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Showing posts from July, 2025

Sermon - Trinity IX, 2026 - Luke 16:1-13

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The Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1540 Christian Wisdom Seeks Eternal Dwellings Wisdom is forward thinking and focused on the goal Christian wisdom employs every treasure, heavenly and worldly, for the sake of reaching the goal If there is a hardest parable, it might be this one; throws people off every time. The parable presents a rich man with a steward who was found wasting the rich man’s possessions. The job of a steward is to be faithful with someone else’s possessions, and this guy wasn’t cutting it. So obviously, he got fired. What’s crazy is the rich man lets the steward hand in the books, and he doesn’t hunt them down and take them from him immediately. The steward does exactly what you don’t want the steward to do, which is why normally the books get taken from the steward: the steward cooks the books. He meets some of the rich man’s debtors, probably tenant farmers, and in order to ingratiate himself with the debtors he adjusts how much they owe, ...
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Sermon - Proper 11, Year C, 2025 - Luke 10:38-42

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Christ with Martha and Mary , Joos Goemare, circa 1600 Receiving God’s Service God serves His people first Our service must respond to, but not distract from, God’s service Listening to Jesus is the one thing needful What’s the point of going to church? Why should people come here? Obviously I don’t need to convince you into coming to church, since you’re already here. But when you’re having a conversation with someone, and you tell them they should come to church, and they ask you why, you need to have an answer, and you need to have the right answer. The simple answer is: we go to church to be served by God. We go to church to be like Mary, “ who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to His teaching. ” This question of why you should go to church has been a major disagreement among Christians on this continent for the past few hundred years. In the 18th and 19th centuries Christian Revivalism and the First and Second Great Awakenings were huge movements in Christianity, attempting to r...
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Sermon - Proper 10, Year C, 2024 - Luke 10:25-37

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The Good Samaritan,  Rembrandt, late 17th century Love your neighbor To love is to devote yourself to another My neighbor is whomever God has placed near to me The Lord Jesus selflessly devotes Himself to us and our salvation We must devote ourselves to our neighbors How do you receive eternal life? That’s not a difficult question posed to Jesus, and in fact it’s a question any average Israelite would’ve been able to answer. The lawyer simply recites the Shema from Deuteronomy: “ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. ” The reason any Israelite could’ve recited this is because the Shema continues: “ And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your ...
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