A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

A Lutheran pastor tells about attending a special Sunday night event at the Pentecostal Church in his town to hear a visiting preacher. The place was packed. The noted preacher said he had seen the New Jerusalem coming out of the clouds as described in our text for today, Revelation 21. He said it was a cube, 1500 miles on each side. He had seen it coming through a telescope, and it would arrive very soon, just the way it is described here in Revelation 21.

Most people think that when we die, we go to heaven which is somewhere else. But it says here in the text that the new heaven and the new earth are coming here.

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Psalm 23, John 10:22-30

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter

The Twenty-Third Psalm is full of promises, and as we read it as New Testament Christians, it says what our hope is all about. (Using the RSV which is strongly influenced by the KJV.)

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters
He restores my soul
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

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Acts 9:1-6 (7-20); John 21:1-19

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter

One of the important world events they used to teach you about in school happened in 49 B.C. when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. It was what we call “burning your bridges.” You can’t go back. You’re committed for better or worse. We still use that expression. And it is understood that this is one of those “facts of history.”

That’s what we’re really asking when we look at resurrection appearances of Jesus: What are facts? What is historical proof? How do we sort that out?

The same thing is true with other historical figures. There’s a lot of debunking today about historical figures. As the saying goes: No man is a hero to his valet.

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Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

A Sermon for Easter Sunday

In order to understand the resurrection, we need to think about the time people lived and what was happening. Their situation was similar to the Curds in Iraq today, who are held under oppression. Or like the people in Burma (Myanmar) where the Buddhists are repressed and persecuted.

What did the Romans do? First of all, the Romans collected heavy taxes. But on top of that they had curfews, restricted the right of assembly, restricted the religious practices. It was like living in a prison camp.

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Luke 19:28-40; 23:21

Everybody loves a parade and a party. There’s Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving. The Rose Bowl Parade on New Year’s Day, and many other local and national parades throughout the year. It’s festive to see the flowers, bands, and floats, but there is something very different about the parade on Palm Sunday.

It is said by the experts who know the First Century AD that a six-year-old girl could carry a sack of gold from Athens to Rome and not be robbed or injured in any way. That’s several hundred miles. That’s terrible because it means it was like North Korea is today. A very harsh military situation. The roads that the Romans built were not like the roads we have. They were not roads for trade and commerce. They were roads for moving soldiers around. It was soldiers everywhere. An Occupied Zone.

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