Our Saviour Lutheran Church - Vernal, UT

06/01/2026

Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Trinity, 2026
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” In the wilderness, Israel stood condemned, dying: the serpents among them. Still, God appointed a remedy: look at the bronze serpent on the pole, and live. So also you, the venom of your own reasoning, strength, and pride working through you: look. The Son of Man is lifted up. He has taken what you could not answer for. On the Cross, He bore your sin into death; on the Third Day, He arose, alleluia.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” The Father gave; the Son descended, was lifted up, and rose; the Spirit was sent, riding upon the Word, blowing where He wills, blowing upon Nicodemus.
You know what became of him. The ninth hour has come and gone, the sun is nearing the horizon, and there is Nicodemus, at the foot of the Cross, a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes in his arms, working against the clock beside Joseph of Arimathea to wrap the body of the One he had come to negotiate with by cover of darkness. There’s no resurrection yet, no vindication in view. There’s only a dead man and linen strips and the smell of myrrh, and the sun going down, and the cost of being seen tending to Him. The night is coming again. Yet there Nicodemus is; the Spirit had blown where He willed, and Nicodemus could not stay away.
Nor can you, Beloved.
That same Spirit, riding upon the water and the Word of Holy Baptism, blew upon you, and you were born from above, from the womb of your mother, the holy Church, into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That Name has been placed upon your forehead and your heart. What you could not answer for has been answered; what you could not bear has been borne. You now stand by His grace, not by your own reason or strength.

05/25/2026

Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost, 2026
Blood and fire and v***r of smoke. The sun darkened. The moon turned to blood. Peter doesn’t soften it. He stands before the crowd with the full weight of a world under judgment, groaning under sin and death and the ancient enemy who wields power against it, and declares: into this world, this blood-and-fire world, your world, the Spirit of the living God has come.
Into your world. Into this one. Into the grief that attends you here today.
And then Peter recites the last verse of Joel’s prophecy, the one that answers death and the grave: “And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Everyone. You, with your grief, your doubts, your prayers answered other than you hoped, your suffering that hasn’t lifted. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Yes, you, Beloved; you have been calling on that name. Every time you’ve returned to this place, every time you’ve confessed your sins and heard the Absolution declared over you by Christ’s own minister, every time you’ve knelt at this rail and received what Christ gives, you’ve been calling. The name of the Lord has been on your lips and in your heart, given there at your baptism, when water was poured and the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit was placed upon you and made yours: yours to call upon, yours to cling to, yours on the days when everything gives way.

05/21/2026

The Funeral of Michael David Goddard
Michael spent years going out into the dark toward the lost, carrying out those who couldn’t carry themselves; he knew what it took to find someone and bring them home. Yet Michael himself had been found, not on a mountainside; rather, in the waters of Holy Baptism, where Christ named him, claimed him, and carried him out of the domain of sin and death and into life. There, at the Font, his sins were forgiven, declared gone by the voice of God. That forgiveness, that spoken Absolution, was renewed again and again throughout his life, spoken to him in this place by Christ through His called ministers. And at this rail, Christ testified to him week after week, month after month, year after year of that same forgiveness, strengthening his faith through His own Body and Blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins. Then, when the illness advanced and prevented him from coming here, it was to these he clung: to the Name placed on him in Baptism, to the forgiveness spoken into his ears, to the sign of the cross traced over and over again on his forehead during those last visits, the same cross inscribed on his forehead and heart at the Font on May 1, 1956. The promises did not depend on his strength to remain in force. The rescuer had himself been rescued. The one who bore others out was himself borne Home on May 12th. He was carried, from the Font to the last breathed Absolution: “My grace is sufficient for you.” It is. It was.

05/18/2026

Sermon for Exaudi, 2026
[Jesus said,] “These things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you.”
Remember. Not overcome. Remember. And that remembering is not left to you; it is the Spirit’s work. He brings to your remembrance what Christ has said. He testifies of Christ. “Of Me,” Jesus says. And the Spirit does so, not from within you. No, rather, He speaks to you, from without: through the apostolic word, the word that has come down through the centuries, the word that sounds in your ears this day—in this place, the word that the devil cannot silence, that death cannot stop, and that your own doubt cannot put out. Because it isn’t your word, your remembering. It is His.
St. Peter, writing to people who are suffering in their faith, at the hands of a world that doesn’t know the Father or the Son, doesn’t tell them to be stronger or to believe harder or to find it within themselves to contend against the trials. He declares something completely opposite. “If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.” The Spirit rests upon you: present tense; in the midst of the reproach, in the midst of the suffering, in the midst of the doubt, the Spirit rests upon you. Not will rest, when you’ve gotten through it; no, now.

05/15/2026

https://www.ashleyvalleyfuneralhome.com/obituaries/michael-goddard

View Michael David Goddard's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.

05/05/2026

Sermon for Cantate, 2026
“For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.” His going away is the condition of that coming. And what comes, or more precisely, who comes in His going away is the Spirit of truth, the Comforter, the One who will take what is [the Lord Jesus’] and declare it to you. Namely: the forgiveness Christ won on the Cross, the righteousness He earned in that perfect life laid down, and the life that burst from the tomb on the Third Day. None of it reaches you without His going away. All of it comes to you through it.
And so the unanswered prayers, the silence, the absences and heartbreaks that have filled you with sorrow: consider what may be happening in them. Not that God has forgotten you. Not that your cry has gone unheard. Rather, He works in the going away, in the dark, in the silence from which no prayer seems to escape. Jesus worked that way once, definitively, on the Cross. He works that way still. The darkness has not overcome Him. The silence is not indifference. He who went away into death for you has not stopped entering the dark places, even yours.
You cannot see what He is doing in it, not yet. You cannot bear it now, as He Himself says to the Disciples here. Sorrow fills the darkness, sorrow which threatens to choke off your prayers. Nevertheless, He bids that you not stop asking, even when the asking feels useless, that you not seal yourself off from Him who speaks into silence.

04/27/2026

Sermon for Jubilate, 2026
Thus, Jesus appeared after periods of “a little while.” Seven times the phrase is spoken in this Gospel—seven, a number which calls to mind the days of the week. So that we might learn what it is to live in that “little while,” between His coming to us in the Gospel and the Sacraments.
This cannot be overemphasized. It has profound significance for you in your daily life. It’s not that the “little whiles” disappear, or that the waiting ends, or—even—that you are lifted out of it. Rather, the “little whiles” are now filled: filled with His speaking, filled with His giving, filled with His coming to you. He comes in His Word. He binds His Name to water. He gives you His very substance under bread and wine. So that the “little whiles” are not empty time; they are filled with Him, for you. Therefore, when you experience trouble, sorrow, anguish, pain, and the threat of falling into despair, remember what the Disciples went through, and how Jesus taught them and came to them just as He said He would, with these words: “A little while, and you shall see Me.” Not as an empty promise. Not as some vain hope. Not as something distant or delayed. Rather, as something given, certain, and present, for He is here even now as He has promised to be.

04/20/2026

Sermon for Misericordias Domini, 2026

04/13/2026

Sermon for Quasi Modo Geniti, 2026
Jesus lives! And because He lives, the hope and trust that died now live again within me.
And yet I know how I spoke and how I withdrew and what it was to be apart from my dear friends and companions, my family in the faith. I know now I was wrong not to be with them, not to be there when Jesus came and stood in their midst that glorious Easter day. But thanks be to God, He has shown me mercy: He gathered me back to Himself so that I could receive what He gives. And so, God help me, I will not leave where Jesus promises to be, I will not keep myself from where He gathers His people, and I will not set aside what He gives and says as though they may be had elsewhere.
For what I have seen and heard and what He gives me is given here, where Jesus stands in the midst, speaking peace, showing mercy, and giving grace. Here is where I see His wounds. Here is where I touch His flesh. Here is where He speaks faith into me.
Here is His Body, given for me; here is His Blood, shed for me. Here Jesus stands, not as some vague memory or remembrance; here He is, bodily present, speaking and giving. And so, here I am, saying, again, “My Lord and my God!”
Alleluia! Christ is risen!

04/06/2026

Sermon for The Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord, 2026
This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
This is the day: the Day of days, long awaited, our triumphant holy day.
This is the day when Abraham receives back his son, as from the dead.
This is the day when Israel stands on the far shore of the sea, safe, the waters having drowned their enemies.
This is the day when Joshua and the people shout with a great shout, and the walls of Jericho come tumblin’ down.
This is the day when David stands over the fallen Goliath, the foe’s head cut off by the anointed king.
This is the day when Daniel comes up out of the den alive, the mouths of the lions shut.
This is the day when Israel returns from Babylon, brought out from captivity and set again in the land.
This is the day when the great fish spits Jonah back onto the earth after his three-day stay in its belly.
This is, indeed, the day long awaited, the day now come. For this is the day the grave spits out the greater Jonah. This is the day the head of the strong, ancient foe lies crushed beneath the stronger One’s feet. This is the day the stone is cast aside, the way opened, and life given, for this is the day of Resurrection.
This is the day the LORD has made, made for you.