Sermons

Isaiah 64:1-9 Jesus Christ is the light of the world. The light no darkness can overcome. They blamed the darkness on God. It’s your fault, God, the people of Isaiah cried out. You were angry. So we sinned. You hid yourself. So we sinned. You have hidden your face from us. So we sinned. You can’t blame us for all this darkness. It’s your fault, God, not ours. They blamed the darkness on God. Oh that you would tear open

I chair the Candidacy Committee for the NWWA Synod, and in our tiny little supposedly godless synod, we have more candidates than most synods, even those in the brass buckle of the Lutheran Bible belt. So I go to a lot of ordinations. A lot. It never ceases to amaze me that these opening words of the bishop to the candidate still bring terror to my soul: Before Almighty God, to whom you must give account… One of the last

The Good Shepherd. The Door. Even the Gate of the Sheep. The Dayspring, the Morningstar, the Light of the World. We call Jesus the Lamb of God, the Son of Man, the Savior. In our hymns and in our hearts we hold him as the Vine, the Tree of Life, the Seed that falls into the earth and dies. And with good reason. All these ways of thinking about Jesus come from the Bible – many of them are references

We have 18-month-old twin boys who live next door to us in Seattle. We have known them since they were born – before, even: we were among the first to see their little bodies forming via the miracle of a sonogram. We visited them in the hospital during their long, early stay there. We made banners for their front porch to welcome them home. We think having them next door is pretty darned cool. On Fridays, when we each have

You know that moment. That moment when you’re caught. That moment when they finally find out – Yes! He is the fraud we always knew him to be. Despite all appearances to the contrary, she is exactly like the rest of us. We all know that moment. We all know it. And we don’t like it. We don’t like it one little bit. Caught in a lie, backed into a corner of our own sloppy painting. Caught. Wrong. Down.  

Sometimes a king is just a king. The king in this story must be God, right? Hold on – not so fast. It’s not, I think, as if Matthew wants us to compare the mean, enraged king of Jesus’ story to the King of the Universe. The God we worship and adore is hardly consistent with a picture of a king-off-the-rails who murders subjects and burns their cities, all on the occasion of his son’s wedding day.   If we

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” The question is, “where are you going?” From the sounds of the rest of this brief passage from Song of Solomon, it could well be Seattle. A land of fruits and flowers, fragrant vines in blossom, birds singing. And at least for right now – “the rain is over and gone.” “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” The question is, “where are you going?”   Where is this

I love it that Jesus is all about what’s best for us. That he can just zoom right in to the middle of a situation and strip away all that would distract us – all the “yes, buts… — and help us to see with just a little more clarity the path for our steps. That’s the Jesus that Luke wants his young church to know – his church of misfits and broken people. Of all the Gospelers – and,

I met Johann Detweiler quite by accident.  It was just a few weeks ago, on the light rail between the airport in Minneapolis and downtown.  I’m trying hard to break myself of the habit of talking to every single person that I meet, and I was doing pretty well with that until Johann dropped a stack of papers that landed all over the aisle of the car.  As I stooped over to help him pick them up, it just seemed

“We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been slaves to anyone.”  I’ll cut him some slack on the “We are descendants of Abraham” line.  100% true.  But really:  “Have never been slaves to anyone…”  I think he either forgot, or is repressing Israel’s bondage at the hands of the Egyptians, from which Moses led them to freedom and the promised land.  And then there was the Babylonian exile.  More:  even as these religious leaders speak with Jesus, they are