Emphasis Preaching Journal

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Martin Luther will not let us get away with just having good feelings for the poor or pity for them while we pray for them. As he once put it in a lecture:

Many live for themselves. Meanwhile they neglect the poor, devote themselves to prayer, and consider themselves saints. Yet it is not enough not to have harmed one’s neighbor. God also demands positive uplifting of the needy through love. (Luther’s Works, Vol. 16, p.19)

Even that is not enough for Luther. He wants us either to get government or we ourselves to intervene on behalf of the poor:

God’s justice is different from that of the world, which does not punish greed but rather regards it as a virtue. God, however, does not want the poor thrown off their property but that they be helped by a grant or loan. (Luther’s Works, Vol.16, p. 61)
Mark E.

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Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23
Martin Luther offers two interesting insights about the Psalm. First, he notes that the psalm’s reference to Zion is really about the church and its beauty. He writes:

The church is the loveliness of his, Christ’s beauty, because it is conformed to him and receives of his fullness. He is himself comely and most beautiful with every kind of beauty, and from this beauty comes the loveliness, that is, his form and image, in the Church. (Luther’s Works, Vol. 10. p. 230)

About the sacrifice we can truly offer God, Luther then quotes Augustine:

This sacrifice means to give thanks to him from whom you have whatever good you have, and whose mercy forgives you whatever evil you have of your own. (Luther’s Works, Vol.10. pp. 232-233)

To these points about the psalm, John Calvin adds:

And can we conceive of greater clemency than this, thus to invite to himself, and into the bosom of the church, such perfidious apostates and violators of his Covenant, who had departed from the doctrine of godliness in which they had been brought up? (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. V/2, p.279)
Mark E.

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Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
I came across this story for which I could find no source, but it was too good to pass up. During the French war, a train carrying dispatches to the headquarters was compelled to go over sixty miles of very rough track. It had to reach its destination within an hour. The engineer was responsible for the train and passengers. His wife and child rode in the coach. Constantly, the train threatened to jump the track or go over an embankment or bridge. As it rolled from side to side, the few people inside held their breath and often cried out with terror as they sped along. There was one on that train who was unafraid and unfazed. Who? The child of the engineer. Happy as a bird, she laughed aloud when asked if she was afraid. She looked up and answered that question, “Why would I be? My father is driving the train.” A little later, the engineer came into the car to cheer up his wife and, as he wiped the great drops of sweat from his face, the child leaped into his arms and laid her head upon his bosom, as happy and peaceful as when at home.

That story depicts faith. Faith: trusting when we can’t see and doing when we don’t understand. Abraham knew that kind of faith. He knew God’s promise and, despite what he was commanding him, trusted. As Jeremy Camp sings, “Even when I don’t see, I still believe.”
Bill T.

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Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
When it comes to the cloud of witnesses spoken of by the author of the letter to the Hebrews, many modern Christians are content to limit that cloud to biblical examples, as well as folks we know going back perhaps two generations. We are likely to throw in contemporary or not quite contemporary writers like Eugene Petersen, or C.S. Lewis.

But the church wasn’t invented yesterday, nor did it take a break for two thousand years when it comes to clouds of witnesses. Consider lifting up examples from the church writers of the first three centuries, when Christianity was an illegal faith. How well do you know your denomination’s history? Who were your martyrs? Your witnesses? Your missionaries? Your heroes? Now look into those who served other denominations. Who do they look up to? Are they part of your cloud of witnesses?

Personally, when the pandemic started, I turned to one woman who survived the Black Plague — barely — and met Jesus at the moment of her near-death in May of 1373. Julian of Norwich wrote two versions of her visions, one soon after they happened, and one at least twenty years later as she continued to reflect on her experience. I needed her assurance that, “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

We don’t have to declare someone a saint in order to benefit from what they have left us down the centuries. Let us work harder to share more of that cloud of witnesses with our congregations and emphasize the Christian faith didn’t take a centuries-long hiatus, but has been lived and witnessed to for more like two thousand years.
Frank R.

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Luke 12:32-40
The lesson reminds us of the urgency of being ready for God in Christ to enter into our lives. Famed New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann has a similar message:

For this self-understanding of my very personal existence can only be realized in the concrete moments of my “here” and “now”... without the readiness to be a human being, a person who in responsibility takes upon himself to be, no one can understand a single word of the Bible as speaking to his own personal existence... Thus, only does it become clear that the hearing of the word of the Bible can take place only in personal decision. (Jesus Christ and Mythology, pp. 56,57) 

H. Jackson Brown, author of the best-selling, Life’s Little Instruction Book, made a similar comment when he claimed that, “You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.” Leonardo da Vinci was on target too, as he once commented, “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
Mark E.