St. Mark's Lutheran

Biblical Text: Luke 11:1-13 Ok, I start off with something a bit hokey – Tony Stark/Iron Man – but this is about Fathers and Sons. (And yes it includes daughters, but the language we are given in Father.) The Lord’s prayer in Luke is a revelation of the Father of Jesus Christ. The Father of … Continue reading The Father of Jesus Christ is Yours

Biblical Text: Luke 10:38-42 The text is Mary and Martha which is usually taken as a compare and contrast of two symbols. Martha representing the active life and Mary the contemplative life. But I think that is a bit facile. And I’m basing that on both the immediate context – largely Luke 9-10 – and … Continue reading Contemplated Action

Biblical Text: Luke 10:25-37 The Text is the Good Samaritan. When you are preaching on such a story you really have to be content with telling the old old story. And as a Lutheran that Old Old story is captured in this incredibly compact story of law and gospel. The law story is clear and … Continue reading The Old Old Story

Biblical Text: Luke 10:1-20 The text is Jesus sending out the 70, or is it the 72? That is one of the few textual questions of the New Testament. Which like all textual questions is ultimately unanswerable. It becomes a matter of faith. But if you side with the King James Version and the manuscript … Continue reading 70 or 72? Call, Authority and Mission

Biblical Text: Luke 8:26-39 The Gerasene Demoniac is one of those stories that is so vivid for me it stands a proof of the rest of the biblical story. Nobody could make it up. And it is such a perfect living symbol that only God could be behind it. This sermon ponders the demonic for … Continue reading Among the Tombs

Text: The Athanasian Creed It was Trinity Sunday. Probably the one Sunday a year where I don’t have a very specific biblical text as the basis of the Sermon. That’s ok, because the Creeds in the Lutheran tradition are part of the Confessions, sometimes called the symbols. The Bible is the Norming Norm, but the … Continue reading Solid Spiritual Words

Biblical Text: Acts 2: 1-21, 22-47, John 14:23-31 This Sunday continues a couple of series. It continues our study of the book of Acts even if we have been “jumping around” in that book. This sermon ends up following up on last week. If last week was about the Spirit’s work “inside” the church before … Continue reading Spirit Power: Courage, Teaching, Peace

Biblical Text: Acts 1:1-26 This Sunday on the church calendar – the 7th Sunday of Easter – to me is the strangest one in the entire calendar. The sermon gets into that a bit, so I won’t spell it out here. But sitting between The Ascension and Pentecost is a time of internal preparation. God … Continue reading Courage of the Spirit

Biblical Text: Acts 16:6-15 The text as I read it had two parts. The first being something of a travel itinerary. And it was travel that was done under some uncertainty and stress. First Paul wanted to go West, but the Spirit stopped him. And he drifted north. When he runs out of North he … Continue reading Discipleship Itinerary

Biblical Text: Text: Acts 11:1-18, John 16:12-15 Change in the church is always a contentious issue. But even Jesus assumed that it would happen. And the book of Acts gives an example of a significant change. What these biblical texts give us is a Spirit Led pattern. This sermon takes Jesus’ words as the basis … Continue reading Spirit Led Change: Vision, Experience and the Word