Fourth Sunday of Advent
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Advent is a wake-up call, one we’ve been hearing all month. Yet Advent is also an invitation to dream along with Joseph and the prophet Isaiah, along with God.

Joseph’s story is full of dreams. It starts with a young couple who have hopes and dreams about their future. They’ll have a wedding feast and then live together. Joseph will be a carpenter, they’ll have children. They’ll be respected members of their community because they are righteous and faithful people.

All of a sudden, everything changes.

Mary is pregnant. Joseph is not the father. And Mary is saying the child is of the Holy Spirit. He’s got to assume she must be lying or delusional. What a nightmare.

I picture Joseph up all night pacing, stewing, thoughts swirling, unsure how to proceed. Finally, he decides to dismiss Mary quietly and be done with it all.

Just as Joseph resolves to do this, God’s messenger appears to him in a dream. He assures Joseph that what is happening for him and Mary is not a nightmare – it is the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes and dreams. The angel says, “do not be afraid” to hold on to Mary. She has been faithful. You can be faithful. God will be with you.

This message of promise gives Joseph the courage to take his part in God’s dream for the world – God’s plan to redeem the whole world. He takes Mary as his wife. She bears a son. Joseph names him, adopting him as his own. Joseph can sleep more easily again. Yet, that’s not the end of Joseph’s story.

After the child’s birth, the whole country faces a horrific nightmare. King Herod is threatened when he learns a child has been born King of the Jews. So, he orders the death of all infants under two years old. God’s messenger again appears to Joseph in a dream to tell him his family should flee to Egypt and escape Herod’s violence. They stay there until Joseph learns in a dream that they can return home. Still another dream guides him not to go to the area of Judea, but rather to Galilee.

In the midst of confusion, turmoil and violence, God guides Joseph with dreams and helps Joseph to take his part in God’s dream for the world.

How does what you dream form and shape your life?

Dr. Craig Nessen, professor at Wartburg Seminary, asked this question in a recent presentation.^[1]  Nessen points out that what changes us as people are not arguments, but rather what we imagine about ourselves, about others, about the world. It is our holy work, he says, to imagine the dream of God.

We’ve been hearing about the dream of God throughout Advent in the promises from the prophet Isaiah.

God’s dream is that swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks; that the wolf will lie down with the lamb and no one will hurt or destroy; that the wilderness will burst forth with abundance for all people, all creation; and all will know Emmanuel – God with us.

In Advent, we are called to imagine God’s dream, to let it form and shape us as God’s people. We’re called to open our eyes to how God’s dream is already breaking into our reality right now in Christ Jesus who is, who was, and who is to come.

Sometimes when I hear Joseph’s story, I long for the clarity he got in his dreams. I long to fall asleep and get messages like he did that will help form and shape me. Some people do get dreams like that. I never have.

Yet, all of us are given Christ Jesus, who is Emmanuel-God with us. Christ Jesus is how God’s dream for the world is happening and will happen. Christ Jesus is how God guides us, shapes us, forms us, and how God helps us to take our part in that dream.

Christ Jesus is present today in bread and wine, word and song, in the gathered community. He is here for you today to say what was said to Joseph long ago, “Do not be afraid.” Look at what I am doing for you, through you.

Your life and the world might sometimes feel like a nightmare, you may struggle to sleep, you may struggle to get out of bed. But, Christ Jesus here and God’s dream is breaking into this world. And, you have a part to play in God’s story. This story isn’t just about Joseph, Mary, the angel Gabriel and people who get clear guidance in dreams. It is you and me and all of creation.

Let’s wake up, open our eyes and dream.

And, let’s take a moment to pray.

^[1] Dr Nessen asked this question recently during a presentation at the Grace Institute for Spiritual Formation. Learn more about Grace Institute at https://www.luther.edu/grace-institute/.

Third Sunday of Advent
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Advent is the season of waiting. It’s a time to practice patience with God, with ourselves, with others. In Advent scriptures, like our second reading today, we’re told “be patient” as we wait for Christ to come and make all things new.

Yet patience does not come easily. And, how often do you find it helpful to have someone else tell you to be patient? “Be patient kids, it’s not time for presents yet.” “Thank you for your patience, your call will be answered in the order it was received.” “Oh, just be patient, it will all work out soon, I’m sure.” Hearing the instruction to “be patient” can make us anything but.

Patience is especially hard when we’re longing for a joyful holiday, when we’re estranged or separated from loved ones or facing health struggles, when we can’t see an end to all the demands, when justice and change are long delayed.

Even John the Baptist, the great prophet, seems to struggle with patience in our Gospel reading today. He sends a message to Jesus from his prison cell asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John has spent his life preparing the way for Jesus to come and make everything right. But now, Herod has thrown John into prison and Jesus hasn’t done anything about it.

John has been expecting Jesus to bring in God’s kingdom as a direct challenge to the oppressive Roman Empire – expecting him to come and destroy Rome and puppet leaders like Herod that Rome has set up in Jerusalem.

Instead, Jesus shows up and cares for the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf and the poor. These are not the movers and shakers of the day. These are not the people who are going to topple Rome. Why is Jesus focused on them? Why isn’t Jesus coming to help John?

So, John asks, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Are you the one Jesus, and if so, why don’t you do something.”

John gives voice to the questions that permeate much of our waiting. When will things get better? Why must we still wait? How long, O Lord? These are important faith questions expressed in the Psalms, the prophets, and Christian worship – especially in Advent.

Asking them doesn’t mean we’re impatient and unfaithful; it means we’re doing what the church does together – questioning, lamenting, searching, praying.

Asking these questions draws us more deeply into a relationship with God who gives us what we need to wait with patience and hope. It’s not that all our expectations are met, all our questions answered. Instead, through seeking, lamenting, worship and prayer, our attention is drawn away from our own narrow expectations and towards what God is doing in the world.

So often when we have to wait, we get fixated on what we think will make everything better: If I could finally get a break, if we could just have a peaceful Christmas or a more harmonious country, if only my prayers were answered and a miracle happened. We focus so much on our expectations and begin to think they are our only hope. When they are met slowly or not at all, we despair.

Yet in worship and prayer, we are shown that our hope is in God, not in things working out as we envisioned. We’re shown that God is more about transformation than meeting expectations. God is in this for the long game rather than the quick fix. God is about the kingdom of heaven breaking into our world in ways that we don’t expect and often don’t recognize.

God’s kingdom comes in Jesus in subversive, undercover ways. God’s power is revealed in weakness and mercy. God has chosen to be present in places of need and vulnerability: in Jesus born in a manger, in Jesus who brought good news to the downtrodden, in Jesus who emptied himself on the cross.

We meet Jesus in the midst of our own brokenness and need as we lament and question and struggle. We meet him in bread broken and wine poured out, we meet him among those the world con- siders last and least, and in the wilderness places of our world. Jesus comes in these unexpected ways to shape us into people who can yearn and hope and work for God’s kingdom to come on earth – for that future glimpsed in our first reading today.

In God’s promised future, all the wilderness of this world will flourish with new life. We and all of creation will obtain joy and gladness; sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

In the meantime as we wait, God calls us to be like farmers cultivating the fields where new life will take root and grow. The same reading that begins, “Be patient, therefore …” doesn’t just tell us to be patient. It also gives us the image of a farmer as an example of how to wait with patience and hope. Farmers don’t passively wait for things to meet their expectations. They labor and harvest, they tend to the growth, but know full well that the growth is beyond their control.

This is how we’re called to work and wait for the future God is bringing. We are to plant and tend seeds of hope. We are to watch for signs of life and nurture them as they appear. We are to wait attentively, keeping our eyes lifted to the horizon rather than fixed on our small plot of ground.

Patience is hard; waiting is hard. Yet in Advent, we are given what we need for waiting. We are given Jesus’ presence in bread and wine, word and song. We are drawn into a community that knows how to lament, question, and struggle together as we wait. We are given visions of God’s promised future that lift up our eyes and expand our horizons. And, we are given examples of how to wait actively with hope like a pregnant mother laboring to birth new life, like farmers tending a field.

These gifts transform all our waiting for we wait as people with a hope beyond expectation. We wait for Christ Jesus, the hope of all the earth.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Second Sunday of Advent
December 8, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Our second reading today ends with powerful words about hope that are often used as a blessing at the end of worship:“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Hope is such a powerful concept – it’s a key theme in this season of Advent. But what does hope look like in practice? What does it feel like and sound like? What does it do?

This week I’ve been praying with a meditation entitled “Hope Sits in the Dark”, written by a woman named Debie Thomas.* Two years ago, Thomas’ now 17 year-old son had a bike accident when riding home from school. He woke up with a cracked helmet, a few scrapes and a vicious headache. The headache hasn’t gone away since. They’ve tried every kind of traditional and alternative medical intervention, but for two years now her son has been out of school and only able to be out of bed for four or five hours at a time.

In those two years, Thomas has learned a great deal about what it means to live with hope in the face of her son’s chronic pain.

She writes, “When I read biblical stories of hope, the ones that resonate are no longer the stories of epic victories and grand celebrations … “Instead,” she reflects, I take hope in the story of Sarah, 99 years old and pregnant, laughing her head off because she thought for sure she was too old and wise and jaded to ever again be surprised by God. I take hope in the story of Hagar, a slave woman dying of thirst in the desert, who even in her abandonment becomes the first person in the Bible to name God. I take hope in the story of Hannah, who cries so hard and so earnestly in the presence of God that people take her for a disrespectful drunk. I take hope in the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who ponders hard mysteries deep in her heart. I take hope in the persistent widow who pounds down the door of a corrupt judge day after day after day, insisting on justice until she drives the man nuts. I take hope in the story of Mary Magdalene, who refuses to budge even when evil, tragedy, death, and despair seem to have won the day.”

Thomas reflects that these stories teach her that “Hope is about the long haul and the long dark- ness. Hope is robust and muscular and ferocious and long-suffering. Hope never gets so cynical that it can’t be surprised. Hope finds and names God in the world’s most desolate places. Hope kneels on hard ground and yearns without shame. Hope ponders and meditates and ruminates.

Hope gets in apathy’s face and says, ‘No. Not good enough. Try again.’ Hope sits in the darkness – out-waiting torture, humiliation, crucifixion, and death – until finally a would-be gardener shows up at dawn and calls us by name.”

As I reflected on these words this week, I began to notice that John the Baptist embodies this description of biblical hope. He is definitely robust and ferocious. He finds God in the desolate wilder- ness while kneeling on hard ground. He never lets apathy stand unchallenged. John also has a profoundly hopeful message, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Heaven has come to earth in Jesus and God’s promised future is breaking into our world. The promised day in which there will be justice for the poor and the meek, in which the wolf will lie down with the lamb – that day is coming.

John shows us what hope looks like and sounds like and what hope does.

This realization surprised me as I tend to associate John more with judgement than hope.

But the thing is, God’s judgement is also hopeful. The judgement that John announces means that there is hope for change, hope for something other than the status quo. It means that God is troubled by the pain and brokenness of our world and that God is at work to do something about it all – bringing the kingdom of heaven near.

And one of the ways that God works change is to call us to change, to call us to repent through the harsh words of John the Baptist. We’re called to repent of everything that prevents us from cling- ing to the vision of God’s hopeful future, everything that prevents us from participating in it. We’re called to keep our faces turned toward this promise even when the night is long, even when the wilderness is vast, even when apathy infects everything around us. We’re called to look to Jesus who will gather up the good wheat and burn away the chaff within each of our lives.

All of this feels like a tall order and it sounds really daunting coming out of John’s ferocious mouth.

Yet, John’s words also point to what God is able to do in and for us. “I tell you,” John says, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” That is, God is able to bring new life even from lifeless stones. God is able to work faith and hope in us – faith that bears good fruit, hope that is robust and ferocious and able to cling to God over the long haul.

We can live with this faith and hope – not because of our own worthiness, not because we have Abraham or Martin Luther as an ancestor of faith, not because we are good religious people, not because we are so strong and resilient – because of what God is able to do for us and through us, what God is able to do for you and through you.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

* https://www.christiancentury.org/article/faith-matters/when-hope-gives-magical-results

First Sunday of Advent
December 1, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

This reading would be jarring at any time, but it sounds especially dissonant as we prepare for cozy celebrations of Jesus’ birth.

Instead of glad tidings of great joy we’re startled by the noise of a thief in the night. Windows shatter and footsteps sound on the stairs. It’s time to wake up, pay attention, take action.

This is not what we expect in December, but it’s what we need for the good news of Jesus to break through to us.

The good news is not just that baby Jesus was born long ago. The good news is that, in Jesus, God broke into our world in a most unexpected way. Jesus came not with power and might but as a vulnerable baby who then lived as a peasant, ate with sinners, and died at the hands of the Empire.

He lived and loved radically, disrupting the ways of this world. The world tried to stop him and put him to death. But God disrupted even the power of death, raising Jesus from the dead.

Now Christ Jesus is alive – breaking into every aspect of our world to make all things new. One day the world will be as God longs for it to be. War, destruction and injustice will come to an end; peace and well-being will prevail for all creation.

Christ Jesus’ life, death and resurrection disrupted everything – but in a sneaky, undercover way that is easy for us to miss.

We get stuck in ruts and routines, nose to the grindstone, and don’t notice Christ’s presence; we miss signs of God’s coming new day. We get lulled to sleep by apathy and overindulgence; we settle for coziness rather than life-giving change.

So, Christ Jesus comes to us through scripture and song, bread and wine, and the gathered community to say wake up, rouse yourself, pay attention – I am doing a new thing for you, for the world.

We especially get these calls in the season of Advent.

Some advent wake up calls are quite harsh. They sound as unwelcome as a thief in the night. The Gospel reading from Matthew today is like that. It’s intended to sweep us of our comfort zones. It’s meant to unsettle and even uproot patterns, routines and relationships. Scriptures like this seek to break into our lethargy and indifference to startle us to attention. Christ is disrupting the world – keep alert, be prepared.

Other scriptures in Advent function more like an alarm clock meant to rouse us to action in the morning. The passage from Romans today is like that: ”You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep … the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day.” Scriptures like these seek to get us up and going to help bring in Christ’s new day.

We need these kinds of wake up calls. Yet, if all we had were the sounds of a thief in the night or a shrill alarm clock, we could get overwhelmed. This could make us want to install a security system to be safe from God’s intrusions, make us want to hide our heads under our pillows and push snooze on the alarm clock for a bit longer.

After all, our world is full of strident calls to action – of people sounding the alarm that it’s well past time to rouse ourselves to address climate change, racism, violence, injustice. Sometimes these get us going. Sometimes they lead to despair.

So thankfully, other scriptures in Advent wake us in a kinder way – more like the sun pouring into our window at daybreak and falling gently upon our faces. Scriptures like our Isaiah reading today shine into our hearts with the light of God’s new dawn to stir us to hope, to rouse us to joy. We hear of a great and glorious time in which nations will no longer learn war, in which swords and spears will be beaten into farm tools.

We’re awakened to the promise of this new day. We’re called to look forward to it and live in it’s light even when we can’t yet feel the full warmth of it on our faces.

And yet, whether the wake-up call is gentle or harsh, all of Advent is meant to bring some discomfort. It is meant to disrupt our drowsiness and move us out of our cozy resting places so that we don’t miss the ways God is breaking into our world.

Advent’s disruptive scriptures may not be what we want in December, but they are what we need to experience the good news of Jesus.

Advent wakes us up so that we can stand in wide-eyed wonder as hope is born at Christmas. It opens our eyes to see how God continues to come to us in unexpected, mysterious ways. It rouses us to attention, action and hope so that we can participate in God’s subversive work of making all things new.

Awake, awake says God to you today. See what God is doing for you, for our world.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Christ the King Sunday Service, November 24, 2019

Last Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Note: Today’s service included Pastor Amy’s reflections, scripture readings, hymns, and Sunday School and Youth Forum students bringing pieces of cloth in the liturgical colors for placement on the altar. Hymn titles, scripture references, and the complete Order of Worship are in today’s bulletin found here:

https://www.goodshepherddecorah.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Sun11-24.pdf

Photos from today’s service are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/goodshepherddecorah/

Pastor Amy ...

Today we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, marking the end of the church year. Worship today is a journey through the liturgical year, the way the church marks time. Beginning with Advent and continuing through The Time after Pentecost, we will honor Christ the King – celebrating that the reign of God is love for us in all seasons and all times. We will be singing a lot today.

Advent

Reflection:

Happy New Year! The season of Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is the beginning of the church year. The color of Advent is blue – that clear, crisp blue that blankets the night sky just before the dawn. It’s a color that symbolizes expectant hope. Not just Mary, but the whole creation is pregnant with possibility. During the season of Advent, we look not only toward our celebration of Christ’s birth, but also toward that day when Christ will come again to fulfill God’s reign of peace and justice, light and life. Advent reminds us that even while we wait with hope, Immanuel is already here making all things new.

Reading from Isaiah, Chapter 40:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be

revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”  

Christmas

Reflection:

The season of Christmas begins with the celebration of the birth of Jesus and continues for 12 days, ending on January 6. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in the baby Jesus. God extends care and com- passion for all the earth in a new way. Heaven comes to earth. God’s word, God’s love, takes on flesh and bone. A baby is born, bringing light and life to all – symbolized by the white and gold that announces the Christmas season. His name is Immanuel, God with us.

Reading from John, Chapter 1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the be- ginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Epiphany and The Time after Epiphany

Reflection:

In Christ, light broke through into our weary world, shining the brightness of God into all brokenness and pain, into every anxious and hopeless place.

At Epiphany, we remember how the light of Christ breaks into our lives, transforms us into the people God intends for us to be, and enlightens all the world. We remember wise men who traveled far upon seeing this light. White and gold shine that light for us in our worship space. The Time after Epiphany lasts until Ash Wednesday. The color of that time is green, as we focus on the growing mission of Jesus.

Reading from Isaiah, Chapter 60:

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms. Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.

Lent

Reflection:

Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday, marks the 40 days before Easter. The 40 days of repentance, reflection, and renewal that we experience during Lent mirror other biblical accounts of 40 – the 40 years the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness and the 40 days of temptation Jesus endured after his baptism.

In the Gospel of Luke we hear about these days when we’re told that “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, ²where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.” 

During Lent we pray to turn from sin and turn toward God. The color of Lent, symbolizing repentance, is purple. Throughout the 40 days, we are invited to carry out the disciplines of Lent – fasting, prayer, and works of love. In this spirit, we now lift our prayers to God for the church, the world, and all in need; we fast from pride and resentment by sharing the peace with our neighbors; and we give our offerings to join God’s work of loving and healing the world.

HOLY WEEK – EASTER

Pastor Amy:

During the time of communion each week, we remember Christ’s betrayal, death and resurrection. In communion, Christ is made known to us as he was made known to two disciples on the day of Jesus’ resurrection.

That story is told in Luke 24:

13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ ¹⁹He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²²Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.  ²⁴Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ ²⁵Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. 28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. ³²They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ ³³That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ ³⁵Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Beloved, Christ is made known to you today in the breaking of the bread. Every Sunday is a “little Easter,” a day of resurrection, when the church gathers to proclaim that Christ is risen and to meet Christ again as he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to us.

Day of Pentecost and The Time after Pentecost

Reflection:

Pentecost is the 50^th day of Easter, a day when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. It’s a grand culmination of a joyous celebration. The color of Pentecost day, symbolizing the fire of the Holy Spirit, is red. The Holy Spirit, given on that day so long ago, continues to ignite hearts and in- spire lives. In baptism, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. We are freed from fear to live lives of loving service, empowered by the Spirit. Martin Luther wrote that the “Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ.” We are in good hands!

The Time after Pentecost continues through the rest of the church year. It’s sometimes called ordinary time, helping us recognize the beauty in the ordinary. It’s the time in which we spend most of our days. And the gift of the long, green Time after Pentecost (green symbolizing growth in faith) is that it invites us to see God in the midst of our daily lives, in the midst of ordinary routine, in the midst of the mundane … God is there. God is here.

Reading from Acts, Chapter 2:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Christ the King

Reflection:

The church year ends with our celebration of Christ the King, in all seasons and in all times. As God’s people, we rejoice in the gift of love and the promise of life given by God for us. We leave here today knowing that next week we return in joyful expectation, to begin a new year. As we go, receive this blessing from Colossians, one of the assigned readings for Christ the King Sunday.

Blessing (Colossians 1: 11-20)

¹¹May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from Christ’s glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. ¹³He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.