Lutheran Church of the Resurrection

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You have come to this place this morning to draw near to Jesus. You have come here, and not to the golf course, camp, mall or Appalachian Trail, because you believe that this is where Jesus is and where he may be found by you. You believe that He is here because you hear His voice here. Here, you hear His Word, and where you hear His Word, you know that He Himself must be present. It is enough for you to just hear His Word to know that He is present. You don’t need to see His face. You know that one day you will see His face just as today you hear His Word, but for now, you only hear His voice. The Lord is your shepherd. His sheep know His voice and they follow Him – not by the sight of His face but by the sound of His voice.

You have come to this place this morning to draw near to Jesus because you want to hear Him speak to you. In fact, you have something very particular that you want to hear Him say to you. You have heard Him say it to you before, but this is a new day and a new week and you want to, you need to hear it again. And you know that as sure as God gave you ears to hear, you will want to hear Him say these words to you yet again and again and again. (more…)

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I don’t know about you, but I find it rather refreshing to hear Jesus say that it’s okay to hate. Hate your father and mother. Hate your wife. Hate your children. Heck, it’s even okay to hate yourself. I find this to be refreshing, because I never have been able to live up to all of those expectations to love. Love your neighbor, love you enemy, love yourself. Loving is hard to do. Hating is easy. It comes naturally. I really didn’t even need Jesus to give me His permission to hate.

I will admit however, that it is a little confusing. John says, “Whoever loves his brother abides in the light. Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness…” (1 John 2:9-10). But Jesus says, ‘hate your brother.” In fact, doesn’t Jesus say, “unless you hate…you cannot be my disciple”? Doesn’t even sound like an option they way He puts it.

How are we to understand all this ‘hate talk?’ (more…)

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Would you please take out your bible and turn to Colossians 3, verses 23-24. Page #985 in the pew bibles. As we’ve done over the last several years, let’s take the occasion of the Labor Day holiday to be reminded of what the Bible has to say about our labor. Let’s talk about the ‘doctrine of vocation.’

Let’s read what St. Paul has to say to Christian households about our jobs. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Mark the page. We’ll come back to this and read these words together a couple of times again.

A. 1st Adam called to labor. We may wonder what our ‘labor’ or our ‘job’ has to do with the life of faith. It doesn’t sound like its very ‘spiritual’ stuff. The life of faith, we say, is made up of ‘spiritual’ or ‘holy’ things like worship, prayer, bible study. That’s the “sacred” stuff. Everything else is “secular,” not the kind of stuff that God has much interest in one way or the other. (more…)