Julie Sermons

Crazy to the World

A homily for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Joshua Leigeber.

What does it look like to live as the Church in the world? The answer begins with recognizing that Christianity is not ultimately about isolated individuals trying to maintain a private faith in the midst of a hostile culture. In Baptism, Christ incorporates us into His Body and makes us members of a real household of faith—a holy community in which we hear the Word of our Father, bear one another’s burdens, and gather at the family table to receive the Body and Blood of Christ.

That life together looks increasingly strange to the world, especially in a culture that urges us to organize our lives around careers, possessions, comfort, and the accumulation of mammon (Matthew 6:24-34). Yet it is precisely within the Church that Christ frees us from the world’s promises and teaches us to trust that God holds our future in His hands. Joined together in Christ, we are strengthened to resist the world’s lies, care for one another, practice generosity, and confess with our lives that God—not mammon—rules the world.

Listen to the full homily below.

Julie Sermons

Returning to the Feet of the Healer

A sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Daniel Suelzle.

The story of the ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19) illustrates the deep connection between faith and thanksgiving. Leprosy isolates and destroys the body with no human cure, sin is a condition that corrupts humanity beyond self-repair. The lepers did not bargain with Jesus; they simply cried out for mercy, recognizing their complete dependence and need for healing to come from outside of themselves. While all ten received miraculous healing on their way to the temple, only one—a Samaritan foreigner—returned to fall at Jesus’s feet in gratitude. In the return of this single, former leper we see that the one who has received the gift of faith and healing, does not keep his gratitude private, but actively seeks out the presence of the Healer.

Living a life of active thanksgiving means consistently returning to the place where Christ promises to meet us. Though gratitude is an attitude of the heart, it is more than that. Gratitude is also a bodily act, as we return to the corporate worship of God in the Divine Service, where He delivers His salvation through Word and Sacrament. A faithful response to God’s mercy isn’t found in choosing a church based on personal preferences or entertainment, but in gathering where sin is rightly taught, the Gospel is purely preached, and the Sacraments are faithfully administered. When we recognize the depth of the disease we have been healed from, our natural response is to gather regularly with His people—returning again and again to the feet of the Savior who freely gives us life.

Listen to the full sermon below.

allsaintsjonesboro Sermons

The Good Samaritan and the Medicine of Christ

A sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Josh Leigeber.

“We love because He first loved us.” So what does it mean for God to make us love what He has commanded? That is what we prayed for in the Collect yesterday.

In the Gospel, a lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds not with a checklist, but with the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. But the ancient Church heard in this parable something far deeper than a lesson about being kind to our neighbors. What if the wounded man in the ditch is not primarily someone we are being told to help, but a picture of us?

The man has been beaten, robbed, and left half dead. He cannot save himself. Then the Samaritan comes to him, binds his wounds, pours on oil and wine, and carries him to an inn. The Church has long recognized in this a beautiful picture of Christ’s work for sinners—and of the Church as the place where Christ continues to care for those He has rescued.

But if we are the wounded man, what does that mean for the Church, for the pastors Christ has entrusted with His wounded people, and for the Word and Sacraments by which He continues to heal us?

And what does all of this have to do with our prayer that God would “make us to love that which Thou dost command”?

Listen to the full homily below.