Year, New You”.

Then I started to think about Christmas. The hymn which we just sang, as well as some other old Christmas hymns and carols, even as they sing of the wonderful news and story of Christmas, slip in some reference to the New Year. And I started to wonder, “Why?” Of course, there are only eight days between Christmas and New Year, and New Year is a part of the Twelve Days of Christmas, so perhaps it makes sense that one would be able to have New Year mentioned in a song of Christmas. But, thinking just a little further, could it be possible to see the theme of newness and renewal of life in Christmas and not wait until New Year to ponder that idea?

Read Full Post »

Sermon for Christmas Eve

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord during the Christmas Eve Candlelight Eucharist, December 24, 2018.

A Song of Peace
Luke 2:14 and 19:38
(Readings Appointed: Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20)

If there are “commandments” that exist about planning worship based upon what people expect, especially at Christmas, perhaps one of them is, “You shall never omit the singing of “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve—ever.” There is just something about the quiet beauty and charm of this text and tune which captures the feelings which surround the retelling of the story of the events of that night so long ago when God Himself entered into our world of space and time as that Infant born in a Bethlehem stable. And in many ways, much of the music and song which fills this night seems as timeless as the story they tell.

For those of you who may not know, this Christmas Eve marks the 200th Anniversary of the first singing of “Silent Night”. There are several different stories that tell of how this carol came to be, but the gist of the story is that Father Franz Joseph Mohr had given the words of a poem he had written to his organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, who composed music for the words, and it was then sung after the Christmas Midnight Mass in the Parish Church of Saint Nicholas in Oberndorf, Austria in 1818. And if you look at the inside cover of tonight’s worship folder, you will find the text of Mohr’s poem with a translation which tries to give a feel for the original thoughts of these words.

Read Full Post »

Sermon for Advent 4

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, December 23, 2018.

A Shepherd from Bethlehem
Micah 5:2-5a
(Other Readings Appointed: Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-56)

With less than 36 hours left to go, the Advent Season has finally made the hard, sudden, sharp right turn to get us to Christmas. Today’s readings finally give us word of what we thought we were anticipating over these last 22 days as we hear of the coming birth of Jesus the Savior. And when we think of Advent solely in the sense of it being our time to prepare for Christmas, to finally hear the words about the birth of Jesus in the final days and hours before the event arrives, almost seems like the person who knows when Christmas happens and yet always waits until the very last moment to get ready.

But our waiting in this season is all about waiting with patience. And I have found it helpful, as we have done together in this year’s Advent sermons, to think through the Old Testament Prophesies which sustained the hope of the people of Israel in their waiting for the Promised One. When we look at the whole of the Old Testament, we come to see that our four weeks of waiting are nothing compared to the waiting done by our forbearers in faith. It is traditionally assumed that Adam and Eve had 4,000 years to wait to see God’s promise of a Savior them to come to pass. Using the timeline given in Matthew’s Gospel accounting of Jesus’ genealogy, from Abraham to Jesus’ arrival was at least 42 generations, or 1,680 years assuming a generation as being 40 years. And tradition has it that from the final words of the last written prophesy in the Old Testament by Malachi in 430 BC to the arrival of Jesus was almost 400 years. Sort of puts our four weeks into perspective, doesn’t it?

Read Full Post »

Sermon for Advent 3

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Third Sunday in Advent, December 16, 2018.

Comfort and Joy
Zephaniah 3:14-20
(Other Readings Appointed: Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 7:18-28)

Perhaps when you read today’s sermon theme, you may have gotten a little bit of a “Christmas Music Earworm”. And yes, the inspiration for the title was from the Christmas Carol, “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”, and its famous refrain: “Oh, tidings of comfort and joy”. The musician known as Sting, who by his admission is an Agnostic, in his notes for his “Christmas” album, “If on a Winter’s Night”, said, “Like many people, I have an ambivalent attitude towards the celebration of Christmas. For many, it is a period of intense loneliness and alienation. I specifically avoided the jolly, almost triumphalist, strain in many of the Christian carols.” And in one track on the album, “Soul Cake”, a song sung by those begging for alms and food at Halloween, he added in his arrangement a musical reference to “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” as “a dramatic counterpoint” to these words sung by beggars.

What is not often known is that the title of this Carol has a comma in it, between the words “merry” and “gentlemen”. This comma actually helps to understand the meaning of what is actually being spoken of, and its meaning is far from “jolly” or “triumphalist”. The text of the Carol is a retelling of the appearance of the angels to the shepherds in Bethlehem on Christmas night. And for the angel to say to them, “God rest Ye merry, gentlemen” was to say, “God keep you merry”, or even more simply in the original words of the Gospel, “Fear not” or “Be not afraid”.

Read Full Post »

Sermon for Advent 2

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Second Sunday in Advent, December 9, 2018.

Purified but Not Consumed
Malachi 3:1-7b
(Other Readings Appointed: Philippians 1:2-11; Luke 3:1-14)

Whichever way one chooses to count, today’s readings allow us to hear the message which the Lord sent to His people by the last of the Old Testament Prophets. In the words from the Prophet Malachi, we hear him speak from the closing chapters of the Old Testament, listening to God’s promise to send a messenger who will come to prepare the way for the Lord’s Promised One; the One who comes to judge and purify God’s people that they may again be the people He intended them to be. Then in the words of today’s Gospel, we see this promise fulfilled in the person of John the Baptist, who in his ministry of “preparing the way of the Lord” was the last of the Old Testament Prophets, and by pointing out Jesus, the One who had come, brought the Old to its close and showed that the New had already come.

What is interesting about both of these Prophets is the common message which they were given to proclaim—a message of preparation for the coming of the Lord through purification and repentance. In some ways, such a message isn’t one which brings much terror to souls. All of us, at one time or another, have needed to seek out and receive forgiveness from someone we have wronged. Other than perhaps needing to humble oneself and swallow our stubborn pride to do so, it really doesn’t take much to go and say to someone, “I’m sorry, forgive me”, and to then gratefully receive from them words of forgiveness.

Read Full Post »

Sermon for Advent 1

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 2018.

The Coming King of Righteousness
Jeremiah 33:14-16 and Luke 19:28-40
(Other Reading Appointed: 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13)

Many of us know that the name of Advent given to this opening season of the Church Year comes from the Latin word that is translated into English as “coming”. As we ended the last Church Year, we began this theme already as we looked to the Scriptures and heard them speaking to us of what we often call our Lord’s Second Coming—the moment of His promised return in glory and power to bring time to an end and to usher in God’s faithful people and the whole of creation into God’s eternity. And as we begin a new Church Year in which we will once again retell the story of our salvation, we look back to the Lord’s First Coming—when He came to earth in the person of Jesus in order that the grace and forgiveness and love of God for the children of His creating would be revealed through the saving acts accomplished for us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

Although many see Advent as our time to “prepare for Christmas”, we have to be reminded that for our salvation it was not enough just that Jesus came to earth through His birth, but that He did so that He would also grow to manhood and suffer, die, and rise again. It is for this reason that the historic Lutheran practice was to begin Advent by hearing what we often think of as the “Palm Sunday” Gospel. Here, along with the crowds on that day, we too greet “the King who comes in the Name of the Lord”, praising and honoring Him because He brings us peace which unites heaven to earth and earth to heaven—a unity that is established through the work accomplished at the end of that Holy Week through Good Friday’s cross and Easter’s empty tomb.

Read Full Post »