Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3:1-9 (January 27, 2025)

January 27, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3:1-9

May the light of Christ live in, with, and around you in the season of Epiphany.

Good morning on this bright Monday. I want to say a great thank you to everyone who made our Saturday 75th anniversary luncheon possible. We had over 70 people present, enjoyed wonderful music, gave away great door prizes, and the fellowship in Christ was wonderful.  On Sunday morning, the day of our anniversary at church, the bell choir began the service with a really great festival piece as they rang us into worship for the day. Today we begin another year in our ministry for the Gospel. It is amazing to now be part of the history of our congregation, where the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been served with joy and thanksgiving. Coming up this Friday we have our Foodies of Faith meeting at 11:30AM at Cheddars on Broadway. If you have not signed up, but would like to join us, please call the Church Office at 520-623-3661. On Sunday we will meet at 8AM for food before the congregational meeting at 8:30AM. Please bring a food item to share on Sunday before the annual meeting. In the Church we truly enjoy this season of Light in the life of Christian people. We all know what is coming with Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent in March and Holy Week in April, then darkness will grow until the glorious celebration of Easter morning and the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. As the days of our desert winter begin to warm, our hearts are filled with joy in the new life of God's creation that appears as we get closer to the warmup which we know is coming after the short winter here in Tucson.

Today we move forward in Paul's letter to the Galatians 3:1-9. Thank you for joining me in this conversation about this text today. Paul begins this passage with a short study on the place of works vs faith and belief. We know that it was difficult for those who had access to Jewish/Christian converts, whose earlier lives and relationship with God had been based on the keeping of the Torah as the means to being right with God. In many ways they wanted to blend their history of keeping the Torah with their newfound faith in Jesus. In the new Church, under leaders who still believed that works were the way to be in God's favor, pressure was put on the new gentile believers to have to keep the laws. When Paul talks about the flesh in this passage, he is speaking of the works that must be completed to earn justification before God, including circumcision. Surprisingly, it is Paul who concludes that it is only by Grace and Faith that people who have believed will be justified. Obviously, from the content of other letters of Paul, this is still an issue in the early church who has sometimes fallen under the teaching of Jews who are now under Roman rule, but who were initially dispersed from Jerusalem as it was conquered hundreds of years earlier. The issue of getting circumcised was certainly a part of those works of the flesh which were supposed to make certain that a person would be received by God, but Paul knew better. After years of living in the law of the Torah, and being a defender of its application, Paul's conversion brought him to the new understanding that in people's sinfulness, works, earning salvation, could never work. Salvation required perfection of behavior, which no one except Jesus Christ had ever been capable of doing. And further, it took a perfect one to pay the full price for sin. We are unable to do that for ourselves. It is by having justification through the perfection and sacrifice of Jesus in whom we believe by the power of the Spirit's gift of faith in our lives that we reach righteousness. But for Paul, the teaching of the Jew converts that the "Law" of the Torah must also be completed, was in complete error. Later we will learn that the actions of thanksgiving that come from we who are saved by Jesus and faith in Him, are just that, actions of thanksgiving that our faith calls us to do. When Paul first came to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, his preaching was guided by the Spirit, and by that Spirit the Galatians were called to faith in the Savior. However, they were quite easily led to believe that having faith in Christ was inadequate on its own merit. Here is the crux of Paul's argument. The Torah cannot merit salvation because of the sin which lives in all people who try to keep it. Now let us talk about being the children of Abraham. It was only by Abraham's faith and trust in God's command that he was justified. Though the Jews can claim a heritage blood relationship with Abraham, they cannot, by works, come to the same relationship with God as Abraham did through belief. We who believe in Jesus Christ are made right with God by Word, Faith, and Grace alone, and that can only happen by the Spirit. So, by belief in Christ, we become the children of Abraham, just like those who have a different kind of claim on their relationship to Abraham.

Faith can never be just a temporary badge to be exchanged for something else later on. Faith is the ONLY thing that gives us forgiveness, life, and salvation through Jesus Christ.

Tomorrow, we will continue in chapter 3:10-14. God bless you and keep you every day of your life.

With love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 4 (January 23, 2025)

January 23, 2024:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 4

What a God blessed morning we have today in the desert. As I was driving the boys to Middle School, High School, and College, I remembered how I felt about this brisk beautiful desert after living in the snow for over 40 years. When we first arrived here in Tucson in January of 1991, I used to sit on the deck of the house and drink a cup of coffee in the cold air with great appreciation for having the opportunity to live in this city because of the Call to serve the Gospel at American Lutheran.  As I enter into my 34th year as American's pastor, I am also fully aware of the privilege that has been mine, Melody's, and our eight children's to be part of the 75 years of God's Grace that has made American an amazing congregation, full of the Spirit, and God's Love for all of our lives. 

The 4th Psalm which we are looking at today, is one which holds both words of praise to God on the part of the faith of the Psalmist, and word to the people about their short memory for all of the ways in which God has carried them through the years of difficulty in the promised land.  Just like you and me, when God doesn't get done what you and I want, when we want it, and how we want it, we, just as the Hebrews did, begin to look to other ways to get that thing for which we are looking.  We have to remember that the Hebrews did not live in an abundant, wealthy, and overflowing presence of everything for which they hoped, and the ease to have their crops and lives be exactly want they wanted. When their neighbors, the Canaanites, seemed to have greater farming success than they did, then there was always that temptation to look toward their neighbor's gods, who were no gods at all, but just creations of the minds of the people who worshiped them. In that religion there was a fulfillment of manipulating their "not" gods to bend to their will. The geographic reality is that the Canaanites lived on the coast and received the benefit of westerly wind filled with rain that sometimes made it look as if their "not" gods could bless them when the One True God of the Hebrews was failing to provide what the Hebrews wanted.  In these early cultures you got to eat what you grew, or what you might be able to exchange with another farmer who grew a different crop. Because of this the Song of the Psalmist guides the listener, or in our case, the reader, to trust the Creator who has always, out of what should have been a disaster, fulfilled the promise of His love for His people.

So, let's take a look at how this all takes shape in the Psalm.

1. The Psalmist starts with a prayer to the faithful God, not asking for anything specific except that God listen. and that will be a sign of God's faithfulness to His people. This is the Psalmist seeking to get God's attention.

2. The Psalmist indicates that if God is listening, it is obvious that God has intervened in many other situations in which the Hebrews have found themselves. Because God is faithful it is time for Him to intervene.

3. Though we might expect the entirety of the Psalm to be prayer to God, it might surprise us to have the Psalmist speaking to the people too. Their faithful God deserves their attention and trust to do what is necessary. After all, they are God's chosen people.

4. In the close of this Psalm, the Psalmist ends with a statement of confidence and hope. The One True God of the Hebrews will not forsake them, and in fact, they will know joy in His continuing fulfillment of His promises for the people of His election.

Please remember that this weekend is our congregation's 75th anniversary of Gospel ministry. You may look at the church website, Godsplaceforgrace.org, where you can get information about Saturday's events, and Sunday's worship.

Please remember that God has chosen each of us too. Through Christ we join the elect, grafted to them, as a new, and living people of our God about whom the Psalmist sings.

In Christ's Love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 2:15-21 (January 21, 2025)

January 21, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 2:15-21

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

It is so good to be back with you online for our Weekly Bible Studies. In my time away from this study, I have been celebrating with you the Christmas birth Narrative, Epiphany, and I have traveled to Michigan for the celebration of life for my older brother Rick. He passed into God's eternal care after suffering with kidney disease and diabetic issues that became life surviving issues after his exposure to agent orange in Vietnam in the late 1960s. In spite of his really good health and exercise regimen, he was unable to survive its effects on his life. I am back now and really looking forward to our celebration this Saturday of the 75th anniversary of American Ev. Lutheran Church (of Pima County). We have sold tickets for the lunch and door prize drawings, and you can come, but it is not possible to share the meal from Noon to 1PM at this time. Our caterer has already been given the total reservations for the meal. But there will be a special musician with us until 2PM, a clown/face painter/balloon artist and the drawings for door prizes. You may certainly join us for these parts of the afternoon. On Sunday, our Bell Choir will open our service with a special festival music arrangement. For members, please remember that we have our annual congregational meeting starting at 8:30AM on February 2. Bring food to share by 8AM. On that day we will not have a noon carry-in dinner due to the carry-in brunch before the annual meeting.

Today we move forward in our study of Galatians. We are in chapter 2, verses 15-21.

In this passage it becomes obvious that there are definitely issues between the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians with regards to which community holds a position of primacy in the early church. This is definitely a very difficult issue, which requires a view of the nature of each community's relationship with Christ, and what that means in terms of who gets to come first. Let's be honest, there has always been this kind of one-up-man-ship with regard to who bears the right to lead and guide the Body of Christ, the Church.  We are still faced with it today. It became obvious at my brother’s Catholic funeral, as were told that unless we were members of the Catholic Church, we would not be offered the Sacrament. Today, the Roman Church, even after decades of dialogs with Lutherans, still claims its primacy above all other churches. I am telling you now that Paul undoes all of that kind of thinking in this passage from Galatians. Right at the beginning of this passage Paul addresses this. We can all acknowledge the historic problems in the Catholic hierarchy, from claiming the right to judge others, to the division of the Papacy, with a pope in France, and another in Italy at the same time, as well as, the manipulation of Christ's children to make money to create the great art of the Vatican and the cathedrals in the middle centuries of the Common Era.  Martin Luther utilized Paul's writings and thinking as the foundations of his suggested reforms of the Catholic Church, and as we know, his life became the target of imprisonment and death if those Catholic authorities had been able to find him as he was being protected by the German princes.  Paul says that though the Jewish Christians might feel their right to superiority in the Church, it was not their right. Instead, the only person who was truly in a position of righteousness before God was Christ by the Father's Grace. He was the only one to be in that position of fulfilling the Law of God, and He did so on behalf of all of God's children. No one has the right to claim individual primacy except Christ, and through Him, we who believe in Him as our Lord and Savior, receive the benefit of His perfection and subsequent justification. We all come before God Justified by Grace through Faith. It is the Christ who lives in, with, and around us, who brings us into the fullness of God's Grace, Forgiveness, Life, and Salvation.

One of the issues here is that we all need to be willing to admit that we become new, only through our Savior. It is the Christ in us who justifies us before God. There is a story about Margaret Thatcher, a historied prime minister of England from years ago.  She once visited a care home for the aged in her country, and in one room she held the hand of a much older woman, and said to her, "Do you know Who I am?"  The woman's reply was, "No, I don't know who you are, but if you ask the nurse, she will be able to tell you". In our secular lives we have an identity that the world generally knows us by, but when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, He becomes the "NEW" that is in us and causes us to transform by the power of His Spirit.  That transition is a lifelong process, where all who accept Christ from the time of their Baptism, their Confirmation, from the Word of God, and having their faith encouraged and strengthened by their brothers and sisters in Christ in the Church, come to live new lives.  My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this is you and me! God's true Israel exists only in one person. That person is Jesus Christ. It is through Him that we too become the true Israel of God, and in that, are also full participants in the elect of God, justified by Christ's sacrifice when He paid the price for our sins on the Cross. This takes us one more step, there is to be no privilege in sharing the meal at the altar. It is to be an open and welcoming meal where all who accept Christ as their Lord and Savior are called to receive His Body and Blood in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. We must always realize that our equality is in Christ and by Christ!

God bless you today and always, and Happy Anniversary American!

With Christ Love, Pastor Kim