Sermons from September 2022

Sermons from September 2022

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

I need to confess that I don’t like today’s parable. It’s been a thorn in my side all week, and you’re probably getting the fourth rewrite of this sermon, but honestly, I stopped counting on Friday, so I don’t know. What makes me most uncomfortable is that I cannot seem to find the “gospel.” And when I say “gospel” I mean it in the Lutheran sense–the good news, that reminder of God’s grace, the recounting of God’s love, the thing that picks me up when the world kicks me down.  Instead, this parable has a lot of fire and brimstone, a lot of talk about an afterlife, and it is based on the actions of the rich man and Lazarus…

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

I’m the kind of person who loves a good plot twist in a book or a tv show or video game or whatever. You think the writer is setting the story to go one way and then BAM we ended up going somewhere else entirely. When it’s done well, well then you’ve got my full attention! Which is ironic because I also have this terrible habit when I’m at home of being like “yep, I know where my husband is going with this conversation about like all the yard work we need to do, I only need to half listen here.”  Until suddenly a sentence contains the phrase “with the fire” and it sounds like maybe a question was happening about this fire business and now he has my full attention again and I’m rapidly trying to piece together what led up to this, and…suddenly I’m not really feeling like a fan of plot twists anymore…

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

In today’s gospel, we heard the Pharisees complaining about Jesus’s leadership style. Remember, the Pharisees were religious leaders that had devoted themselves to a literal, conservative, and unchanging view of the Jewish Laws. They worked to follow over 600 Jewish laws, and these laws shaped their understanding of God and the world. From their perspective, they were doing God’s work by following these rules. So, when Jesus started fraternizing with those who didn’t follow these Jewish laws, they did what self-righteous religious people often do, they grumble…
  • 1
  • 2