Lutheran Church of the Resurrection

“And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.”

Still dripping wet from His baptism in the Jordan river where the “Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove” and His Father reminded Him, “You are my Son, with you I am well pleased,” the Spirit leads Him into a place where the voice of the Father is NOT HEARD and the BODILY FORM of the SPIRIT does not rest upon Him and the questions all begin with “If you are the Son of God.”

It’s a question of identity. DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE?

It’s a question that you and I are challenged to answer every day. In your baptism, the Spirit of God descended on you and the Father declared, “You are my child and with you I am well-pleased,” and Jesus Christ took you into Himself and covered you with His righteousness so completely that you have died with Christ while you’re still alive and you have already been raised with Christ before you’ve been buried.

And not in here but out there, in the wilderness, so many questions begin with “if you are a child of God…” Continue reading →

It had been 430 years to the day since Jacob led his small family to Egypt to be reunited with his son Joseph. Jacob was reluctant to go down to Egypt. But God promised Jacob, “I will go down with you and I will surely bring you up again.” (Gen.46:4). That was 430 years earlier, and all of Israel, in each generation, had eagerly awaited, prayed for, hoped for the time when God would return them to land He had promised to give them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

I. The Exodus of Israel.
A. Passover.
And now “the time had fully come.” As word circulated through the various villages and settlements of the Israelites, there was a palpable excitement and tension in the air. THE TIME FOR DEPARTURE HAD COME. It was time for exodus. “Exodus” is a Greek word which” literally means, “the way out.” Ex = out. Odos = road or way.

The preparations for this departure were unlike any preparations for any trip you and I have ever taken. It all centered on a young, male, lamb without blemish or defect. The lamb was to serve two purposes.

 First, the blood of the lamb was to be sprinkled on the doorposts of the houses. The Lord would pass through Egypt and strike down every first-born male in every home except those marked with the blood of the lamb. The blood was to be a witness to life.

 Second, the body of the lamb was to be eaten for sustenance for the journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land.

The lamb would spare Israel’s death by its blood and sustain Israel’s life by its body. Continue reading →

“And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee…” And He did incredible things. He set a man free from his demon and broke a woman’s high fever and “all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him and he laid his hands on everyone of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many…”

And when it was time for Him to go, “…the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them…”

They wanted Him to stay. And who wouldn’t? A new doctor had come to their town and what a doctor he was. You name it and He could fix it. And it was the way that He did it that was so amazing. All the other traveling medicine men wanted their patients to buy their special potions or come in for some tests or see another specialist. But this One just REBUKED the demons and REBUKED the fever and REBUKED the diseases and it was all better.

It incredible, awesome and every extreme adjective you can think of. And they were all ‘astonished,’ and ‘amazed’ and ‘blown away.’ But then, all too soon, He announced He was moving on. Continue reading →

January 22nd is not a day of observance on the Church’s calendar unless it happens to fall on a Sunday. And yet it is a day that many churches in the U.S. have observed since 1973.

It is a day in this nation’s history that has scarred us in an even deeper way than April 12th which marks the beginning of the Civil War, July 28th which marks the beginning of WW1 or December 7th which is Pearl Harbor Day, if only because those terrible days are a part of our past, and we lament that they happened, while the practice of abortion is a present practice now for 43 years that continues to be carried out among us and that continues to be defended and funded as an inalienable right to end more lives than the Civil War and WWI along with the Revolutionary war, WW -2, the Vietnam and Iraq wars combined.

The transference of the observance of the Slaughter of the Innocents which appears on the Church’s calendar on December 28th, to the Sunday closest to January 22nd seems like the appropriate thing to do, since it takes us far beyond the recent history of our nation into the ancient history of Israel and the life of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old and under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah; ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” Continue reading →

There are aspects to life in a small town that are very nice. In a small town like Waterville, it’s not unusual to see someone you know at the grocery store or the post-office, and the UPS driver knows that if no one is at the church he can deliver his package to the pastor’s house which he happens to know where it is located. That’s the nice part about living in a small town.

But a typical, small, middle-eastern village like Cana is much tighter-knit community that anything we have here. Everyone knows everyone and there’s lots of family connections. When a baby is born in the village, the whole village celebrates. When someone dies the whole village mourns. When there’s a wedding, the whole village attends.

A typical middle-eastern wedding takes place in the cool of the evening. The bride and groom each wear a crown on their heads, identifying them as king and queen for the day.

After the ceremony is completed, the couple is led through the streets of the village with a canopy held over their heads, burning torches blazing, the band playing music that demands clapping and dancing and singing. The parade winds through every street in the village so everyone will know that bride had a new name and one new family had been created out of two.

The whole village looks forward to and eagerly anticipated an upcoming wedding day. A wedding is a significant event for the whole village that is filled with joy. Continue reading →

“Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son; with you I am well pleased.”

I remember a story from a long time ago about a congregation that decided to remodel their sanctuary. And unlike our project, theirs included a new baptismal font. After the construction was completed, they were surprised when the building inspector would not approve the construction unless the baptismal font had its own septic tank to dispose of the water in it to prevent the polluting of the ground. One of the elders of the congregation said, “I guess it would pollute the ground what with all of those sins washed into it.”

“Now when all the people were baptized.” All the people went into the water and their sins were washed away. When they came out of the water they were not the same people who had gone into the water. They went in ‘sinner,’ they came out ‘saint.’ They went in ‘guilty,’ they came out ‘innocent.’ They went in ‘rejected by God,’ they came out ‘beloved by God.’ Transformed, renewed, born all over again, new beginning. BAPTISM IS A WONDERFUL THING. Continue reading →