“But Deliver Us from Evil”

[Pr. McDermott preached this sermon while on vacation at

Highland Park Lutheran Church, Los Angeles, CA]

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

After Jesus fed the five thousand on the hillside near Capernaum, immediately He knew that He must leave, or else risk being mobbed as the crowds figured out what He had done. So He directed the Twelve to get into the boat and shove off across the lake, while our Lord retreated to an isolated place to pray. When He came back down to the sea-shore, Jesus saw that “they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them.”

While possibly not the same acute peril they faced in other storms, this was nevertheless a hard force against which the disciples rowed and fought. The wind was beating against them, buffeting them about and pushing them off course. The waves were stirred up, making it rough going and hard to steer. After hours of this, anyone would be fatigued, frustrated, and fed-up.

Now, one thing that bears considering is why they were out on the lake in the first place.

Food That Satisfies

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.” What a description of the general state of mankind! “Like sheep without a shepherd.” Everyone running his own way, scurrying to and fro, in a mad dash to dash madly until the end comes and everything stops dead.

In today's Gospel lesson, you heard how the people of the Galilean towns and villages were scurrying about in such a manner to get a glimpse of Jesus, to hear Him preach, and maybe even to have their ailments healed by His sacred touch. In such holy fervor, they were missing the point of actually listening to what Jesus was saying to them, much less doing what He commanded of them.

In this way, they were not so much different than you today. Possibly, you may not spend your life rushing about in holy fervor, but how much time do you spend distractedly busy with the this, that, and the other of this body and life?

“They Will Know That a Prophet Has Been Among Them”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

How do you know that God is here? Many people wonder about the presence of God in our midst, and how you can actually know that God is here. Furthermore, even if you know that God is in your midst, for what reason is He here? Does God come to bless and to give love and life, or does He come to judge and condemn and kill? How can you know? By His Word, in which the Lord reveals Himself and His will for you and for all mankind.

Ezekiel reports in today's Old Testament lesson that “The Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet.” He was called by God directly and immediately to preach the Word to the people of Israel. In Ezekiel's time, the people of God were in exile in Babylon, and many had given up the faith of their fathers – however weak that had been – and settled into a sort of sad agnosticism, some paying lip service to the gods of their pagan captors.