A Sermon for Reformation Sunday

Today is the Festival of the Reformation, the day we celebrate that medieval monk named Martin Luther, who nailed 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, back in 1517. That paper he nailed to the door was a list of points for debate about indulgences, purgatory, power, and the pope. He wrote, of course, in Latin and his theses were intended for a select audience, for his fellow monks and scholars.

He didn’t intend to start a ruckus. Most of the people couldn’t even read Latin. But what he had written in Latin was quickly translated into German by others who shared his concerns.

Another problem. Most of the people couldn’t read German either. Only about 10%. But even that didn’t matter because enterprising colleagues and sympathizers took his points and made them into cartoons and drawings, the memes of the time, and soon everybody was talking about them.

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A Sermon for the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Our text today comes from the earliest, the oldest letter of Paul: 1 Thessalonians. This little letter is like other letters of Paul. In fact, there is a scholarly book on Paul which has put all the letters of Paul in parallel to each other, and then it takes each letter individually and shows where there are parallels in Paul’s other letters.

This helps us see that Paul’s letters have a certain structure that has a lot in common with each other as well as other letters of the day. We have thousands of papyri that are letters from that time. From that we can see that Paul follows a standard form for letters, and he adapts that form for his own use.

For example, he often starts out: “Grace and peace.” “Grace” is the way a Greek letter would begin, and “Peace” (Shalom) is the way a Hebrew letter would begin. Paul puts them together. There is nothing particularly significant about this. It’s like saying: “Dear So-and-so.”

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A sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Philippians 4:1-9

You likely know what WWJD stands for: What Would Jesus Do?

That question exploded in the 1990’s as a way of offering a quick moral compass for Christians in everyday situations. If he were in my place, what would Jesus do?

The question comes from a book written 100 years earlier, In His Steps, by Charles Sheldon. Christians want to know: How do we follow “in his steps”?

In Luke 10:1-11 it says: “The Lord appointed them to go out two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come.” Based on that, a Christian group called “Two by Twos,” formed to follow “in his steps.”

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Philippians 3:4b-14

A Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Fight the good fight, run the race, go for the prize.

Paul writes in our text for today: “Not that I have already attained this [resurrection from the dead] or am already perfect, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus“ (Philippians 3:13-14).

Here and elsewhere in the New Testament we find the theme of a contest, a race, a battle in war, someone striving to reach the goal and the prize.

But didn’t Christ do that for us? What are we to make of this?

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Philippians 2:1-13

A Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

There is a basic kind of poetry in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. It is called parallelism. Something is said and then the same thing again in the next line, slightly differently. This is called “synonymous” parallelism. Or something is stated and then the opposite follows in the next line; that is called “antithetic” parallelism. Or where there is progress in what is said, it is called “synthetic” parallelism.

Scholars have identified as many as six different kinds of parallelism. Don’t worry. We won’t go through them all today.

There is a joke from the 1600’s about poetry and prose. You find it in Molière’s play, The Middle Class Gentleman, written in 1670. In one scene the Philosopher says to the Middle Class Gentleman: “If it’s not prose, it’s poetry, and if it’s not poetry, it’s prose.” The Middle Class Gentleman turns to the Philosopher and says: “For forty years I’ve been speaking prose, and I didn’t even know it.”

Back to the Bible and to poetry found, this time, in the New Testament.

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