Sermons (Page 77)

There’s a class in seminary called “homiletics.” It’s a fancy term for the exploration of the art of preaching and writing sermons. As a pastor, one of the more common questions I am asked is how I can come up with something to say every single week. While I sometimes explain this whole sermon thing as a weekly TED Talk of sorts, the homiletician, or the one who prepares to preach, always begins with the Scriptures and then lets the Scripture speak to the context…

In today’s gospel, James and John asked, “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54) The question was a visceral human respond. It embodied the law of retaliation which demands “an eye for an eye” or a “tooth for a tooth.” It says, if you’re going to reject me, be rude to me, or embarrass me, then you best watch out because you’re going to be eviscerated.

We are, finally, back in the gospel of Luke! And, we start off with a busy story. I think, the key to understanding it, is to look at the context. Now, directly before today’s story, Jesus decided to go to the other side of the lake – a place that was not Jewish (and remember, Jesus is Jewish) and a place that was probably unknown to him. So, Jesus was in the boat with his disciples, and after a storm raged, Jesus calmed the storm. That scene ends with the disciples asking each other, “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?” (Luke 8:25). This question about Jesus’s identity is what frames today’s reading…