A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. “At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! I recently shared a meme on Facebook. Its heading read: “When people say, ‘you and what army?’” The picture showed an artist’s rendering of a host of angels looking down on earth from heaven. It’s a good reminder of the invisible dimension of God’s creation that we humans, so caught up in the day-to-day circumstances of life in the visible dimension of creation, can easily forget or underappreciate. Today is the Festival of St. Michael and All Angels. St. Michael, whose name means “Who is like God” is the archangel mentioned in the Book of Daniel (12:1), as well as in Ju...

Click here to listen to this sermon. “Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?’ The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: ‘Surely I will never forget any of their deeds’” (Amos 8:4-7). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! It is a time of prosperity in Israel, but God’s people completely misunderstand His blessings. The people are greedy, and rather than seeing this prosperity as an opportunity to serve the neighbor, the people see their wealth as proof of God’s approval. Like today’s “prosperity Gospel” preachers, they reckon that riches are a mark of God’s favor, and poverty is proof of God’s...

Click here to listen to this sermon. [Jesus said:] “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” (Luke 14:26-26). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Jesus is at the height of His success as we measure it. People are flocking to Him—the numbers growing as He gets closer to Jerusalem. Yet, Jesus has to ruin it by telling the people a bunch of hard truths they can’t handle. He can’t help it. Jesus never compromises the truth, for that would be compromising Himself. The Lord’s criteria for discipleship are as simple as they sound horrifying: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and child...

JESUS MAFA. The Poor Invited to the Feast , from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, Tenn. Click here to listen to this sermon. [Jesus said]: “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:13-14). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! On first reading, this text appears to be an assortment of different, unconnected moments in the ministry of Jesus. We have a healing (vv. 1-6), a parable (vv. 7-11), and then a teaching about regard for the poor (vv. 12-14). When you look at the text more closely, however, you see this all happens on one occasion. The text begins with a reference to a meal on the Sabbath at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees and it is not until verse 25 that we leave this occasion. Recognizing this unity encourages us t...