Ascension Lutheran Church Austin, TX Sermons

Sermon 2006-11-12 The Widow's Offering  play >

Sermon 2006-11-12 The Widow's Offering

11/13/2006 | Download File (5.62 MB) - right click to download

Sermon Sunday, November 12, 2006 +----------------------------------------+ | Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost | +----------------------------------------+ [9]Mark 12:38-44 * A widow*s generosity reveals the hypocrisy of the scribes THE WIDOW'S OFFERING While waiting in the HEB pharmacy some time ago, I sat down to check my blood pressure. Along the wall, next to the cuff into which you slide your arm is a sheet of thick Plexiglas with three or four holes a little bit bigger than the size of a quarter. Sure enough, someone had gotten the bright idea of dropping a couple of quarters, some dimes and a handful of pennies through the hole and into the space between the plastic and the wall. All tolled it appeared to be about seventy-five cents, chump change these days. But judging by the chips and cracks in the plastic though, what was also evident was the fact that probably more than one person had tried unsuccessfully to retrieve the change. *An awful lot of fuss for just a few small coins.* I thought to myself. *A lot of fuss for just a few small coins.* I guess we could make the same conclusion about Jesus too. One day he sat down opposite the treasury and watched people put in their money. *Many rich people put in large sums, but a poor widow came and put in two small coins, worth about a penny.* To the disciples he said, *She has put in more than all those who are contributing the treasury. For she, out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.* Those like us who know the difference between a large and a small sum are left to ponder Jesus* peculiar accounting. A single penny worth more than a *large sum*? What could Jesus possibly be talking about? I don*t suppose it*s any accident that the widow and her coins make their appearance at this time of the year in the life of the church. It is November after all. Time for churches everywhere to start worrying about next year*s budget and the poor widow serves as the perfect model for us all. If everyone adopted her type of sacrificial giving then our money problems would disappear and we*d be on the right track. So, open up your pocket books folks and give until it hurts. But of course anyone who understands anything about money will tell you two cents ain*t much in the grand scheme of things. The widow*s act makes for a good Reader*s Digest story, but such a small response would wreak havoc with the annual budget. Why if everyone gave two cents then where pray tell would we be? There*s staff, utilities and mortgage to pay, not to mention the Sunday school materials to purchase and some months even that*s a stretch. No we*re much better off encouraging abundance giving than praising people who give a heroic pittance. Let*s hear it for *large sums in the treasury*, because that*s just the way thing are. When I try and form a picture in my own mind of the woman at the treasury, I can*t help but think of someone like Marion, a woman I once met, a poor widow herself with a bad heart and diabetes. At the time I met her she was living in subsidized housing, but even so, her five hundred and fifty dollar social security didn*t go very far. Like so many of the working poor, over half of her income went to pay rent. Whatever was left over went to buy food, medicine, pay the electric bill and take care of whatever unexpected emergencies came along. She*d been ill in recent months and the cost of her prescriptions alone had just about wiped her out. So Marion has had to make some hard choices. The city was breathing down her neck because she*d gotten behind on her electric bill to the point that she*d started to get notices in the mail telling her unless she took care of her balance by the end of the month, her service would be cut off. That would be bad news for anyone but even more so for her because there*d be no way to power the electric heart monitor she used at night and she wouldn*t be able to charge the panic button she wore around her neck. *I just don*t know what to do, Pastor. I never supposed this is the way it would be.* She lamented to me in my office. *I*m not out to trick nobody. I just want to get better and get a job. I don*t want to live this way no more.* It seems to me that well to do folks like us view folks like Marion or the nameless widow in today*s gospel lesson in one of two ways, that isn*t it quaint that a poor little old lady drops a couple of pennies in the plate or that they only have themselves to blame for the situation they find themselves in. In either case, we show great disregard and disrespect. There*s nothing romantic and ideal about having to decide which bill to pay or whether to take your medicine. That the nameless widow*s offering couldn*t stack up to that of the big givers watching from the box seats wasn*t fault. Look again at the woman whom Jesus watched that day! She wasn*t a poor widow, but was poor because she was a widow. See, in those days there was no such thing as a rich widow. Women were completely dependent upon their male relatives for everything. To lose your husband was not only an emotional loss, but an economic one as well. If that happened a woman would have to live out her life at the mercy of others, other male relatives or anyone else in the community who might give he

Sermon 2006-10-22 Servant Song  play >

Sermon 2006-10-22 Servant Song

10/23/2006 | Download File (9.86 MB) - right click to download

Sermon Sunday, October 22, 2006 [9]Isaiah 53:4-12 * -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Servant Song I*m always amused and fascinated by lists of failed predictions throughout history. The online encyclopedia known as Wikepedia ([10]www.wikepedia.com) has a whole section devoted to the subject. Here is just a sprinkling of examples to consider. *There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the US**FCC Commissioner T. Craven, in 196).// *There*s no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.*--Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, maker of big business mainframe computers arguing against the PC in 1977.// *Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in ten years.* What do you think about that one, Don?*Alex Lewyt, President of the Lewyt Vacuum cleaner company in a New York Times article from 1955.// *The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.**IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production in 1959.// *Television won*t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.**Daryl Zanuck, 20^th Century Fox movie producer in 1946.// *I see no good reasons why the views given in this book should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone.**from the forward of Charles Darwin*s book, The Origin of Species in 1869.//*It will be gone by June.**Variety magazine, passing judgment on rock *n roll in 1955.// And particularly fitting considering the little gathering going in Zilker Park later today, *The singer will have to go; the BBC won*t like him.**First Rolling Stones, Eric Easton to his partner upon hearing Mick and his mates for the very first time in the early 1960*s. So much for seeing, for predicting, for imagining the future! Of course trying to call to mind a picture of things to come is something we all try to do. Goodness knows its part and parcel of what it means to be human. We want to have some sense of control, of certainty, direction, especially when we lack those things. God*s people living in exile over five hundred years before the birth of Jesus we no exception to the rule, people who had seen their city fall to their Babylonian captors, people who in the words of Walter Bruggeman *had suffered the loss of their entire world of faith.*[11][1] Everything that they*d banked on, that they*d pinned their hopes on, that they had taken for granted had been pulled out from under them and all that was left was their discontentment, a sense of failure, and heart rending grief. So they cried out to the Lord, *My way is hid from You, and my right is disregarded by my God.* And, *The Lord has forgotten me.* But in the midst of the darkness something strange and mysterious begins to stir, a word that bears an unbelievable sense of hope in a world of no hope, of a future when all conceivable possibilities have dried up and withered away, a future that no one could have imagined. The words that make up our Old Testament Reading this morning are taken from the second section of three that comprise the Book of Isaiah. It*s a passage that normally is read on Good Friday as we recall the mystery of the crucifixion and death of God*s servant Jesus. *He was despised and rejected by others; a man of sufferings and acquainted with infirmity and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised and we held him of no account. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him as stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.* Certainly as the church, we make the connection between God*s servant whom Isaiah describes and Jesus who through suffering and death fulfills God*s will. And that*s entirely appropriate, but at the same time, it*s important for us to recognize that Isaiah is speaking over five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, to a particular people, living in a particular time and place. In short, what*s going on here is a lot bigger than our particular interpretive framework. Here in Isaiah, we find four so called *Servant Songs* of which our reading today is the last. There*s been considerable debate through the ages with no clear consensus about just who this servant happens to be*a specific person, the community of God*s people or a particular group of people within the community. What is clear though is the recognition that through God*s servant, God is up to something peculiar, working behind the scenes, rearranging things in such a way that a new and unimaginable future is not only possible but has begun to break in upon us. Our situation and circumstances are entirely different from those living in exile over twenty five centuries ago. We live in our own homes and we have every reason to believe that we will continue to do so. We are free to choose how to worship, what to eat, how to spend our time, the people we want to hang out with. But if we don*t literally experience exile, then surely we can speak of the ways in which even we are held captive *by definitions of reality tha

Sermon 2006-10-08 Listen  play >

Sermon 2006-10-08 Listen

10/10/2006 | Download File (6.61 MB) - right click to download

Sermon Sunday, October 8, 2006 +-----------------------------------+ | Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost | +-----------------------------------+ [9]Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12* God has spoken by a Son -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LISTEN It*s amazing to consider the changes in how we communicate with one another over the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. I mean, who could have ever imagined a world of e-mail, text and instant messaging? For some folks it*s like air conditioning. They can*t even begin to imagine their lives without it. While we may resist and resolve not to have anything to do with it often for very good and justifiable reasons there*s a certain inevitability to change. The manner in which we communicate has gone through a process of continued evolution*from primitive cave etchings, to stone tablets and papyrus to the moveable press, the typewriter and the computer and cell phone. We can only imagine what connecting with one another will look like in ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now. Changing times call for new ways of connecting, one to another. The writer of Hebrews was on to this idea centuries ago. *Long ago, God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son*. Something has changed. Something is different and now God is up to something new. But in a world of head-spinning change, what*s the message? How do we listen? How will we hear God*s message, God*s word for us in Christ Jesus? There are a lot of things I remember about visiting my Grandparents Rudy and Arlene. One in particular was the fact that until the mid seventies their phone was on a party line. Every time I went I got the same lecture. One ring and the call was for the guy down the road. Two quick rings together and it was for the next door neighbor and if three rings, then it was okay to answer. The problem was I never quite seemed to figure that all out. Being from the big city all I knew was that if the phone rang once, twice or three times, for goodness sakes it needed to be answered. That being the case, you can probably imagine that I got myself into some really hot water a time or two when someone caught me listening in on what the neighbors were talking about. Thankfully the days of party lines are more or less long gone. Changes and improvements in technology ensure that nosy grandkids won*t be listening in on someone else*s private conversations. Praise the LORD! The idea that changes in how we connect with one another lead us to certain assumptions that it*s always for the good, that what we have now is better than the way things were before. Such an assumption may very well shape how we understand this remarkable claim of the writer of Hebrews, a person whose identity is thoroughly unclear by the way. *Long ago God spoke*by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.* Like a lot of people who call themselves Christian, are we to understand that somehow the prophets didn*t get it right or missed the boat, that God*s promises were somehow deficient and needed correcting, that when it comes to being close to God those who call themselves Christian are at the top of the food chain and everyone else is beneath us? I suppose that a person could make such a conclusion, but that*s not what*s going on here at all. It*s important for us to recognize what*s being said here and what is not being said. It*s not that the Old Testament is insufficient and needs an infusion of Jesus to render it acceptable, but rather that the word God has spoken in the past becomes the way we understand and evaluate our life as those who follow Christ, not by slapping a few boards and some paint on the old, but through the life, death and resurrection of God*s Son, Jesus fulfilling the promise and going even farther than anyone could have ever possibly imagined. The book of Hebrews is written to people who have grown impatiently self important and feel the need to embellish, to supplement, to add on to the message of Jesus, but in so doing make a mess of something so simple, yet profound as the love he comes to share. There*s a clear message here to those who have grown too religious, who have come to believe that Jesus isn*t quite enough, a clear word for those who say it*s all about *Jesus and the angels, Jesus and Moses, Jesus and the priesthood, Jesus and politics, Jesus and the right definition of marriage, Jesus and a single, narrow definition of the family, Jesus and enough money in the bank, Jesus and whatever sacred cause, whatever perceived need that we desperately cling to, whatever prop we think he needs to hold Him up and make Him more convincing. In the introduction to Hebrews in his Biblical paraphrase, [10]The Message*, from which I*ve been quoting for a few months at the end of the worship service, writer Eugene Peterson notes, *It seems odd to say so, but too much religion is a bad thing. We can*t get too much of God, can*t get too much faith and obedience, can*t get too much love and worship. But religion*the well int

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