Messiah Lutheran Church: Pastors' BlogGuiding Your Walk with God

The scripture for this sermon is Acts 4:32-5:11.

Jesus is risen!  Alleluia! Now what? As unpopular as the answer might be today, scripture is pretty clear that the command is to go forth and build a church. By church, scripture isn’t referring to a building or a denomination.  They mean a community with a hierarchical structure, internal expectations and a guiding mission. All of which is unpopular because people today don’t seem to have a lot of trust in the church. The cover of Newsweek last week was a picture of Jesus with the headline that read, “Forget the Church, Just Follow Jesus”.  A hot viral video last year was a posting by a guy titled, “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus”. For many, the church represents a wrong turn in their relationship with God not the natural next step after encountering the risen Lord.  (more…)

In the nine years I have been at Messiah, one of the greatest gifts for me personally is to walk with people in their last days. It is an honor to be invited into this most private and vulnerable time. People are full of worry for their loved ones, regret at not seeing children or grandchildren grow up, questions come up about God and the bad cards they had been dealt, but also inspiring witnesses of trust and faith in the midst of their pain.  (more…)

I got to tell you about a movie that I saw this week. It ended with Miriam showing up at the wedding, dressed like a man, can you believe it?  Her ex husband who was there in full military uniform could not, but since his commanding officer Colonel Gary was the guy marrying his daughter Joann, he didn’t dare cause a scene.  All of this caused the Joann to start crying.  When the priest, Father Tim tried to calm her down, he tripped and fell and inadvertently grabbed at the bride’s best friend and maid of honor Jennifer, who was wearing a low, cut red number in honor of their high school prom, a very significant earlier scene in the movie. The priest grabbed the top of that dress and just pulled down trying to catch his balance and Jennifer was left completely naked at the front of the church. Everyone realized including Tim and Susan what all of us already knew from the boating scene in the middle of the movie that Jennifer was really Justin. What a movie! (more…)

The text for this sermon is Exodus 20:1-17, which contains the Ten Commandments.

Test.  Find a list of the Ten Commandments.  Read them carefully.  When you hear one that you have broken in the last few weeks, you can stop. 

What is going on here?  Why is there not one person among us with their hands raised?  What is that all about? The great church founder in the New Testament Paul himself at one point said that he was blameless under the law and he encouraged other Christians to strive to be blameless, too. Even though he preached we were freed from the law, he still thought that we should be following the law. Have we forgotten this as Christians? Does it matter if we are all saved by grace anyway and God promises to forgive us no matter what laws we break? (more…)

The scripture text for this sermon is Numbers 21:4-9.

So there were these slaves in Egypt, who had been enslaved for a couple of hundred years or so. They were the Israelites. The one and true God had a special heart for these slaves. Don’t ask me why, they looked like you and I, acted just as bad as you and I, nothing really special about them, but God thought they were special. God heard their cries in Egypt and decided to free them from slavery.

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When I was a kid I was a part of a street gang. We called ourselves the Jets. How sad is that? A tough group of suburban 8 year old thugs whose name came from a Broadway musical. Don’t mess with the dancing Jets of Temperance, Michigan. Anyway our leader’s name was Danny. Danny was charismatic and a little scary. (more…)

The biblical text for this sermon is Mark 9:2-9.

This is what every person of faith hopes for, to brush this close to heaven. Scholars take pains to explain the rich symbolism in the story, for example why Moses and Elijah meet Jesus and not David and Abraham, or what the whole booth thing is about that Peter wants to build. But, you don’t have to be a scholar to understand what happened. Three humans get this close to God, a breath away from heaven. This is a fascinating idea for all of us. I’ve got books on my shelf about near death experiences, following the light, that sort of stuff. We all want to know what heaven looks like, what God sounds like. The disciples hit the jackpot on the mountain that day.  (more…)

In the news in January was a story about Alan Guilbert, conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, stopping a performance because of the interruption of a ringing cell phone.  It was a quiet part of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and the cell phone ring tone was a Caribbean Marimba. The contrast by all accounts was very stark. The audience helped him locate the fifty something man in the front row that had the ringing cell phone in his pocket.  Only when confronted by the conductor, did he reach into his pocket and turn it off. The audience started shouting at the man, to leave and for Guilbert to take his tickets. The director using his microphone asked if it was off now. He nodded yes. Guilbert then apologized to the audience for the interruption. They rose to their feet clapping wildly. (more…)

Both inside and outside of the church the last 40 days of the year always feels like a bit of a party. Outside the church, we start with getting together with family over thanksgiving. We eat lots of food and watch football. Then the month in between we are getting ready for the next party. We look for the perfect gift for family and friends to make the next party great. When Christmas comes we share our gifts with one another, eat lots of food, and generally celebrate once again. Then to top it all off, we bring in the New Year with a party. Inside the church, Advent season is a time of waiting in excitement for the party to come. We build up to a crescendo on Christmas Eve with the celebration of Jesus birth. The place was packed with people, its decorated so nicely; we light candles and sing songs. For many people it is their favorite service of the year. It is a huge party.

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The text for this sermon is Luke 2:1-20.

When my kids were little, they were always so proud of their art work.  Ben would get an Origami book and spend hours folding and creating what he saw on the pages.  Nathan would spread out with his Lego sets and go off the reservation, combining the different objects from the prescribed “recipe”.  Abbey would knead and push on blue, green and yellow Play-doh concentrating on making what she was envisioning in her mind. (more…)

The text for this sermon is Luke 2:1-20.

Every month, Thadd or I lead the preschool children in chapel. We sing, pray, and tell a bible story. In December, of course I told the nativity bible story.  I stumbled on the part of the story where they put Jesus in a manger. These kids, even though they are 3, 4 and 5 know about the manger. They have been singing Away in a Manger, since they could talk. Yet, they hadn’t quite got what a manger was. This is Reynoldsburg. None of them are farmers; they haven’t seen animals eat out of mangers, feeding troughs or anything else. (more…)

When I grew up, there was an expected way that boys acted and it was different than the way girls acted. I learned this from my very traditional middle class suburban home.  My dad brought home the bacon and my mom fried it up, so to speak. She took care of the house and the kids while my dad worked. Dad had a few responsibilities around the house, the yard, garage and discipline. If we did something especially horrible during the day, my mom would put us in our room and tell us to stay there until dad got home.  This would give us hours to stew and wait. We knew that when dad would come through that door he would be mad that we had ruined his peaceful evening. (more…)

The text for this homily is Psalm 80.

God, come back!

Smile your blessing smile:

That will be our salvation.

Have you ever prayed a prayer like that?  My niece Kirsten surely did last week.  She is a school teacher in Toledo raising her 8 year old daughter.  She lives in a house my sister, her mom owns in an older neighborhood in Toledo.  My sister was just saying at Thanksgiving that she would like to get rid of the house before she retires.  She isn’t charging her daughter enough to make it worthwhile as a rental and for obvious reasons she doesn’t want to kick her out to make it a more profitable asset.  Kirsten doesn’t want to buy it, which kind of irritates my sister and there was an awkward silence when the subject got broached on Thanksgiving.  (more…)

The scandal at Penn State has got me thinking.  For those of you who do not pay attention to the news, the alleged crime is that a prominent assistant coach for 30 years at Penn State used a charity that he founded and the facilities and legitimacy of Penn State to systematically abuse young boys for at least the last thirteen years, both while he was a coach and in retirement. Further, in 1998 and 2002 the school was made known of these alleged crimes and failed to respond in a way that would have definitively stopped the actions of the assistant coach.  (more…)

The text for this sermon is Matthew 25:14-30.

What keeps us from taking risks? Maybe we should start with a different question, what makes most young people so risky?  My oldest son when he was in college took a photography class. He came home from Christmas with really cool pictures of an old railroad trestle in the mountains around Pittsburgh. Fall colors, sun setting, great shadows captured with white steel beams against a blue sky made for some really interesting photographs. As Paige and I admired them it started to occur to us, how did he get this picture underneath the bridge looking up into the sky, or this one on the middle of the bridge looking to the other valley, or this one seeming to look down past the iron framework to the tiny river hundreds of feet below? Like any good parent, we went from complimenting his skill to yelling at him about the obvious risks he took to get them.   What if a train had come across, what if you had slipped, what if… (more…)

Our little church on the hill in Reynoldsburg took quite a hit last year with the loss of some very special people.  There are nearly 200 years of membership represented in these eight candles. Peg Pfautsch died suddenly just a few weeks ago, still a shock for this congregation who worshipped with her days before she died. Peg started coming here when only Fritz Hall stood on this land.  Millie Peck, too started attending with her husband and two children in the sixties. Well into her 80’s, she worshipped every Sunday at 8 with us.  Husband and wife Jim and Dorothy Morris, both passed away this year.  They were active in our Senior Lunch Bunch, came to Messiah Night and Dorothy raised her voice in song for our Senior Saints.  Susan Wright had not been able to attend the last few years because of a chronic illness, but she too worshipped and served faithfully for years, raising her kids here, allowing us the honor of grieving with her when her son died and later celebrating the baptism of her grandchild.   Phyllis Moder died nearly a year ago but her encouragement and support of our worship life is still missed.  I am sure our Chancel Choir will be remembering her place beside them when they sing at 11.  We also grieve today with Florence Mbekem who lost her husband William, who we were never honored to meet.  And our hearts break with Don Searls and his wife Julie as they continue to grieve Andrea who died at way too young of an age, just as she was graduating from college and beginning a life of serve to those in need.    (more…)

The Pharisees and keepers of the law think they finally have Jesus where they want him. They have been arguing with him for quite a while now.  But now they are trying to get him to stumble.  They asked Jesus which one of the 613 laws was the most important.  There is no way Jesus can answer this question correctly.  There are all kinds of different laws about resting on the correct day, eating the right things, and when to do sacrifices.  It’s a no win situation.  This is the equivalent of your wife asking you if she looks good in that new dress.  If you say yes you look great…so you are saying that if I wasn’t wearing the dress I wouldn’t look good and if you tell her she doesn’t look good in the dress…look out because that wont end well.  This is a no win situation for Jesus.  But once again Jesus is ahead of the teachers of the law.  He responds that the greatest law is that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind and he threw in a second command as well, “You should love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus says that every commandment falls into line behind these two.

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The text for this sermon is Isaiah 45:1-7.

I want to look at the last verse of our Old Testament text this morning, Isaiah 45:7. This is God speaking through the prophet, I form light and create darkness, I will make weal and create woe. I the Lord do all these things.  I will make weal and create woe.  Weal is an Old English word that is related to our present day words well and wealth.  It is a noun that describes a content or prosperous state of being.  So weal is a good thing.  Through the prophet God is saying that I am the same God behind lives that are content and prosperous and lives that are full of woe, despair, chaos and difficulties. (more…)

Is Mitt Romney a Christian?

This question recently came up at a gathering of Republican political candidates at the Values Voters Summit.  Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas was called to introduce Governor Perry of Texas. In that introduction he indicated that candidate Mitt Romney was not a Christian because he was a Mormon. All traditional Christian denominations recognize that Mormonism is a cult, Pastor Jeffress later said in an interview.  Romney was a moral man the pastor said, but he would only vote for someone who had given their life to Jesus.  Governor Perry later said he did not agree that Mormonism is a cult. (more…)