This year we take up the theme of Holy Baptism. We will be talking about how we live out our baptism daily. The question Luther asked was, “What does baptism mean for daily life?” We will continue our focus on Luther’s Small Catechism. Sunday Worship On Sunday mornings in worship we will be talking to members of our congregation about how they live out their baptism in life’s ordinary circumstances. The themes for our discussion will come straight from the assigned Lenten Scriptures. We will discover how people respond with faith when challenges happen in our lives. Sunday Forum Each Sunday we will take the Gospel we hear in worship and look at how it intersects with our daily life. We will ask the quintessential Lutheran question of it, What does this mean for me? Be ready to engage the scripture on a very personal level. Wednesday Night Soup Supper and Worship After we share a meal, we will be looking at each of the 5 aspects of our Baptismal Affirmation:
Daily Devotion As in past Advents and Lents, you will have daily devotional cards to mark the 40 days of Lent and the days of Holy Week. A Congregational Service Project To emphasize the watery part of our baptismal theme, we will be collecting loose change for Lutheran World Relief, to fund a $500 water system that provides clean water for drinking and bathing. Our Objectives for our Lenten Season for every worshiper:
Pastor Lori A. Cornell
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“All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.” Ecclesiastes 3:20
It is quite unbelievable to me that it is already February. Time seems to be flying faster than I am accustomed to these days. When I think of February, I think of calendars made of construction paper hung up with masking tape on the walls of elementary school teacher’s walls, dressed in bright pinks and reds and decorated with hearts. Our culture has declared February to be love month. We center it on Valentine’s Day. We buy chalky heart-shaped candy to share, or give out valentines; we bring flowers to our significant other, or surprise a new love interest in our life with a box of chocolates. The world seems focused on the sugary love that is shared in sweet kisses with our sweethearts. But the church will celebrate February in a way that is much less sweet and cute. February 10 marks Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. Ash Wednesday is my absolute favorite day of the church year. Part of this is because it reminds me of dark evenings spent at church growing up that had a special holiness to them. I remember sitting as a kid, feeling the oddity of worshipping at night and reveling in the experience. There’s just something holy and wonderful in coming together at night to worship God with your community, to sing songs and pray together around candlelight. It’s beautiful. But the best part of Ash Wednesday was when I would go to the pastor, feel the grit of ashes being pressed onto my forehead and hearing the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Because those words have done two major things for me at various points in my life. When I was a boisterous, obnoxious, middle-school aged girl who thought she was invincible, those words reminded me that one day, I will return to dust. And there’s nothing I can do to change that. But in years that were plagued with self-doubt, these words reminded me that I am nothing but dust, and yet I am part of the humanity whom Christ lived and died to save from the very things that were causing me to have self-doubt. I am made of merely dust, and yet God charges me and allows me to live a life freely given and inspired by the fact that I have been saved by grace through faith. Ash Wednesday reminds us of the love that is far deeper than the sticky-sweet love of Valentine’s Day. Ash Wednesday reminds us of the cutting love that God has for us, the love that sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for us. The love that tells us that though one day, we will face our own deaths, Christ conquered it for us first. And so, let us be reminded that we are merely dust, and that God is so much greater than us. And let us be reminded that we are merely dust, and that God has done so much for us unworthy creatures. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Grace and peace, Intern Pastor Carrie Smisek Jesus said, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer answered, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” Luke 10:36-37
I wonder what Jesus’ first audience thought about his parable of the Good Samaritan. Samaritans were, after all, the original whipping boys of any Orthodox Jew. A good Jew would do everything she could to travel outside Samaria when moving from Galilee down to Jerusalem and visa versa. Samaritans were the half-breeds of Judaism, compromising their faith by settling for a worship site on Mount Gerizim rather than making the pilgrimage to the Temple to the south. So just hearing Jesus lift up a Samaritan as the hero of this story probably raised the hair on the back of his listeners’ necks. But notice who the Samaritan helps, because I think that is the more challenging part of the parable for us in 2016. The man who the Priest and Levite avoid but the Samaritan stops for is a man who has been beaten and robbed. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time—after all, any sane person would know that you never travel the road from Jerusalem to Jericho alone. The Priest and Levite could easily have justified their behavior by saying that stopping to help him could have made them victims of robbers as well. No doubt they asked themselves the same questions about safety that we do when we consider picking up a hitchhiker or stopping on the side of the freeway for someone in a disabled vehicle: “Am I making myself unnecessarily vulnerable?” “Will I just become another victim?” “Was this person careless about his own safety, and now he’s risking mine?” Our world is rife with trouble, and each of us wants to avoid being its next casualty. So we ascribe to the Christian values of love and mercy, but become increasingly cautious, then question our own motives, and feel guilty for not acting out of our beliefs. We are afraid. And there’s reason for our fear: We leave behind the Year 2015 with an ever-growing awareness of the possibility of domestic terrorism, racial tension, hate crimes, police brutality and police officers who are afraid for their own survival, ethnic and religious conflict and misunderstanding, the unfathomable plight of refugees on the other side of the world, and fear-mongering politics. The brutalities of life that we first-world American citizens have so blithely avoided or ignored are staring us in the face. They are our problems. Which could explain why many of us are inclined to curl up in the fetal position and wish all this bad news would go away. But Christ’s light lifts our heads, and draws us out of our fear, to respond to the world he loves. He calls us to be “the ones who show mercy.” This New Year offers us the opportunity to be Christ’s people who walk in the Light that the darkness cannot overcome. And to do that we have to face our fear. What or who are we afraid of? What stories do we tell ourselves and others about what will happen if we risk approaching the beaten and robbed of our society? What stories do we tell ourselves and others about how “those people” got into the bad situation that they are in? And how can we bridge this impasse of being called but afraid to show love and mercy. I would like to invite our whole congregation to enter 2016 with a New Year’s resolution to practice what we believe—to be the ones who show mercy. I suggest we do this (beyond the many hands-on ways we currently serve people) by examining exactly the stuff that makes us afraid—racial tension, poverty, violence—and discovering how to practice an empathy that allows us to be the neighbor Christ wants us to be. On January 10, 17, and 24 at Forum we will be talking about “Race and Faith.” We will examine what the Bible and Jesus have to say about race. We’ll listen to our Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton in dialogue with others about the topic. We’ll hear people’s personal narratives. And one of our own members will share her perspective on what it means to follow Christ and work to mend racial divides. These Forums are the beginning of the Council’s initiative to have “Courageous Conversations” about the controversial issues we find ourselves confronting when we hear the call to “the one who shows mercy.” Please join this conversation, and do it with your heart set on contributing to (as one of our offering prayers says) to the “care and redemption of all that God has made.” Perhaps this resolution will allow us to greet 2016 with a sincere “Happy New Year.” Your Sister in Christ, “Praise the Lord! O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.” Psalm 106:1
November marks the start of family season. Trees sprout their vibrant reds and oranges, children’s painted handprints are turned into turkeys, and mouths begin to water at the anticipation of the pumpkin and apple pies that you can almost smell in the air right now. Thanksgiving is somehow already right around the corner. And though Thanksgiving’s true history is much darker than the pilgrims in buckled hat images that come so easily to mind, it is a holiday that I appreciate. This is a time when we get to spend time with our families, whether family means those we are related to by birth or by bond. We catch up, laugh, and enjoy good food together. This is a time when favorite family food dishes are prepared and shared. In the best situations, it is a time when people take off the masks they wear at work or in public, and share their lives and their stories with the people closest to them, the people with whom they belong. And this is why I continuously give thanks for church families. The church is an interesting place; it is a place where people from all walks of life can come together. Homeless people can sit next to an affluent family who is sitting next to the single mother who is sitting next to the teenage high school drop out who is sitting next to a teacher who is sitting next to a retired judge who is sitting next to someone who got a speeding ticket two weeks prior, etc. And we all belong here. The church is where very different people can come together because of a singular bond – the bond of being in a family. We are brought together because we know that each and every one of us is a child of God and that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. When we gather together to worship, we do the same things we do at family holidays. We catch up with each other, we laugh, and we enjoy good food. But rather than turkey and mashed potatoes, we get to feast together in the most holy of meals every week when we stand before the altar and taste grace as we receive Christ’s body and blood. And this holy and precious food sustains us in many ways, showing us that we are loved and forgiven, so that we may go out and be free to love and forgive those around us. We can be vulnerable and open with each other, and we can bring to light the things that trouble us in the dark because we are a family. May we be bold enough to remember how deeply we belong in the family of God and the deep, enduring love that frees us to be our true and authentic selves. And may we be move forward thanking God for God’s goodness and the wonderful things that have been given to us. Grace and peace, Carrie When thinking about my personal statement for confirmation, I was asked to think of a Bible passage that was important to me. I chose Mark 10:43-45, "Yet is shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant and whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
What this passage means to me is that even God came to serve and not be served. The definition of the word 'serve' means to act like a servant. I fell like Jesus calls me to serve others. This last July, I was privileged to be able to attend the National Youth Gathering in Detroit. This experience was great and I felt like I grew a lot in my faith. During the National Youth Gathering, we participated in a Day of Service. On our bus ride to the project site, we passed by much of the inner city. There were several buildings that had been burnt to the ground. Parts of buildings had fallen onto the sidewalk and road. No one was there to clean it up, so pedestrians had to go around the debris by walking in the road. The buildings were eye sores for the community as well. I could tell that the people of this city struggled with many problems. Our service project from "Focus Hope" was to clean out an alley way that was overgrown. The alley was so overgrown you couldn't tell what it was. As we cleared some debris and trees, we discovered an abandoned homeless camp there. The alley way was not safe for families and kids to be around. It opened my eyes to see how other people have to live in some areas of severe poverty. The whole point of the gathering was for us to grow in our faith and to make the community of Detroit more safe and a better environment to be in. The people I saw during my trip were the people that lived in that town. most of the people that we saw were sitting on their porches, smiling and waving as we walked by. It felt great to see the smiles on the people's faces because I knew I was making a difference for them. I want to take what I learned about serving and bring it back here to our community and help out by helping with the Sack Lunch Program or the Reach Out Program at the church to help people in need. The last thing I would like to say is to the people that made it possible for me to go on this trip to Detroit: You helped serve me so that I could go and serve others in other communities, so thank you. |
Rev. Lori A. Cornell
Calvary's Pastor Jake Schumacher
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