Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Laugh!

Ammo is getting scarce!
This morning I lucked out and was able to buy two boxes of ammo.

 

I placed the boxes on the front seat and headed back home, but stopped at a gas station where a drop-dead gorgeous blonde in a short skirt was filling up her car at the next pump.

 

She glanced at the two boxes of ammo, bent over and leaned in my passenger window, and said in a sexy voice, "I'm a big believer in barter, old fella. Would you be interested in trading sex for ammo?"

 

I thought for a few seconds and asked, "What kind of ammo 'ya got?"

"How Much Do You Owe?"

The parable Jesus presents in our Gospel text today is all about debt. On the face of it, a hired hand is commended for acting dishonestly to save his own hide when he realizes how unmanageable his debt has become....

[But] unless we understand what is going on around this parable we walk away from it thinking it is a lesson on dealing with our finances and investments in this world in order to win friends and influence people, because in doing so we somehow are feathering a heavenly retirement nest. But as always, in reading the Scripture and hearing the Word of God, if all we get out of it is what we have to do to pay off our debt and gain access to our heavenly home, we leave ourselves on the outside of the window looking in.

So, here in today’s parable we have Jesus catechizing His disciples, preparing them for His death on the cross and His subsequent departure, which will leave them in charge of proclaiming and spreading the message of the kingdom of heaven—especially how one comes into it. This He does with a parable so that hearing, the Pharisees will not understand, because they do not recognize Him as the Christ, who by His crucifixion is The Way to heaven and THE key to understanding all of Scripture -- and therefore, also this parable.

To hear the entire sermon preached for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity, click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3381

“The Will of My Father”

[The] rejection, restyling and perversion of the man as head of household along with fatherhood and the father figure (that is to say, this re-creation and playing God we do) is as old as sin itself. In the beginning, the will of God the Fa...ther—through the Word that is His Son who sends forth the Holy Spirit to do His good work—was to create and forever sustain life. The epitome of that life, the crown of His creation, and the focus of His love was and ever will be the man He created in His image and made to be male and female—distinctly different with specific non interchangeable roles and vocations, yet one flesh. Man to be the head of the woman to provide for and take care of her as his own flesh and raise children with her, in their image, that only she could bear and nurse.

The sin of Adam was a rejection of what he was created and given to be by his Father in heaven—thus a rejection of the Father Himself, as well as His Word and Spirit.

“In the day that you eat of it you will surely die.” They did. We do.

You can make fun of “Father Knows Best” all you want. But He does [know best]. So the Word, His only begotten Son, became flesh—human flesh--distinctly male flesh—to do the will of His Father that Adam and every man since has failed to do. And He did it not by man’s will, but by His Father’s. On the way to the cross He prayed, “Not My will but Thy will be done.”

To hear and/or the entire sermon preached for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3374See More

The Compassion of Christ

 

Christ knows our need before we do. And He supplies it at the proper time.

We, the Baptized children of God, really do get the best of both worlds. We might not get the most. We might not get everything we covet. We might not get it exactly when and where we want it. But the LORD, our Father in heaven truly does “give them their food in due season. [and] open [His] hand [to] satisfy the desire of every living thing [whose] eyes ... look to Him for their daily bread.

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3364

 

"Until All Is Accomplished"

In none of [His own works] did even this man, Jesus, boast even though He was and is the Christ, the very Son of God. Even though He could have done it all by His own work, He became passive and “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:8) ”

Herein is righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees and the most obedient, holiest, nicest, sweetest, even most helpful, compassionate, and tolerant people among us.

And herein is our entry ...into the kingdom of heaven—not to be excused or exempted or even freed from good works and righteous behavior, but as both Paul and Chrysostom point out, to be “Christ’s workmanship” who fulfill these things “Until All Is Accomplished” on the Last Day when Jesus “shall come to judge the living and the dead.“

To hear and/or read the entire sermon preached for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity, click on this link. http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=3359