Archive for August, 2011

Performance, creativity, and the reason for preaching

Posted on August 24th, 2011

  Pr. Samuel Beltz, a recent graduate of the St. Louis seminary, doesn’t want to return to his alma mater for their symposium, “Rediscovering the Art of Homiletics.” I’ve never met Pr. Beltz, but I like the way he thinks. What makes me nervous for the future of our synod, though, is apparently what he was taught (and rightly rejects) about preaching: “Rediscovering the Art of Homiletics” This title seems adventuresome, brave, pioneering even.  However, in my mind, I ask “has the artfulness of homiletics gone someplace that it needs to be rediscovered?”  No.  It has not.  If there is one thing that is very apparent to me as I have seen and heard the homiletical noise from pulpits in my short life it…

Categories: Theology

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Trinity 9 sermon

Posted on August 21st, 2011

Departing from my usual custom, this sermon is on the Epistle for the day, 1 Corinthians 10:6-13. Dear Christians, lest we stumble and fall and are destroyed as happened to many of the Israelites, and lest we fall into contention and immorality as happened in Corinth, this morning we will consider the Word of God written in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. “These things,” the reading begins, “took place as examples for us.” We’ve been dropped right into the middle of a thought. What things? Paul has just been talking about the Israelites who, in being led out of slavery in Egypt received a type of baptism by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, and received a type of communion,…

Categories: Sermons

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The Resurrection of the Body

Posted on August 16th, 2011

A parishioner forwarded to me an email from a relative asking questions about heaven, hell, and the resurrection. The particular problem here is a belief that there is no resurrection of the body, but just a spiritual existence after death. I’m going to address this in a midweek Bible study which this particular parishioner attends. Here are some of my notes (excluding the email, which I haven’t obtained permission to share). These are the questions raised by the email (or, assumptions made that need to be addressed): When the body dies, does the soul/spirit go to heaven or hell? The questioner does not find Scriptural reference to “body” in hell (although thinks it may be implied by “fire”). The questioner cannot find Scriptural reference…

Categories: Theology

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Trinity 7 sermon 2011

Posted on August 7th, 2011

Readings: Genesis 2.7-17; Romans 6.19-23; Mark 8.1-9 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Today’s first reading, from Genesis, tells us of our origins: God made man from the earth which He created. But man is not simply dust, not simply earth; you are not merely matter. Man is both body and soul together, not as two parts temporarily joined; man is an embodied soul, or an ensouled body. Our first father became a living being when God breathed into Adam’s face the breath of life. And all good things to eat God gave to the man. The world was God’s gift to His creature, and God proclaimed a feast for him. He made from the man…

Categories: Sermons

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Psalm 58

Posted on August 4th, 2011

1Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge the children of man uprightly?  We confess God as He has revealed Himself: one God in three Persons. So why does this Psalm address “gods,” plural? The Hebrew term here is אֵלֶם meaning “in silence”; however, it’s not far from the Hebrew word for “gods,” which would here mean men who act as gods on earth – the powerful men, the politicians and the rich men who control them. “In silence” however is the best reading, so that the first part of verse 1 should read, “Do you in your silence decree what is right?” In other words, they are staying silent when they ought to speak up. Think of the terrible…

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Trinity 5 sermon

Posted on August 2nd, 2011

Gospel: Luke 5.1-11 – The Calling of Simon and the Miraculous Catch of Fish I’m posting this rather late; this is from July 24, 2011 By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread – or catch fish. Putting food on the table is not just difficult physically, but taxing on the psyche. Food for the table, clothes for the children, rent for the landlord, mortgage payments for the bank, tuition for the school – it’s all included in the petition in the Lord’s Prayer for daily bread; and the struggle for that daily bread is fraught with anxiety. Jobs can be lost, even through no fault of your own. Despite the affluent, residential neighborhood that our church is in, people who have…

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Politicians and the Antichrist: Why it matters

Posted on August 1st, 2011

I finally read David Mills’s piece on the Bachmann Antichrist Overdrive flap at First Things (“Michele Bachmann, the Anti-Christ, and the Political Theologian“), and he makes the excellent point that politicians need to tell us more about what they believe, so we can have a better idea of how they’ll approach their office: Religious politicians (on the left and right) are happy to appeal to the religious voter, and many are happy to appeal to culture war divisions, and some to imply that God is on their side without quite saying so. But they want to stay as far away as possible from what Chesterton called philosophy and I’ve called theology, because the clearer they are about their principles and commitments, the less room they have…

Categories: Politics, Theology

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