Reformation Text Study

If you're looking for a text study to aid in preparations for celebrating Reformation Day (October 31), please consider this humble offering. It was presented last year (2009) at our weekly Pericope Study group, and I offer it here for wider consideration and use.

"Almighty and gracious Lord, pour out Your Holy Spirit on Your faithful people. Keep us steadfast in Your grace and truth, protect and deliver us in times of temptation, defends us against all enemies, and grant to Your Church Your saving peace; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever." (Collect for Reformation Day, Lutheran Service Book)

Homily for Trinity 20

"The Lord loves a banquet. He is happiest when His people are gathered at the table with Him." That's how Dr. Norman Nagel began his 1996 sermon on Luke 14:15-24 at Zion Academy. It's also a line I was happy to adopt for my 2010 homily for Trinity 20 based on Matthew 22:1-14. Under the title and theme of "R.S.V.P." we heard how God loves a banquet, invites the bad and the good, and wants our R.S.V.P. for attending His feast of forgiveness, life, and salvation given through His Son.

To listen to the audio file of this homily, click this link and then download the audio file.

Homily for Trinity 16

Sunday's homily for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity focused on the account of Jesus raising the widow's son at the town of Nain (Luke 7:11-17).

To listen to the audio file of Sunday's homily, "His Life Invades Our Death," just click on this link, download the file, and listen.

Homily for Trinity 15

Sometimes a preacher looks at a text such as Matthew 6:24-34 and wonders how he can really "improve" upon it by proclaiming and applying it. After all, in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus' words are pretty clear in themselves. He gets right to the point when He says: "Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on." How much clearer can He be than when He says: "Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?" And then there's that immortal saying: "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." The preacher (okay, at least this one was) may certainly be tempted simply to read the Gospel for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity and say, "'Nuff said. Just do what He says. Amen. "

But don't worry! I did not do that! :-) Rather, I took an image from Johann Gerhard's Postilla for this text about our fallen, sinful state being like brute beasts, focused on earth rather than God and heaven, and - Voila! - ready-made sermon title and theme. This morning's homily, "Slaying Beastly Worry," wrestled with our worries but then took consolation in our Lord Jesus Christ giving us His food, His drink, and His clothing of righteousness.

To listen the audio file of today's homily for Trinity 15, click on this link, download the audio, and listen away. May our gracious Lord bless you and strengthen your faith as you hear His saving works for you ... works that slay your beastly worry.

Helpful Quote on Preaching?

The following quote comes from Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) in his Yale Lectures on Preaching of 1872. It was today's Reading IV in For All the Saints, vol. IV, p. 173. Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know what you, the readers of this blog--especially the clergy though also welcoming responses and insights from lay readers--think about the content of this quote:

There are, also, some specialties in this true Christian love and sympathy that bear upon the pulpit. In the first place, the whole cast of your thought and the subjects with which you deal are to bear the impress of this good news,--that God is Love, and that God so loved the world, that, having died for it, he now sits at the right hand of God, a risen Saviour, to live for it.

If you preach justice alone, you will murder the gospel. If you preach conscientiously, as it is called; if you sympathize with law and with righteousness as interpreted by the narrow rule of a straight line; if you preach, especially, with a sense of vindictive retribution,--I do not care who the criminals are,--you will fail of your whole duty. There must be justice, and punitive justice, of course; but, after all, "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord. It is a quality so dangerous to handle that only Infinite Love is safe in administering it. No mortal man should dare to touch it, for it is a terrible instrument. You are to administer all the great truths, the most rugged truths, in the spirit of the truest sympathy, benevolence, and love.

So, what say you? Is the content of this quote helpful for the preaching task or not? If so, how so? If not, why not? How does it help, or not, the preacher diagnose our sin and then give us the healing medicine of Jesus the Physician of the soul? Pros? Cons? What's helpful? What's not?

Now it's your turn. Comments, questions, or "smart remarks"?