Sermons from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Raleigh, NC

Gospel - Mark 1:14-20

Jesus’ yells for the disciples to follow him, upsetting their professions, goals, and agendas. Is Jesus yelling today? And are we listening?

Gospel - John 1:43-51

Can anything good come out of Haiti?

Can anything good come out of Oakland?

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Come and see. Come and see the hometown of God….where all the goodness and grace and healing comes from…where God is born and nurtured and raised and formed and launched out into the world to bring life and life abundant.

We can turn our backs if we want to. We can be too good for all of that. We can want the best – and only the best. We can leave them alone in the messes we helped create.

Or, we can “come and see” the very face of God. We can allow ourselves to be reborn and nurtured and raised and formed and launched out into the world to bring life and life abundant.

Gospel - Mark 1:4-11

A new hobby begins in a quiet moment of curiosity. A new relationship begins in the quiet, unspoken awareness of attraction. A new job begins with the quiet inkling that your old job isn’t quite the right fit anymore. A new life forms in secret, before mom and dad have any idea. Before the big leaps are taken and the big declarations are declared, the new beginning is there, changing everything…

Today we are invited to consider: What new beginning, what new creation, is God’s Spirit bringing about in us, in our ordinary yet extraordinary lives? How will the epiphany of Christ – his manifestation – be made manifest in our gifts and time and intentions? How will this new year be new, for us?

The world awaits the answer.

Gospel - Mark 1:1-8

John is calling us home. He’s calling us to our place of truest belonging, to the God who has already forgiven us, to the God who has always loved us, to the God who tells us, whatever has gone awry…you belong here, you have a home, here.

Gospel - Mark 13:24-27

Gospel - Matthew 25:31-46

We see that, yes, Christ will be king at the end of it all, in all his fullness, but that Christ is also king, here, now, wherever there is suffering. We see that, yes, he will reign forever and ever, but that “forever and ever” includes this time, this place, this person, this hurt, this moment. It’s good news because God is here fighting for those who most need to be fought for. Sometimes that’s us. Sometimes it’s people we don’t know. Sometimes, it’s even our enemies.

Gospel - Matthew 25:1-13

And, even on our worst days, when we have truly had enough. Even when folks don’t share and community fails us…even when all the lamps are bone dry and dark. What if…what if we simply set down our empty lamps and wait for Jesus as we are, in our emptiness, in the darkness? What if we don’t rush out at the last minute and try to make everything right? What if we simply stand before Jesus with nothing left? What if we embrace the claim that Martin Luther scrawled on a scrap of paper years ago, just before his death: “We are beggars. This is true."?

Gospel - Matthew 5:1-12

Christ calls us into blessed community, and we leave the balcony open in life because God has kept it open in into eternal life.

Gospel - John 8:31-36

It can be so hard to admit our need of God. So often, we don’t even know it’s there. And yet, it’s in those moments of knowing our need that God’s help, God’s saving, God’s reformation is good news. We all know change can be so tough. But when you see the gaping hole and all the ways your house and the whole street might be about to fall right in, you couldn’t been more grateful for someone to come in and take care of it. And that’s what Jesus does.

Gospel - Matthew 21:33-46