11-27-2017

 Good Morning All,

                   Ephesians 4:24; “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

      One time, as I was coaching high school age kids in baseball; I talked with a fellow coach who faced a unique situation.  He had a young man come up who could throw the ball pretty well.  He had decent speed and was fairly accurate.  The problem was that the way he threw the ball made it an illegal pitch.  If a runner was on base it would have been called a balk.  So he had to set about to completely change.  He had to get rid of the old style of pitching and bring in a new style of pitching.

     This was harder than it sounds.  One of the first problems was that he wasn’t convinced that he had to change.  He had been successful at the younger level and no one had made him change.  His coach kept telling him that he was wrong but neither he nor his parents believed him.  He asked me what he should do.  I told him to go ahead and let the kid pitch.  The other coach asked, “what about a balk?”  I said, “so what?  He doesn’t believe you; let him believe the umpire.  The only thing I would do would be to talk to the umpire before the game and let him know that you know it is a balk and that he should call them, vigorously if needed.”  Needless to say, the young man’s first pitching appearance wasn’t what he or his parents expected.

    So the young man swallowed his pride and worked to change his pitching style.  He was never as dominant as he was when he was younger but he was a competent pitcher.  In a way, our life is like that.  Sometimes change is needed but change is hard.  That is what has to happen in a Christian’s life; we need to change.

   When God calls us to faith, he makes us “a new creation.”  This means that we need to shed the old life and live the new life that God gives us.  This can be difficult because part of change is to recognize that the old life was bad.  It takes humility to admit that past failures have caused pain.  It takes humility to confess our sins.  Yet this is an important part of faith.  We humble ourself before God.  When we truly recognize and confess our sin, God creates us as new creations.  It is out with the old and in with the new, the new that God creates in us.  We need to embrace it and to live it.  We need to shed the old.  We need to, through faith, embrace the new life; trust in God’s mercy and his will for our life.  This is the new life to trust in God over our own skill and knowledge.  Trust in God to provide and protect us.

Father of all that is good and gracious.  We give you thanks for the new life that you give us.  Strengthen us by your Spirit.  Give us the humble heart to live according to your divine will. Guard us from all evil and keep us safe within your loving arms.  Be with those who are struggling with the cares of life and give them the certainty of hope in you.  Save them by your mercy.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret          

11-26-2017

 Good Morning All,

                   Genesis 2:7; “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

      When I was a kid, I got a box of clay one time.  It had four different colors blocks of clay.  It kind of looked like sticks of butter.  You could take it and then you had to “warm it up” that was to roll it in your hands until it became pliable.  Once it was pliable, then you could form it into different shapes.  It was fun to work with but my actual shapes were not quite as good as my imagination.  I had visions of being a Michelangelo but I ended up more like the turtle than the artist.

    It takes talent, patience, an artistic flair, and a passion to be a good sculptor.  It takes an eye that sees what this blob of clay can be.  Michelangelo once said that, “he saw an angel in the block of stone and chiseled til I set him free”   That is quite the skill and it displays a little of what God does for us through his creative process.

   In this process we see two things about God.  First we see him as the God who is willing to get his hands dirty in our life and secondly, we can see this creative process as an ongoing event.

   In the creation of the rest of God’s works; he spoke and it was.  Yet here we see God taking his time to mold and shape you to be the creature that he wants us to be.  With the creation of Adam; he had the perfect creature.  It was shaped right and it filled its role in creation perfectly.  Then Adam sinned and he began to add extra clay to his existence.  He padded this perfect creation with excess selfishness, excess jealousy, excess greed, with excess hatred.  All of this excess went to block his vision of God and Adam lost sight of all that God had done for him. 

    So God sent Jesus to return us to the creative process.  We see when Jesus told his disciples that he would “make them fishers of men.”  Here “make” can be thought of as molding or shaping or fabricating.  It is taking a lump of clay and shaping it into a piece of art.  We can see God doing this when we think of times when the excesses of our lives are stripped away until we see that our only source of hope and security is God.  All of that padded on excess sin needs to be shed.  We need to stop clinging to our old sins, our old sinful desires and to our old sinful hurts to be the creation that God desires us to be.

   Yet we sin and we sin daily so God must continue to shape us and mold us daily.  He does this through the forgiveness of sins which he tells us to remember.  We call this the confession and absolution cycle.  Through this process God continually molds and shapes us.  He gets his hands dirty because he loves us.

Gracious Father, you have wondrously made me and you continue to mold me into the disciple that you want me to be.  Lead me to trust in your loving arm.  Lead me to be your holy child.  Lead me to be the light in this dark ad lonely world.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret      

11-25-2017

Good Morning All,

         1 Peter 3:21; “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”

       It must have been quite the event to watch.  It was the formal claiming by the explorer for the king or queen who funded them.  At first a landing party would have set foot on the land and searched to make sure it was safe.  Once it was determined to be safe, the lead explorer would take the skiff boat ashore with the flag of the nation that he was sailing for.  He would take the flag, attached to a long iron shaft and the drive the shaft into the ground.  He would then proclaim, “I claim this land in the name of King whatever!”  This was how the European kingdoms claimed land throughout the new world.

     During the great land rushes, the settlers would ride their horses, wagons or just run to the land that they wanted.  They would place flags or strips of cloth on the perimeter of the land and then claim it as their new home.  The marking the land as claimed by someone gave ownership of the land.

    This is what we can think of when we think of Baptism.   This is part of what we are doing when, during the Baptism, the pastor makes the sign of the cross on the forehead and on the heart of the person being baptized.   As he does this, the pastor says receive the sign of the holy cross both upon your forehead and upon your heart to mark you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified.  You are marked, claimed by Jesus as his own child.  Nothing will ever separate you from Him because he has claimed you and nothing can ever pull you from his hand.

    This is what we call the baptismal promise and that we live in God’s baptismal grace.  We only need to recall this promise; we are claimed by Christ the crucified.  Regardless of the failures of our life, that promise is always there, that promise never leaves.  The promise made to us in our Baptism is entirely dependent upon God and his mercy.  It is a promise that he makes to each one of us who are baptized.  Forgiveness of sins and our salvation to eternal life are promised mercies.  Neither depends upon us but rather depend entirely upon God.

     So we can always come back to the certainty of God’s promised mercy, the forgiveness of sins, because of the simple promise that God made to us in our Baptism.  We are God’s baptized children forever his forever saved.  So no matter what we face, no matter what comes our way, we always have God’s promise.  We can always trust in God to keep his promise made to us in our Baptism; we are marked as one redeemed by Christ the crucified.

Father of all grace, through the mercy of Baptism we are your redeemed children.  You have made us yours and keep us safe within your loving arms.  Help us to remember the wonders of your grace.  Keep us secure in the knowledge of our salvation.  Be with those who are hurting at this time.  Remind them of the promise that you have made to them.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret