As we continue to experience The Word of the Lord together, let us pray. Great Parent, Loving God, Great concerned and involved Lord, open up our hearts and our minds and stir up within us your Spirit, so that we might grow in faith and serve you with our whole hearts and minds. If these words are not your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught, but if they be thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, thou who art our rock and our redeemer, Amen.

Hear now the The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Luke. Listen for God’s Word for you today. Luke 4.1-13.

The grass withers, the flower falls, but The Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

I haven’t been here in a while, so I’d like to make this sermon complicated enough for you to feel like its good that I’ve come back. So, lets cover lots of stuff. First, I want us to go over the Doctrine of the Church, then the Doctrine of the Trinity, then we’ll touch on the Doctrine of Creation, and finish with the Doctrine of the Sacraments. But I’m not worried.

Notice, I did not say we could get through this because I am good. We are good is what I’m saying. See, the church is not just me. I am not the only minister here. And the sermon is not just something I deliver. A couple of times in the year and a half I have been here I have preached a sermon that I had preached before in a different church. People get the kind of preaching that they expect. This church I preached the same sermon in had silently contracted with the current pastor and the previous pastors to expect nothing in a sermon. People get the kind of preaching they look for. But you, when the sermon starts, you sit up. You pay attention. The sermon affects you not because I am some great orator, but because you actively listen. And the sermon itself takes on a life of its own, as you communicate by how you sit, how you move around, when you sigh or take a deep breath. I need you to help me preach. Imagine, that late one winter night I get a call from the Norcross Police, saying that the alarm went off. After I come down and check out the building with them, finding that nothing has been broken or taken, that in fact it was most likely me who just left the door unlocked, I decide to stop in my office to look at something for the next day’s service. You know I have those comfy chairs in the office, so as I sit down, the late night catches up with me and I sleep. And suppose that it rains, and the night’s rain turns to freezing rain. Nobody can get to church, can’t get on the roads because its too dangerous. But I don’t need to get to church, I’m already here. Do I have church just me? 10.30 I walk in, nobody here, what should I do. Well, I find the bulletin, there are about 100 of them, so that is not a problem. Open to the hymnbook, I sing, “Joyful, Joyful, We Ad – I adore thee, God of glory…” I pray the prayers. Do I preach here alone? No way, I’ve got a freebee. Save that one till next week. Though, none of you are here, how do you know if I preached it already or not. Whether I preach it or not, it’s not a sermon, because you aren’t here. My name may be in the bulletin, but it just isn’t a sermon without you. You can’t do church alone. None of us is the church. To get it right, you’ve got to sing the whole song, I am the church… And that is the Doctrine of ecclesiology, the Doctrine of the church. We are the church; it isn’t church without you.

She’s a dancer. She has danced all her life. She was born a dancer and she spends hours every day dancing, dancing alone on the beach where she has lived all her life. You see, she was abandoned on a desert island as a child, and though she has never heard a note of music, she goes out to the beach alone and silently to the rhythm of the waves, she dances. What is that she is doing, is it really dancing? Until one day, a shipwreck survivor, hanging on to a log drifts ashore. It turns out the survivor is a dancer, and for the first time she dances with a partner. Now she’s dancing. Except, the next day, some of the wreckage floats to shore, and in a sealed crate is found a portable radio and cd player, with batteries and all. And now, she dances, with a partner, to music. And that is the doctrine of the trinity. The dance, the partner, and the music between them. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit of God between them. There is only one thing left to make it complete. When they are rescued, they continue to dance, refining, rehearsing in a darkened hall, the dancer, the partner, the music. And at last, one night the auditorium is filled with people, the room is buzzing with anticipation, and then they dance. How they dance! Was she really even a dancer before that night, how she dances! Does the role of the audience make a difference? Look at her, she leaps higher than ever before, and twirls faster than ever in her life. At the end, did it matter whether people left at intermission or whether standing and whistling them demanded an encore? Of course it mattered. She’s danced all her life, but she knows deep within her, that night she began to dance. There, we have just covered the doctrine of creation. The Father, the Son, the Spirit, and creation.

A parent holds the newborn child, I happen to know a little about this now, so you should take my word on it. This child is nothing but a bundle of needs; it doesn’t produce a thing but demands for nighttime feedings, and dirty diapers. Lots of dirty diapers. But the parents holding that child, perfectly fine as a couple before that, and before that doing very well thank you, as a single man and a single woman. But since that birth something has changed forever. If something were to happen to that little baby, mom is not sure she would survive. When dad goes back to the office after that child was born and gets asked, “How was your weekend,” does he say, “Oh, you know, it was fine.” I don’t think so. He’s grinning, and showing pictures, and talking about his child as though it were the first baby ever born. The God in heaven was perfectly fine, perfectly complete, perfectly perfect. And then, in love, God created. And God became God the Father, God became like a mother, holding her baby, and you became a child of God. How could we ever think that what happens to you matters little. God would die if something took the life from you. God did die. Love so great that it chose to become that vulnerable to you. The temptations prove that God was just that, vulnerable. As Christians, we celebrate Good Friday and Easter. You simply can’t get to good Friday and not know that God was vulnerable, not if you believe in the Trinitarian God, that Jesus is God. You can’t say that God died on a cross for you, until you recognize that God is vulnerable. For otherwise that death means nothing, if it is just going through the motions.

Let me end with a story, after you hear the story, I want you to think of it backwards. In the parking lot outside the annual dog show, a pickup truck displayed the sign, “Puppies for sale.” Little boy, clutching his savings of $2.73, asks, “Mister, can I buy a puppy?” “Well, you can look, it doesn’t hurt to look at the puppies.” One puppy in the back of the truck has hip displacement. “I want that one,” says the boy, offering his money. “Son, you don’t want that puppy,” says the owner. “That one has a bad hip, it’ll never be able to walk good.” And the boy pulls up the leg of his jeans, revealing a twisted leg encased in a leg brace. “That’s o.k. Mister, that puppy will need someone who understands.” Listen to it backwards. I believe not only does the puppy need a little boy who understands, I believe that the boy needs a puppy who understands.

The Lord of the dance has invited you to the dance, the host has spread the table and sent out the invitation, “come.” Today, set aside your concerns about whether or not you are worthy to receive. Today, focus not what you need to receive. Today, just see how much God desires you to come. This time, for God’s sake, just come. Remember what it is like to cook for yourself when you are home alone. Then remember what it is like to cook when friends are coming over for dinner. God has prepared the music, and invites you to come, and dance. For God’s sake, come. Amen.