Archive for September, 2009
September 30, 2009 at 6:24 am · Filed under Homilies
Introduction
This is a funeral homily I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009.
Readings
Ezekiel 2:8-3:3
Psalm 119:105-112
1 John 1:1-4
Luke 11:28
Message
On the day of his confirmation in the Christian faith,
Bud selected the verse from Luke’s Gospel
that we just heard:
“But [Jesus] said,
‘Blessed rather are those who hear
the word of God and obey it!’” (Luke 11:28, NRSV)
This is a word of blessing for all of us
who, like Bud, strive to live as servants of God.
Jesus tells us that blessings fall upon us
when we hear God’s Word with the ears of faith
and then obey it, following him on the way of the cross.
On this journey, we can trust the words of the Psalmist:
“Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105, NRSV)
We can never know for sure
what illuminated path our feet will take
in our lives as disciples,
just as Bud probably did not imagine,
as he stood before the congregation
at Trinity Church in DeWitt
on that April confirmation day in 1938,
that his discipleship would lead
to the battlefields of Europe
and to the factories of Nebraska.
And neither Bud nor Mabel
could have guessed
that the vows they made in 1944
to stand together, listening to God’s Word and obeying it,
would bind them to one another as husband and wife
for almost 65 years.
This marriage, like any marriage,
is both a gift from God and a sign of God’s love for us.
We can enjoy and celebrate
the fidelity and love and care
that Bud and Mabel shared,
just because it was such a blessing in their lives
and a fount of love in the lives of others.
But at the same time,
this union, because it was a marriage made by God.
pointed beyond itself, reminding us of his faithfulness and gifts for us.
In a way, much as spouses are united in marriage,
Jesus Christ, the groom, binds himself to his Church, the bride.
And then, we all live in the intimacy of this sacred marriage.
Our bridegroom shares himself with us,
giving us his Word to nourish us,
saying to us just what he said to Ezekiel:
“‘Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you
and fill your stomach with it.’
Then I ate it; and in my mouth
it was as sweet as honey.” (Ezekiel 3:3, NRSV)
This Word is a Word of life,
a Word that gives us life here and now,
a Word that promises us eternal Life, even in the face of death.
This is why we can hear and obey when God speaks,
trusting that he will show us how to serve him now
and that he will gather us all together on that final day,
reuniting us with all who have died before us.
On that day, we will celebrate
in the endless marriage feast of heaven.
On that day, we will hear perfectly and obey fully
the “word of life,” as John’s letter says,
because “truly our fellowship is with the Father
and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
On that day, by God’s grace,
“our joy [will] be complete.” (1 John 1:1,3-4, NRSV) Amen.
September 30, 2009 at 5:54 am · Filed under Daily Words
“In everything you do, act without grumbling or arguing….” (Philippians 2:14, LH)
September 29, 2009 at 6:26 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Too heavy for us our offenses,
but you wipe them away.” (Psalm 65:3, LH)
September 28, 2009 at 6:13 am · Filed under Daily Words
“For, to me, ‘life’ means Christ; hence dying is so much gain.” (Philippians 1:21, LH)
September 27, 2009 at 6:13 am · Filed under Homilies
Introduction
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 26-27, 2009, the weekend of the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost. The special occasion for the weekend was the dedication on new pulpit and lectern Bibles and the blessing of worshipers Bibles.
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Readings
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 19:7-14 (Antiphon: v.8)
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
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Prayer
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation[s] of [our] heart[s]
be acceptable to you,
O LORD, [our] rock and [our] redeemer.” Amen. (Psalm 19:14, NRSV)
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Message
We call it by a number of names:
The Holy Bible, the Good Book,
the Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments.
But whatever name we use,
we are pointing to a whole collection of writings
with a long and complex past
entwined together with God’s history among his people.
Protestants’ sixty-six or Catholics’ seventy-three books
in the Scriptures
are filled with stories and poems,
histories and letters,
wisdom and prophecies,
gospels and end-time literature.
They were shared by oral tradition
and originally written in a variety of languages:
Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
Then the books were handed down
between the generations,
copied a letter at a time onto scrolls
and later onto folios of pages.
Within Judaism,
historians believe that the list of books
in the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament,
settled into its final format
by the end of the second century A.D.
And within Christianity,
the New Testament reached its current form
sometime in the middle of the third century.
Archeologists have found fragments
of these ancient heirlooms
stored in pots in caves in Israel
and in other sites across the middle East.
Scholars have dated and compared these pieces
and have sought to assemble
the best possible collection
of the most reliable manuscripts.
Then translators work
to understand the languages
and the words the texts use.
This is a complicated task
as there are no direct connections
linking a Hebrew or Greek word
with the words in modern languages.
The challenge is to offer
the best fit, the most apt translation.
Then there’s the whole question we face
of selecting which version to read.
It helps to explore the introduction in a Bible,
because there you can often find out details
about the approach taken by the team of translators.
Some attempt to create a literal,
word-for-word translation;
others try to translate the sense of whole sentences.
But regardless of which translation we use
and how the translations are created,
we trust that God is at work
in the text and through the faithful service
of those who brought the text into being
and who have touched it across time.
We trust God to use all of this
to make known to us his will.
Our congregation’s constitution includes
a Confession of Faith that summarizes our view of the Scriptures.
It states:
This congregation confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the Gospel as the power of God for the salvation of all who believe.
- Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate, through whom everything was made and through whose life, death, and resurrection God fashions a new creation.
- The proclamation of God’s message to us as both Law and Gospel is the Word of God, revealing judgment and mercy through word and deed, beginning with the Word in creation, continuing in the history of Israel, and centering in all its fullness in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
- The canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the written Word of God. Inspired by God’s Spirit speaking through their authors, they record and announce God’s revelation centering in Jesus Christ. Through them God’s Spirit speaks to us to create and sustain Christian faith and fellowship for service in the world.
This congregation accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life.
(Model Constitution for Congregations, 2007, C2.02.-C2.03.)
This tells us that the Scriptures and the Word of God
are connected, but are not exactly the same.
First of all, as John’s Gospel tells us,
Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh.
This means that in one sense
the Word of God is God himself, God with us.
The next part of the confession
states that we believe that
the proclamation of God’s message
is the Word of God.
This means that all preaching and teaching
and witness and action
that share God’s message with us and the world
are themselves the Word of God.
We hear and absorb this Word as Law, God’s judgment,
and as Gospel, God’s free gift of grace.
And thirdly, we confess that the Canon of Scripture,
the collection of books contained in our Bibles,
are the written Word of God.
God has inspired individuals of faith,
from the original judges and prophets,
poets and apostles,
to those who first committed the texts to writing,
through those who labor with manuscripts and translations,
to create and maintain and pass on
the written texts of the Scriptures.
We believe that the Good News about Jesus Christ
is hidden deep within and foreshadowed by the Hebrew Scriptures,
just as the promise of the long-awaited Messiah
is revealed and fulfilled in the Christian Scriptures.
And finally,
we confess that we live according to God’s will,
that we trust him to share his inspired Word with us
through the Canon of the Scriptures,
and that we accept the Scriptures as
“the authoritative source and norm
of [our] proclamation, faith, and life.”
This means that we come to God our Father
and ask him for the blessing of faith by the Spirit
that we may follow his Son Jesus Christ in obedience.
Along the way in our journey of faith,
we have been bathed in water with the Word,
we walk in obedience to that Word,
we hear God’s Word proclaimed to us,
we feast upon this Word in bread and wine,
and we read and hear and study this Word,
revealed to us in the Scriptures.
And we do all of this together,
by the grace and mercy of God,
as a community created by Word and Spirit
in God’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Amen.
September 27, 2009 at 6:10 am · Filed under Daily Words
“It is my wish that you may be found rich in the harvest of justice which Jesus Christ has ripened in you, to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:11, LH)
September 26, 2009 at 7:46 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
This article is the October 2009 installment of my monthly message in the parish newsletter for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb.
At the Crossroads
Several times in September, we heard in the Gospel readings from Mark how Jesus taught his disciples that he would suffer, be killed, and then be raised from the dead. And then we stood with the crowd he gathered together as he said,
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)
This is a wonderful—and difficult!—saying. Its power comes in the purity of its vision. When we hear Jesus tell us that this is what it means for us to follow him, then we know what is at stake. We can see how his obedience to the will of his Father led directly to his suffering, death, and resurrection.
And we hear him tell us that our lot is the same. When we follow him, we can expect that our path will lead to suffering, and that we may die. This is what faithful obedience to the will of our Father may mean for us.
It’s natural to want to avoid pain and suffering. But discipleship is not a matter of our nature. Remember that we say in our Confession,
“Most merciful God, we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” (LBW, p. 77)
Part of our bondage is that we would not choose, on our own, to shoulder our crosses and to follow Christ to our deaths. But because we are forgiven sinners, blessed with faith, we are able to act in faithful obedience to God. This means that we can, with the Spirit’s help, follow Christ along the path our Father points out to us.
With a Mission
Walking with our shouldered crosses is just another way to envision the mission on which God sends us. As we turn the pages of our calendar from September to October, we turn the spotlight of our parish’s life from education to mission.
This month, as you hold your times of devotion, read the Scriptures, say your prayers, gather for worship, serve people in need, and carry out your calling as a Christian, keep in mind that we have a mission to follow Christ and ask, as you live each day, how Christ leads you.
When we celebrate our Mission Festival on Sunday, Oct. 18, we will hear how God’s mission comes to life in several ministries that serve people across Nebraska and around the country. And then, when we gather on Sunday, Oct. 25, we will celebrate the Confirmation, the Affirmation of Baptism, of two members who will stand in our midst to say they are ready, with God’s help, to shoulder a greater responsibility for the mission of God’s people.
In Freedom
It might seem that obedience to God takes away our freedom. If we have shouldered our crosses and follow Christ, then there is so much we will set aside and abandon. But in truth, our great freedom comes in obedience. Because when we follow Christ, we live by the promise that death and its “no”—the final end of all of our plans—will not have the final word about us.
Nothing is more freeing, more liberating, than to know that our future lies with the One who can, with absolute certainty, keep his promises to us and who says “Yes” from beyond the grave.
Blessings,
Pastor David Frye
September 26, 2009 at 7:16 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
In its worship on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 26-27, 2009, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., will dedicate new pulpit and lectern Bibles and bless the Bibles that worshipers bring from home. This brief order comes in the liturgy before the first reading.
Liturgy
Our heavenly Father blesses his people with the gift of the Holy Scriptures. Through the work of prophets and sages, poets and apostles, he shares his Word with his people. As Luke tells us in his Gospel:
When [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” (Luke 4:16-22, NRSV)
Today we bring an offering to God. We ask him to receive this Bible and to dedicate it to his glory and our inspiration. We will turn to it regularly in worship and hear from its pages the blessed accounts of his mighty acts among his people.
We also bring the Bibles entrusted to us in our homes and wherever we carry them in our daily ministries. We ask God to bless these books and our prayerful reading and study of them.
Please rise with your Bible. Let us lift these Bibles before God and pray together, responding, “Your mercy is great.”
Receive this pulpit/lectern Bible to your glory. When we turn to it in worship and hear your Word proclaimed, may we be blessed by that hearing with new understanding and renewed faith in you. Hear us, O God.
[C] Your mercy is great.
Bless these Bibles that you have given us. May they be instruments for your Word to guide our daily lives, inspire our service, enliven our praise, and strengthen our trust in you. Hear us, O God.
[C] Your mercy is great.
When we are tempted to twist your words to satisfy our own desires, recall us to obedience to your will, as revealed in these Scriptures and lived by your holy Church. Hear us, O God.
[C] Your mercy is great.
Draw us daily to listen and to live by your Word, that you may mold us for service the way a potter shapes clay into vessels. Then use us to bring you glory in all things. Hear us, O God.
[C] Your mercy is great.
We bless you, O God, for the gift of your Scriptures, and praise you for generously blessing us through your Word in speech and text; through your Son, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh and spoken by the power of your Spirit.
[C] Amen.
September 26, 2009 at 6:01 am · Filed under Daily Words
“I rise before dawn and cry for help,
I hope in your word.” (Psalm 119:147, LH)
September 25, 2009 at 5:31 am · Filed under Daily Words
“O Lord, plead my cause against my foes;
fight those who fight me.” (Psalm 35:1, LH)
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