Category Archives: Forgiveness

Listen to Him: Lost and Found – Sermon on Luke 15:1-32

Leave a reply

March 31, 2019
Lent 4C

What’s your favorite story? Is it one you read when you were young, or maybe heard your parents tell you over and over? When our sons were young enough we could still tell them what to do, we made them sit through all of Lawrence of Arabia. We kept telling them we wanted them to be culturally literate, so they could get half of the jokes that flew past them when they watched the Simpsons.

Stories shape our worldview. They help us make sense of things we don’t understand. Stories teach us how to get along in the world, how to deal with hardships and challenges, how to behave toward others. It’s how the Inuit raise their children to be gentle and never explode in anger – they use storytelling to help young children understand the consequences of their actions.[1]

Jesus fully understood the power of storytelling. That’s why he used parables so often in his teaching. Stories helped the people who were listening to Jesus get a better grasp of who God is, and just how much God loves us.

So here we are, in the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s gospel, and once again, it’s story time. Here we are, following Jesus toward Jerusalem for the last time, and once again, we find Jesus at a table. Continue reading →

God With Us: Prepare for Peace – Sermon on Luke 3:1-6

3 Replies

December 5,2021
Advent 2C
Video

I mentioned last week that this season of Advent brings in the Year of Luke – in the coming year, we will take most of our gospel readings from Luke’s account. Luke uses the first two chapters to introduce this story of Jesus’ life and work. In chapter one, we meet a young girl named Mary, and her relatives Zechariah and Elizabeth, who are expecting a child in their old age. We also meet the angel Gabriel, who will tell Mary she is to become the mother of God’s Son, while Elizabeth’s son will be a prophetic voice that goes before Messiah into the world.

But as I also mentioned last week, a theme running throughout this gospel is the theme of reversal, and we will experience it during Advent by beginning at the end, as we did last week, and moving toward the beginning, as we will do next week. Today, we are in chapter three, and Luke introduces us to the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, known to us most often as “John the Baptist.” Continue reading →

The Last Laugh – Sermon on Mark 16:1-8 Easter B

1 Reply

April 1, 2018

A good “April Fool” joke is some false claim that is presented so convincingly, you think it’s true. And just when you surrender to the claim, the joker yells “April Fool!” If you came here this morning expecting me to tell a bunch of jokes, “April Fool!” – I’m not going to do that. The Good News I have to share with you this morning might have felt like a practical joke to the disciples who first heard it, but they quickly realized the truth, and the truth was way more amazing than they could have imagined. Continue reading →

Forgive Again – Sermon on Matthew 18:21-35

1 Reply

Revised for September 13, 2020

I don’t think any of us call ourselves Christians with the idea of becoming less like Jesus as our goal. We’re all in it to become more like Jesus. Sometimes, it’s hard, though, isn’t it? Sometimes we’d like Jesus to let us off the hook a little bit, tell us what we are doing is good enough, pat us on the head and let us get on with being a little less like him. Right? But it never seems to work that way. Continue reading →

Mercy and Justice

Leave a reply

This is not a blog post about Martin Luther King Day, even though we celebrate 50 years of “I Have A Dream” today. This is not a blog post about the presidential inauguration. Four years ago was history in the making. Today is just confirmation that it wasn’t a fluke. Frankly, I don’t have a thing to say on either of these topics that someone else hasn’t already said better and more eloquently. (And I am not talking about Mark Driscoll, who seems to have forgotten that bit about “judge not, unless you wanna be judged.”)

What burns my oatmeal right now is the awareness that, as much as we say mercy and justice matter to us as Christ-followers, most of the Christians I know are not too comfortable making mercy and justice a reality for others. We are grateful when it comes our way, but showing mercy – real caring for another that costs us – is something we simply don’t know how to do very well. We can pray for another’s need. We can talk about a problem we see. But when it comes to forgiving someone who has wronged us or putting another’s welfare and safety ahead of our own, we look more like Mark Driscoll than Jesus.

And do we even know what justice really is? The mission statement for my denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church, focuses on the desire to see more disciples among more populations in a more caring and just world, but what exactly does that mean? Whose justice are we talking about here? And who gets to decide what that justice looks, smells, and feels like?

Jesus came into the world to shine light into our darkness, to make wrong things right again, to heal brokenness and offer hope where there is no hope. He calls each of us to participate in that same work. So I have to ask myself: What am I doing to show that kind of mercy and build that kind of justice? What are you doing to make this a more caring and just world?