June 26, 2022 – Dedication of Stained Glass Windows                      Text:  2 Chronicles 29:3-11

Dear Friends in Christ,

    We all know what it is like to plan.  On our recent vacation we had to make plans – after all that is what vacations are all about.  Monday of this week went like this.  Up early.  Pack.  Clean the room.  Check out.  Get out into Denver traffic.  Stop for breakfast.  Gas the rental car.  Return the rental car.  Take shuttle to airport.  Weigh, tag and drop off bags.  Go through TSA line.  Then find our departure gate.  In Lueck family vacation history nothing has gone as smoothly as this endeavor.  We were at our gate 2 ½ hours before our departure.  We planned and everything worked.

    Today we have dedicated the stained-glass windows to God’s glory.  They beautify our sanctuary.  They all started with a plan many years ago.  Like the Israelites in the wilderness, it took many years to get to the Promised Land.  In the design for the church, architect and member Don Gronert, had the upper windows shaped like church windows.  The first monies given for the project were in 2005.  Today is a day of blessing.

    That is what Good Shepherd Lutheran is – a blessing.  We have come here again today to worship in the Lord’s House.  That has always been the focus since Good Shepherd began as a mission in the 1990’s.  We congregate together to confess our sins, witness the Lord’s Absolution, meditate on His Word, sing His praises, hear the Word preached, lift our prayers, partake of Christ’s body and blood and receive His blessing for the week ahead.  We are . . .

“THE CONGREGATION THAT WORSHIPS”

    Our worship life ties us in to the Christians of all time.  Not a lot has changed since Old Testament worship and that is a beautiful thing.  Now we know that they had their ups and downs.  Their good kings and their bad kings.  Shortly before our text begins the King was Ahaz.  He shut the doors to the Lord’s temple, and he set up altars on the street corners of Jerusalem.  He encouraged the people to burn incense to other gods.  This all provoked the Lord God to anger.  Ahaz then dies.

    In steps Hezekiah.  Twenty-five years old and verse 2 says, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.”  What did he do that was right in the eyes of the Lord?  The first thing was he opened the doors of the temple and repaired them.  Do you see the key here?  The people need to return to worship.  With no worship there is no faith.  The people before had been unfaithful and did what is evil in the sight of the Lord.  They had forsaken the Lord, turned their faces from the place of worship and turned their backs on what the Lord wanted.

    It is still the same in our time.  If we forsake worship life, if we don’t allow our face in the Lord’s House, if we turn our back on God’s Word and Sacrament then God has every right to bring His wrath upon us.  What if God turned his back on us?  Is there a worse feeling?

    Hezekiah was led by the Lord to repent of all the people had done.  “Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, in order that his fierce anger may turn away from us.  My sons, do not now be negligent, for the Lord has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him and to be his ministers and make offerings to him.” (v. 10-11)

    The covenants made in the Old Testament were always directed toward the Lord.  Hezekiah knew they could only make a fresh start if they acknowledged their sinfulness and were forgiven.  Then the true worship could begin.

    The same can be said of us.  If we have negligent in our worship, if we have not always followed the Lord’s Word, then we admit that and receive a covenant ourselves.  What is that?  It is the covenant promise that God made to us that he would send His Son into the world to die for us.  He would send his Son into the world to rise for us.  He would send His Son into the world to forgive us and cleanse us from our awful sin so that we can enter and leave this place of worship knowing that we are a redeemed child of God.  

    You see this depicted in our windows.  Christ’s birth – born for us so that man may not die.  Baptized for us – Christ’s baptism is our baptism, what a wonderful gift it is.  Christ’s giving us his body and blood – sacrificed and shed for you so that you know His presence in your daily life.  Christ rising from the dead for us – through Jesus we have conquered death and sin and Satan.  Because He lives – we live!  May these windows reflect what we already know.   They are visual reminder of God’s great love for us.  One day you may be sitting in worship, feeling down about a life event, struggling with a sin, and you take a look up and you see with the eyes what the Lord has done for you.  It calms your heart.  It lifts a burden.  It confirms your faith and why you come to His house each week.  Love, mercy, grace all for you.

    Unlike our Monday trip, this plan took years.  The life of a congregation can be like that.  Even when we were getting closer, a worldwide sickness put on the brakes.  The Lord is faithful.  This allowed us to time to have all of the funds to pay for the windows.  What a gracious God we have.  His timing is not our timing. 

    The Psalmist wrote, “Better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere.”  We can all say “amen” to that because we are . . . The Congregation That Worships.

                                            Amen.             

June 12, 2022 – Trinity Sunday                                      Text:  John 8:48-59

Dear Friends in Christ,

    Science fiction is a genre that is quite popular.  It has been pointed out by Orson Scott Card, a science fiction writer himself, that most of the heroes in the books and movies are mostly individuals, out doing their thing by themselves.  They seldom have family or friends.  There is no spouse or children, parent or childhood buddy.  

    Something we knew before the pandemic has know become a mini-crisis in our world.  Men and women are not meant to be alone and isolated.  It has especially affected the older and younger generations.  The science fiction hero is to be the rugged individual but what is seen on the big screen only goes so far.

    This Trinity Sunday morning let’s look in on the dialogue between Jesus and the unbelieving Jews.  It will help us see . . .

“THE TRINITY OF GOD MAKES US ‘WE’ NOT ‘ME’ WITH HIM”

    We love the me generation and being our own person.  Believe me, we all talk like this quite often.  Look at marriage today.  Sixty years ago, half of 21-year-olds were married.  Three years ago that percentage was down to 8%.  Today even lower.

    Or take the words we use like sheeple.  We blend people and sheep for the definition of a docile person just going with the flow.  The Washington Post wrote, “The cancel culture is often stoked by sheeples with no interest in drilling down to the truths.”  How true.  Look at the mob mentality in our age.  People follow blindly without knowing what they are following.

    We is better than Me.  English writer John Donne wrote the famous poem with these lines:  “No man is an island…every man is a piece of the continent…Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”  When one man dies, is reminds all of us that mankind is dying.  “The wages of sin is death.” (Rom. 6:23)

    God is not a Me.  Our Holy Lord is not about sinful individualism.  He is not disconnected from us even though we speak of God as Him, He, The One.  We think this way and then we get to Trinity Sunday and like a three-leaf clover we squish our one God into Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  What did our Lord do in the Garden of Eden?  He created humanity male and female.  One, yet two.  He did the same in marriage, the two become one. (Gen. 2:24)   God knew that it was not good for man to be alone.  He had to have someone to fight with over the remote!

    God is a We.  The Father begets a Son through whom comes the Spirit.  The Jews could not grasp this concept because they couldn’t let go of their ideas about God.  How could Jesus know the Father?  It didn’t make sense to them.  They heard blasphemy when Jesus said, “I am.”  In a mysterious wonder, our Lord is in fact three persons in one divine substance.  In Jesus, we see God for who He is, just as Abraham got to witness during his time.

    Abraham believed, because he believed in what God saying.  Think of the things in his life where he had to trust God.  Being a father as a senior citizen.  Rescuing Lot.  Having to watch the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Asking to sacrifice his son Isaac.  The promise God made him about his descendants.  Abraham was no island.  He was a We with God.  The Lord led his life and Abraham followed.

    The devil would like us disconnected, kept apart.  He wants us to be believe that to be alone is to be like God.  He whispers to us that we can do what we want, it is not affecting anyone else.  We have personal choice and freedom, and you can’t tell me any different.

    Jesus wants us together as He and the Father and Holy Spirit are together.  Verse 55, “But you have not known him.  I know him.  If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word.”  God sent Jesus into the world to forgive us.  He takes our “I am an island” and “my choice” and “you can’t tell what to do” and He lays it on a cross so that you and I can be free.  The Holy Spirit breathes out into us the Christian life that we lead.  By the power of the Spirit, we keep the Father’s Word, Jesus, in us.  This is what it means to have everlasting life and “if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.”  We may try to live our aloneness but the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit pierce our hearts, enliven our faith and make us One with them.

    Here is how it works.  I like my alone time.  More and more as the world gets rougher and rougher to live in.  But the Lord says, “Lueck, I need your witness.”  So I go out in public to a ball game, a public trolley in Savannah, the grocery store.  I am placed into situations where God’s name is used in vain or other profanities used.  I am compelled to speak up.  The reaction is usually not positive.  Here is the interesting part.  Over the years not one other person has said anything.  I feel like an island, but I’m not because I am doing what my Lord and Savior wants me to do.  The Lord uses me to help change a corner of the world.  I don’t speak for myself, I speak for We, my kids and grandkids.  I speak for our faith.  I speak for Jesus.

    What about you?  Is it going to be Me or We.  The Lord must change the hearts and the behavior.  The Trinity of God is a unity.  They do not stand alone.  We honor them by keeping their Word.  Abraham knew God not as a ‘He’ but as a ‘We.’  Now we do as well, through the Word of our Lord Jesus Christ.

                    Amen.               

June 5, 2022                                              Text:  Genesis 11:1-9

Dear Friends in Christ,

    In watching a recent episode of American Built, they focused on the Willis Tower in Chicago one the tallest buildings in the world.  When the Sears Corporation had it built in the early 1970’s it was to function as their corporate office.  The other motivation in play was that Chicago wanted the tallest building in the world.  Something that had been around since the Great Pyramid was built in Egypt.  Man is always trying to outdo each other.  It is so obsessive and competitive that there is an organization, The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, that has become the official referee.

    Today in our text there are people who want to make a name for themselves.  They want to be known over all the earth.  They are all speaking the same language.  What are they saying?  They want to live apart from God.  Man cannot survive this way.  The Lord will make this clear by what He says.  Let’s hear it together . . . 

“NOW YOU ARE TALKING MY LANGUAGE”

    At this time in history all of mankind is descended from Noah.  Remember, the ark builder?  Because they were all related, they all spoke the same language.  Just because they had this in common did not mean they had total unity.  They were still out for each other.  This happens when we fail to communicate with our Creator.  When we are not communicating with God, then we are not able to communicate with each other.

    Look at our communication in the United States.  We speak English, the universal language of the world.  Go anywhere, which I did on the internet this week, and they have signs in English.  We may have the same language but are we understanding one another?  When gas hits five dollars a gallon and energy prices are spiking, and we can’t hire enough workers to produce goods and services even when we have let millions of new people into our country there is a communication breakdown.  People babel on about solutions but they are all speaking a different language. 

    When some see a beating heart as not a child, we are speaking a different language.  When some see marriage as beyond a man and a woman, we are speaking a different language.  When some are comfortable with anarchy and chaos, we are speaking a different language.  But at the root of all this miscommunication is men and women who want the power of God.  

    That is what happened in Shinar.  Look at their language in verse 4.  “Let us build ourselves…let us make a name for ourselves.”  They have forgotten the original “let us” moment of Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  This was the Holy Trinity speaking.  Nothing can be made apart from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Now we are starting to hear some language we can get behind.

    What motivated the Lord to intervene?  The key here is in verse 6, “this is only the beginning of what they will do.  And nothing they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”  Man is a conceited mess.  If the human race remained united in self-interested pride, there would be no limit to people’s rebellion against God.

    The Lord intervenes in the affairs of man.  He must.  His divine power altered their though processes, making it impossible to communicate and trust one another.  The tower was to reach the heavens, but the all-knowing, all-powerful God came all the way down to inspect this tiny structure of man.  The early Christians understood this verse to refer to the preincarnate Jesus.  Now You Are Talking My Language.

    The Son of God is the Word made flesh.  The Word of God in the flesh confuses the word of man.  Man always talks big, always makes plans apart from God but God’s Word is always the final answer.  

    Here we are in society, in families, in schools, in jobs, in churches.  We all speak the same, except for an accent or variation here and there.  Yet, look at all the misunderstandings we encounter.  Husband and wife.  Child and parent.  Teacher and student.  Boss and employee.  Communication breakdowns hurt and they can linger, and they can tear apart relationships.  

    God comes into this world of ours every day.  In the person of Jesus Christ, we have a Savior who spoke a language that even his 12 closest buddies didn’t always understand.  But they would.  They would see Him die.  They would see Him rise from the dead.  They would see Him ascend to heaven.  They would receive His forgiveness and share in his glory.  On Pentecost they would be given power from on high.  They would need this strength when people didn’t understand their salvation message.

    You and I have what they had.  The Lord speaks to us in language easy to understand.  Water and Word.  Bread and wine and Word.  He answers our prayers and forgives our misunderstandings with others.  His language is our language.  In a world of confusing language, He calms the troubled heart.  In a society of profane language, He lets our light shine with the words we use.  He wraps us in His arms and says, “I love you and will use your witness.”

    Now you are talking through Me.  Thank you Lord.

                                    Amen.