Worship

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

Services are cancelled for February 11 due to the inclement weather conditions.

Matthew 2:11 “And going into the house, [the wise men] saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.”

“Wise men from the east” Matthew tells us, “wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?”’ What a thing this was. What was going through Herod’s mind (before the murderous jealousy crept in)? How do ‘wise men’ from the east know to come here and to worship a king? A star, that’s not much to go on. What was going through the heads of the wise men? Do you think
there was more than three to start off with but only three actually thought they should come? Was there a whole astronomy group who regularly got together and were amazed to find this star but only one of them was like, “Hey, this star is signifying the birth of the king of the Jews so we should travel down there to give him gifts.” Did the other wise men look at each other and say, “Balthasar you’re crazy. We’re not traveling all that way to give gifts to a baby because you think this new star signifies his birth.” But then Melchior says, “You know I have some things to get from Tyre. Maybe on our way back we can swing by and get them. Sure I’ll go.” And of course if Melchior is going, then Casper is going to go too, because they are best buds. And so you have three wise men setting out to find a child guided by a star.

We don’t know how it happened because we are not told, but it almost certainly did not happen the way I just described. (Please don’t make that movie.) In the context of the other events surrounding Jesus’ birth, it would almost be normal for an angel to have appeared to them in a dream to tell them to go and worship the new born king. Jesus’ birth was a one-time deal. It is not something that will ever happen again in the history
of the world. Perhaps God let the wise men know about it so that they could be a part of this event too. Because Jesus, king of the Jews, did not come to save just Jews but all people, even wise men from the east (and you and I here in the west).

Epiphany is about Jesus being made known to the nations, to all people, not just a specific people, the Jews. For the vast majority of you who are reading this, that means that without Epiphany you don’t get a Savior. Christmas on its own is the story of a Savior come to save His people, one small nation. But Christmas followed by Epiphany is the story of a Savior come to the nations, a Savior who has come to you, whoever you are. Merry Christmas and happy Epiphany!

~Pastor Mehl