RoboPreacher

won't you come and knock me down The Gospel according to St. Matthew: Today’s parable is right in our “wheelhouse,” grace . It’s all grace.  That’s what we’re all about here too, grace. We hear Jesus tell this parable of the landowner who treats all the laborers the same, and we applaud.  After all, we’re the “ nice ” Lutherans. We don’t make folks jump through hoops, we don’t exclude - we, just like the landowner, we’re gracious.  Yes, this parable seems to have been recorded just for us . We hear today’s Gospel, and we settle in and get ready to pat ourselves on the back. We hear today’s Gospel, and before the preacher can open his mouth, we already know the punchline, “let’s keep acting like that magnanimous landowner.”  In fact, I know you; you blue collar union-workers; why you even commend the landowner for paying all the workers the same. When Jesus tells that the landowner is just as generous to those 11th hour workers as she...

you fool it's only moonlight The best work a preacher can do is to simply get out of the way for Scripture, make room for the Bible to speak for itself.  Our first lesson today is the conclusion to the Joseph story. It is also the conclusion to the book of Genesis. In these six short verses we get to hear some of the most profound, most faithful words humans ever speak.  Not only that, but the seven beautiful words that tumble from the lips of Joseph, in the middle of these six verses, are so subtle, so concise and condensed they’re all too easy to miss; “Am I in the place of God.” To help us really hear these words, to let the profundity of these words take our breath away, in an attempt to get out of the way for Scripture, the sermon today will simply be telling the Joseph story. I will set everything up, but Scripture will have the last Word. For today we will let Joseph be our preacher. Before we start, think of Joseph as someone who knew for himsel...

but i couldn't get it out The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew the 18th Chapter ! This week we begin another year of programming. With this beginning we switch from thanking God for rescuing us in baptism; to confessing our sins, and hearing God’s Word of grace. I know to some that kind of thing seems gloomy, but the truth is, it’s really a miracle. The miracle that if God hadn’t forgiven our sins, we’d never be able to confess them. This week we had “God’s Work Our Hands” day. What is interesting about that day, isn’t our hands. Heaven knows our hands love to be doing something; right or wrong. What is interesting is that God would come to folks like us, freeing us to do God’s work. Today’s sermon is a story. It is a warning-story of sorts. It is a story of what kind of work our hands can do without God’s intervention. Okay, let me tell you how it went. There was this member of my old congregation. I won’t be going back there anytime soon. Anyway, th...

we sat down & wept I couldn’t have been here more than a month; I was making a hospital visit, when out of nowhere she asked: “what do you think, why would God let Pastor Chuck die so young.” That was the first time I touched, for myself, the scar that had ripped across this place. I knew that Pastor Chuck’s sudden and tragic death was a part of this place’s story. That day, though, I learned that the scar was still raw. That day I learned that tragedy had ripped across you all and left sorrow and that terrible question in its wake, “why.” That day in the hospital, the woman I was visiting had known me for as long as about ten minutes, and Pastor Chuck’s death had happened over ten years ago. Yet, when she was confronted with someone from Trinity, the first question on her lips wasn’t “how are you,” but “ how could God let something like this happen.” We all know what that’s like, too; to be tormented by some tragedy that prods at what we think we know about G...