Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord, January 10, 2016

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Texts:  Romans 6:1-11 and Luke 3:15-22

Sermon Theme:  “Baptized into His What?”

(Sources:  Concordia Pulpit Resources, Vol. 26, Part 1, Series C; Anderson’s Cycle C Preaching Workbook; original ideas; Emphasis Online Commentary; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Online Baptism Jokes, SgForums.com; Believer’s Bible Commentary; Footnotes, Concordia Self-Study Bible.)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

On this Festival Day of our Lord’s Baptism, the Gospel text from Luke gives a brief account of Jesus’ Baptism, and the Epistle from Romans explains to us what Baptism is all about.  The doctrinal issues regarding Baptism have been a major separating point among various denominations.  Thus many jokes about Baptism center on these differences, like the exchange of words between a Baptist minister and a Lutheran Pastor; here’s their conversation:

Lutheran Pastor:  So, let me get this straight – you believe a person isn’t baptized unless he has been fully immersed in water – is that correct?

Baptist Minister:  Correct.  We believe in full immersion – not pouring or sprinkling.

Lutheran:  So if you walked a person into a stream up to his ankles, that wouldn’t consist in an actual baptism?

Baptist:  No sir.  No Baptism.

Lutheran:  What if you got him up past his knees?

Baptist:  Still not good enough.

Lutheran:  What about if he waded in to his waist?  Would you pronounce him baptized?

Baptist:  No, no, no, — what about immersion do you not understand?

Lutheran:  Please forgive me, I am slow sometimes – I really do want to understand you, and I thank you for your patience.  Just a couple more questions and I’ll move onto other edifying topics.  What if he were immersed up to his chest?

Baptist:  No.

Lutheran:  What if he walked all the way in, held his breath, and was up to his eyeballs in water?

Baptist:  No, he has to be immersed.

Lutheran:  I think I understand now – you and I agree after all!

Baptist:  What?  What do you mean?  Did I convince you that immersion is the only way for baptism to be properly administered?

Lutheran:  On the contrary – you gave me great evidence against it!

Baptist:  I did!?!?

Lutheran:  You sure did.  You convinced me that getting your feet wet doesn’t make one baptized.  You convinced me that getting wet up to your knees or waist doesn’t make one baptized.  You convinced me that that being up to your chest or neck in water doesn’t make one baptized.  You even convinced me that being up to your eyeballs in water doesn’t cut it.

Baptist:  So?!?

Lutheran:  So what that tells me is that both of us deem water being administered to the head as sufficient to consider one baptized.

While that is a humorous response to an age-old doctrinal issue, it is an attempt to get to the true essence and significance of baptism.  The fact that Jesus  allowed Himself to be baptized underscores the importance of the Sacrament, as well as the statement made by Jesus in the last chapter of Mark:  “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Continue reading →

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas,

The Sunday before the Epiphany, January 3, 2016

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Luke 2:40-52

Sermon Theme:  “Question or Obey?  It Depends . . .”

(Sources:  Anderson’s Cycle C Preaching Workbook; Emphasis Online Illustrations; original ideas; Harper’s Bible Dictionary)

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Seated among the learned rabbis in the Temple, the twelve-year-old Jesus shows a remarkable awareness of who He is.  His parents should know who He is, considering what the angel said to them before His birth, and what Simeon and Anna and the Wise Men said after His birth, but obviously they didn’t, or maybe they just didn’t know how to act as parents of the Savior of the world.

In “The Prayer of the Frog,” Anthony de Mello tells a story of a grown woman who in a coma, near death, and lost the awareness of who she was.  In the coma, she dreamed she was being taken up to heaven and standing before the Judgment Seat of God.

“Who are you?”  a Voice says to her.

“I’m the wife of the mayor,” she replies.

“I did not ask you whose wife you are, but who you are.”

“I’m the mother of four children,” she replied.

“I did not ask whose mother you are, but who you are.”

“I’m a schoolteacher.”

“I did not ask you what your profession is, but who you are.”

And so it goes.  No matter what she replies, she doesn’t seem to give a satisfactory answer to the question, “Who are you?”

“I’m a Christian.”

“I did not ask what your religion is, but who you are.”

“I’m the one who went to church every day and always helped the poor and needy.”

“I did not ask you what you did, but who you are.”

She evidently fails the examination, for she is sent back to earth.  When she comes out of the coma and recovers from her illness, she is determined to find out who she is.

I think all human beings are a little like that.  During our lifetime, we are always asking, “Who am I?  Why am I here?”

Being both God and human, Jesus did not have that problem.  He knew who He was.  He was the Savior of the World come to rescue fallen humankind from sin and restore them to a right relationship with the Heavenly Father. Continue reading →

Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas

December 27, 2015, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Colossians 3:12-17

Sermon Theme:  “Taking Back the Christmas Gift That Doesn’t Fit”

(Sources:  Anderson’s Cycle C Preaching Workbook; Brokhoff Series C Preaching Workbook; Emphasis Online Illustrations; original ideas; Online Stories about Exchanging Christmas Gifs)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

It may be too soon after Christmas for any of you to have to deal with exchanging Christmas gifts that don’t fit.  It’s such a hassle that I’m inclined to want to give the oversized or undersized garment to Goodwill.  And it’s probably a toss-up as to which is more difficult to exchange, that which was purchased at a shopping mall or that bought online.

My bad experiences have been mostly with those purchased online, including a belt from Amazon that would have fit my thigh rather than my waist.  Eventually I was able to return it.

However, I read about a woman who bought a crocheted halter top for her daughter for Christmas from Amazon and had horrible time trying to exchange it.  It was a one size fits all garment, but when she got it, it was too small to fit any human creature; she asked to return it, and they said, ‘No, one size fits anybody.’

Well it didn’t, so to prove her point she put the crocheted halter top on her cat, and took a picture of the cat wearing it.  Then she sent a photo of the cat wearing it to Amazon with a note saying, “See, here’s my proof.”  Amazon was convinced and said she could return it for a refund.  However, the cat hated it and ripped it off.

Most of the time, one-size-fits-all does fit unless you’re excessively obese.  And it is especially true that one size fits all if you are referring to the spiritual clothing Paul describes in today’s sermon text.

Paul says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”  The NIV says, “Clothe yourselves,” a translation I like better, because the Greek verb rendered as “put on” can only refer to clothing (and not, for example, “put on a pot of soup”).

Mark Twain once quipped, “Clothes made the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.”  If that is true, and I believe it is, just imagine the influence a person dressed in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love would have on society!

The problem is today’s world, based on newspaper headlines, neither possesses nor values such qualities as compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love; if they did, the world would be transformed. Continue reading →

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent

December 20, 2015, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Micah 5:2-5a

Sermon Theme:  “Just another Little Town?”

 (Sources:  Emphasis Online Commentary; Emphasis Online Illustrations; “Do We Really Know Where Christ Was Born, CBN.com; original ideas and illustrations; “Bethlehem: Then and Now” by Mitri Raheb; Anderson’s Cycle C Preaching Workbook; Harper’s Bible Dictionary; Introduction to Micah, CSS Bible.)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

           When I was a kid growing up in the small, rural town of Dime Box, I was ashamed to tell strangers where I was born, because experience taught me they would laugh when I told them.  I thought they were laughing because I was born and lived in a small, nowhere town, but it’s more likely they laughed because of the name “Dime Box.”

Jesus was born in a small, rural town also, a town in Judea named Bethlehem.  Historians and archeologists believe Bethlehem had a population of between 300 and 1,000 inhabitants at the time of Jesus’ birth.  If 300, it would have been the size of Dime Box at the time of my birth.  If 1,000, the size of Wallis when I was called to the church here in 1988, — the population of Wallis was exactly 1,001 in 1988.

A couple years after I was called to serve at Wallis, I was at a pastors’ workshop, and one of the pastors of a big city church asked me where my church was located.  When I told him “Wallis,” he wanted to know how big Wallis was, and I replied that the population was exactly 1,001.

“Are you the one?” he asked me.

“No, I live in East Bernard,” I answered. Continue reading →

 Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent

December 13, 2015, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Philippians 4:4-7

Sermon Theme:  “Rejoice!  Have No Anxiety about Anything!”

 (Sources:  Emphasis Online Illustrations; Anderson’s Cycle C Preaching Workbook; Concordia Pulpit Resources, Vol. 26, Part 1, Series C; original ideas; Online Peanuts Comic Strips)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Happiness is an elusive thing.  Abraham Lincoln once said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be,” and several great thinkers have said something equivalent to, “Unless you carry happiness within you, you will never find it.”

Everybody has his or her own idea about what happiness is.  Snoopy says happiness is an ice cream cone.  Sally Brown says happiness is having your own library card.  But, in today’s sermon text from Philippians, Paul is talking about “joy” rather than “happiness,” and for many, joy is even more elusive than happiness.

I love the Peanuts cartoon strip which begins with Charlie Brown, head down, standing with his “hung dog” stance.  Charlie says to his girl friend, Peggy Jean, who is standing there looking at him, “This is my depressed stance.  When you are depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand.  The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high, because then you’ll start to feel better.  If you’re going to get any joy out of being depressed, you’ve got to stand like this.”    Peggy Jean says nothing, just looks at him bewildered. Continue reading →

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

December 6, 2015, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Luke 3:1-14

Sermon Theme:  “The Color of Repentance”

(Sources:  Anderson, Cycle C, Preaching Workbook; What Luther Says, CPH Anthology; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Repent and Sin No More, Online Jokes; Repent and Be Saved Online Commentary; original ideas)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

           Sin is not a joking matter, and confession and repentance must be taken seriously.  However, I want to share a joke about repentance that really makes a very good point.

Once there was a tradesman, a painter named Jack, who was very interested in making a dollar where he could.  So he often would thin down his paint to make it go a bit farther.  As it happened, he got away with this for some time.

Eventually, the local church decided to do a big restoration project.  Jack put in a painting bid, and, because his price was so competitive, he got the job.  And so he started, erecting the trestles and putting up the planks, and buying the paint and thinning it down with turpentine.

Jack was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly done, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder.  The sky opened and the rained poured down, washing away the thinned down paint from all over the church and knocking Jack off the scaffold to land on the lawn.

Jack was no fool.  He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he fell on his knees and cried, “Oh, God!  Forgive me!  What should I do?”

And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke, “Repaint!  Repaint!  And thin no more!”

Continue reading →

Sermon for First Sunday in Advent

November 29, 2015, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Jeremiah 33:14-16

Sermon Theme:  “A New Branch; a New Name”

 (Sources: Anderson, Cycle C, Preaching Notebook; Emphasis Online Commentary; Emphasis Online Illustrations; original ideas; Online Jokes about Small Towns; Funny Names of Towns Online; Introduction to Jeremiah, Concordia Self-Study Bible.)

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

           Today’s sermon text is a very short, simple, but powerful prophesy from the Prophet, Jeremiah.  Through Jeremiah, God proclaims that He will fulfill the Promise He made, He will cause a Righteous Branch of David to spring up; He will save Judah, and Jerusalem will be safe; and He will give the Holy City of Jerusalem a new name.

This prophesy comes at a time when this capital city of Judah, Jerusalem, is doomed to defeat by the feared Babylonians.  In 605 B.C., the mighty Egyptians were crushed by Babylon, returning to Egypt with heavy losses.  That meant Babylon had a free hand in western Asia for the next 70 years, and could and did terrorize small nations like Judah.  In his prophesy, Jeremiah assures the people God’s Promise, made long ago, will be kept, and he speaks of a new name for Jerusalem.  It will be called “The Lord is our righteousness.”

What difference does it make what a city is called?  Social scientists have found that the name of a city makes a great deal of difference, both positively and negatively.

Years ago, Cincinnati was disparagingly called “The Sin (S-I-N) City,” – that is, until political and social leaders decided the name for their city was not what they wanted, so they cleaned it up, making it more morally pure.

Los Angeles was commonly called “the city of Angels,” which was a wonderful name.  But, in more recent times, L.A. seems to be the opposite of a city of angels – unless you’re talking about “Hell’s Angels.”

I grew up in Dime Box, Texas.  The name is very appropriate considering the size of the town.  A dime is even smaller than a nickel.  It fit all those “You- know-you’re-from-a-small-town-isms.”

You know you’re from Dime Box when the local phone book has only one yellow page.  You know you’re from Dime Box when 3^rd Street is on the edge of town.  You know you’re from Dime Box when “A Night on the Town” takes only 11 minutes.  You know you’re from Dime Box when weekend excitement involves a trip to the grocery store.  It may be small, but it was a safe, peaceful, and a caring place to grow up in. Continue reading →

Sermon for Thanksgiving Eve, November 25, 2015

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  Deuteronomy 8:1-10

Sermon Theme: “Thank God during the Best of Times and during the Worst of Times”

  (Sources:  Concordia Pulpit Resources, Volume 12, Part 4; original ideas; Online Jokes about Thanksgiving; footnotes, Concordia Self-Study Bible; Rinckhart, Wikipedia.)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

           Perhaps like some of you were doing earlier today, the mother of the family was pawing through some frozen turkeys at the grocery store, but couldn’t find one big enough for the huge number of family members coming the next day for Thanksgiving dinner.  So she asked the stock boy, “Do these turkeys get any bigger?”

“No ma’am,” the stock boy replied, “they’re dead.

One year, a couple’s four year old boy wanted to give thanks before the Thanksgiving meal.  Everybody bowed their heads, and the boy began his prayer thanking God for his Mommy and Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa.  Then he gave thanks for the turkey, the dressing, the mashed potatoes, the fruit salad, the cucumber salad, the cranberry sauce, the bread rolls, the pumpkin pie, the chocolate dessert and even the Cool Whip.  Then he paused.

Everyone waited.  And waited.  Finally, after a long silence, he looked up at his mother and asked, “If I thank God for the broccoli, won’t he know that I’m lying?” Continue reading →

Sermon for Christ the King, Last Sunday of the Church Year

November 22, 2015, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas

Sermon Text:  John 18:33-38

Sermon Theme:  “What Do You Worship as King of Truth?”

 (Sources:  Anderson’s Cycle B Preaching Workbook; Emphasis Online Commentary; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Online “Snoopy and the Meaning of Life”; original ideas)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

           One of the most all-time favorite Peanuts comic strips shows Snoopy in the lead-in box lying on top of the “u” in a stone sculpture of the word “truth.”

Then the strip actually begins with Snoopy lying on top his dog house, staring at the stars, unable to sleep.  “Rats,” he says, “it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and I’m wide awake!”

“Were am I going?  What is the meaning of life?,” he asks suddenly.

So he trots to the back door of Charlie Brown’s house, and kicks the door loudly, “Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.”

Inside the house, Charlie Brown is awakened from his sleep by the noise and says, “I recognize that kick.  That is the kick of someone who has awakened in the middle of the night and wants to know the meaning of life.”

Charlie goes to the door, sticks his head out, and says to Snoopy, “The meaning of life is to go back to sleep and hope that tomorrow is a better day!”

Then Charlie adds, as he slams the door in Snoopy’s face,” And if you’re thinking about eating, forget it!”

Snoopy walks back to his dog house muttering, “Wouldn’t that unplug your heating pad!”

All of us no doubt have had nights like that and can identify with Snoopy, especially in the unsettling times of recent weeks, — ISIS brings down a Russian passenger plane; ISIS causes mass murder and destruction in Paris; Al Qaeda terrorists take hostages in a hotel in Mali; and with 27 killed; ISIS says on the day your wife leaves for New York that they will suicide bomb Times Square.  Yes, these are unsettling times!

What does all of this mean?  What is the meaning of life?  What is truth? Continue reading →