Lutheran Church of the Resurrection

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. I remember the week of March 8th quite vividly. When the 2020 calendar came out, I had circled March 8th, because I knew that it was going to be one of the worst days of the year. See, I love my sleep, and March 8th was the day that we all get robbed of an hour of sleep. In case you haven’t gathered, I don’t like daylight savings time, so that week already started off quite badly! But I remember sitting in class that Tuesday…right after chapel, I had Pastoral Leadership and Theology with Dr. Weise. Now, Dr. Weise has his PhD in hematology, so he likes talking about things related to the medical field. Continue reading →

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our text for this morning is the Old Testament reading from Genesis 50. The Joseph we meet in this reading has come a long way from the Joseph we first encounter in Genesis 30 and whose story is told from Genesis 37 onwards. Let’s be honest, Joseph was a spoiled brat—in every sense of the term. He was the 11th of 12 sons, and his father, Jacob, loved him more than his brothers. And Joseph took every opportunity he had to rub that in his brothers’ faces. In Genesis 37, we see this play out as Joseph starts having these dreams—dreams where is brothers are bowing down to worship him. Now, let’s forget that we know how this story ends for a second and put ourselves in this moment in the story—You can almost imagine what’s going on in this arrogant 17-year-old’s head: “I’m going to get to call the shots, tell my brothers what to do, and do what I want, when I want!” But Joseph very quickly learns that his arrogant trust in himself is nothing more than a sham and a delusion.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our text for this morning is the Epistle Reading from Romans chapter 13. Romans chapter 13 is in the middle of a section of exhortation which Paul begins in chapter 12. Paul begins this section in Romans 12:1 by saying, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice…Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind (Romans 12:1-2). The mercy of God toward us in Jesus is the foundation of the transformed, renewed mind and life that we are called to have. It’s in this context that Paul now instructs his readers how their minds ought to be renewed, specifically in relation to the civil realm. So, if I had to sum up our reading from chapter 13, I would do it in this way: In His mercy, God invites us to submit to authority for our good. And, whenever God does something in His mercy and for our good, we better stop and listen, right? So, if in His mercy, God invites us to submit to authority for our good, the question is, how do Christians submit to authority? Or, to put it differently, what is submission to authority? Well, according to Paul, Submission to authority is willingly and lovingly giving what is owed because authority is from God. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s break it down by starting with the first part.
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“’But who do you say that I am?’ And Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God…” “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

What our Lord ‘BEGAN’ to show his disciples is just how true Peter’s confession was – “You are the Christ…” Though out the entire Old Testament, the word and promise of God was that God would send a ‘Messiah,’ a ‘Christ,’ into this fallen and broken world to renew and restore it. But rather than welcoming Him and thanking Him, it would despise and reject Him and cause him to suffer many things and be killed. But ultimately, the Messiah would accomplish the purpose for which He came – for even death would not be able to stop Him.
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“Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’”

It is of no small significance that St. Matthew tells us where Jesus poses His question to His disciples. But then again, there’s not one word in the Bible that is of small significance.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our text for this morning is the Gospel Reading from Matthew 15—it’s this strange story of an odd interaction between Jesus and this Canaanite woman. And, let’s be honest, there’s a lot in this story to cause you to scratch your head and wonder what’s going on. But for all of the confusing parts of this story, the main point is quite clear when you look at the last thing that Jesus says to this woman: O woman, great is your faith! (Matt. 15:28). In other words, Matthew has included this story in his gospel in order to highlight the great faith of this woman and to contrast it with the lack of faith that we see in the Pharisees and even is disciples in the first part of chapter 15. So, this morning, I would like to take some time to examine the great faith of this Canaanite woman—not as some intellectual exercise, but with the goal that you and I might use this as an opportunity to evaluate our own faith in relation to this Canaanite woman’s great faith.
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1. The summer after my sixth-grade year in school, my church youth group went on a Servant Event trip to Western New York. Our purpose for the trip was to lead Vacation Bible School at an inner-city congregation in Buffalo. While we weren’t engaged in the activities related to that VBS, we stayed at a Lutheran summer camp in the area—Camp Pioneer, which is right on the shores of Lake Erie. As you can imagine, during our downtime at Camp, we did a lot of “camp things.” Most notable of which was that we gathered each evening around the campfire for devotions and singing. You know how camp songs tend to be—they have this way of getting stuck in your head. Well, there was one song in particular that has stuck with me since that trip. And I was reminded of that song because of our Gospel Reading for this morning. The chorus of this song is based on the story of Jesus and Peter walking on the water. I’d like to share this song with you, but don’t worry! I’m not going to sing and dance for you! The chorus goes like this: “Get out of the boat; walk on the water. Get out of the boat; take his hand. Get out of the boat; walk on the water. He’ll be with you in whatever you may do. He will help you stand on the blue waters of life, my friend; he will help you stand.” It’s a great camp song! It’s catchy, it’s fun to sing around the fire, but it also has a great message. It encourages trust and stepping out of your comfort zone knowing and believing that Jesus is there with you every step of the way. But there’s a problem with this song—this isn’t what this story is about! Somewhere along the line, we’ve come to think that this story is encouraging us to emulate Peter—but that’s completely missing the point! Let’s walk through this story one more time, and I’ll show you what I mean.
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In the 1965 musical, “Man of LaMancha,” Don Quixote adores the beggar, prostitute named Aldonsa. He calls her his ‘Dulcinea,’ which means ‘sweetheart,’ and treats her as his princess. And this bothers Aldonsa because she can’t understand him. She’s never met anyone like him and she can’t figure out his motives, not only with regard to her but with everything he does. She sings one of the most poignant songs in the musical – “Why does he do the things he does? Why does He do these things?” And for Aldonsa, the big question is, “What does he want from me? What does he want from me?”
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Have you ever tried to hold a rubber band in tension? It’s not as easy as you might think. Especially not if you try to do it for any length of time. You have to keep focused on both sides, or else it will slip…and you’ve lost it. There are parts of our faith that are a lot like this—tensions that we need to hold. We can’t overemphasize one side to the point where we forget about the other, or else it will slip…and you’ve lost it. This morning I want to discuss one of these tensions in our faith—a tension within the character of God. God is a God of love AND justice. We don’t get to pick and choose between these attributes. It’s not one or the other. It’s a both/and situation. God is a God of love AND justice. This is the tension we live in as the people of God and we must try to faithfully hold it, kind of like a rubber band. I’d like to consider this truth this morning—God is a God of love AND justice. And as we do so, my hope, prayer, and goal is that you would be encouraged to live faithfully in this tension.
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The text is our Lord’s parable about the weeds that have sprung up among the wheat.

This is the second of two parables that Jesus puts before “the crowds” that is also followed by an explanation to His “disciples.” The first was the one we heard last Sunday which was also about the sowing of seed. A “sower who went out to sow.” He sowed seed everywhere and some seed failed to produce much of anything and some produced impressive crops.

Privately, to His disciples, Jesus explains that the ‘seed’ is the Word of God, and the reason that the Word sometimes produces its harvest of faith and good works and sometimes does not is because there are forces at work in this world that are opposed to THE WORD – forces that want to see it fail – like an airborne virus that attaches itself to the heart and interferes with the work of the Word to produce FAITH and the FRUITS OF FAITH in a person.
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