Bloghardt's Reflector

St. Luke 15:1-10 - Trinity 4 - 2009
St. Mark Lutheran Church - June 28, 2009
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In the name of Jesus. Amen. Today...Jesus does the unthinkable.  He eats with sinners.  He rubs elbows with the wrong sort of people.  Tax collectors.  Sinners.  Gentiles.  He hangs with the likes of you and me.

The Pharisees grumbled.  They would!  Their religion was for righteous people.  Good people can come in.  Bad people can’t.  Religious people are welcome.  Tax collectors are not.  They wanted a church full of .. well people just like them.   

Jesus’ response is to tell them a parable.  What man or you, if he had a hundred sheep and one strayed, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine and go get the one who strayed?  What shepherd wouldn’t do that?

It’s a rhetorical question.  That’s what shepherds do - they go track down stray sheep.  Well, except the Pharisees.  They don’t.  So, Jesus continues, “What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one doesn’t comb the house for that one that she lost?”

And again, the Pharisees wouldn’t.  But, Jesus would.  That’s what He was doing eating with the sinners - He was going after the lost sheep and the lost coins and bringing His Father joy!

LSU beats the University of Texas in the CWS!  

St. Luke 14:15-24 - Trinity 3 - 2009

St. Mark Lutheran Church - June 21, 2009
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In the name of Jesus. Amen.  Excuses.  Excuses.  Excuses.  They have so many excuses - “I have bought a field, I have five new oxen to test drive, I have married a girl.”

Excuses are how we live and deal in our minds with what we do and don’t do.  Excuses are how we justify what we do before God and one another.

Our best excuses are the ones that allow us to dodge responsibility for what we’ve done:  “I’m sorry I did that, but there were circumstances, you made me, or that person got what was coming to them!”

And then after our “I’m sorry but” we wonder why the person that we apologized to looks at us as if us didn’t apologize.  Well, we didn’t!  We cancelled everything with our excuse! 

That’s what “I’m sorry, but” means.  It means “I’m saying I’m sorry.. But here’s why I did what I did and this makes it completely reasonable so I shouldn’t be held accountable for it.”

The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our

St. John 16:2 - Easter 7 - 2009
St. Mark Lutheran Church - May 24, 2009
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In the name of Jesus. Amen.  There is a war going on, dear Saints of God.  A war going on in your country, in your schools, on your radio, television and on the internet.

You may be fighting it, you may not be.  But, it’s going on.  And it’s against you.  And if your enemies can’t get you, they’d be very happy to help themselves to your children.  

At stake is the very Gospel itself.  Your faith, your life, and your souls.

Do I sound paranoid?  Full of hate speech?  Sounds as nuts as little green men at Area 51, eh?  

That’s what the world says about your faith.  And we have become so desensitized about the world’s religion, we join in by feeling a bit guilty when Jesus talks the way He does today.   

“They will put you out of the synogogues.  Indeed the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he’s doing God a service.”

And why?  Why will they do what they do?  Jesus says they will do all this - the killing, the suffering, the mocking, because they don’t know the Father nor the Son.  

St. Luke 24:51 - Ascension 2009

St. Mark Lutheran Church - May 20, 2009
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In the name of Jesus, our risen and ascended Lord. Amen.  You say it every day, “I believe in Jesus Christ, who ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of God.”

It’s not just words.  Not just some sentence or fact.  You know, like.. The grass is green.   Texas has hot summers.  LSU won two national championships in the last five years.  And oh and.. Jesus ascended to heaven.

The Ascension is so much more!  Dr. Luther reminds us that we must consider Jesus’ ascension and His Lordship as something that is “active, energetic, and continuous.”  

We must not imagine that Jesus sits up in heaven and does His own thing while we do our thing here on earth.

No, that’s not Jesus’ way.  He does what He does for you.  He did what He did before He was crucified for your salvation.  He does what does now for the same reason.

He ascends to spread of the Gospel to Jerusalem, all of Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  So that you and me, who know that Texas summers are hot would hear the Gospel - hear Jesus’ apostles preaching repentance unto the forgiveness of sins.