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Podcast Description
The weekly sermons from St. Peter's Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Arlington, WI
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1 |
Faith Seeking Understanding | St. Luke notes that for some of those disciples, they still didn’t get it. “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” “Lord, now that You’ve gotten this Messiah business out of Your system, now that You’re done with all of this sin, death and evil stuff, now that all those three years are over and done, now, are You going to get to the real work?” They didn’t get it! Like many a student who never gets it, who never gets why they are in school in the first place. They don’t get why they have been given an education. Just like many a Christian never gets it...never gets why they go to Sunday School and learn those stories in the Bible. You hear it so often as students get older...even well into adulthood…“Oh, those Bible stories...I learned all that stuff when I was a kid.” Well, duh! Of course you did. But you’re not a kid anymore, are you? And those stories of the Bible teach us different things than when we were five or six. It’s called maturity. It’s called growing in wisdom and understanding and insight. It’s not something to get over and done with and on to the next thing. | 5/20/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What We Do for Love | Jesus says, “If you obey My commands, if you do the things I have taught you, you will remain in My love. Just as I have done the things My Father has taught Me.” So that’s it? Just get out there and imitate Jesus? Obey! Obey! Obey! No. We love one another, because that’s what Jesus has done. He has loved us, because that’s what the Father does. The Father loves His Son, who loves us, who love one another. It’s not an imitation of Jesus’ love. It is Jesus’ love. It’s God’s! It’s ours too. All together as one! You see, that’s what the thought-clichés and pious platitudes about love fail to grasp. We cannot love one another unless we remain in Jesus’ love. We cannot bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things unless we remain in the love of Him who has done all things in the laying down of His life and taking it up again. | 5/14/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Simple Botany | Because of a mother or father, because of a grandfather or grandmother, because of a godparent, and often because of all of them, we learned that in Holy Baptism we were made branches of the True Vine, Jesus Christ. They showed us by their lives what it means to be grafted into Him, and that His life flows in us. No...not everyone has that kind of Christian upbringing. Some have only gotten connected to Jesus as an adult. And yet, because of this background, these folks do have a vital sense of what it means to be connected to the True Vine, because they know the difference between before and after Jesus. But either way, as a child or adult, the simple botany of this matter is that getting connected to Jesus through Holy Baptism is God’s good and gracious will for every single person on this earth. There is only one True Vine, and He is Jesus Christ. | 5/6/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Hearing from the Flock | Martin Luther once declared, “Thank God a seven year old child knows what the Church is: sheep who hear the voice of their [Good] Shepherd.” “I know them,” this Shepherd says, “and they follow Me.” Yes, often times that means the green pastures and the still waters. But there are times...times when it is the valley of the shadow of death. Still He leads and we follow. He speaks and we listen. And even in the darkest valley we shall fear no evil...for He is with us. And we are a Flock, His Flock. And in this flock He says, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know My own, and My own know Me.” | 4/29/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Not A Ghost | There is, perhaps, no stranger tenet of the Creed—to us folks today, as much as to the Greeks back in Paul’s day—than the resurrection of the body. The resurrection of this limited, lumpish thing that grows old, wears out, dies, and decays. But if it’s hard to see how the body could rise again—and that has been a puzzler since the first Easter—it may be even harder to see why we would want it to rise again! Why not take Plato’s view of the matter, that human beings at death simply slip this husk of flesh and are free? It’s certainly the driving, persuasive argument from the assisted suicide and euthanasia crowd. The Greek symbol for the psyche, the soul, was the butterfly. Butterflies don’t want their cocoons back—why should we? | 4/22/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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In the Shadows – Thomas | Because we are not saved on the basis of our certainties. Nor are we lost on the basis of our doubts. A hundred years ago there were plenty of people on the Titanic who were certain that the ship would not sink. There were plenty of people, too, who doubted whether that was a wise thing to conclude. But those doubts didn’t sink the Titanic, nor did all the certainties added together keep it afloat. Despite both the certainties and the doubts, the great ship sank because it hit an iceberg! So the greater ship of the Church, captained by Jesus Christ, does not depend on the certainties of those onboard, nor is it affected by the doubts of those who don’t sail with Him. We are saved or lost on the basis of Jesus Christ alone...that He successfully steers His ship and keeps it afloat! Whether He is, in fact, who He claims to be. Whether He has done, in fact, what He claims to have done. It’s about Him! | 4/15/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
Why Are You Weeping? | Someone you know is as grief-stricken as Mary Magdalene. Someone you know has had their life paralyzed by grief at the death of a loved one, or by the loss of something they valued as much as life itself. Someone you know has no clue as to what Jesus’ resurrection means, what it means that He calls each of us by name. Someone you know does not understand how anything can become new because of Easter. Someone you know...perhaps even you. Easter makes you an apostle. Whether by word or by deed we approach those who are weeping, literal tears or only figurative tears. And those weeping folks may react kindly to such mercy or more like Mary Magdalene erupting in her grief. But either way Easter now manifests itself in how you live, and in how you talk about this life, this world, and all the daily messes with which we must all contend. | 4/8/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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So It Begins | So it begins! The climax of the Lenten season is upon us. Jesus enters the gates of Jerusalem to the shouts of the people, to the songs of praise...only to hear those voices at week’s end turn first to accusation and then to jeers, as He goes to His death on a Roman cross. The climax of the whole Christian story is upon us. Little wonder that each of the evangelists—Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—slows down at this point in his Gospel. Each of them moves from the fast-paced, panoramic view of Jesus’ life and ministry, out of which they each capture significant moments along the way, to this almost slow-motion recounting of Holy Week, of Jesus’ final hours. Each step of this journey is significant. Each step deserves the care and the detail which the evangelists give it. | 4/1/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Out of the Shadows – Light | In the days of our nation’s westward expansion, the days when these hymn tunes were born, there were many, many new beginnings which did not see a good ending. The violence of man and nature cut their journeys short….like Israel in the wilderness, like Israel in Jeremiah’s day. As we too are sorely tried in our journey through this life. Yet, while our journey with God faces many dangers, toils and snares, we remember that all along the way God has made His heart known to us. His heart, Jesus, is with us. And whether our Lenten season this year has been an easy journey or one that has threatened to leave our bones buried in the wilderness, for us the promise here in Jeremiah 31 is a reminder. Even in the darkest periods of the journey, God’s heart, His forgiving and forgetting heart, is revealed most clearly in those darkest periods. | 3/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Trials of Jesus – Faith | 5th Midweek in Lent Genesis 20:1-11 & Mark 14:53-54, 66-72 (Click on the MP3 player so that the music will be playing while you read the sermon.) It’s been called the saddest music ever written. Written in 1936 as a movement in a string quartet, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, has been the musical outlet for many occasions of great sadness! In 1945 it was performed to help the nation grieve the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Within hours after the President’s death, WGN in Chicago and ABC and NBC in New York were all cueing up Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Shortly after the Twin Towers fell in 2001, Leonard Slatkin conducted the Adagio in London at the Royal Albert Hall as a tribute to the victims. And it has been heard in numerous movies…always sad, always tragic. The Adagio is the perfect soundtrack for today’s text. The week had started with a parade. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The whispers of “Hosanna” had been going on for years–that Aramaic phrase that means “Lord, save us.” On Palm Sunday it had turned to shouts of joy, still in Aramaic so that the Romans couldn’t understand their cries for deliverance. Then a symbol of freedom is added–the people cover the street with palm branches. And the whole city is thrown into turmoil. But in just a few days, everything will change. The martial music of that joyful Sunday will sound like this. Hopeful cries will turn into cries of accusation. Shouts of “Save us!” will become shouts of “Crucify Him!” And Jesus’ own disciples…yes, they too will all desert Him. Peter, driven by his idealism and the pride he had in his faith, very comfortable in his innocence, Peter had protested with all the confidence in his own faith, “No, I won’t. Not me! Never.” “Yes, you will,” Jesus replies. “In fact, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” “Never,” says Peter. “I would die first.” And the music is there…but Peter cannot hear it. You know the story…Jesus is arrested and put on trial. Peter witnesses it all…from a safe distance. But he is recognized because his Galilean accent gives him away. And despite his noble intentions, despite his brave declarations, despite his faith, Peter denies that he even knows who Jesus is. He fails as a disciple. He weeps bitterly. It is one of the saddest moments in the Passion story. Peter realizes he has failed. His sense of loss is withering. Not only is Jesus going to be crucified, but there is nothing Peter can do about it. And the music of Samuel Barber cuts right through the heart. One music historian suggested three possible reasons for the profound sadness in this music: It’s about Barber’s own struggle with depression. It’s about the absolute aloneness we feel when a loved one dies. It’s about the shattering sound of our fallen dreams, dreams that have been dreamt big…and the shattering emptiness we feel when we realize we are not, nor ever will be that big. That third option fits so well. Peter was dreaming big for three years with Jesus. But now those dreams have fallen. Indeed, all of humanity holds on to the dream of being like God, of being self-sufficient, of being able to handle all the complexities of life on our own. It’s part of the naïve innocence of being human. In Peter’s story, human innocence is shattered…lost. With Peter we also realize that despite our best intentions as people of faith we have a way of denying Jesus. We think we can handle life. That if we have enough faith, we can handle it all. We can handle faith and sin and grace and all of it on our own. But we cannot. We cannot. Peter’s moment in the courtyard was the moment of his redemption. In that moment of denying Jesus, in that moment of the shattering sound of everything he had naively claimed in faith…precisely then, in that fall, Peter was born anew. It is as Martin Luther had said of his own dark night when the Gospel burst in upon his tro | 3/22/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 10 Episodes |
- Free
- Category: Christianity
- Language: English
- © Copyright: St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Arlington, WI, 2011.
