Matthew 1 – “Reconciliation and Enjoyment” – December 23, 2018

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The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are the only ones that tell the story of Jesus’ conception and birth. Mark begins with Jesus as an adult. John begins with the beginning of time and then skips ahead to Jesus as an adult. In the Gospel of Luke we get lots of stories including a story about the miraculous conception of John the Baptist, the story of the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary and announcing the conception of Jesus, Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth (and John the Baptist’s mom) where John leaps in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice. We get the Song of Mary beginning, “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,  for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant, Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed” Which by the way is where we get the words to The Canticle of the Turning, “My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great, and my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait.” Then after Mary sings we are told of the birth of John the Baptist, and we get a song from his dad. Then finally in Luke, Jesus is born complete with the manger, the swaddling cloth, the shepherds keeping watch over their flock, and the heavenly host. That is all in Luke.

Matthew handles things more expediently.

Sermon – November 23, 2014 – Matthew 25:31-44

It’s like eating an orange!

I finally figured it out. We’ve been reading the Gospel of Matthew for weeks now and dealing with all these parables about judgement and Jesus refusing to open a locked door and people being cast into the outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth and now today we have a group of people being called goats and being sent to the eternal fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels and I’ve finally figured it out. It’s like eating an orange. Reading a parable from Matthew is like eating orange. The eternal judgement stuff is the peel. You don’t eat that part! If you want to get to the good, sweet, juicy stuff in the parable you have to take off the peel. In the same way you have to remove the condemnation and punishment from Matthew’s parables.