Homily for Good Friday

On Good Friday we hear just how God has reversed our woeful predicament of sin and death by giving His only-begotten up to the death of the cross. On this day we hear the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to St. John (chapters 18-19), and here at Hope we got to hear it sung with the magnificent choral setting by Carl Schalk. In addition to pondering our Lord's Passion, we also hear what it means for us in the words of St. Paul: "For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Good Friday's homily this year is titled "Great Reversal."

Click on this link to download and listen to the audio file. The Lord bless you as you prepare to celebrate His victory over death!

Homily for Holy Thursday

The Holy Triduum is absolutely my favorite time of the Church Year, and even of all time. After all, it does usher in our Passover from sin and death to forgiveness and life in Christ Jesus.

This year's homily for Holy Thursday focused on Christ our Passover under the title "Memorial Meal of Receiving Rescue & Living in Love."

Click on this link to download and listen to the audio file. The Lord bless you and keep you!

Homily for Passion Sunday

Holy Week began with the celebration of Passion Sunday (with Palm Sunday Procession). This day's homily, titled "Ready to Suffer," is based on Matthew 27:11-54, the shorter passion reading option for the day.

Click this link to download and listen to the audio file. God bless!

New Sermons

New audio files of recent sermons have been added to my iDisk page. To listen to these audio files, just follow these simple steps:

1. Click on this link. It will take you to my public iDisk page.
2. Select the folder "Hope Sermons."
3. Select the sermon you wish to hear (listed by liturgical day then calendar date).
4. Click the "Download" button and follow instructions for downloading and listening on your computer.

The Lord bless you and keep you!

A Gem from Luther

Here's a gem of a quote from Luther, which was part of a larger reading at this morning's Holy Thursday Morning Prayer:

"Therefore, the Sacrament is given as a daily pasture an sustenance, that faith may refresh and strengthen itself so that it will not fall back in such a battle, but become ever stronger and stronger. The new life must be guided so that it continually increases and progresses. But it must suffer much opposition. For the devil is such a furious enemy. When he sees that we oppose him and attack the old man, and that he cannot topple us over by force, he prowls and moves about on all sides. He tries every trick and does not stop until he finally wears us out, so that we either renounce our faith or throw up our hands and put up our feet, becoming indifferent or impatient. Now to this purpose the comfort of the Sacrament is given when the heart feels that the burden is becoming too heavy, so that it may gain here new power and refreshment." (Large Catechism, V:24-27; Concordia, pp. 434-35)

Holy Thursday - Quote of the Day

"What shall I do with my sins? I do not know. My mind cannot imagine what I might use to wash and cleanse myself. If I took it into my head to wash with water, then the seas and the rivers would not be sufficient to cleanse me. Yet if I wash myself with the blood and water that flowed from the rib of the Son of God, then will I be cleansed, and compassion will be showered upon me." (Ephraim the Syrian, A Spiritual Psalter, #140, p. 221)

St. Joseph, Guardian of Jesus

Today the Church remembers and honors St. Joseph, the stepfather and guardian of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Lutheran Service Book gives these readings for observing this day:

2 Samuel 7:4-16 – God will raise up David’s offspring and He shall build a house for God’s name.

Psalm 127 – “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

Romans 4:13-18 – God’s promise of offspring for Abraham came through the righteousness of faith.

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23 – Joseph protects the Infant Jesus in the flight to Egypt then returns to the land of Israel and settles in Nazareth of Galilee.

Collect of the Day:

Almighty God, from the house of Your servant David You raised up Joseph to be the guardian of Your incarnate Son and the husband of His mother, Mary. Grant us grace to follow the example of this faithful workman in heeding Your counsel and obeying Your commands; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Hymn Verse:

We sing our thanks for Joseph,

The guardian of our Lord,

Who faithfully taught Jesus

Through craft and deed and word.

Grant wisdom, Lord, and patience

To parents ev’rywhere

Who guide and teach the children

Entrusted to their care. (LSB 517:14)

Meditation:

“Oh, Joseph, of the great heart, wearing goodness and understanding. You are strong, Joseph, a man of toil, of gnarled hands and faith and wise judgment. For a short moment long ago, you hesitated before this child, but then, in fullest love, you battled for him mightily, and won.

“You will endure, Joseph, for out of homeless nights and weary journeys and strength and sacrifice for a child, you built not beams and trestles, but life. Old carpenter, it is said you died in Jesus’ early manhood, but the structure that you raised lives on beyond the best of wood. You did not know at first, Joseph. But that boy was yours because you wanted him, and is yours, even as he is all mankind’s who want him.” (George W. Cornell [1920-1995], They Knew Jesus; cited in For All the Saints, III:1316)

St. Patrick Interview on Issues, Etc.

Check out yesterday's interview with yours truly on St. Patrick, Missionary to Ireland.

St. Patrick

On this day the Church honors St. Patrick, Bishop of Ireland. This article comes from a newsletter article from a couple of years ago.

Who was St. Patrick?

When I say, “March 17,” chances are good that you think, “St. Patrick’s Day.” And once you think of St. Patrick’s Day, you probably think of all the green clothes and hats you can wear, the green food you will eat, and the green decorations that go up just about everywhere. You might even think of delicious corned beef and cabbage (Yum!), and perhaps even green beer. (Although that still doesn’t seem right. I mean why taint perfectly good beer by turning it green? ☺)

However, St. Patrick’s Day is about much more than that. March 17 is the Church’s day to commemorate the great bishop of Ireland and his tireless work to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ among people who were quite hostile to Christianity. Through the faithful and even life-threatening work of preaching the Gospel of Christ and founding many churches, God used St. Patrick to convert Ireland from pagan religions such as Druidism to Christianity. March 17, then, commemorates the death of St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century.

The LCMS website gives this summary of St. Patrick’s life:

Patrick is one of the best-known of the missionary saints. Born to a Christian family in Britain around the year 389, he was captured as a teenager by raiders, taken to Ireland, and forced to serve as a herdsman. After six years he escaped and found his way to a monastery community in France. Ordained a bishop in 432, he made his way back to Ireland, where he spent the rest of his long life spreading the Gospel and organizing Christian communities. He strongly defended the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in a time when it was not popular to do so. His literary legacy includes his autobiography, Confessio, and several prayers and hymns still used in the church today. Patrick died around the year 466.

On one occasion, in A.D. 433, Patrick defied the orders of King Loegaire and refused to honor a pagan festival. The king, then, tried to assassinate Patrick, but Patrick and his coworkers were able to escape unharmed. Tradition says that God’s deliverance from this peril prompted Patrick to write his best-known hymn, known today as “I Bind Unto Myself Today.” This hymn is an excellent confession of the Holy Trinity and of God’s deliverance from sin and evil through Jesus Christ. Here’s the text from our hymnal, Lutheran Service Book, 604:

I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me forever,
By pow’r of faith, Christ’s incarnation,
His Baptism in the Jordan River,
His cross of death for my salvation,
His bursting from the spiced tomb,
His riding up the heav’nly way,
His coming at the day of doom,
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself today
The pow’r of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need,
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward,
The Word of God to give me speech,
His heav’nly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile foes that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In ev’ry place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility,
I bind to me those holy pow’rs.

I bind unto myself the name,
The strong name of the Trinity
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three,
Of whom all nature has creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word.
Praise to the Lord of my salvation;
Salvation is of Christ the Lord!

So, this March 17, instead of merely donning the green and enjoying corned-beef for St. Patrick’s Day, we also thank God for the Bishop of Ireland and his faithful preaching of the Gospel and his confession of the Holy Trinity. No matter what opposition we face, we can also proclaim the goodness and mercy of our holy, Triune God, just as St. Patrick did.

Sermons should be preached and not read.

Perhaps you've heard them too: sermons that are read and not preached. The content of the sermon may be good or even great. However, when the preacher's nose is stuck on the manuscript or notes and his eyes are diverted from the hearers, something is missing. And our hearers know it too.

Oh, I've also been guilty of this, especially when I'm not as prepared as I would like to be ... or truly should be. Or maybe I wanted to get just the right wording from my written words on the page into the spoken words for the faithful. However, I've started thinking differently about the preaching task and my growth as a preacher.

Sermons should be preached and not read!

Yes, the content of sermons needs to be well-prepared and absolutely faithful to the Scriptures, the Creeds and Confessions of the Church, and the faith once delivered to the saints. Yes, sermons need to edify and nourish the faithful sheep of Good Shepherd Jesus in His redeeming words and works. But let's also embrace and highly prize some good delivery in which the preacher actually engages the hearers--no, not with antics, jokes, or cheap gags, but with the simple courtesy of things like eye-contact and some conversational proclamation of God's Good News in Christ Jesus.

With this general concept in mind, I've gone to preaching more from outline notes than from a manuscript. Consequently, I can't really post "the sermon" here on the blog to be read. After all, the sermon is really meant to be a "heard word" rather than a "read word." Wasn't it Luther who quipped that the Church is not a pen-house but rather a "mouth-house"?

So now I'm making some audio files of sermons available. In the left hand column under "Sermons" you can now find a gadget with a link to the audio files of my Sunday sermons. These are sermons that I've preached since returning from my sabbatical last summer, beginning with Holy Trinity Sunday, 2009. Just follow the directions in the left hand column and you should be able to listen just fine.

I hope you will find this resource helpful, especially because sermons should be preached and not read.

Ah...

...here's my long lost blog!

Well, I wish I could claim that I had lost it, but I knew where it was this whole past year. I wish I could claim that I had forgotten just how to access it, but I did remember how ... and just didn't. I wish I could say that my year long hiatus (sabbatical?) from blogging was intentional, but it wasn't. I hadn't planned it out, and I certainly hadn't grown any aversion to it.

The truth is: life happened.

One year ago today I posted my last entry, though not with the intention to take any time off, let alone 365 whole days. After last year's final post, family things such as robotics competitions and high school graduations happened, sabbatical trips and private retreats were taken, and I got reacquainted with my basement woodworking shop. At this time last year Mrs. RAsburry and I also dove head first into Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University" and can now very proudly and unabashedly scream: "WE'RE DEBT FREE!" (More on that down the road, I'm sure.)

Life just sort of happened.

Within this past year I returned to my parish duties after a much-needed and ever-appreciated sabbatical. I continued attending the most excellent sessions of DOXOLOGY and its advanced training in pastoral care and counsel. And I have thoroughly enjoyed (yes!) getting back into parish duties of preaching Christ crucified and risen, giving out His healing, life-giving Sacraments, teaching the Scriptures and the Catechism, and giving pastoral counsel and visits as needed. (However, the jury is still out on whether I've enjoyed getting back to things such as voters meetings! :-)

Life happened.

I wish I could say that I thought about making my return to blogging at the 3 month mark, but truthfully that milestone came and went before I realized it.

Just having to much fun with life happening last summer, I guess.

I did think about getting back the swing of blogging at the six-month mark ... and then again at the nine-month mark ... and, well ...

Yep, life happened again (not complaining about it; just enjoying it these days).

Suffice it to say that I couldn't resist diving back into the realm of blogging on this, the one-year anniversary of my last post. I guess it's time to stir, or fold, this blogging stuff back in with all of the other ingredients of life that gladly happens. There is something to *wanting* to get back into an activity such as this rather than doing it merely in order to keep up others or feeling as though "I must."

So, if there are still any who might read the posts at this spot in cyberspace, thanks for being patient ... or waking up ... or returning to paying attention ... or whatever. I hope you'll welcome me back into the "conversation."

Book Confessions Meme

Anastasia and Pr. Hall have both posted this meme on their blogs, so I'll be bold and jump into the fray as well. I also like Anastasia's way of tagging not just specific people (I'm one who has missed some of the times I was tagged. Mea culpa!), but everyone who reads. So to quote her: "If you are reading this, you are TAGGED!"

Book Confessions Meme

1. To mark your page you: use a bookmark, bend the page corner, leave the book open face down?
Oh, never bend the page corner! Those little dog ears could fall off, and then the whole book would be useless. Use a bookmark - and that can be just about anything, from a bona fide book mark, with or without a fancy ribbon, to a piece of junk mail sitting idly by. I've been know to fold a Post-it note in half for a quick book mark, but I find those little Post-it flags to be superb book marks. After all, they don't fall out.

2. Do you lend your books?
Only if it's a book I won't mind forgetting that I loaned out, because I will probably do just that (and then I'll just have to go and buy another copy in order for the loaned-out one to come back home).

3. You find an interesting passage: you write in your book or NO WRITING IN BOOKS!
Does highlighting and underlining count as "writing in books"? Of course, you write in a book...if it belongs to you. How else would I be able to go back and find that juicy quote for later use?

4. Dust jackets - leave it on or take it off.
Why mess up the dust jacket when it often looks so nice with good artwork and can cover up the worn and scuffed up cover? :-)

5. Hard cover, paperback, skip it and get the audio book?
Ah, why judge a book by its cover, whether hard or paper? A book's a book and the important thing is what's inside. As for audio books, only with stories/novels that I probably wouldn't take the time to sit down and read (like the Mitford series or John Grisham novels). Audio books are quite nice for those nice long drives (listened to a lot of them in the good ol' Wyoming days).

6. Do you shelve your books by subject, author, or size and color of the book spines?
Mostly by subject and then by author within various subjects. But, honestly, some shelves have become catch alls for quite the mixtures of subjects and authors.

7. Buy it or borrow it from the library later?
Borrow it? Library? I like that quote supposedly from Erasmus: "Whenever I get a little money, I buy books. And if there's any left over, then I buy food and clothes."

8. Do you put your name on your books - scribble your name in the cover, fancy bookplate, or stamp?
Write my name on the first blank page inside the front cover, under the heading "ex libris" and above the date acquired.

9. Most of the books you own are rare and out of print books or recent publications?
Yes.

10. Page edges - deckled or straight?
I don't mind either kind of page, but for some reason my fingers are never quite sure of what to do with deckled pages. They must be too used to straight pages.

11. How many books do you read at one time?
What does "at one time mean"? :-) I can only open the cover and feast my eyes on the words on the page one book at a time (haven't quite mastered the separate book for each eye routine just yet! :-), but right now I have three theological books, two novels, and one piece of literature, "The Odyssey," all clamoring for my attention. Of course, that's in addition to books like the Bible and devotional volumes that get a little attention each day, but does that really count as "at one time"?

12. Be honest, ever tear a page from a book?
Only from a phone book - and even then something didn't seem quite right with the universe. :-)

Healing for the Healers

This little piece from Terry Mattingly - at tmatt.net - was just recommended to me.

As one who has "been there and done that" with the whole depression and burnout thing, I can say that this little piece captures quite well the need for ministers - "healers" - to be healed and refreshed. Pastors need not be afraid of or shy away from their own need to be healed and renewed. After all, theirs is a demanding vocation of giving Christ-centered, forgiveness-focused healing to other people as well as dealing with the messy, viscious ugliness and fallout of human sin, even from the baptized in the flock. Also, parishioners need not stigmatize their pastor's need for healing and care. After all, when their pastor is healthy--spiritually, mentally, and physically--then they will benefit not only from his services of preaching, teaching, and visiting, but also from his example that all of life is lived only by the grace and mercy of our loving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Fatherly Wisdom-"Lenten Instruction"

Reading IV from For All the Saints (volume I, page 803) gives us this nice little snippet from Caesarius of Arles simply called "Lenten instruction":

Let it not be enough for you that you hear the divine lessons in church, but read them yourselves at home or look for others to read them and willingly listen to them when they do. Although through the mercy of God you frequently and devoutly hear the divine lessons throughout the entire year, still during these days we ought to rest from the winds and the sea of this world by taking refuge, as it were, in the haven of Lent and in the quiet of silence to receive the divine lessons in the receptacle of our heart.

Devoting ourselves to God out of love for eternal life, during these days let us with all solicitude strive to repair and compose in the little ship of our soul whatever throughout the year has been broken, or destroyed, or damaged, or ruined by many storms, that is, by the waves of sins.

During these holy days of Lent if you cannot cut off the occupations of this world, at least strive to curtail them in part. By fleeing from this world, through an expedient loss and a most glorious gain you may take away from earthly occupations a few hours in which you can devote yourselves to God. For this world either laughs at us or is laughed at by us.

Fatherly Wisdom-Preacher: Preach with deeds before words

St. Gregory the Great concludes Book III of his Book of Pastoral Rule with this exhortation to preachers:

"But in the midst of these considerations, we are brought back in the zeal of charity to what we have already said, which is that every preacher should be 'heard' more by his deeds than by his words. Moreover, the footprint fo his good living should be that path that others follow rather than the sound of his voice showing them where to go. For that cock, which the Lord used in his manner of speaking to symbolize a good preacher, when it prepares to crow, first shakes his wings and by striking himself with them makes himself more alert. For it is certainly necessary that those who offer the words of holy preaching must first be vigilant in the zeal of good works. Otherwise, if they are sluggish in performing them, they will have only words to entice others. Let them first perform lofty deeds and then convince others to live well. Let them carefully examine whether there is anything about themselves that is sluggish and, if so, correct it with strict observance. Only then should they tell others how to live their lives. Let them first correct their own sins through tears and then denounce what is punishable in others. But before they offer any words of exhortation, they should proclaim by their actions everything that they wish to say." (The Book of Pastoral Rule, III:40)