Thursday after Pentecost 18
October 4, 2012
The Lord be with you
This coming Sunday is the 19th Sunday after
Pentecost. It is also the Commemoration of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, Pastor. Muhlenberg
was a very important colonial pastor, as far as Lutheranism in America
is concerned. You can read more about him in the post I will put on the blog
Sunday. Sunday is also Lutheran Women’s Missionary League Sunday. This isn’t
exactly a “liturgical” day. Nonetheless, many of our congregations will
recognize it as a way of lifting up the kingdom work that the women in the
LC-MS accomplish. We will do that at Lamb of God.
Our liturgy for Sunday will be the Service of Prayer and
Preaching (page 260), with a few modifications to recognize our women. The two
most noticeable modifications will be the congregation praying out loud the
Collect for LWML Sunday and our Mission Statement will be replaced with the
LWML Pledge. This pledge, written in 1955, should be something every Christian
can wholeheartedly pledge. It is: “In fervent gratitude for the Savior’s dying
love and His blood-bought gift of redemption we dedicate ourselves to Him with
all that we are and have; and in obedience to His call for workers in the
harvest fields, we pledge Him our willing service wherever and whenever He has
need of us. We consecrate to our Savior our hands to work for Him, our feet to
go on His errands, our voice to sing His praises, our lips to proclaim His
redeeming love, our silver and our gold to extend His Kingdom, our will to do His
will, and every power of our life to the great task of bringing the lost and
the erring into eternal fellowship with Him. Amen. “
Our ladies will also play a more prominent role Sunday,
handing out bulletins, ushering, reading, providing us with the Children’s
Message and Tina Mullinax will be playing “Nearer My God to Thee” on her violin
during our offering. The assigned lessons for Pentecost 19 are Genesis 2:18-25;
Hebrews 2:1-18; Mark 10:2-16, and, as you will see, work well for LWML Sunday.
We will also be using Psalm 128 (antiphon v. 1). Our opening hymn will be “One Thing’s Needful”
(LSB 536), our “new” hymn. The sermon
hymn is “O Father, All Creating” (LSB
858). Our closing hymn is “Lord, When You Came as Welcome Guest” (LSB 859). The sermon text is Mark 10:7,
and its title is “Prelude to a Marriage.”
In our public prayers we will continue to lift up other
Christian denominations and their leaders. This Sunday we will remember the Wisconsin
Evangelical Lutheran Synod and their president, Rev. Mark Schroeder. We continue
to pray for our LC-MS missionaries around the world. This month we remember David
& Joyce Erber, who work with English speaking people in Nigeria
and West Africa. We pray that the Lord would raise up
Christ-centered leaders of Lutheran congregations; that the Lord would protect
David as he travels; and that the Holy Spirit would continue to sustain and
grow the Lutheran church bodies in English-speaking West Africa.
We will remember the persecuted believers in Tunisia.
Tunisia is in North
Africa, right next door to Libya.
Tunisia was a
fertile ground for the Early Church,
but the conquering of the area by Arab Moslems changed that. Non-Moslems must
pay a 50% tax. Over the centuries, this policy, plus the mandatory execution of
any Moslem who converts to a different faith, has diminished the numbers of
non-Moslems. Recently, more radical Islamic groups, like Al Qaeda, have
increased the danger to Christians. Just this past June a young man who
converted to Christianity was martyred for his faith in the One True Triune God
by having his head cut off with a knife. I refrain from putting the graphic
video up here. Today there are maybe 25,000 Christians in Tunisia.
We will also remember, in our prayers, our sister SED congregations:
Our Savior, Bryans Road,
MD; Our Shepherd, Cambridge, MD;
St. Paul, Catonsville,
MD; Galilee, Chester,
MD; and Bethlehem,
Aiken, SC. We
will continue to remember those who have been misled by our cultures acceptance
of abortion and advocacy of sexual immorality, asking God’s grace for their
lives that they may be healed and restored by the Holy Spirit. We will also
continue to remember those trapped in the modern practice of slavery and ask
God to bless all efforts that are pleasing in his sight to end this sinful
practice. We will also remember the Lutheran Malaria Initiative’s effort to end
malaria in Africa by 2015.
The following video is of a man playing our closing hymn, “Lord,
When You Came as Welcome Guest” on the tuba. This is a well known tune as it is
also used for “Jerusalem, My Happy
Home” (LSB 673) and “Lord, Bid Your
Servant Go in Peace” (LSB 937).
Our adult Bible class
meets at 9:00 Sunday morning. We are starting
the final chapter of Matthew, and considering what we will do next.
Preview of the
Lessons
Genesis 2:18-25: The story of creation is actually broken into two parts in the
Bible. The first part (Genesis 1) deals with the big picture. The second part
(Genesis 2) deals specifically with humanity. In Genesis 1:26, when God says,
“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish
of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth,
and over all the creatures that move along the ground” the word “man” does not
mean “males” but humans. The dominion spoken of here applies equally to men and
women. In Genesis 2 we have a close-up on the creation of humanity. These
verses are commonly heard in wedding services. Anyone who has been to a few of
these has certainly heard them expounded on many times. Some things to note
include that Adam was made out of the ground. This reflects the connection we
have with nature. Due to that connection, our “dominion” should not be one of
master and slave, but one more akin to caretaker and what is cared for. In the
same sense, the woman is made from Adam. Once again, the relationship is
therefore not master-slave but care and support. This is especially true as the
image of God is given to both. The mutual dependency is accented even stronger for
a man and a woman than our mutual dependence with nature. Another interesting
feature is that Eve is “born” of Adam, where as normally men are born of women.
While a number of points might be illustrated from this, my mind goes to how
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, designates Jesus as the New Adam. Just as Eve (and
through her all humanity) received “birth” through the Old Adam, so we all now receive
our new birth into the Christian Faith through the New Adam, Jesus. Finally the
final verse, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed”
can catch our attention. Here we see the stark difference between the perfect
creation and the mire of our fallen creation. Adam and Eve could live in this
state without all the lust such publications like Playboy engender in us. Such
a state is near impossible to imagine for us fallen people. No one should take
this to mean we are to strut around in our “birthday suites.” Sin changed
things. So, in Genesis 3:21, God himself provided Adam and Eve with their first
set of clothing.
Hebrews 2:1-18: We will finish out the Church Year with a series of readings from
Hebrews. This is the first one. No one really knows who wrote this book. Some
suggestions include Paul, Apollos, Luke and Barnabas. Even though it is
anonymous, it was accepted as Apostolic right away. Because the writer does
such an excellent job of interpreting the Old Testament in light of Jesus, I am
inclined to think of him as one of the two “Emmaus Road” disciples (Luke
24:13-35). As far as I know, I’m the only one who thinks this. One of the main
focuses of the book is to encourage converts to remain faithful to Jesus (2:3).
This encouragement was important as persecution of Christians was enticing some
to return to Judaism. The writer demonstrates the superiority of Jesus over
angels. He then writes about how God, in Jesus, became enfleshed. Just as Adam
and Eve were flesh and blood, so Jesus became flesh and blood. He ends with how
this enfleshment of God made possible our Lord’s victory over the devil on our
behalf. He also points out how the enfleshment of Jesus means that Jesus can
relate to us. He has “walked in our shoes.”
Mark 10:2-16: Some say that this reading has Jesus’ teaching concerning
divorce. That really isn’t so. It has Jesus’ teaching about marriage. The
Pharisees ask when it would be okay to get a divorce. How human, as in fallen
human. We always tend to want to know how to get around God’s will. So we get
questions like, “What it the minimum requirement to get a divorce?” “What is
the minimum requirement to be a Christian?” “What is my minimum responsibility
to my neighbor?” God isn’t really all that interested in “minimum” questions.
His goal is to provide “maximum” answers. We are always to be growing in the
grace of God, at least, that is God’s desire. Jesus points to divorce as
evidence of a hard heart. In stead, God desires marriage to be a live long
union between a “male and female,” which produces the maximum about of support,
blessing, joy, and contentment. Jesus doesn’t want our marriages to be examples
of people scraping by, but a reflection of the same relationship Jesus has with
the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33). The
reading ends with the disciples trying to keep parents from bringing their
little children to Jesus so Jesus could bless them. (This reminds me of people
who will not baptize infants and small children.) Jesus rebukes the disciples
“for to such belongs the kingdom of God.”
In this reading Jesus affirms that small children can indeed have faith, for it
is only by grace through faith that we are received into the kingdom
of God.
Tidbits
- Our Cub Scout Pack will be meeting at Church, 1:00 pm, to go to King’s Mountain.
- As mentioned above, this is LWML Sunday.
- PLEASE DON’T FORGET, We are sponsoring a Pancake Breakfast, Saturday, October 27, at the Fats restaurant (http://www.superpages.com/bp/Boiling-Springs-SC/FATZ-Cafe-L0006431720.htm) in Boiling Springs, to support the Lutheran Malaria Initiative (LMI). Members are asked to sell tickets for $7.00 (of which $4.00 will go to LMI and $3.00 will go to Fats to cover their costs) for this event. Tickets will be available Sunday. Additional help will be needed in the form of greeters who will also sell tickets at the door and/or accept donations. You can expect more information over the next two months on this blog about our Pancake Breakfast and LMI.
Well, I pray I’ll see you Sunday.
Blessings in Christ,
Pastor John Rickert
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