The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity 2018

in

“What do you think about the Christ?” Jesus asks; “Whose Son is He?” They said to Him, “The Son of David.” David was the great King of Israel to whom was promised a son who would be an everlasting king. But the father is greater than the son. So how, Jesus asks, can David’s son also be David’s Lord?

Those interrogating Jesus cannot answer. The climax of the Gospel reveals the answer: When unbelieving Thomas is confronted with the risen Jesus, who still bears scars on His hands and side, he confesses, “My Lord and my God!” That’s who Jesus is: God in the flesh. True God, begotten of the Father from all eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

But why? Because He yet loves this world whose love has grown cold. The Bridegroom bears the hatred and animosity of His bride, yet He loves her to the end, to the Telos, to the completion of what it means to be human. For the God who is love made us also to love.

Read More

Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity 2018

in

The one thankful leper didn’t have his leprosy cured because he believed hard enough. Jesus commends him because he saw in Jesus the merciful God. God had shown pity on him, and therefore the leper was glad. I imagine they all were glad, because they were healed. But the thankful leper was glad not just for his healing, but because he had found God. He wanted to be with him. This kind of faith ceases to be about the believer and becomes all about the object of belief. The Christian, then, never talks about his own faith, but the Christ in whom his faith is.

Read More

Do You Believe Her?

I write a weekly article for our church’s newsletter. Most of that content is subscription-only. Here’s a sample from this week’s edition. You can sign up for free here.

Ford - Kavanaugh

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Many were riveted to the testimony on Thursday by the Supreme Court nominee and his accuser. Just a few days earlier, I had been discussing with students in our school the New Testament's use of the term "testimony" (sometimes translated "witness"). One student observed that the word today is usually used in churches for a contemporary person's religious experience.

In the Bible, as in the adjudication of a crime, what matters is testimony and evidence. The first eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus was Mary Magdalene. "I have seen the Lord!" she said to the other disciples. Do you believe her? They didn't – at first. Soon others had eyewitness testimony to add to hers. The mounting weight of the eyewitnesses made belief in the resurrection credible.

We must still ask that question today: Do you believe her? Or, look up passages like 1 Corinthians 15 (especially verses 3-8) and 1 John 1:1-4. There you will see the New Testament foundation for belief in Jesus: the eyewitness testimony. Do you believe them?

The reason I am a Christian is because I find the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus credible. If He is risen from the dead, then Jesus is who He said—the Christ—and will do what He promised—pardon our sins and raise us from the dead. Everything depends on that. I believe the witnesses.

Your unworthy undershepherd, 
Pastor Esget

Sermon for Teacher Work Week: The Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist

in

What are we here for, at Immanuel Lutheran School? Our goal as pedagogs is to ago the paidoi, to lead the children to their goal, to their completion, to their perfection. We ourselves are not there, but we are on the path. And this path leads to the kingdom of God, the perfection of the world in the regenesis of the human race. All the subjects—math and literature etc.—are to be employed with nurturing the conscience and shaping the heart. We are preparing our young men for the moment Salome salaciously presents herself and now a decision must be made. We are preparing our young women to not be Salome.

Yet there is something beyond morals here, and obedience to the God-given conscience. There is also preparation for the moment after the moment, the time when we’ve stepped off the path our pedagogs mapped out for us.

Read More

Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity 2018

in

Jesus is the Good Samaritan, and He comes to you, in your ditch. He comes to you with your heart problems, and to you with your heartbrokenness. He comes to you with your struggling child, and to you with your family strife. He comes to you in the darkness of the night, and to you at the end of your life.

At the heart of God is mercy. He will not leave man in the ditch. 

Read More

The Wedding of Molly Leithart and Shawn Barnett

in

Through the testing, the Holy Spirit creates in you a holy love that passes the shallow romanticism and eroticism of our culture. This is a love that flows from being loved by God. This love lives each moment as a gift from God. In this marriage, Molly and Shawn, God makes you participants in His own work of creation, pro-creation, of unmerited love, and the joy of giving and receiving gifts. 

Read More

The Pride of Dominion

in

Here's a great passage from St. John Chrysostom on the Parable of the Unrighteous Steward that shaped my thinking in preparing yesterday's sermon:

You are an administrator of things that are another's ... Upon you has been bestowed but the right of their brief and passing use. Cast then from your soul the pride of dominion, and put on instead the modesty and humility of a steward.

Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, vol. III, p321

Sermon for Trinity IX, 2018

in

This parable has a surprise. If you’ve heard the parable before, you lose the surprise. But imagine you’re hearing it for the first time.  There’s a manager who has been cooking the books. He’s been caught, and the CEO has told him to clean out his office. But instead, he quickly alters the records even more, so that the people who owe the company money get a big reduction. He’s hoping that the people he helps will in turn help him once he’s out on the street. 

Now right at that moment, when the evil person has been exposed, many of Jesus’ parables will conclude with condemnation, something like, “It would be better for that man to have a millstone hung around his neck and cast into the depths of the sea”; or, “Bind him and cast him into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth”; or, “Assuredly I say to you, that man will be cast into prison and not get out until he has repaid the last penny.”

We expect to hear a pithy ending to the story that promises justice in the end. But instead, Jesus surprises us with a radically different kind of ending: the embezzling, wasteful, dishonest manager gets praised. So what’s going on?

Read More

Sermon for Trinity 7

The Lord Jesus sees the need of the people in the wilderness, and gives them the free gift of His compassion. In the same way, the Lord Jesus sees your need, and has compassion. In today’s Gospel, the LORD wants you to see that He will not abandon His people; He will not send them away hungry. But the timing of His help is not as we would suspect; it comes when everything else is exhausted. It comes when the disciples can see no hope, no resource, no solution. It comes when the people are starving and in the wilderness. But it does come, at the Lord’s command, on account of His compassion.

Read More

Sermon on Psalm 141

in

We are very familiar with Psalm 141, since it is a fixed part of our Evening Prayer liturgy. “Let my prayer rise before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

The lifting up of hands in prayer at the evening sacrifice betokened the Lamb of God, who was offered up as our sacrifice at the evening of the world – and whose death itself came about at the time of the evening sacrifice. There on the cross, His arms were lifted up, as He offered prayers for the world’s forgiveness.

Read More