October 10, 2022 — That Great and Terrible Day

“Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”  Malachi 4:5-6

“The promise of the Day of YHWH does not come without its requirements, however. The day of the Lord is a blessing for the righteous because they “Remember the teaching of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb…” As we wait for the Lord to make things right, we must remember that we are called to stricter obedience to God’s will. The obedience is herein described in terms of the Mosaic Law complete with its statutes and ordinances. Though we, as Christians, have a different relationship with Mosaic Law, we are not less obliged to “remember” that we have been called to a different set of values than those posed by our world. As Christians, we are called to live our lives by God’s system of rights and wrongs. Taking seriously personal morality and our commitment to justice, we are called to live out an example of God’s ways, rejecting the dangerous moral postures that hurt our brothers and sisters, and offering a new way of living out God’s forgiveness, truth, and light. We are called to express a new Law, the Law of Love that Jesus repeatedly commands of us as the testimony of our fellowship with him.” (December 21, 2008, Rodney S. Sadler, Jr.)

The true fact of life is that we cannot predict to any great degree of accuracy when we might leave this world. It may not be for three score or more — it may be tomorrow. And if we delude ourselves into thinking that we always have enough time to establish a relationship with Jesus Christ, that there is always plenty of time to get the “G-d Thing” down in our lives, well that is just a continuation of the delusion.

As the parable of the man who built bigger barns to keep his stuff teaches us, G-d may come tonight to demand our presence in the Heavenly realm. So, if we believe that we have plenty of time to wait to work on justice and peace in this world, or if we believe that we have plenty of time to take obedience seriously, obedience to the ways that Jesus calls us to live, we had better begin to change our thinking now. There is no better time than right now to consider the “Great and Terrible Day of the Lord” — for it may be here before you know it.

Let us pray,

Lord Jesus, we have no idea when you will come – come to judge the earth or come to welcome us into the kingdom. Help me to prepare every day as if this might be my last – and to live in joy and love for all you have given me. Amen.

Pastor Dave

October 9, 2022 – Pentecost +18C

¹On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, ¹³they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” ¹⁴When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. ¹⁵Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. ¹⁶He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? ¹⁸Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”Luke 17:11-19

I was talking with a pastor the other day, and he was telling me the story about a woman he went to visit while she was in the hospital. He went to visit her because she was diagnosed with cancer. He told me that he was with her and her mother, and prayed with them on the day that the doctors told her that she had no more than two months to live. He also told me that he went to visit her one year later – at her home. One year later the pastor was visiting her in her home – and she was cancer free. This woman, told a year prior that she was dying, was now living without a trace of the disease that had brought her so close to death.  The amazing part of this story is that she was also living without something else – she was living without G-d. Once she had been “healed” of her disease, she stopped coming to church. 

It seems that ten lepers were on a journey one day. We don’t know anything about these ten except that at this point in their lives they were considered lepers – and as such were in desperate shape. Our text tells us that Jesus was continuing his journey toward Jerusalem – in which the ending was to be an arrest, a trial, a crucifixion, and thankfully a resurrection. So their collective journeys, Jesus and the ten lepers, intersected in spectacular fashion. And in the end ten lepers were healed by Jesus. But the story doesn’t end there. Only one of the lepers stops to take stock of what has happened – to realize that something wonderful and dramatic has occurred that has changed his life – only one goes back to thank Jesus.

Ten lepers recognized Jesus – called him master – understood his authority – placed their lives in his hands – heard his words of healing – only one returned to bow and worship and submit again to that authority. G-d’s love is relational – is about relationships. In our relationship with Jesus we have opportunity after opportunity to hear about the love, mercy and grace of Jesus Christ that we experience in G-d’s word and sacrament, and then go forth out in the community to be in relationship with others – family and stranger, friend and enemy, Jew and Gentile, Leper or Samaritan or Aids patient – and will also have unlimited opportunities to share Jesus’ love, mercy and grace.

Pastor Dave