A Famine Not of Bread

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 concern for the poor (vv. 12-14). When you look at the text more closely, however, you see that 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 in verse 1, and it is not until verse 25 that we leave this occasion. Recognizing this unity encourages us to look for the connection among these seemingly unrelated events. Like a friend telling us what happened last night at dinner, Luke re...

Abandoned Sathorn Unique in Bankok, Thailand Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Jesus is finished with His table talk and is back on the road again, followed (as it always seems) by large crowds. They have not lost their curiosity and anticipate the next miracle with enthusiasm. The words they now hear from Jesus are meant to cool some of the shallow ardor the crowds so often display. Do you wish to be a disciple of Jesus? If so, Jesus gives you the criteria, and His requirements are as simple as they sound horrifying: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his 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… Anyone who does not renounce all that he has cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26-27, 33). So, there you go. “Hate your family,” says the Lord. Not just the ...

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...

White trash dudes ushered out of Queen Elizabeth II’s reserved seats for the baseball in  The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad!  (1988) Click here to listen to this sermon. “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11). Grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Aimee and I went to a concert at the Denny Sanford Premier Center a couple of weeks ago. The tickets were a gift and we got really nice seats on the floor only a few rows back. During the concert there was a little commotion as a security person followed a couple up toward the front. The security person spoke to the couple who were seated, looked at their tickets, said a couple of words, and then they got up and sheepishly made their way to the nosebleed section that they were supposed to sit in. I imagined the irritation of the couple who needed to have someone from security open up their seats. But even more, I...