July 3, 2022                                      Text:  Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Dear Friends in Christ,

    When soldiers in Vietnam had 30 days or less to serve in that country, they were called short-timers.  It was a tradition that once a soldier reached that status he made himself a short-timer stick.  He would carve this stick with notches which would indicate how many days he had left before returning home.  This way they were showing tangible evidence that they yearned to go back to their own country, which they often referred to as God’s country.

    Today’s Epistle teaches us that all Christians are really short-timers in this earthly country.  But we are short-timers who know that . . .

“GOD’S COUNTRY IS OUR FATHERLAND”

    Hebrews is written to persecuted Christians who are spiritually weary.  They haven’t faced martyrdom, but they are in danger of losing hope in God’s promises and even falling away from the faith.  To revive their faith, the writer of Hebrews proclaims Christ as God’s final Word.  To further explain what their faith looks like we have chapter 11.  It gives definitions of faith from the Old Testament.  The focus of our text is Abraham.

    Abraham was a short-timer.  He was an alien and a stranger.  He lived in tents and very rarely had a permanent home.  His life was always changing, always on the move.  We too are short-timers.  Our life is transitory.  What is meant by that?

    It means that we can make all the plans and choices we want but we are not ultimately in control.  Haven’t you had an illness or injury that disrupted your life?  Weather events can throw changes our way.  Maybe you’ve been set to move somewhere and make a job change and what looked good at the moment isn’t quite as bright as it used to be.  Like a boxer we bob and weave to try to get out the way of the punches to the gut that life brings our way.

    Our text says Abraham, “went out, not knowing where he was going.”  One of the greatest faithful followers of the Lord, not knowing where he was going?  Who was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this?  This Bible we believe in is not an earthly nirvana of good times for God’s people.  They struggled.  We struggle.  That had times they didn’t know where God was leading them.  We have times where we think the same thing.  Lord, where do you want me to go?

    What Abraham and these others had was a strong belief in what God was doing.  How else could Abraham go all the way to the point of plunging a knife into Isaac?  Faith.  Faith in the assurance of things hoped for.  Faith in creation and the Creator.  Faith in the Word of God.  Faith that life here is temporary.  We are a short-timer on this earth.

    God’s country is our fatherland.  God Himself has built a country for us through the life and sacrificial death of his Son.  Only there will the foundation be without defect.  The perfect Son lived the perfect life to die our death.  

    We are not natural citizens of God’s country.  By nature sin excludes us from God’s country.   We can wander aimlessly seeking the false shelters provided by the devil and the world.  But God the Father through His Son Jesus has made us His own.  Through Holy Baptism we are made citizens.  

    Interestingly enough what we find in the Greek word for fatherland in our text is different than the way we think of it.  A fatherland is usually the place where one was born, but our fatherland is where we are going.  

    We are citizens of God’s country through faith.  Right now we can’t see what we hope for, but it is real and it has substance.  We don’t base our certainty of future blessings on subjective feelings.  We base it on a demonstration of God’s faithfulness through His Word.  Haven’t you seen this in your life?  In our ups and downs, God’s presence is always level.  He knows you.  He looks forward to greeting you in your fatherland.  He rejoices when the fulfillment of our citizenship takes place but until then he tasks you with work in his Kingdom.  An American soldier in Vietnam was a full citizen of the United States.  But he wouldn’t experience that full citizenship until he returned home.  Letters and cards upped the ante and the anticipation of going home.  God Word and promises do the same for us.  

    Imagine a frigid winter’s night.  Snow and wind.  Two men are walking down the street.  One is wandering because he has no home to go to.  He is looking for whatever shelter he can find.  He’s lost.  The 2nd man is walking in the same storm, but he has pep in his step and a tune on his lips.  He sees the lights of his home – warmth and family and a good meal await.  He represents the Christian.  We are weary Christians traversing these streets of life.  Yet we see God’s country in our future.  We see our fatherland and eternity with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  That is our home.  Prepared by God for you and me through our Savior Jesus Christ.  Welcome.

        Amen.               

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.