“Caught in the Net of Jesus” (Luke 5:1-11)
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
When you go out in your boat to go fishing, you bring along a rod and a reel. On the end of the line is a big hook on which you place some tasty morsel that the fish will bite into. You feel a tug on the end of your line and set the hook in the fish’s mouth by quickly pulling it toward you. Now the fight begins. It’s just you and that 40-pound King Salmon as he tries to swim away and you try to reel him in. Once you pull him into the boat, you bop him on the head to keep him from flopping around and jumping back into the water. Back at the dock, you clean him up, ready to be taken home and put on the grill.
So maybe it strikes you as a little odd when you hear Jesus telling his disciples that they will be fishers of men. Are we supposed to have some kind of hook with which to reel people into the church? Are we supposed to put out some bait that might attract people? I can think of all kinds of things that would draw people here. But would that bait keep people here? How long would they stay? Once they tire of the bait we are offering, they might very well look for other interesting and exciting and tasty bait somewhere else on the other side of the lake. And is the bait we offer truly spiritually nourishing? After all, what do you do with fish when they are hooked? You kill them and eat them. Sometimes, as churches try to draw people in, the bait offered to them is not neutral … it could be spiritually deadly.
Caught in the Net of Sin
But fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, or the lake of Genessaret as St. Luke calls it, didn’t use rods and reels and hooks and bait. They used nets, just as they do there to this day. There was no bait involved. The nets were simply cast out into the water, enveloped the fish that were there, and drawn into the boat.
In our Gospel lesson today, Simon Peter and his business partners had worked all night long and hadn’t caught a single fish. The fish just weren’t in the places where the crews were dropping their nets. So after an unfruitful night, they headed back to the shore to clean their nets and get ready for their next outing.
With the crowd pressing around Jesus, he got into Simon Peter’s boat and asked him to put out a little from the land so he could preach from the boat. After his sermon was over, Jesus told Peter to take his boat out into the deep water and put his nets down for a catch.
Peter replied to Jesus in a tone of half-belief. “Master,” he called Jesus, “we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” You can just imagine Peter thinking, “Master, you’re a carpenter. You make tables and chairs. Stick to that, would you. I’ve been fishing all my life out here. I’m a professional. Please don’t tell me how to do my job.” Nevertheless, Peter and the others let down the nets. Did they do it just to humor Jesus? Or was there a part of them that heard the implied promise in Christ’s words, “Let down your nets for a catch” … “Really. I mean it, guys. The fish are there. I put them there.” Sure enough, they pulled in such a catch that it took two boats to hold all the fish...and even then they began to sink.
Half-belief is really unbelief. Peter recognized this and fell down at Jesus’ feet. He confessed that he himself was caught in a net … the net of sin. Notice how his address of Jesus changed … from Master to Lord. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” He now knew he was in the presence of God and didn’t deserve to be there. What will it take for us to know this and respond like Peter? Instead, we often come to church with such nonchalance. Do we really enter here without taking into account that we do not deserve to be in God’s presence because of
the sinful net in which we are entangled.
Likewise, in his vision in the temple, Isaiah also was in the presence of God. In fact, it was the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the same person before whom Peter knelt in the boat. St. John makes that clear in chapter 12 verse 41 of his Gospel: “He [that is, Isaiah] saw Jesus’ glory and spoke of him.” What will it take for us to reply like Isaiah, “Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”? We are in the presence of God in Word and Sacrament, yet we often confess our sins half-heartedly. We repeat the words of confession in our liturgy but don’t stop to think about what we are saying. We don’t honestly believe that the things we do or think or say are very serious.
What will it take for us to realize that our boat is sinking, and we have no life preservers on board? The author of Ecclesiastes said, “Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.” (Ecc. 9:12) No one knows the hour of their death, and apart from turning to Christ in repentant trust, the net of sin will drag us down to eternal death.
Caught in the Net of Forgiveness and Love
But the Creator of all that swims in the sea is a better fisherman than Peter realizes. The net that Jesus casts out is different. Normally, fish are caught in nets to be killed and eaten. But the net that Jesus uses catches people and delivers them from fear and unbelief to a life of faith and trust and hope. With Peter kneeling before him in the boat, crying out “Depart from me … O Lord,” and with the water splashing over the sides of the boat because of the large catch of fish, Jesus’ one concern was not the sinking boat. It was absolving Peter. And he did so with these words, “Do not be afraid.” “Don’t be afraid, Peter. You are indeed in the very presence of the Holy God. And I am not about to depart from you. I am going to stay right with you.” And when we confess our sins before the Lord, he says a similar thing to us, “Don’t be afraid. You are indeed in the very presence of the Holy God. But I am not about to depart from you. In fact, I have gone to the cross for you, where I paid the price for your unbelief, for your doubts, for the ways in which you don’t take your sins seriously. The debt you owe to God is paid in full with the price of my shed blood. You are forgiven. And now, you are no longer caught in the net of sin. You are caught in the net of my love. And in this net, I envelop you with grace and mercy and pull you out of the depths of your sin into a new life of faith and trust and hope in me.”
“Do not be afraid,” Jesus said. “From now on you will be catching men.” From that point on, Simon Peter, James, and John “left everything and followed him.” The forgiving Word of Jesus creates faith and gives a new initiative and a changed perspective. It gives a new initiative to leave everything behind and follow Jesus. It gives a changed perspective on the things of this life. Family, work, and material goods are all good things and are gifts from God. But everything now takes second place to Jesus. Not everyone is called to literally leave everything behind. But in our hearts, everything else now fades in comparison to the importance of being a follower of Jesus … and following Jesus begins right here, where we hear his Word and eat and drink his body and blood for strength for our journey.
The forgiving Word of Jesus also gives us a new vocation. “From now on you will be catching men.” It seems that up to this point, the disciples had an occasional acquaintance with Jesus. They had heard him teach from time to time. But now, they were called into a different kind of relationship with him. Their “seminary training” had begun in earnest. Following Jesus became a full-time vocation, listening to him, learning from him, and preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God. When you are baptized, you enter into that full-time vocation of being one of Jesus’ full-time followers, no matter what your station in life. He washes you clean of all your sin. His Word of Life gives you a new initiative and a changed perspective. Caught in the net of Jesus’ love, His Church goes out into the world to catch people in that same net by casting out the Good News of Jesus and drawing people into a new life … a life of faith and trust, a life free from guilt, a life free from the fear of death, a life full of the promise of eternity.
Casting out the net of the Gospel, we don’t always get a big catch, do we? Sometimes the net is empty. Sometimes there’s only one or two fish. But that doesn’t mean we pull our boats into shore. With faith in the power of Christ’s Word, we keep on shoving off into the deep water and responding to our Lord, “At your word I will let down the net.”
Amen.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (February 7, 2010)
Friday, February 5, 2010
A hymn for post #666
Text: Jacob Fabrizius, 1593-1564; translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1827-78, alt.
Out of the Mouths of Babes #15
I don't know where or why or how my daughter thinks up this stuff, but no one can deny that she has an active imagination. Here's what I heard as we were driving to preschool this morning:
Sunday, January 31, 2010
"The ways of destroying the church"
Since we've been studying 1 Corinthians in our Sunday morning Bible class, I may have to pick up a copy of the book from which this quote is taken. Thanks to Paul McCain for posting this at his blog Cyberbrethren.
The ways of destroying the church are many and colorful. Raw factionalism will do it. Rank heresy will do it. Taking your eyes off the cross and letting other, more peripheral matters dominate the agenda will do it-admittedly more slowly than frank heresy, but just as effectively over the long haul. Building the church with superficial ‘conversions’ and wonderful programs that rarely bring people into a deepening knowledge of the living God will do it. Entertaining people to death but never fostering the beauty of holiness or the centrality of self-crucifying love will build an assembling of religious people, but it will destroy the church of the living God. Gossip, prayerlessness, bitterness, sustained biblical illiteracy, self-promotion, materialism-all of these things, and many more, can destroy a church. And to do so is dangerous: ‘If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple (1 Cor. 3:17).” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
- D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 83-84.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (January 31, 2010)
“Christ’s Word has Authority and Power” (Luke 4:31-44)
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
As a parent, it’s important to learn how to speak authoritatively. If you are trying to stop your three-year old from picking up a sharp knife on the counter, you probably don’t want to say (in a mousy tone of voice), “Honey, don’t do that, okay? You might hurt yourself.” Instead, you are going to want to muster up the strongest, loudest voice possible, declaring a loud, “STOP!” You want to speak and exercise your authority in order to keep your child from harm.
Likewise, teachers are taught something which involves learning how to speak with authority. When you give your students instructions, such as “Take out your textbooks and turn to page 23,” don’t tack on the word, “Okay?” … like I demonstrated with the knife-and-three-year-old incident. When you end every instruction with the word, “Okay?,” it implies that the students have the option to not take out their textbooks or do whatever you have told them to do. You are not making a request. You are instructing them to do something. Say it like you mean it: “Take out your textbooks and turn to page 23.” Period. As a parent I try to remember this little piece of advice, too. When I’m telling my children to do something, I’m not looking for their agreement. I expect them to do it right away. They are the ones whom I expect to say, “Okay, dad.” Now, talk to me after church and I’ll tell you how well that’s going for me.
In today’s Gospel reading, we heard about the authoritative word of Jesus. Prior to this, Jesus was in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth where he was invited to read from the Scriptures and explain what he had just read. If you were here last week, you remember what happened. The people didn’t react so well to his sermon. They ran Jesus out of town and just about threw him off a cliff. Now, here he is in the city of Capernaum on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Once again, he goes into the synagogue and teaches the people gathered there. St. Luke tells us that the people “were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority.” Jesus’ word was not authoritative because he didn’t attach the word “Okay” on the end. St. Mark gives us a clue as to why the people perceived authority in our Lord’s teaching. In Mark’s account of this event, he adds, “he taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.” (Mark 1:22) In other words, his teaching was unlike the teachers of the law. Their custom was to offer numerous quotes from rabbis who had gone before them in order to support their authority. This was apparently not the case with Jesus. He simply explained the text. Besides, what higher authority can you have than the Author himself?
The Author of Life confronted the Author of Rebellion there in Capernaum (as he did throughout his earthly ministry). The devil is chief of all the angels who rebelled against God not long after creation was finished. Taking the form of a serpent, he deceived Adam and Eve and tempted them to disobey God. In this way, sin came into the world. Remember, sin is not only disobedient actions. It is a destructive depravity. It is a corrupting condition. Every human being now carries a rebellious sinful nature. And all creation is affected by that sin, as St. Paul writes in Romans 8:22, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
Today’s text shows us sin’s powerful effects. The presence of both demons and disease has caused that groaning of which Paul writes.
Demon possession has been the subject of movies like the Exorcist in 1973 and The Exorcism of Emily Rose in 2005. Hollywood has sensationalized the whole topic of demon possession. But demons are real. The Bible makes that clear. They don’t just exist in nightmares or in World of Warcraft (a popular online role-playing game). Demons are evil spirits, those angels who followed Satan in his rebellion against God. Luke describes the demon in our text as “unclean,” as if a demon could be anything other than unclean. Calling this spirit unclean stresses the foul nature of demons, how they are responsible for all sorts of deceptive, disgusting, and destructive behaviors and attitudes. One thing to note, however, is that demons really don’t appear all that much in the Bible other than in the Gospels. It seems as though they kicked their activity into high gear during Jesus’ earthly ministry. After all, they knew who Jesus was. They called him “the Holy One of God” … “the Son of God.” So at the very moment the Messiah was present to inaugurate his kingdom, the devil led his enemy forces into battle to derail that kingdom. Do demons still operate today? Yes, they do, but it seems as though God hasn’t given the same wide berth as we read about in the Gospels. Nevertheless, don’t walk right into the devil’s territory. Don’t walk into that palm reader’s business just for fun. Don’t think that just because someone says that they hear from angels that they are good angels. If you dabble around in things like this, then you are giving the devil a wide berth to walk right into your life and wreak havoc, bringing disbelief and despair.
Disease is another piece of evidence that we live in a sin-broken world. God made the world perfect in the beginning. There were no such things as blazing fevers, diabetes, cancer, or H1N1, to name a few. It’s always a temptation when we are ill to ask, “What did I do to deserve this? Is God punishing me for some particular sin?” But that’s a question that has its origin in the pit of hell, because it leads to doubt and despair. People get sick and die because we live in a world that is damaged by sin and death. It’s evidence that there’s something wrong with the world, not that you have committed any particular sin. We’re all sinners and we’re all dying, even those of us with perfect blood pressure, perfect blood sugar, and whose bodies are in excellent physical shape. Jesus dealt with this when asked about two examples of fatal catastrophes that befell two different groups of people. (Luke 13:1-5) His answer? It wasn’t that the people who died were worse sinners than everyone else. But the warning given is that these events ought to lead us to repent of our sins, since we very well could have been in the shoes of those people who died and face a worse fate than a building falling down upon us.
Yes, sin has some very powerful effects. But it is nothing like the powerful Word of Jesus. Jesus speaks and destroys the devil’s kingdom. The prophet Jeremiah’s ministry was only a prelude to Jesus’ ministry, who was set over “nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” (Jer. 1:10) “The reason the Son of God appeared,” writes St. John, “was to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8) St. Peter says that Satan is like a “roaring lion.” (1 Pet. 5:8) But with his powerful Word, Jesus turns him into nothing more than a muzzled dog. With authority, Jesus says, “Be quiet!” Jesus rebukes the demon who had taken residence in the man in our text. The unclean spirit is silenced. He will not allow the demons to proclaim him, but wants the people to acclaim him on the basis of the works he does as the promised Messiah. Silenced, the demon takes one parting shot at the man, throwing him down to the ground before coming out of him. But in the end, the man was not harmed.
With Jesus and His powerful Word on your side, Satan cannot harm you. He is only a muzzled dog. He may bark and snarl at you. But he cannot harm you. God’s authoritative Word and Name were placed upon you in Baptism. You were brought out of the devil’s realm of unbelief and confusion into God’s realm of faith and peace. The Holy Spirit took up residence in you, so you need have no fear of any unclean spirits taking up residence in you. Your Lord Jesus is a mighty fortress for you. Christ is a “fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls” which the devil cannot break down. (Jer. 1:18) To be sure, Satan “will fight against you.” But resting in Christ’s grace and standing in his strength, he “will not prevail against you.” (Jer. 1:19)
Likewise, Jesus speaks and diseases are healed. Did you notice how Jesus “rebuked” the fever in Simon’s mother-in-law in the same way as he “rebuked” the demon? He rebukes both because they are both evidence of the corruption of our world through sin. And just as demons have to flee at Christ’s word, so does disease.
Some might say that the miraculous doesn’t happen any longer. I would never want to limit God in that way. He does as he pleases. There are people who have had certain conditions disappear which the doctors can’t explain. Miracles? Probably. We can’t say for sure unless we have a clear word from the Lord. One thing I do know. When Jesus heals, it is instantaneous and complete. Simon’s mother-in-law immediately got up and was able to wait on everyone. Also, when Jesus heals, it’s without all the “huffing and puffing” that you see in some circles. But let’s not forget the healing that Jesus does the vast majority of times. Jesus heals today through doctors and nurses and medicine and relief workers today. It is still the powerful Word of Jesus that works behind the scenes and under the hands of those who work in the healing arts in order to bring wholeness and healing to those who are hurting and hospitalized. There was another time when Jesus was asked about someone with a debilitating condition. The disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:2-3) Jesus proceeded to heal the man in order to display the work of God in his life.
Jesus speaks his authoritative, powerful Word. Demons flee. Disease takes flight. Sins are forgiven. But the works of God don’t always appear miraculous. Words, water, bread and wine seem pretty common. But the Author of Life has attached his authoritative Word to them. He writes you into his story and makes you a part of his life, death, and resurrection and uses earthly things to deliver heavenly gifts to you. And the works of God were certainly on display in Haiti as help and healing flowed in the name of Christ through the tender touch of aid workers following the recent tragic earthquake. But there was still death there. A lot of it. Where is the healing in that, you may ask? Where is God in all of that? For those Christians who died there, and for all Christians who have died anywhere, they have still been healed. They are with the Lord and await the coming resurrection of all flesh, where bodies and hearts and souls and minds once diseased and distraught will be made whole for eternity.
Amen.
Friday, January 29, 2010
This is, like, hilarious, and so true...ya know?
And I hope my sermons are filled with conviction and are not "aggressively inarticulate" (HT: Paul McCain).
Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Blogging about the relief efforts in Haiti
Read the latest posts as of today on the blogs or sites linked below for some personal perspectives on the relief efforts in Haiti, specifically the work of teams put together and sent by LCMS World Relief and Human Care.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany (January 24, 2010)
“Today this Scripture Has Been Fulfilled” (Luke 4:16-30)
It’s possible to become so familiar with something that you begin to take it for granted. Take the Bible, for example. We have heard the familiar stories so often that it’s easy to hear or read them without really taking time to contemplate them and meditate upon the meaning of the words. It is God’s Word, after all. Perhaps we should take more time with those words and mull them over … to do as the old collect says regarding the Holy Scriptures: to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.”
It was Jesus’ custom to go to the synagogue every Sabbath day. There, he would hear the Scriptures read. The congregation would chant psalms together. A rabbi would sit down and expound upon one of the Scripture readings to the people gathered there. And Jesus would listen attentively … the Word made Flesh meditating upon his Heavenly Father’s inspired Word from what we now call the Old Testament. Jesus was certainly familiar with the Bible. He had a hand in authoring it as True God. But as True Man, he never became bored with it. It was never so familiar to him that he ever said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard all that before. Let’s go on to something else.” That’s a familiar attitude that you and I battle all the time.
Familiar
Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that we are familiar with something. However, when it comes right down to it, we’ve never really gotten to know our subject matter all that much. This type of familiarity only looks upon externals.
That was part of the problem with the people of Nazareth. They thought they knew who Jesus was. The hometown boy, the son of Joseph and Mary, come home to visit his family. “It’s so nice to see him again.” “Look how he’s all grown up.” Jesus was invited to read the Scriptures in the synagogue service. He reads a passage from Isaiah 61 which foretells the coming of the Messiah and describes his coming kingdom. Like the year of Jubilee in the old covenant – where slaves were released, property was returned to its original owners, and debts were forgiven – under the Messiah’s rule “the year of the Lord’s favor” has arrived. The poor would receive good news, captives liberty, the blind would see again, and those who are oppressed would find relief and refreshment. And then, surprisingly, Jesus declares, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, “The kingdom of the Messiah is here and it is found in me.” At first, the people are mildly pleased with the sermon of their hometown boy. “All spoke well of him.” “It really was a nice sermon, wasn’t it?” you can just hear them say. But all they could see were the externals. All they could see was a man standing before them. Their hardness of heart prevented them from recognizing that the Divine Messiah was right before their eyes. They were spiritually blinded. They wanted more proof of this incredible claim coming from the mouth of Jesus. They wanted to see some miracles like they heard Jesus did over in Capernaum a few miles down the road.
And you know what else familiarity breeds. Contempt. The people scorned Jesus and his words. And so Jesus explained that his message was not just for them. It was not just for an elite group of people favored because of their bloodline. His message of salvation would include the Gentiles. Jesus holds Elijah and Elisha up as examples of prophets who, like him, were rejected by their own people and who took their mission to two individuals who were outside the promises of the old covenant … the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian. Jesus implies here that Gentiles, too, were to be included in God’s plan of salvation.
And then what happened? They excommunicated Jesus. Can you imagine that? Excommunicating the Son of God? But that’s what they did. They kicked Jesus out of church! Their contempt turned to rage, and they dragged him out of the synagogue and tried to kill him by throwing him off a cliff. But it was not our Lord’s time to die. And so, he was able to pass through their midst and escape harm until a later time when a cliff named Calvary would figure in his death.
Like the people of Nazareth, you and I often close our ears to what God’s Word has to say to us. It points out our sin. It calls us to repentance. It calls us to meet the needs of those around us who are both familiar and unfamiliar. It reveals our spiritual poverty, our captivity to sin and death, our spiritual blindness and brokenness. We deserve to be crushed under the weight of God’s wrath because of the ways in which we have held God’s Word in contempt. It’s no different than if we had been the ones throwing Jesus out, taking him to the outskirts of town and attempting to throw him off a cliff. After all, it was indeed our sins that sent him to the cross.
Fulfilled
But what Jesus said to the Nazarenes is true for us today, too. “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The Messiah is present through his Word to bring forgiveness and restoration. Jesus became poor for us. Jesus allowed himself to be taken captive for us, arrested and put on trial and sentenced to death on a cross. There Jesus was oppressed for us by the weight of the world’s sin and the weight of God’s wrath at the cross. He was broken, bruised, and crushed for us and for our sin, as Isaiah says elsewhere (chapter 53, to be exact), “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” (Is. 53:5)
“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” As you hear these words and receive them in faith, Jesus gives what he says. This is “the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is the year of Jubilee. Not just 2010, but every moment following the death and resurrection of Jesus is “the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus makes you rich as an inheritor of heaven. Jesus releases you from the bonds of death, because in your Baptism you have been given the guarantee of your own resurrection on the Last Day. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit upon you to open your eyes of faith so you can recognize Christ as True God and True Man and trust in him as your Savior. Through Christ’s death on the cross, Jesus releases you from the sin and guilt that oppress you.
Now, instead of holding Jesus and his Word in contempt, we can give him honor and glory in our midst. We can thank and praise him for all that he has done for us. We can return to him a small measure of the great love he has for us. We can trust that his Words are true, that they give what they say they give: forgiveness, life, and salvation.
“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” It’s a miracle every time we hear and believe God’s Word. We can’t do it on our own. St. Paul says in Romans 10:17, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” The Good News enters our ears and goes right to our souls. It restores our spiritual sight which can now look beyond the familiar, external shell of things. Spoken words are no longer just sound vibrations communicating ideas but are words which the Spirit uses to create faith and give eternal life. Water is no longer just a bath, but with God’s Word of promise it is a “life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit.” (Small Catechism, Baptism, Third Part: “How can water do such great things?”) Bread and wine are no longer an appetizer before lunch, but are “the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, instituted by Christ himself for us Christians to eat and drink.” (Small Catechism, Sacrament of the Altar: “What is the Sacrament of the Altar?”)
Familiarity breeds contempt, so goes the old saying. But the familiar Word of Jesus has been fulfilled in our hearing. It is familiar to us, but now, we can receive it with joy and thanksgiving, anticipating every opportunity to hear it and be blessed by it.
We are more than familiar to God. He knows everything there is to know about us. And yet, he still loves us and gave his Son for us. We are forgiven and reconciled to God in Christ. Now, we can view those familiar people around us in a different light. Now, we can seek to forgive and be reconciled with those whom we have held in contempt. We have been given new eyes which can look at those familiar people around us, no longer with contempt, but with compassion and concern.
Amen.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Another review of "A Little Book On Joy"
Click here to read another review of Matt Harrison's "A Little Book on Joy" (with my doodles inside!). This one's by Jenny Jordan at Cross-Focused Leadership.
Haiti Update from Emily Bartelheimer
Here's a follow up from a previous email received from Emily Bartelheimer regarding Pastor Daniel Paul and the orphanage in Ounaminthe.
Hello,
School will be canceled for one month; however, the orphans will still have classes, but not the other children in the community to attend school at the orphanage.
The road from Ouanaminthe to Port-au-Prince in impassable. As a result there are no public buses. Samuel, Pastor Daniel's brother-in-law, has no way of returning to Ouanaminthe and will stay with family near PAP until the roads improve.
Pastor went to work in the garden on Saturday. People cut down one of his trees in his garden to make charcoal. He was devastated. The price of charcoal has doubled in one week due to the rain and the earthquake. People have also stolen cassava and sweet potatoes from the orphanage garden. He harvested some of them and planted more. Food prices have already began to soar and people are desperate.
Some people were asking if specific people were alive. Here is an update:
-Rico and David, Pastor's brothers, are alive. However, like all Haitians in PAP, the economical situation is devastating. There is no food.
-Pastor Daniel's sister's cousin died.
-Nelson is alive.
-Danya is alive, but her father is still missing.
Emily
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Harrison on Haiti
A post entitled "Holding Steady in the Chaos" from Pastor Matt Harrison's Mercy Journeys blog:
Urgent patience is our mode now. It’s been a completely chaotically normal first three days after a horrific disaster. Seismic indicators registered the event. Silence from Port au Prince, then trickling info, third hand. Then by Wednesday night voices were arising who’d seen it first hand. Total devastation. People in the streets immediately after the event, looking, calling desperately into the rubble. Most hearing no reply. Reports of the airport closed, then open, then choked with traffic, then closed again. Reports of the port filling with ships, of hastily prepared relief cargo slipping into the ocean on the way, of other ports suitable and not. A sporadic message or two began coming from this cell phone or that within Haiti, but mostly busy signals – all one metaphor for an infrastructure unequal to the challenge in the best of circumstances.
The theological loons began. “Haiti made a pact with the devil.” “Something in its past.” I’m sorry, but I have little time for prognosticating, would be “prophets” who can’t get the basics of the Christian faith right (justification, Baptism, Lord’s Supper, a-millennialism). This event is just as much a judgment upon the Christian community in America for largely ignoring the screaming need in our own hemisphere. In God’s economy it is most often the righteous who suffer, and the evil that “prosper.”
In any case, we now begin down the path of tending to our brothers and sisters in Christ in Haiti, and as they are even now and have been from the moment of the earthquake, caring for their neighbors, we will come along side and increase their capacity to do so. And midst all the weakness and pain, the strength of the Lord will be made perfect in weakness.
Matt H.
Pastor Matt Harrison is Executive Director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Haiti Relief
As you well know if you have been watching the news, the people of Haiti are in dire need of help following a devastating earthquake. While there are many worthwhile relief agencies to support, please consider making a donation to our own LCMS World Relief and Human Care. Here is a video with Pastor Matt Harrison (Executive Director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care) discussing the issue.
Click here to go to the Disaster Response page of the website of LCMS World Relief and Human Care. There you will find links to articles about the situation in Haiti. At the bottom of each article, there is a "Give Now" button where you can donate, or simply click here to go directly to a form by which you can give directly to the efforts on behalf of Haiti.
