Once again, during the summer months, we will be going to one worship service. The service will start at 9:00 am, with Sunday School beginning at 10:30 am. Holy Communion will be celebrated each Sunday. This new schedule will begin on Sunday, June 3, and is planned to end on Sunday, September 9.
May includes the ascension of our Lord on the 10th. As Jesus ascends into heaven He gives His disciples one last command, which we know as the great commission. He says,“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” As Christians in a culturethat was once more friendly to our faith than at the current time, we may feel an impulse to retreat into our own enclaves and to build barriers between ourselves and the world. Insupport of this we might find passages like James 4 where he writes, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” Reading this we may feel like our impulse to keep the world at arm’s length may in fact be the right one. When we read Jesus’ lastcommand to us, however, we see that separation from everything non-Christian is not the answer. How can we make disciples of all nations if we have no contact with them?
Jesus’ ascension reminds us that He is now up in heaven at God’s right hand. We know too that He will not staythere forever. He will come back. When He does, the time for making disciples will be over. At that time many people will be His disciples yet others, sadly, will not be. Jesus desires that everyone believe and be baptized. During thistime of the Church Year as we continue to celebrate our Lord’s resurrection and then the coming of the Holy Spirit atPentecost, we are reminded that as Holy Spirit filled disciples of Christ we are called to make more disciples. We arecalled to spread the Holy Spirit through God’s Word and through the waters of baptism. This is what we who await our Lord’s return do because, as He ascended into heaven, that is what He commanded.
Pastor Mehl
The beginning of April coincides with the beginning of the Easter season. The season of Lent is a season that intentionally precedes Easter. The season of Lent moves on the calendar as the date of Easter moves. In the larger picture of Church life, what we do revolves around Jesus and what He has done. The most important thing that He has done (as any good Sunday School attendee can tell you) is die and rise from the dead. Yes, we celebrate His birth, but that is not important if He does not die to take away our sins. Even His death is not important if He does not rise, and so the resurrection is the most important event in the life of Christ and therefore the most important event in the life of the Church.
This Lent we have been preparing for Easter under the theme of O Wondrous Love. In our mid-week services we have looked at love from a variety of different angles as it intersects with the cross. We have looked at our own responsibility to love others. We have looked at how some of Jesus’ disciples loved Him at the time. We have looked at all of these things knowing that Easter is coming, which means that there is a love coming that overshadows all of the love that you or I or Jesus’ disciples could muster. Easter is about God’s love for us. It is about God’s love for you.
Many look to the cross as the ultimate symbol of Christ’s love, yet the cross is emptied of its power without the resurrection. The cross is the symbol of great sacrifice and great love. The empty tomb is the symbol of that sacrifice and love applied to you. The cross is the only way that our sins are taken away, but that does not help us very much without the eternal life of Easter. Easter is Christ victorious over death. Because of Easter the supper of which you partake and the baptism with which you have been washed connect you not only to the cross but the empty tomb as well. You not only have your sins forgiven but you get to live an eternal life free of those sins.
Eternal life free from sin is a wondrous gift and so wondrous love is displayed by God when that gift is given to sinners like you and me. No wonder so much in the church revolves around Easter. No wonder we worship on Sunday, the day Jesus rose from the dead. This wondrous love of God is entirely worthy of being the Church’s centerpiece as well as your own. He is risen, He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Ephesians 5:1-2 “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
This year we have the interesting development of Valentine’s Day falling on Ash Wednesday. Lent begins on a day when we would normally not be thinking somber Lenten thoughts. Valentine’s Day is usually thought of as a happy time where we think about those we love and what they mean to us. This is a different kind of feeling than the one typically evoked by Ash Wednesday where we go to church to have the pastor put ashes on our head in a sign of sorrow and contrition as he says, “Dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Yet, at the same time love is a broad thing. In English, we have just the one word. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, there are at least 3 words for love (some people add in a 4th). You feel a different kind of love in different kinds of relationships. You love your kids and your spouse and your friends and your Lord with slightly different forms of love. Keeping this in mind, are Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday completely opposite when it comes to the feelings they invoke? Not necessarily. There is a type of love that is sacrificial. Ash Wednesday opens Lent which prepares us to observe our Savior’s death. Why did He die? Because He loved us. “Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us.” It is this kind of love that all Christians are asked show to their neighbor. When Paul tells us to “Walk in Love” it is this kind of love that he has in mind.
Perhaps that is a thing we can consider this coming Lenten season. Christ’s call to love our neighbor includes not only the cheery more positive aspects of love that we are most inclined to think about, but also the somber notes that are struck when we think about giving something up for someone else. For we ourselves are recipients of this kind of love in the grandest of ways. When we think of love in the next couple of months it would be appropriate to remember that some love has a price. The best love has a price. For “Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us.” And through His love you are now God’s beloved child. How do you walk in this love?
~ Pastor Mehl