Sunday Worship Youth & Family Music Milestones Stephen Ministry The Way
This Month Archive
St. Mark's Lutheran Church

 

 2016

 Sermons



Dez 25 - The Gift

Dez 24 - God's Love Changes Everything

Dez 18 - Lonely?

Dez 18 - Getting Ready

Dez 11 - The Desert Shall Bloom

Dez 4 - A Spirited Shoot

Nov 27 - Comin' Round the Mountain

Nov 20 - Power on parade

Nov 13 - Warnings and Love

Nov 6 - Saints Among Us

Okt 30 - Reformation in Catechesis

Okt 23 - The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Okt 16 - The Word of God at the Center of Life

Okt 9 - Continuing Thanks

Okt 8 - The Cord of Three

Okt 2 - Tools for God’s Work

Sep 25 - Rich?

Sep 23 - With a Word and a Song

Sep 18 - To Grace How Great a Debtor

Sep 11 - See the Gifts and Use Them Well

Sep 4 - Hear a Hard Word from Jesus

Aug 28 - Who is worthy?

Aug 21 - Just a Cripple?

Aug 14 - Not an Easy life with Christ

Aug 6 - By Faith

Jul 31 - You can't take it with you

Jul 25 - Companions

Jul 24 - Our Father

Jul 18 - Hospitality

Jul 17 - Priorities

Jul 11 - Giving

Jul 10 - Giving and receiving mercy

Jul 3 - Go!

Jun 26 - With urgency!

Jun 19 - Adopted

Jun 12 - A Tale of Two Sinners

Jun 5 - The Laughter of Surprise

Mai 29 - By Whose Authority?

Mai 22 - Why are we here?

Mai 15 - The Spirit Helps Us

Mai 8 - Free or Bound?

Mai 1 - Let All the People Praise You

Apr 24 - A New Thing

Apr 17 - A Great Multitude

Apr 10 - Transformed

Apr 3 - Here and There

Mrz 27 - The Hour

Mrz 26 - Dark yet?

Mrz 25 - The Long Defeat?

Mrz 25 - Appearances

Mrz 24 - Is it I?

Mrz 20 - Bridging the Distance

Mrz 16 - Singing the Catechism: Holy Communion

Mrz 13 - What is important

Mrz 9 - Singing the Catechism: Holy Baptism

Mrz 6 - What did he say?

Mrz 2 - Singing the Catechism: The Lord's Prayer

Feb 28 - Pantocrator

Feb 24 - Singing the Catechism: the Creeds

Feb 21 - What kind of church, promise, and God?

Feb 17 - The Catechism in Song: Ten Commandments

Feb 14 - Available to All

Feb 12 - Home

Feb 10 - The Catechism in Song: Confession and Forgiveness

Feb 7 - Befuddled, and that is OK

Jan 31 - That We May Speak

Jan 24 - The Power of the Word

Jan 17 - Surprised by the Spirit

Jan 10 - Exiles

Jan 3 - The Big Picture: our Christmas—Easter faith



2017 Sermons      

      2015 Sermons

The Hour

Read: Luke 24:1-12

 
Easter - March 27, 2016

The Rev. Kenneth R. Elkin 

 

What happens to us in the “hour?”, the hour that in our understanding Jesus moves from being an interesting person to being the best teacher to being the glorified savior?

 

Remember how in Charles Dicken's  fantastical tale called A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is enabled to review his whole life in no time at all.

As the bell tolled what he thought was his doom, in the end the tolling is transformed into glad ringing and he discovered that he had not missed Christmas at all!

 

Our story this Easter Day is even better than that.

The bell tolls yet today; what does it mean?

It tolls about things mundane, and eternal; about time and eternity, about past, now, and not yet.

It tolls about everything about our lives being broken open and examined at the same time.

It tolls about the truth that presses beyond the boundaries of language to contain it in a sermon.

It tolls about Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, and our resurrection in anticipation.

It tolls about creation and new creation, hope, promise, and fulfillment.

 

Remember back in January when we heard the second chapter of John's Gospel, when Jesus attended the wedding in Cana of Galilee.

When his mother urged him to do something, to take care of the embarrassing hospitality problem, he retorted, “My hour has not yet come.”[John 2:4] He went ahead and did the first of his signs, and the bell begins to strike the hour.

To the woman at the well that we encounter in chapter 4, Jesus says “My hour is coming.”[John 4:23]

To those who questioned his authority to heal the man at the pool on the Sabbath, Jesus said, “The hour is coming... I testify that the Father has sent me” [John 5:25,36]

Opposition increases as the bell tolls, and many no longer go about with Jesus. [John 6:66]

When his disciples urged him to show himself to the world, he declined and stayed in Galilee, telling them “my time is not yet fully come.” [John 7:8]

 

No one arrested Jesus when he was in the Temple , “because his hour had not yet come.” [John 7:30 and 8:20]

It was finally at the time of the festival, when Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and when some Greeks asked Philip to take them to Jesus that Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.”

And he wondered out loud, Should I say 'Father save me from this hour?'[John 12:27]

The clouds of controversy swirl and darken around Jesus.

After Judas dips his bread in the dish with Jesus, indicating that it was he who would betray Jesus, Judas leaves and the evangelist reports curtly, “And it was night.”

The darkness of abandonment and  betrayal was upon him, but Jesus resolutely moves ahead as the hour continues to toll.

He said to the confused disciples, “I am going away, and I am coming to you” [John 14:28]

In prayer he says, “Father the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.... I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.” [John 17:1,4]

To Pilate he says, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” [John 18:37]

On the cross he said, “It is finished, completed.” [John 19:30]

And in completing that part of his work, he gives up his spirit. 

He is in charge of things the whole way, from the start of creation...”In the beginning was the Word”...[John 1:1], through the disciples confused reaction, past the terrors of crucifixion and death, to the resurrection that we hear yet today.

 

The striking of the hour was not concluding, as the disciples feared, but just starting!

This was not a tragic end of the story, but one more step on the way.

Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb while it was still night, facing the darkness of nature and the darkness of sorrow and despair.

She comes to grieve at a grave.

But the hour is still striking.

Neither she nor the disciples find the body of Jesus in the tomb.

As they are trying to make sense of what has happened, Jesus appears to Mary, but she does not recognize him.

She first calls him “sir”, thinking him to be the gardener.

When Jesus calls her by name, then she addresses him as “rabbi”, the old title by which she had known Jesus.

And then a bit later as she begins to understand that everything is now different, she reports the news finally to the others, and she calls Jesus  “Lord.”

From “sir” to “rabbi” to “Lord.”

It is a signal that the darkness of both sorts is broken.

The bell that we thought was tolling for sorrow, continues to ring now for joy.

 

What happens to us in this “hour?”, the hour that Jesus moves from being an interesting person, to being the best teacher,  to being the glorified savior for us?

We can look around the world and see any number of dark things, broken relationships, cloudy times.

The list of them is as long as life itself, but that is not the end of the story.

 

For you see that the ringing of the bell that Christ lives a new and resurrected life was not limited to that first Easter day, but continues each day we gather in his name and under his promise.

The Lord's hour is still ringing upon us.

It rings whenever we gather gladly in his name for worship.

It rings when we receive the promise of new creation in Holy Baptism.

It rings whenever we hear his word proclaimed and receive the down-payment on the fullness of Christ's presence with us in the Holy Communion.

It rings as we wrestle with what it means to be a good steward of all the things that God has placed under our dominion.

It rings when the we share Christ's good gifts with others.

It rings when Jesus helps us to laugh Satan away from us.

It rings at the hour of our death when Satan thinks that at last he has won, but Jesus says “No, this is one of mine, who shall live even as I live.”

It rings as the darkness is broken forever; it rings on that eternal Easter Day.

Let the rejoicing continue: Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.  Amen. 

 

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.