ILC Devotion 17 December 2012

Immanuel Lutheran Church Weekly Devotion

Monday 17 December 2012

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^NRSV Luke 1:46-48a  And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸ for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”

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When you think of Christmas and the events prior to Jesus’ birth - the Gospel of Luke gives lasting imagery, which has fed our hopes and dreams for almost two thousand years. We have the Christmas story read to us at every Christmas Eve service. But on the 4^th Sunday of Advent we hear Mary’s response to God in her life. We hear the Magnificat, this poetry, this hymn Mary offers to her cousin Elizabeth, who carries her child, the future John the Baptist. This is one of the most lyrical, beautiful and poetic passages of scripture, and the Bible is full of great poetry. Mary acknowledges the power of God, this power of God to work through this poor, teen aged woman, who will bear the savior of the world, Jesus.

Mary proclaims this is a God who stands with the weak, the powerless, whose mercy they will see. Her son Jesus will proclaim this Good News to the very same people. God stands with them; God is their salvation. With the sad events of last Friday, we want a God who will be with those who are weak, vulnerable, unable to defend themselves against the power of evil, and their protectors, their teachers. This is the hope we hear in the Magnificat, this is our hope too. We live in a broken world, that brokeness can come upon us at any time and any place, and we are powerless to do anything about it. This is where we will find God, with the weak, the marginalized, those unable to defend themselves, those who care for the young, the hurting, the frail, the vulnerable. This is where we find the face of Christ. Jesus comes to us, in our moments of anxiety, frustration, hurt, despair. Jesus is born to this poor, young mother in humble circumstances as a weak and vulnerable infant, a baby. A baby who comes to show us God’s grace and mercy in a world that can be broken, hurtful, and at times deadly. Yet because of this brokeness, we are given an opportunity to be Christ to others, when we extend the love of God to those who are weak, vulnerable, hurting, as Jesus called us to do so many years ago. Yes, our world is broken, through Jesus we can do something about it. Celebrate this gift God gives to us.

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We pray: Dear Lord, we come before you as your hurting, broken children. We seek you loving mercy and care. Help us to find it and help us to offer your love, care and mercy. Take us, broken though we are and have us be the face of Jesus to all. In Your Holy Name we pray.  Amen.

ILC Devotion - 10 December 2012

Immanuel Lutheran Church Weekly Devotion

Monday 10 December 2012

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^NRSV Isaiah 12:2-3  Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. ³ With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

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Salvation - is a word used by the Church quite a bit, after all, it is our mission to tell people about salvation. In the study of theology there is even a special branch of theological study called soteriology  - the study of the doctrine of salvation. So how well have we done our job as the Church? How would you define salvation; what does it mean to you? I asked my congregation to ponder this question during my sermon. I had a father of a young man, who is a 6^th grader, tell me his son’s response: salvation means to be rescued. This works for me. But what are we rescued from and what are we rescued for? Martin Luther said salvation means we are rescued from sin, death and the devil. This is one side of the equation, but what are we rescued for? We have to be rescued  for something otherwise why be rescued at all?

Sin does take its toll on us. Because of sin we are in need of rescue, so our lives can be salvaged. We are like a ship, we are at the helm and we have ignored the charts telling us about the reef; we have turned away from the advise of our pilot who warns us to be careful of the danger of obstacles ahead; we have been clueless regarding the weather and the impending storm breaking around us; we and we alone are responsible for running our ship up on the reef and wrecking the ship. We are on the reef and we can’t get off. Jesus is in charge of this salvage operation, Jesus will rescue us. Why would Jesus do this? Jesus sees the value in us, even though we are a shipwreck. Jesus gives his life to rescuing, restoring and salvaging us. Jesus wants us to reach the safe harbor, safe from storm and strife, where we will know peace, the peace that passes all human understanding. That safe harbor is timeless reunion and restoration with God. Through Jesus, we are able to be rescued and experience this divine fellowship with our creator, because God loves us.

Right now our life is on the reef, the wind and waves batter us; we are in peril of breaking up. We seek to be rescued from our destruction and have our lives salvaged so we can experience this love of God and be secure in our relationship with God. Jesus is our salvation, Jesus rescues us and will pilot us to God’s peaceful and loving harbor. We wait for the one who will come rescue us and save us from destruction.

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We pray: We have turned from You, O Lord; we face destruction. Only through Your Son, Jesus can we be rescued, saved from destruction and renew our relationship with You. Help us to wait and watch, and be ready. In Your Holy Name we pray.  Amen.

Immanuel Lutheran Church Weekly Devotion

Advent Devotion - Sunday 2 December 2012

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    Psalm 25:4-5, 8-10, 14 --  ⁴ Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. ⁵ Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.
    ⁸ Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. ⁹ He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. ¹⁰ All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
    ¹⁴ The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes his covenant known to them.

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        I value my friends; they are near and dear to me. If you look at my Facebook page you may think that I have many friends. I may know many people and be acquainted with them, yet I would not call all of them my friends. My friends are a very select group, people that I care very much about. Some I have known for years, since childhood, others I have recently known. I have friends in Montana, Maryland, Missouri and Minnesota, as well as other states and lands. Our connections and relationship with each other have transcended time and distance.
        Yet how many of us would consider God or Jesus as a friend? Jesus or God offers us a friendship that is beyond our human understanding. God offers us steadfast love and faithfulness. To have God as a friend is to know that God is not fickle, God will not cast us aside. Yes, we have friends we highly value, but do they offer the faithfulness and love God offers us? Our friends may be by our side when the chips are down for us, but they have lives to live and they cannot be with us 24/7, the way God can. But to have a friend in God or Jesus does not discount our earthly friends. How can we know God’s love and faithfulness but through our friends who stand by us? When our friends care for us and are by our side we see the incarnational face of God through our friends  love and faithfulness. The psalmist is asking God to teach him divine truths and the path God will guide him upon. The eternal truth: God’s steadfast love and faithfulness given for us through His Son Jesus, who comes into our lives, our world. Jesus calls us to model this with those around us in our community, people we meet when our paths cross. If we want to experience this steadfast love and faithfulness of God, let us model this same steadfast love and faithfulness to not only our friends but all people who we meet in life. God’s steadfast love and faithfulness is to be shared with others, so we may know it ourselves.

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    We pray: Dear Lord, we long to have this friendship with you. Yet we are the ones who turn away. Forgive us, welcome us back to you, so we may experience your  faithfulness and  love for us. In Your Holy Name we pray.  Amen.

Immanuel Lutheran Church Weekly Devotion
    Monday 10 December 2012

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    NRSV Isaiah 12:2-3  Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

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    Salvation - is a word used by the Church quite a bit, after all, it is our mission to tell people about salvation. In the study of theology there is even a special branch of theological study called soteriology  - the study of the doctrine of salvation. So how well have we done our job as the Church? How would you define salvation; what does it mean to you? I asked my congregation to ponder this question during my sermon. I had a father of a young man, who is a 6th grader, tell me his son’s response: salvation means to be rescued. This works for me. But what are we rescued from and what are we rescued for? Martin Luther said salvation means we are rescued from sin, death and the devil. This is one side of the equation, but what are we rescued for? We have to be rescued  for something otherwise why be rescued at all?
        Sin does take its toll on us. Because of sin we are in need of rescue, so our lives can be salvaged. We are like a ship, we are at the helm and we have ignored the charts telling us about the reef; we have turned away from the advise of our pilot who warns us to be careful of the danger of obstacles ahead; we have been clueless regarding the weather and the impending storm breaking around us; we and we alone are responsible for running our ship up on the reef and wrecking the ship. We are on the reef and we can’t get off. Jesus is in charge of this salvage operation, Jesus will rescue us. Why would Jesus do this? Jesus sees the value in us, even though we are a shipwreck. Jesus gives his life to rescuing, restoring and salvaging us. Jesus wants us to reach the safe harbor, safe from storm and strife, where we will know peace, the peace that passes all human understanding. That safe harbor is timeless reunion and restoration with God. Through Jesus, we are able to be rescued and experience this divine fellowship with our creator, because God loves us.
        Right now our life is on the reef, the wind and waves batter us; we are in peril of breaking up. We seek to be rescued from our destruction and have our lives salvaged so we can experience this love of God and be secure in our relationship with God. Jesus is our salvation, Jesus rescues us and will pilot us to God’s peaceful and loving harbor. We wait for the one who will come rescue us and save us from destruction.

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    We pray: We have turned from You, O Lord; we face destruction. Only through Your Son, Jesus can we be rescued, saved from destruction and renew our relationship with You. Help us to wait and watch, and be ready. In Your Holy Name we pray.  Amen.

Immanuel Lutheran Church Weekly Devotion

Monday  26 November 2012

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1 Thessalonians 3:10 - 12, NJB
We are earnestly praying night and day to be able to see you face to face again and make up any shortcomings in your faith. May God our Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, ease our path to you. May the Lord increase and enrich your love for each other and for all, so that it matches ours for you.

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      In this passage from 1st Thessalonians, I would say, Paul is being a little presumptive regarding his judgement of the faith of this worshiping community. Yet you can insert any congregation here. We all have shortcomings regarding our faith. But Paul’s prayer is an earnest request for God to be at work in this congregation. Paul wants to desperately visit with them. Paul loves them and cares for them. He wants them to grow in their love for Christ and for each other. It is my prayer, that Paul’s prayer would be for all congregations, in all times and places. Our human fallibility is not only open to doubts regarding our faith, but distrust, hostility towards one another. Unless you were living very primitively, far from American society, you were a witness to just how depraved and hostile we can be towards each other during this past political campaign. Our political campaigns now celebrate how debased this process has become, rather than being an enlightening and uplifting political process. We have sunk to the lowest common denominator, rather than aspiring to a virtuous ideal.
      Paul is calling on the Thessalonians to love each other and all people, but he is not saying they have to agree with all people. We all can love and care for each other. This is not that difficult to do. What is difficult to do, is setting aside our differences so that we can love and care for each other. Our humanity gets in the way of the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. We engage our divine calling of Kingdom building in fits and starts. It is hard to be a disciple and to be a Kingdom builder. Paul is calling us – with God’s help – to engage this process, to be faithful to this process, not to be successful at this process. We ourselves will never be able to bring about the Kingdom of God; only when Jesus returns will He be able to usher in God’s Kingdom. We start and work on building the Kingdom, Jesus will come and finish the job with us. This is God’s plan for us, this is how God fulfills the divine promise made to us. He sends His Son – to us. This is what we wait and watch for, patiently, with hopeful expectation.

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We pray: The apostle Paul prays for us to love and care for each other. Yet our human vices get in the way of our virtues. Forgive our shortcomings, help us to have courage to strive towards virtue and be righteous before you. In Your Holy Name we pray.  Amen.

Immanuel Lutheran Church Weekly Devotion + Monday 6 December 2010

KJV Isaiah 11:6-7  The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

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        Since Susan and I have moved to Montana, we have met a few ranchers and learned about the faith filled but precarious business of ranching. Ranchers raising cattle or sheep faithfully care for the animals in their charge. Animal husbandry is part and parcel of the make up of a successful rancher. They are very attached to the animals in their care. If they want to be successful as a rancher, they have to be attentive to the cattle or sheep they care for.  Ranchers monitor the weather and work to protect new born calves or lambs from the elements. They check the pastures to insure the animals are able to eat nutritious grass and have access to water. The one thing ranchers are continually on the watch for are predators who would prey upon their animals, especially the new born. Coyotes, mountain lions, bears and as of late wolves, are a threat to the animals a rancher cares for; they are a threat to a ranchers livelihood.
        Isaiah is telling us of what to expect when the Messiah comes and initiates the reign of the Kingdom of God. This reign will be transformational for all of creation. There will be no predation of one animal against another. I dare say it would be very hard for a rancher to ever believe that the wolf would dwell with the lamb, that the mountain lion, bear and calf would lie down together - and no harm would come to the lamb or the calf. Just as astounding and unbelievable for us to accept would be that a little child will them. Yet this is what happens. We are awaiting the coming of our Messiah. Our Messiah will come to us as a child born in dire circumstances. This is the child that will lead us to the Kingdom of God. Our Messiah - Jesus, has come to us once and we wait for him to return again. We are in the mean time of almost but not yet; the Kingdom of God has not yet fully arrived. Coyotes, mountain lions, bears and wolves still prey upon lambs and calves. Ranchers continue to protect and defend their animals. The promise of a child to come and lead us has been fulfilled for us and we believe. We continue to believe and hope that Jesus will return again and the reign of God will come - the wolf will live with the lamb, the lion and the calf will lie down together. With anticipation, we wait and we hope for that day when sin is forever banished from creation and our Messiah reigns.

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We pray: Most merciful Lord, we struggle each and every day against sin. There are times when we resist and there are times when we sin. Forgive us when we sin, help us to resist temptation and follow where you lead. Sustain us with the hope of your return and the ushering in of your reign where there will be no more sin.
        In your Holy Name we pray.  Amen.

Advent II- year A - 2010

The prophet Isaiah tells us about the hope and expectation of the one who is to come. For Isaiah, the Messiah will usher in the Kingdom of God. Where else - other than the Kingdom of God - do you find this occurring? Isaiah 2:4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. I can not speak for you, but I am not optimistic on experiencing this in my lifetime, by anything we can accomplish. We ourselves are not capable of bringing about a time when we will beat our swords into plow shears, only the Messiah will bring peace and arbitrate our differences to the point where we don’t need military hardware to defend ourselves.

Isaiah 11:6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. This prophesy of Isaiah is closer to home. Do we ever think that the wolf or mountain lion will ever lie down with the lamb, fawn or calf elk - without eating it? Then the prophet says a child will lead them - A Child! Who would ever believe this. For a child to be our Messiah is as inconceivable as the U.S. doing away with its military, as wolves and lions not eating baby animals and instead eating grass. Isaiah has some pretty high expectations of just what the Messiah will accomplish. We do expect this in the Kingdom of God. Paul expresses these expectations as well when he writes to the Romans: Romans 8:22-25 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. During this season of Advent we wait with patience. But just exactly what are we waiting for? John the Baptist does not offer us a rosy picture of the coming of the Kingdom of God. John the Baptist’s Messiah is not an innocent, charming child, is it?

The axe and the winnowing fork are the tools of the trade John the Baptist uses to illustrate the coming of the Messiah. The axe fells a tree, leaving a stump. It is out of the Stump of Jesse that our Messiah will come. John calls the people to repent - to turn and live righteously; be a tree that bears good fruit, fruit worthy of repentance. The axe and the winnowing fork are the tools at hand. The axe cuts down the tree that does not bear good, repentant fruit; the winnowing fork will separate the grain from the chaff - the chaff and the unfruitful tree will be burned with unquenchable fire.

What John is prophesying and proclaiming is a rite of purification in order for us to be ready for Messiah. Num 31: 23 everything that can withstand fire, shall be passed through fire, and it shall be clean. Nevertheless it shall also be purified with the water for purification; and whatever cannot withstand fire, shall be passed through the water. The purifying fire of the Holy Spirit will cleanse us, burn away the impurities. John baptizes with the water of repentance. People receive it and live righteous lives - in right relationship with God. Either way we will be purified by God and welcome into his Kingdom. A kingdom the Messiah will come to establish. We wait with hope for what is unseen and unbelievable at the same time. We light our candles and wait for Messiah, the anointed one who will establish peace, justice and harmonious living. We wait for the child who will lead us to the Kingdom of God.    Amen.