What Would It Take?

   What would it take to keep you from worship?  Jail?  Sports?  Threat of losing your job?  Your personal religion?  Loss of your friends and family?  Your personal pleasure?

   Worship is a community activity.  It draws us from all our relationships into God’s presence.  From our connections into the relationship with the living God for which we were created.

   It’s not about you.  It’s about us.  God has made of a bunch imperfect people into the Body of Christ. 

   Worship is a time set-apart for Word and Sacraments, to gather with other imperfect people and experience the promise of Jesus that, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Matthew 18:20

   We are not alone.  We are a worshiping community formed by the living God.

 

Real True Life

   What kind of life does Jesus have in mind for you?

   It is a good one, but I wonder how many people prefer to hang onto parts of their old lives than to living the wonderful life Jesus is calling us to live.

   I heard a woman on the news the other day saying that she had a right to drink alcohol while watching her children free of judgment.

   It made me wonder if that is really the life Jesus has in mind for us?

   Is it possible that, even we who have walked with Jesus for awhile, can still find areas of our lives that we do not want to give up, but instead try to justify?

   Do we ever confuse freedom with indulgence?

   Do we ever confuse accountability with judgment?

   We most certainly do.  But, Jesus died and rose for us, and calls us to follow him in the way that leads to a real, true life.

 

Nature Reveals

   When you look at the foothills north of us, what do you see?

   What does your interior sight tell you?  That is, what do you feel, sense, encounter when you see something grand?

   Psalm 121, in the Bible, begins,

“I lift up my eyes to the hills—

from where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.”

   Nature reveals God.  Nature can give us a sense of majesty, an incomprehensible mix of things that seem to us both good and bad, a wave-length, a resonance.

   But, nature itself is not God.

   Our help comes from God, who made Nature.

   Our help comes from the crucified one who redeems a fallen Creation.

   Our Help tells us this story in Lent.

 

Fishing

   Have you ever gone fishing?  What kind?

   It takes discipline, and hard work, and patience, and for some a strong stomach.

   Sometimes your efforts are rewarded, sometimes they’re not.

   How do you fish for people?  It’s pretty much the same.

   We learn, sometimes by trial and error, what is effective, to go to where the people are, and to use whatever technology we can.

   Sometimes, though, it’s just “instinct”, or the voice of the Holy Spirit.

   Some fishers for people are commercial fishers, some use a net, and some go looking one-on-one.

   One thing that rarely works, however, as has been said, is waiting for the occasional fish to jump into the boat.

   We, as disciples of Christ, are all fishers of people.  The only question is, “What kind?”

 

Religion as Relationship

   Of all the things said about recent statements made by Duck Dynasty’s Phil Roberson, a little-commented-upon remark made by a Public Relations expert on TV annoyed me the most.

   He said, “he used religion as a weapon, and not the tool it’s meant to be”. 

   This is not a kind thing to say about religion.  It says that true religious behavior is something we use to serve us., like a useful tool we can pick up or put away, depending on what serves us best.

   It is why some Christians describe their faith as not a religion, but as a God-centered relationship.

   Jesus came to seek and to save the lost.  That’s the good news.

   We serve others in his Name.  We do not use it to get what we want.

   We do not celebrate slavery to ourselves, but the freedom we have been given in Jesus Christ. 

 

Consumer Holiday?

   Sally and I saw our first Christmas display in a store in May (!).

   More stores will be open on Thanksgiving Day this year than last year.

   Store employees are expected to be at their stations to offer sales.

   Christmas sales have been going on for months, and now everyone seems to be first to offer even deeper discounts out of fear that shoppers will have spent all their
Christmas cash before December.

   More and more I hear people saying that Thanksgiving if their favorite holiday because it isn’t such a drain in every way.

   How did the Birth of Christ, the Savior, come to this?

   Whatever the reason, each of us has the power to say no, to instead bring our faith into focus.

   We can not consume  the Christmas story of the love of God this year, but instead live it.

 

What The World Thinks About Us

   What do people think about Lutherans?

   A recent totally unscientific, but interesting, study sought to discover what people thought about American Christian denominations.  Their method was to Google the words, “Why are [fill in the blank]…”

   Among the results for Anglicans were the words, “so liberal”, “converting to Catholicism”, “important”, and “wrong.”  For Evangelicals they were, “so judgmental”, “so annoying”, “republicans”, and “so crazy.”

   For Lutherans the words were, “on notice” (a Colbert Nation thing), “not Christians”, “wrong”, and “different.”

   Looks like some people were looking for reasons to disagree with us, and others.

   Do we care what the world thinks?  Only so we can understand and reach it for Jesus.