Wednesday Lenten Services continue through April 10th at Faith with a meal at 5:30 and Service at 7:00. All are welcome!
Palm Sunday Service is April 14th at 10:00 AM. Maundy Thursday Service with Communion is April 18th at 7:00 PM. Good Friday Service is April 19th at 7:00 PM. Easter Sunday Breakfast begins at 8:00 AM Easter Service will be at 10:00 AM. A light Easter Dinner begins at 2:00 PM.
The weather is turning warmer and the snow is beginning to melt in earnest. As we pray for those who have faced crisis created by spring floods releasing enormous amounts of water in melted snow and rain, we cannot help but to count our blessings here. The moisture this winter has been good for us. Chaffee County is no longer in a drought. The river will run this spring and summer, bringing tourists and income to our city. We give thanks for the water. Throughout the history of human civilization, building communities and towns has required water. Without water, there is no basis for meeting our needs. In the driest areas, water must be brought in. We need water; it is such a staple that it is often forgotten. But then we see towns that have lost their water supply and literally dried up. In them we see empty houses and schools, no longer in use, and once again count our blessings that we still have water enough to drink and clean.
We shouldn’t forget the water. That goes for the water of our baptism as well. During this season of Lent and Easter we focus on the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who had no sin died for us sinners. Death could not hold Him, and He lives. It is through water that we are made a part of Him. In St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans chapter 6, Paul writes, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”
Your baptism makes you a part of Lent and Easter. You were put to death with Jesus in your baptism and you will be resurrected like Jesus because of your baptism. The water that washed you has brought you to eternal life. How can water bring life? Baptism is not a human work. God works through it. God’s promise and the water that washed you in baptism created a new you. God spoke, and just as in creation, what He spoke happened. Water and the Word has made you God’s child. As the water trickles and flows down the mountain this spring, bringing life to our community, remember also the water that washed you, bringing you eternal life. Thank you, God, for the water that brings us life.
“Behold the man!” proclaimed the unwitting preacher Pontius Pilate in one of the shortest yet most profound sermons ever recorded. This will be our endeavor this Lententide and Easter Sunday. Behold the man, God in human flesh, Jesus. His incarnation will provide the basis for our meditation and proclamation on His Passion. And His real bodily suffering and death will provide the basis for our full-throated proclamation on Easter morning of a bodily resurrection, not just of Jesus but also for His saints. Real bodies that have suffered, wept, bled, prayed, eaten, hoped, and more will be those raised incorruptible from their graves on the day of Jesus’ return.
We will fix our eyes and our preaching on the man Jesus, contemplating the inescapable fact—indeed the most important fact in the course of human history—that God became man. The Second Person of the eternal triune God, whom we confess in the Nicene Creed as “God of God, Light of light, very God of very God . . . of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made,” became a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood human being, a man.
In some ways, you can understand that the first heresy the Christian Church had to contend with was that of Gnosticism, the hyperspiritual religion that held that because no man could be God, the Christ could not be God. Gnosticism is alluring because it tidies everything up, gives Christianity a more attractive spiritual veneer, and pulls its adherents out of the mire of this world and gives them something otherworldly to strive for.
Considered correctly, it becomes pretty hard to spiritualize Christianity—a religion that bases its existence on the enfleshment, the incarnation, of God—into the mess of disembodied, matter-rejecting, hyperspiritual Gnosticism. When God has flesh and blood, skin and teeth, cells and nuclei, DNA and RNA, it’s difficult to contend for the disembodied spiritual against the material. If God has a body, bodies must matter.
In case you aren’t convinced of the pervasiveness of the second-century heresy of Gnosticism, even in our twenty-first-century context, attend a funeral. If you hear talk only of heaven with nary a word of a bodily resurrection, you’ve witnessed firsthand modern-day Gnosticism. If the preacher doesn’t deal with the body in the casket as the real person whose death has assembled the mass of grieving relatives and friends, if he talks only about the bodyless soul in heaven, he hasn’t preached a genuinely Christian funeral. In other words, if he gives preference to the spiritual over the material, he succumbs to the Gnostic heresy the earliest generations of the Church sought to guard against by preaching the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus.
This Lent, we will consider what it means that God became man. In preparation for the celebration of a real, bodily, flesh-and-blood, bone-and-sinew resurrection, the resurrection without which our faith and our preaching are all in vain, consider the body of Jesus that exists in order to be nailed to a cross. The spiritual, bodyless Son of God became the embodied, enfleshed, incarnate Son of Mary. In Jesus, God has human flesh, a body, just like you. What could be more profound?
Each week, we’ll consider a different aspect of the body of Jesus Christ. What does it mean that, in Jesus, God has hands, feet, lungs, lips, eyes, and ears?
Advent is a season of anticipation. It is when we look forward to Jesus’ birth at Christmas and His arrival in triumph at the last day. We are not very good at anticipation. Who among us hasn’t badgered someone we love for a hint about what we are getting for Christmas? Who hasn’t looked ahead to the spoilers for a movie we are anticipating watching? Who hasn’t peeked ahead in that novel to see how it comes out? We don’t like to wait. We don’t do anticipation anymore. We are all about instant gratification. We prefer to know not only the outcome, but what happens on the way as well. As Christians we know the outcome. Jesus is triumphant. The baby born to a virgin at Christmas is the Savior who takes away the sin of the world. With His death on the cross, with His resurrection at Easter, we are assured that all who rely on Him for salvation are rewarded with that salvation forever. We know the outcome, but ahead of us still lies a journey. We don’t know what’s going to happen on that journey. Our faith calls us to follow Jesus. Our faith calls us to serve our neighbor. We will do those things as Christians, as those who are called to follow Jesus, as we wait. Anticipation of what God has in store for us is itself a joy. A smile from someone you have helped. A sentence from a child who believes in Jesus because you have shared your faith with them. These are milestones worth living in a time of anticipation. We join together with the whole of Christ’s Church in saying, come Lord Jesus. We celebrate His coming at Christmas, and we anticipate His coming at the end fearless and knowing that we are His. Advent is a season of anticipation, and there are some things worth waiting for.
Special Advent Services at Faith are:
Don’t forget that Sunday November 4th at 2:00 AM we fall back an hour as daylight savings ends. Service at faith is at 10:00 AM. See you there!
The annual Thanksgiving Holiday is coming up fast, and boy do we have some thanks to give. There is snow on the mountains, there is cool fall weather, and God is waiting for you at Church. I know, things may not be going exactly how you want them to go. None of us is getting any younger. Those crisp chilly mornings can mean stiff and slow muscles. The cold and the wind can be miserable. The brilliant colors of fall will soon be replaced by the more somber tones of winter. But God is still good. He has cared for you since you were brought to Him and made a part of His family in your baptism. He has not abandoned you, even when you walked away from Him. He still waits for you in Church. The words of an old hymn come to my mind. Oswald Allen wrote “Today Your Mercy Calls Us”. It contains one of my favorite lines of any hymn.“No questions will be asked us, How often we have come, Although we oft have wandered, It is our Father’s home”. There is something wonderful about home. You are always welcome there. There is nothing better on a cold day after an absence than walking into your warm and inviting home. It isn’t just that you are now surrounded by your stuff. It is a sure and certain knowledge that here is where you belong. Your Father in Heaven is waiting for you where you belong. He is in His House, waiting with His forgiveness, and His peace. You belong there. And you are welcome. That’s something to be thankful for.
We have been doing lots of celebrating. These last couple of weeks the church celebrated the last Sunday of Easter, the Festival of Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. My kids are celebrating the end of their school years, and Amy and I are celebrating having them at home for the summer. That’s a whole lot of celebrating! Soon enough, though, the church festival season changes to the many Sundays after Pentecost. The long days of summer can begin to wear on us even with the many activities going on. In short, time wears us down, and we can forget the joy and elation of the festival season. So where do you go to recapture that spirit of celebration? God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, fills us with joy in faith. St. Paul tells us, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Romans 15:13) So where do we seek joy? We seek joy in the continued gifts of the Holy Spirit, and we are filled. There is contentment, peace, and joy in faith. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) So we know where to go to continue the celebration. Where God’s Word is preached and where God’s sacraments are rightly observed there is joy, there is the celebration. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:20) Even when Easter is over, and before Advent begins, even in the many Sundays after Pentecost and the dog days of summer we celebrate together with God. Come and celebrate.
There is an older song by Jimmy Buffet that is titled, “A Pirate Looks at Forty.” It was later followed up by a book, “A Pirate looks at Fifty.” In both the song, and the book, the writer looks back at his life’s successes and failures. In the end he decides that he is who he is and is happy with both the triumphs and failures of life. As many of you know this year I turn fifty. That leads me to look back at my life, just like the song and the book. A preacher’s life is one that is slightly out of sync with what is normal. Success is not measured by the usual signs. I will likely never achieve the traditional hallmarks of success. Planes, cars, and houses, are not where one who is called to preach the Word of God looks for validation. Oh, some of these may come, that is true, but these are not the signs of success a preacher looking at fifty, or sixty, or seventy, looks for. Where one who preaches the Word finds success is in the fulfillment of that Word. God’s Word is true, and His promises are fulfilled. That means all His promises. Even those that are given by His unworthy servant. His promise of forgiveness that is offered in absolution, the promise of strength, faith, and forgiveness, given in Holy Communion, His promise of faith, and salvation in the water and Word of Holy Baptism. These are promises that God made, and that God will keep. The joy of this preacher looking at fifty is that I have been a part of God’s Word and promise for fifteen years. I have been able to see God’s promise made and have seen the lives of people called by the Word, forgiven, and strengthened to go on through difficulty, and I can be confident that their faith at the end of life, faith given to them by God, led them to hear those wonderful words, “well done my good and faithful servant.” That promise, that hope, that sure knowledge of what is to come, ties the one privileged to proclaim God’s promise close to God’s people with beautiful bands of silk. I look back at the people who have heard God’s Word, through me, or in spite of me, I look at the tragedy and the tears of years of funerals, and the joy and tears of years of weddings and baptisms, and confirmations, the forgiveness that I have shared, and been given. I look at the lives of those God has called me to shepherd and I may not come to the conclusion that I am good, or that life is good, but I certainly rest on the rock-solid certainty that God is good. As this preacher looks at fifty I see the people that God has surrounded me with, a great cloud of witnesses, and I am thankful for them, God’s strong Word, and His promise that lasts forever, and ever. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria.
Ash Wednesday, February 14th, Dinner starting at 5:45 PM, Service starts at 7:00 PM
Lent 1, February 21st, Dinner at 5:45 PM, Service at 7:00 PM
Lent 2, February 28th, Dinner at 5:45 PM, Service at 7:00 PM
Lent 3, March 7th, Dinner at 5:45 PM, Service at 7:00 PM
Lent 4, March 14th, Dinner at 5:45 PM, Service at 7:00 PM
Lent 5, March 21st, Dinner at 5:45, Service at 7:00 PM
Maundy Thursday, March 29th, Service at 7:00 PM
Good Friday, March 30th, Service at 7:00 PM
Easter Sunday, April 1st, Service at 10:00 AM
Once again we prepare to enter into the Lenten season as we journey through the Church Year. Lent, however, is its own kind of journey. Lent is the journey we make as we travel with Christ from the Mount of Transfiguration to Jerusalem where He will face the cross and the grave for our sakes. It is a very sobering trip, a journey that often struggles to find joy. But there is Easter!
This year our theme for our Lenten worship will focus upon the journey, but perhaps not in the way we usually walk it. Our overall theme will be “Return from Exile: A Lenten Journey.” All journeys must have a starting point; and in the preaching and teaching this Lenten season, we will consider our starting point a land of exile.
The land of exile from which we begin our journey is the wilderness of sin and death. Sin came into the world when our first parents were unfaithful and disobedient, eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve sinned, and we have inherited from them not only the sin itself, but also the result of that sin—separation from our Lord and God. From the first sin in the first garden, we have been exiled into the wilderness where we have wandered without any ability to find our way out.
This is the beginning of our journey: exile. But every journey also has a destination, an ending point. Our return from exile brings us into the promised land. Our relationship with our God is restored by Christ’s sacrifice. Our destination, then, is the perfect place, the new garden, the courts of heaven—the ultimate destination which was established for us by His death and resurrection. There is great joy in the journey as we see where our returning brings us; but there is also a somber attitude when we consider what Christ faced on account of our sin.
All journeys consist of many events that take place between the journey’s beginning and its end. Our Lenten journey is no different. Each leg of our Lenten journey begins in the Old Testament and then continues into the New Testament, pointing us to the joy that is ours in Christ Jesus. Do not be surprised to discover that from the very beginning, even outside the gates of the Garden of Eden, it is Christ who travels with us. He has always been our guide, from the very beginning, and He will journey with us to the very end. Indeed, He has even gone before us to prepare a heavenly dwelling place.
Life is full of journeys. Life itself is a journey. We enter this Lenten season contemplating the reality of our earthly journey but with eyes fixed on its destination—the empty tomb and the open gates of everlasting life. What joy there is in knowing that we do not walk this way alone!