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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 - Michaelmass 2020 - Matthew 18:1-11

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  Jesus, setting a small boy in the midst of the disciples, said: “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ” You, who have been adopted into God’s family through the waters of baptism, whether you are in the golden morn or silvery eve of life, you are God’s beloved children. God, your heavenly Father, sent His holy angels to guard you, His children. “ For I tell you that in heaven their [God’s children’s] angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. ” My brothers and sisters, we are God’s children, Jesus Christ is our brother, and we are all one family in Him through the waters of baptism. When Christ was baptized, He sanctified all waters of baptism to be a lavish washing away of sin and an adoption into the holy family. You are God’s children. From the womb to the cradle to the grave, you’re God’s little children. Like t...
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Sermon - Trinity XV 2020 - Matthew 6:25-34

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“ You cannot serve God and mammon. ” The first commandment teaches us what it means to worship or serve a god, namely, to fear, love, and trust in it above all things. What that fear, love, and trust looks like however is dependent upon which god you worship. The worship of mammon looks like worry and anxiety, while the worship of the true God looks like a confident trust that He cares for us. Rich or poor alike, mammon is a god that requires you to serve it by a constant and insidious worry and anxiety that you may lose it at any moment. Mammon is more than just money, it’s all of our worldly wealth, be it property, health, or prestige. Mammon is terribly flaky. In but an instant you can lose it, even without any fault of your own, and mammon abandons you.  Property can be taken or destroyed. Money can be lost at the drop of a dime. Health can turn to sickness by invisible threats. Family can forsake you because of one wrong word. Prestige can be turned to shame with a rumor. The ...
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Sermon - Trinity XIV 2020 - Luke 17:11-19

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Last week we considered how Jesus is like the Good Samaritan, binding up injured sinners and caring for them, how He sets them within the hospital of the church. Today we continue to see how Jesus is like a good physician. Jesus makes sinners well and then sets them on their way. One day, “as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed.” Without touching them, without doing anything strange, without even coming near them, Jesus healed these ten lepers. The only things that He did was come into their presence while journeying to Jerusalem and speak to them, commanding them to go to church. Then before they had even accomplished what He commanded, He had mercy upon them and healed them.  So it is with people like us. We too have been afflicted with a terrible leprosy, a leprosy...
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Sermon - Trinity XIII 2020 - Luke 10:23-37

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  In an era devoid of the spiritual, the church of Christ now wanes, yet the church of science and medicine reigns. In this new church our Lord isn’t the Good Physician, but physicians are the lords. Pastors and scriptures are filled with myths and opinions, while doctors and medical journals are filled with facts and truths.  While hospitals are indeed a godly endeavor, as evidenced by today’s parable commanding us to show mercy and the fact that Christians started the first hospitals and funded and ran most of them up until the past century, there is still a greater need than the physical and a greater hospital than the ones filled with needles and beds. St. John Chrysostom preached, saying: “Enter into the church and wash away your sins. For there is a hospital for sinners.” And so, Christ is the Samaritan binding up half-dead sinners in this hospital of the church.  There is a greater malady in this life than can be treated with ordinary medicine. There is a sickness ...
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Sermon - Trinity XII 2020 - Mark 7:31-37

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  In the Garden of Eden God created man in His image. Thus Adam and Eve were able to converse with God, just as freely as you and I might chat with our friends. God would speak and Adam and Eve could hear Him and then respond right back!  I can hardly imagine strolling along and having a conversation with God, but that’s how it was, at least until the Fall into sin. At that time Adam and Eve chose to listen to Satan and each other rather than God. Henceforth all of their descendents from Cain, Abel, and Seth, to you and me, all have been born deaf and mute like the man in the region of the Decapolis. Like that man, Christ opens the deaf ears of our hearts to believe the Gospel and loosens our tongues to rightly declare His praise. Let me ask you a question: why do humans have ears and mouths? Is it just so that we can converse with one another or hear danger coming and run away? If that were the case then we would be no different than the beasts of the earth. Animals have ears...
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Sermon - Trinity XI 2020 - Luke 18:9-14

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  Sometimes the parables can be hard to figure out. Not this week, since the parable’s preface clarifies the issue for us: “ Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt. ” The point Jesus makes here is that trust in oneself leads to pious or impious damnation, but trust in God leads to a contrite heart, justification, and pious living. Jesus illustrates this by means of a common Biblical trope, namely that of a pharisee and a tax collector. The way this trope is typically understood today is that Pharisees are the bad guys, the upper class elites, the high brow, hoity toity, jerks who don’t let the common people come and associate with them. The tax collectors then are the underdogs, the ordinary, humble Everyman, just trying to get along and escape from the long arm of the Pharisees. So many a Christian reads the Bible and would rather identify with the tax collectors and prostitutes, than with the phari...
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Tradition: Passing Down the Treasures

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(The following is a newspaper article published in Emmetsburg and Algona, IA on differing dates.) “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you” (1 Cor. 11:2). “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter”( 2 Thess. 2:15).  American culture has long been skeptical of tradition, believing that we humans are progressively improving from one generation to the next. So we discard the old simply because it’s old while we believe that the new must be better. Perhaps this is in part due to the industrial revolution and many recent technological advances: Eg, a car is better than a horse-drawn buggy.  But too often we apply this “newer is better” principle also to other facets of our civilization. We’ve come to believe that Google is better than memorization, colored lights are better than stained glass, listening to music is b...
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