A sermon for the season of Lent

This week the protagonist we are focusing on is Satan himself. We recall that at the Last Supper Jesus dipped a morsel of bread, gave it to Judas, and then Satan entered Judas (John 13:27). Satan was very much a part of what was going on.

What do we know about Satan? The Old Testament actually has very few references to Satan. There is the talking snake in Genesis 3:1-6 at the fall into sin. Then in an entirely different kind of account Saul lost his kingship; he went to the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:3-25). To consult a sorcerer was forbidden. Dealing with evil spirits was part of the pagan religions of that time, and Saul was adopting these practices. Then in Job 1:6 it says Satan is up there in heaven among the sons of God. Satan asks the Lord: How do you know Job is faithful to you? It also says in Zacariah 3:1 that Satan is in heaven as the accuser.

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A sermon for the Season of Lent

Today we’re going to look at the Beloved Disciple.

Lutherans are those who take the Bible seriously. As Cromwell said when a painter was painting his portrait: “Paint warts and all.” We take the Scripture as it is, and we still take it seriously. It would be easy to say: “Look at all the difficulties,” and walk away. We take it seriously and ask: “What do we do with it?”

With that comes the matter of tradition. We know the famous song from the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, in which Tevya stands on the roof and sings: “Tradition! Tradition!”

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A sermon for the Season of Lent

Today we come to Mary. You might ask yourself: Which one? As a matter of fact, there are eight women in the New Testament named Mary. We shall consider three of them.

The three Marys are: 1) Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazareth, 2) Mary Magdalene, and 3) Mary, Jesus’ mother.

It is important to remember in all of this that the name “Mary” in Hebrew is Miriam. We know from Exodus that Miriam was Moses’ sister. Perhaps the earliest piece of the Old Testament which we have is “Miriam’s song,” found in Exodus 15:21, the great song of victory: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”

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A sermon for the Season of Lent

In 1939 Winston Churchill, while talking on the radio about Russia, said: “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” This is also a good description of Judas. Judas is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. 

First, what about his name?  We know the name Judas is a common name in the Hebrew tradition. Another one of the Twelve is also named Judas. What does “Iscariot” mean? You can take the first part of the word, “Is” means “man,” and then from “cariot,” which would mean Judas is from Judea, would be the only one of the Twelve from Judea. Then we can take Iscariot and translate it back into Aramaic, and the word means “liar,” or “the crooked one,” “the wrong one.” Or we could take what Iscariot sounds like in Latin, sicarius, a short sword. And the people who were Zealots, that is the Jews who were rebelling against Rome, carried short swords, and they were called Zealots. We really don’t know. Judas was one of the Twelve, and the first part of the riddle, if we may go with that quote from Churchill, is how could Jesus have chosen him. When you think of it, it makes no sense. This man Judas betrayed him! And there are those therefore who have said Judas never existed. Such a wild story; it’s just a fantasy made up of legend. But really it’s the opposite. This kind of story of someone who betrayed his own master like this is too radical to be invented. It has to be true. And we have to think about in what sense its true because the story has problems.

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John 11:49-53

A sermon for the Season of Lent

We have taken up Peter, and today we’ll take up Caiaphas and the trial: What actually happened, and who was responsible for this trial and crucifixion, this miscarriage of justice.

About 170 A.D. a Christian named Tatian put all four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – together into a single narrative of Jesus’ life. It was called the Diatessaron, which means “according to the four.” And we think that it was actually all together! We think so because there are such movies, like The King of Kings, a silent movie from the 1920s, and there are others since, most recently, The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. We think we can really see things “as they actually were” (the goal of historical research as stated by the historian, von Ranke). Of course it was much more complicated. We need to see this in order to understand what happened at the trial of Jesus.

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