October 3, 2021 – LWML Sunday                                Text:  1 Peter 1:22

Dear Friends in Christ,

    Great to have you in worship today.  What motivated you to come to Good Shepherd today?  Worship?  Hearing God’s Word?  Holy Communion?  Visiting with fellow believers?  A less than 10-minute sermon?  Coffee and donuts?

    Maybe it was all of the above.  Churches are always inviting people to come and visit.  This is what we do.  We are privileged to be here.  Led by the Spirit these hours spent together give us a real lift.  Great to have you in worship today.

    Today is Lutheran Women’s Missionary League Sunday.  LWML is an auxiliary organization of our Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.  These women of the church support one another and the missions of the church around the world.  

The theme is based on 1 Peter 1:22 . . .

“LOVE ONE ANOTHER FROM PURE HEARTS”

    Think about a heart in a hand.  Have you ever held a heart in your hand?  Maybe while dissecting in high school or college?  Or a school field trip to a hospital?  If you did it wasn’t beating.  But think about what a transplant surgeon does.  He takes out a diseased heart and puts in a new heart.  That is what God has done for you and me.  In Baptism the Lord gives us a pure heart with all the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection.  A transplanted heart may not last a lifetime.  Our new hearts given through baptism will live forever.

    Why do you and I need heart transplants?  Because within our heart are thoughts and feelings which make us ashamed.  Within our hearts are ideas and urges that are sinful.  Within our hearts are things we never want others to know about us.  By nature our hearts are not pure.  This came with original sin that showed itself in the first two people on earth – Adam and Eve.

    While are hearts are corrupt, we do not have to continue to live that way.  Christ Jesus offers His forgiveness.  His cross transplanted His righteousness to us.  In a heart transplant, new physical life comes to a fatally ill patient.  God has given you this new, pure heart.  You have newness of life and God gives you His love.

    “Having purified yours souls by your obedience to the truth.”  Doesn’t this sound like Peter is advocating we can keep ourselves pure by keeping the commandments?  Peter is not going down that road he is simply talking about faith.  Our new heart, our new birth, makes us children of the heavenly Father who through trust look to Him and want to live holy lives for His sake.  

    At the beginning of the sermon the question was asked what brought you to church?  Part of the answer is coming together in Christ.  During the real isolated times of the virus many of us experienced meetings on our computer.  I remember one morning just working from my bed.  The Internet provided a Zoom meeting, I had my phone and I just propped myself right on the old mattress.  It was a meeting for the circuit visitors of our Central Illinois District led by President Miller.  It was good to chat and hear what everyone was doing.  Did you find this curious – where people would sit in their house for these meetings?  But then again I was in bed.  Showered and dressed but still on the bed.

    Last month for the first time in almost two years we all got to be together in Springfield.  It had a different vibe.  More togetherness.  More interaction.  You could read faces more clearly.  We all left that day knowing why we missed being in person.

    That is true of our worship.  We thank God for technology and the ability to worship safely, but being apart is hard.  Being together, in person around His Word of new birth, of life and love in Christ.  This Word transforms us as we hear it.  This Word transforms us as it is spoken and sung.  This Word transforms us as we receive it physically in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  There are reasons to come to Church but we come to worship because here all our hearts are together, not only together with one another, but most importantly, together with one another in the Lord’s hand.

    This love inside then reaches outside these walls.  “Love one another earnestly from the pure heart.”  That is what we do.  This is what the LWML does.  They give millions of dollars through the district and synodical level for mission projects.  Unless you are really in tune with your church, most people in the pews on a Sunday don’t realize the wonderful outreach that is accomplished by our LWML and the LCMS.  The Word of God is at work.  It is transplanting hearts.  It is transforming lives.  It is a wonderful time to be the church because so many need this message.  Hearts long for something stable.  Brothers and sisters need the love of Christ.  Holy Spirit continue to lead in this direction

    Coming together in worship, God makes us a big-hearted church that extends His hand of love to everyone.

                    Amen.          

September 26, 2021                            Text:  Mark 9:38-50

Dear Friends in Christ,

    Ten women were in a book club.  One day at lunch one of the bolder women asked, “How many of you have been faithful in your marriage?”  Only one raised her hand.

    That evening one of the ladies told her husband the story and admitted that she didn’t raise her hand.  The husband turned away from the football game in shock.  The wife was quick to reassure him, “I have been faithful to you.”  “Then why didn’t you raise your hand?” he asked.  She answered, “I was ashamed.”

    Is this what it has come to?  Ashamed of being faithful?  Ashamed of the truth?  Even Christians are accommodating themselves to the world’s attitude.  If this continues Christians lose their affect.  They are no longer salt.  Nothing is different in walking as a follower of Christ. 

    Do you want to be different from the world?  Then join me in . . .

“BEING SALT – NOT SALTY”

    Things on a Sunday morning tie together.  Look at the Old Testament lesson.  The Israelites were a little salty.  “Manna again?  Where are the melons and onions and garlic and fish?  Come on Lord, we are your people.”  God is feeding and leading and it is never enough.  Do you ever get salty like that?  Take stock of your blessings but you stand in front of your closet with hundreds of pieces of clothing and go, “I have nothing to wear!”  

    We can be minute focusers and petty complainers.  We join right in.  Instead of being salt we are salty.

    Even the disciples led by John are a little salty in our text.  “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” (v. 38)  This guy didn’t have the credentials.  He didn’t have the tribalism card.  Oh by the way, I did learn that word this week – tribalism.  This idea that we are divided into tribes in the US of A and our tribes views are always right.  The disciples were a tribe and didn’t like this interloper.  But Jesus calls out their prejudice.  “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” (v. 39)  Are you getting saltier?

    Now Jesus really goes after them and after us.  He wants us to cut off body parts.  Hands and feet and eyes, oh my!  What is the Savior talking about?  He isn’t really advocated this, is He?  No.  He is trying to save us from hell.  Trying to lure us back from the depths of fire and devil.  Trying to turn our saltiness into salt.  He knows these body parts sin and are motivated by the sinful self.  We need some genuine change in our lives.  We don’t want to live as salty people in an ever -increasing salty world.  We want to be different in a God-pleasing way.

    There is a reason to be God-pleasingly different.  It is God’s favor for us through Jesus Christ.  It’s Romans 5:7, 8:  “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man though for a good man someone mighty possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:  While we were still sinners Christ die for us.”  It’s 1 Peter 2:24:  “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness.”

    Absorb God’s love.  Let it flavor all that you do.  Face each day in the knowledge that you are eternally loved through Jesus Christ.  Go to bed each evening, even if frustrated in some salty behavior, knowing that your sins are forgiven for Jesus sake.  The blood stained Cross is our assurance.  With this flavor enhancer clinging to our being we can then be salt.

    “For everyone will be salted with fire.  Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again?  Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” (v. 49, 50)  

    This can be a challenge because of what we have for salt today.  Salt is sodium chloride – a stable molecule.  Buy a can today put it in your pantry, come back in 50 years and it’s still salt.  It might be a little chunky, but still salt.

    When Jesus teaches the disciples, they didn’t have pure salt.  Salt was harvested from the surface of salt marshes flowing from the Mediterranean or Dead Seas.  It had impurities from the rocks it was scraped off of, and from the algae, sand, and sea life that flowed in with the seawater.  That is how the salt lost its saltiness.

    Salt has no power in itself.  Our holiness, our forgiveness, our power come from Christ.  The salt in us only has power because it is from Christ.  The salt of his sweat in Gethsemane.  The salt-laced blood He shed for us.  These won our forgiveness.  Filled with the salt of Christ, we can battle the powers of evil.  We can control our sinful appendages.  We are purified and cleansed.  We can flavor and preserve others.  We can forgive one another.  

    The salty world can dry us up, but Christ salts us with His Word and Spirit so we can have peace with one another.  Live that out today and always.

                                        Amen.