Lection: Matthew 22

Matthew 22:34-40

“Reforming Towards Love”

The last Sunday in October is often marked in Lutheran, Presbyterian, and other Reformed Churches as Reformation Sunday. It’s the closest Sunday to that historic date of October 31^st in 1517 when a German professor of theology named Martin Luther challenged the status quo of current Christian theology by nailing his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg’s Castle Church, thus beginning the 16^th Century Reformation of the Church.

In some contexts, Reformation Sunday is celebrated like a victory in which right thinking triumphed over wrong, and the church moved in new, more enlightened, directions. Of course, we must remember that while the 16^th century movement brought needed change to our understanding of God’s grace and led to new opportunities for all Christians to read the Bible themselves and to interpret it together in community, it also led to brokenness and division in the church.

Change is difficult, and the church at that time was not successful in reforming together. The conflict over theology and church practice led not only to arguments, but to bloodshed. And the divisions made at that time still keep us separated today, even if most of the divisive issues have now been resolved.

For … Read more »

Matthew 22:34-40

“First things first: Seeking God’s Priorities”

When you are learning how to preach, one of the things you learn about is the most common error in preaching – and that is to try to preach more than one sermon at a time. Both the blessing of the Scriptures and the problem for preachers is that any given biblical text can lead us in dozens of different directions.

We read and study the text, we consider what other commentators and preachers have said about it, we take it to Bible study and listen to the ideas of others in our own churches, and then… at some point before Sunday arrives we must choose which sermon we are going to preach.

You don’t want to hear 2 or 3 sermons with multiple ideas mixed up together. If a sermon is going to do its job, it needs to have focus and clarity that will be accessible and helpful for its listeners. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes a difficult choice to make to leave a precious thought or idea unsaid, to leave it for another sermon sometime in the future.

One commentator I read this week pointed out that the preacher must choose which of the lectionary readings … Read more »