A Famine Not of Bread

"Entry of the Christ into Jerusalem" by Jean-Leon Gerome Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! We live in an impatient world. Just look at our holiday observances. Black Friday is supposedly “the official start of the Christmas season.” But did you notice the Christmas decorations on the shelves right next to the Halloween candy this year? The world celebrates its holidays in advance. What it calls “Christmas”—the decorating, the feasting, the nostalgia—everything is done prior to December 25 th . Then people open presents, and that’s that. By December 31st, trees are hauled out to the dump and everyone’s gearing up for the Super Bowl. Advent, which begins today, is the time of the Church Year that’s most out of step with the concurrent cultural celebration. It is never harder to preach about John the Baptist than when people are humming “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Throughout December, the world i...

  Click here to listen to this sermon. "The Two Sons" by Eugene Burnand 23 When [Jesus] entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to Him as He was teaching, and said, “By what authority are You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?” 24 Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell Me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe Him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And He said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things”  (Matthew 21:23-27). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! As the national election ap...

Click here to listen to this sermon. [Jesus said:] “ If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once” (Matthew 21:3). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! The two young Galilean men walk into the village. They look around a bit and then go up to a donkey that is tied outside the gate of the garden with her colt. They begin to untie it without asking permission. A couple of peasants ask them what they think they are doing. “The Lord needs them,” is their simple answer. The owner nods and the men go on their way. Give that a try some time. Walk over to a stranger’s house. Open up the garage door and start backing his car and pickup out of the garage and down the driveway. If anyone asks you what you think you’re doing, just tell them, “the Lord needs them,” and he’ll send you on your way. Right! It sounds like a good way to get arrested for grand theft; doesn’t it? Of course, it makes a huge ...

"The Wicked Vinedresser" by Eugene Burnand Click here to listen to this sermon. “Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit” (Matthew 21:33-34). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Are you familiar with the term “reprise” when it is applied to a song? A song reprise is usually a repeat by the same artist of the same song with some improvements or change in style or music of that song—like “Let It Go” in the soundtrack for the recent Disney film Frozen . Or “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on the Beatles album of the same name. You might call our Gospel text a “reprise.” Jesus essentially draws His parable from the song of the vineyard that God had sung through Isaiah seven centu...

Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! In the events that led up to the sermon text for today, a multitude followed Jesus. Some were true followers, that is, His disciples. Others there were people in desperate need of the Savior’s healing Word. It seems likely there were people in attendance from the previous day’s Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem. No doubt there were children whose lips had offered praise. There were also known sinners like tax-collectors and prostitutes. And there were the chief priests and elders who sought to discredit and rid themselves of Jesus by arresting Him. These chief priests and elders were examples of men who were inside the Church but outside the kingdom. They refused to receive the gift of repentance and they were hardening their own hearts. When they questioned Jesus’ authority in the temple, he turned the tables by asking them a question about John the Baptist, a question th...

Click here to listen to this sermon. Or here. Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?’ Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:42-43). Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! He plants a vineyard. Sets a fence around it. Digs a winepress. And builds a tower to watch for thieves and robbers. So far so good. Sounds a lot like the song of the vineyard that we just heard in our reading from the book of Isaiah, doesn’t it? Then the owner of the vineyard makes his first mistake. He leases it to tenants. He’s asking for big trouble. He should keep the vineyard for himself. Nobody else will ever care about it as much as he does. Then the owner compounds his error. He decides to go off to another country. He takes a trip, an ex...