Cantate 2023

May 13, 2023 by Christopher Esget in Sermons

Most people sense that something is deeply wrong in the world; everything from riots in the streets to the incredible rise of depression and suicide indicate this. The US surgeon general recently declared America has an epidemic of loneliness.

What’s been the response? American Christianity from Evangelicalism to the mainline churches set forth a vision of God as a feminized fuzzball of felicitous friendship. All have won and all must have prizes. Meanwhile, the “Tolerance” bumperstickers are gone, and politicians only make demands for reparations, recriminations, or retribution….

Rogate 2022

May 24, 2022 by Christopher Esget in Sermons

Sometimes you’ll hear folks slander Luther by saying things like, “He took James out of the Bible.” That’s nonsense. He included James, and the entire apocrypha, in his German translation of the Bible. But even if he had removed a book from the Bible, one of the great things about being Lutheran is we don’t have to regard him, or any man, as infallible. But did Luther in his later years keep saying the same things about James? …

Cantate 2022

May 23, 2022 by Christopher Esget in Sermons

When we are angry, we are putting ourselves in the place of God the judge. The sin of anger puts our souls in danger. Jesus and John the Baptist would both say, “Repent.” James says, ‘Put away these sins, and receive with meekness, i.e., humility, the saving Word of absolution.” …

The Second Sunday after Christmas 2022

January 02, 2022 by Christopher Esget in Sermons

“An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.” It’s not an example. Many of our dreams are the fruits of anxiety or indigestion. I once had a dream that Fritz Pauling and I were in Italy stealing a pipe organ. I don’t plan to do what I dreamed. (Although it might make a pretty good buddy caper movie.) The kind of dream Joseph has is extremely rare. But it should remind us of another Joseph: the son of Jacob who had that amazing technicolor dreamcoat. His dreams got him thrown into a pit, then sold into slavery. To where? Egypt. See the similarities? With this new Joseph, and the Mother and Child, God is going to redo the Exodus.

So the “Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying.…” Angel means messenger. An angel speaks; that is his purpose: he brings God’s Word to particular people. What’s the message?

Cantate 2021

May 08, 2021 by Christopher Esget in Sermons

The Church’s “new song” has nothing to do with musical style or instrumentation. We are a people who are liberated from the world’s “old song” of hatred, despair, and lust, the funeral dirges and anthems of kingdoms passing away. The new song is the song of the new kingdom that the LORD has inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The Church’s liturgy is the new song.