Sermon for Easter 4

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, April 25, 2021.

To Serve and Protect
John 10:11-18
(Other Readings Appointed: Acts 4:1-12; 1 John 3:16-24)

Today we reach the mid-point of these Great 50 Days of the Easter Season.  And at this point, the Gospels we hear proclaimed to us move us from the focus of seeing and beholding the Risen Lord Jesus as He appeared and showed Himself alive to His disciples and followers, to now spending time listening to the Lord Jesus, now as the Risen One, as He teaches us of who He is and how He and His risen life are seen and lived out in our lives as His followers in our own day.  As we hear the Lord Jesus speak to us in these days, we discover that, for us, Christ’s resurrection is about more than a day, or even a season, but it is truly about a way of life and a life that we live in and through the Risen Lord.

This mid-point Sunday of the Easter Season has often been given the name of Good Shepherd Sunday.  Through the readings, especially in the Introit Psalm and the Gospel that we have heard on this day, we come to see once again that beautiful image which we find in Scripture of our Lord as the Shepherd who cares for us who are “His people and the sheep of His pasture” (Ps. 100:3).  In this image of our God as our Shepherd, we find peace and comfort in the knowledge that we live with One that we can trust to love us, to care for us, and to lead us always in the right way.

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Sermon for Easter 3

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Third Sunday of Easter, April 18, 2021. This Sunday was also observed, along with other congregations of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, as “Here I Stand” Sunday, in commemoration of the 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther’s appearance and defense before the Holy Roman Emperor and other leaders of church and state at the Imperial Diet held in Worms, Germany.

Here We Stand
Readings Appointed
(Acts 3:11-21; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36-49)

Back in the pre-pandemic lockdown days of 2017, when time seemed to be more easily observed and measured, many Lutheran Christians joyfully marked and celebrated the 500^th Anniversary of the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation, that period in history begun through Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses Against the Sale of Indulgences on October 31, 1517.  After that celebration, there were some who rightly pointed out that if Luther’s act in 1517 was just the beginning of the Reformation, then there’s more 500^th Anniversary moments yet to come, perhaps even not to finish until 2030 and the 500^th Anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession, the primary statement of our Lutheran Christian faith.  At the 2019 convention of our Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, a resolution was passed to call on congregations to celebrate the historical event that we remember today; an event which might have gone unnoticed and unobserved by us here until I saw on Facebook the news message from Synod about it while I was planning worship for this Easter Season.

500 years ago today, Martin Luther stood before the leaders of both church and state to answer one question: Would he recant—disavow—everything that he had taught since the posting of his 95 Theses.  But what brought Martin to this moment?  Since that day in 1517, Luther continued to preach and teach and debate and write, defending and even further entrenching the positions he took against the Pope and the Roman Church.  For this, Pope Leo X responded with his own writing—the Papal Bull, Exsurge, Domine (Arise, O Lord), of June 15, 1520—which ordered Luther’s writings to be burned and for Luther and his followers to renounce their teachings and return as “loyal subjects” of the Pope and the Roman Church, giving them 60 days from the publication of the Bull in Germany to do so.  Luther refused, and so on January 3, 1521, under another Papal Bull, Decet Romanum Pontificem (It befits the Roman Pontiff), Luther and his followers were excommunicated from the Roman Church and declared to be heretics and schismatics, calling on leaders of the church as well as state to help in bringing Luther and his errors from further eroding the unity of the Church under the Pope.

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Sermon for Easter 2

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 11, 2021.

To Touch and To Be Touched by the Risen Lord
1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31
(Other Reading Appointed: Acts 4:32-35)

Each year on this Sunday after Easter, we hear in the Gospel the account of the Risen Lord’s appearances to His disciples on the evening of that first Easter Day and on the Sunday following.  And each year when we hear these words, we are always amazed at the response of the main protagonist in this account.  Every year at this time we are allowed to be hard on “poor old ‘Doubting Thomas’”.  We are hard on him because of his refusal to believe in the Risen Lord without having real, physical proof of seeing for Himself that Jesus had truly rose from the dead.  We almost seem to take pride in the fact that we in our day are somehow “better” than Thomas because Jesus calls us blessed for “not seeing but yet believing” in Him and in His resurrection.

Yet, before we get too hard on Thomas and his reaction to the resurrection and before we get a little too prideful on our ability to “believe without seeing”, let’s think a little about what happened in these days following our Lord’s resurrection and put ourselves into that place and time.  If we look carefully at these things, we might just see that we are not that much different than Thomas, because all of us are looking to touch and to be touched by our Risen Lord.

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Sermon for the Resurrection of Our Lord: Easter Day

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord: Easter Day, during the Festival Eucharist, April 4, 2021.

The New, Eternal, Normal
Mark 16:1-8
(Other Readings Appointed: Isaiah 25:6-9; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11)

There was a time some years ago when as a Preacher that I began to worry about having anything new to say in an Easter sermon.  Let’s face it—we all know the story: who did what and what it was that happened.  There is truly not much more to be said about it.  And yet, we still tell and talk about this “old, old story” because it is the heart and center of our faith, for as Saint Paul reminds us, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).

And then came 2020.  As we spent an Easter in isolation together, connected only through the internet, we celebrated what, as I called it in my sermon last year, “The Most Different Easter Ever”.  Yet, as I preached that sermon, I once again retold that “old, old story”, because it was the word we needed to hear as the world so suddenly changed around us and we needed the reminder that because of what that first Easter brought to the world assured us that since Jesus is risen from the dead, all is well and all will be well.

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Meditations for Good Friday

At Trinity-Mount Rainier on Good Friday, April 2, 2021, the order of worship used the devotion of the Stations of the Cross. This devotion follows the traditional fourteen stations made in the City of Jerusalem by Christian pilgrims following the Via Dolorosa–the Way of Sorrows–marking the places in Christ’s way of the cross from His condemnation to His burial. The stations recall both events which are recorded in the Gospels and those which have come through tradition and legend.

This year, I chose to write meditations for each of the Stations to be used during the course of the service. The hope was to enrich the order of Scripture and prayer with devotional thoughts which would give commentary on the events being remembered, especially giving background and Christological focus to the more legendary Stations.

I pray that these devotions may be of use even in private settings as we reflect on Christ’s salvation won for us through His passion, death, and resurrection.

The meditations can be found here:
Stations of the Cross Meditations

The Order of Service for the Stations of the Cross can be found here:
Good Friday Liturgy 2021

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Sermon for Holy (Maundy) Thursday

A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on Holy (Maundy) Thursday, the First Day of the Easter Triduum, during the Evening Commemoration of the Lord’s Supper, April 1, 2021.

This Blessed Sacrament of Unity
1 Corinthians 10:16-17
(Other Readings Appointed: Exodus 24:3-11; Mark 14:12-26)

As I was thinking of a theme for this Holy Thursday sermon, I would have to say that there was a hymn text which came almost unbidden to my mind, though one that is not in our hymnal.

Thou, who at Thy first Eucharist didst pray
That all Thy Church might be forever one,
Grant us at every Eucharist to say
With longing heart and soul, “Thy will be done”:
O may we all one bread, one body be,
Through this blest Sacrament of unity.          (The Hymnal 1982, 315:1)

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