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

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalms 3 (December 19, 2024)

December 19, 2024:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalms 3

Blessings and Peace dear friends. This morning, I am using my new computer, so I am getting a late start. It is trying, and I assume will eventually succeed, to get all of that put back into place so that I am able to work quite a bit more quickly.

Please offer prayers of thanksgiving for the success of Kandice getting five liters of liquid removed from her body. It sounds like the doctors may well need to remove at least five more, so pray that can be done in the very near future. Della will soon be moving to memory care at the Cascades, but I am hopeful that once she gets that higher level of care, she will be able to return for worship on some Sundays. Pray for the family who will have Mom, and her two children Baptized on the 4th of January. Pray that they will consider becoming a part of our worshiping community. Pray for Jesse and myself, as we spend some time in the next two weeks getting ready for our trip back to Michigan for my brother's celebration of life. I am also asking members to bring angels from their homes that can be placed on, and around, the altar on Christmas Eve. Please bring them this Sunday, and then we will have two more Sundays on which to celebrate the Christmas Season. Please remember that Christmas Eve worship starts at 7PM. I hope we will see you there as we celebrate the greatest gift in the history of our world, the birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem.

Today we move on to Psalm 3, and we find out that not all Psalms are about gentleness and loving kindness. This Psalm may well be a Psalm of David, and if so, it would have been written around the time that David's son, Absalom, is threatening David's kingship. We do realize early on this Psalm that David places a great deal of trust in the LORD for keeping him safe from the hands of his enemies. At the same time, he has written this Psalm as an appeal to the LORD to keep him out of the hands of those who are a threat to his life, and his place as the king of Israel. (see 2 Samuel 15) Of course, many of the kings of Israel found themselves in the very same kind of place in their rule over the country. Even Saul, who was initially a pretty good king, found himself paranoid about the role that David might play in Saul's demise. It was so invasive in Saul's thinking that he could no longer help himself to find his way out of that feeling of being betrayed. It is certainly true that even in the time of the judges, those selected to lead found themselves in trouble with the people, or those who thought that they should be removed. Scripture itself shares story after story about God's deliverance for those of faith, when it looks like there is no chance to overcome the enemy. Just as an aside, you and I face an enemy too. That enemy is death. We know that we cannot defeat death on our own, but with the gift of Jesus Christ, we are able to come to that time when we know it is not far off. with a sense of calm. We appeal to God, seeking His intervention, that we might have eternal life, and the LORD has given us the answer in Christ's Resurrection from the dead, the sure and certain promise that, like Christ, when we live in faith, we too shall share in the Resurrection to eternal life.

So, how do we keep going when faced with what seems to be insurmountable odds? The people of God have always turned to the LORD for the answers to the plights of our lives. The first thing that we must do is to face the LORD with the truths, or facts of our situation. If we hope to be held on to by God, we must bring into the midst of our relationship with Him the difficult truths of what is going on. Second, when we are stressed by what is going on, or when we are confident of the overwhelming danger that we will face, we must not forget our relationship with God. Our God, David's God, is no small, puny, garden-variety god. Our God wields the greatest power we will ever know, His passion for His people! And here is the kicker, what God has done before, He will do again for His children, so rest well, knowing the one who is our defender in all the hard things of this world. God has always and will always choose to be our deliverer in all things.

Please remember that there will not be Bible Studies for a while. Studies will resume on Monday, January 20th. When I am away from doing these three studies each week, please be sure to take the time to read ahead in the Psalms, and also be sure to get a copy of the Daily Devotional at church. God Bless you and keep you safe from all harm in the month ahead.

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 2:11-14 (December 17, 2024)

December 17, 2024:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 2:11-14

Good morning my dear friends in Christ. It was a very frustrating morning today. My current computer has decided to become intermittent in the reception of the internet, so Jesse and I worked on it for an hour trying to get it to open and to receive our Cox internet. After that frustrating time, Jesse brought out his computer, new in June, and I could hardly believe how fast it was. So, I have pulled out a new computer which we had at home, and we are in the process of loading it with all of my data, information, emails, security programs, passwords, etc. It will probably have to update for a long time to get up to date.  Please pray today for the families of the child and teacher who were shot and killed at their Christian School in Madison, WI. Also pray for the families of the 12 vacationers who lost their lives to carbon monoxide poisoning.  Pray for our drummer Jeff who is home very ill today from his work. I thank God for the power of the prayers you all offer on behalf of circumstances of illness, tragedy, and war around the world.

Today we continue in chapter two of Paul's Letter to the Galatians church verses 1-14. If there is any word that describes this reading, and it will take Paul a bit longer to theologically unpack what surrounds it, is the word hypocrite, or as the text I am using, in more modern English, is "Play-Acting. In our modern culture in the Church to use such a work is a real "slam" against a person who is doing it. Here, I think that Paul is pretty angry, perhaps most especially because he has already been to Jerusalem, after waiting 14 years, to convey the understanding between himself and Peter and James that they are really working in two different areas of ministry, Paul with those who are gentile and uncircumcised, Peter and James with Jews, all of whom are circumcised.  In their separation it became more than that primary identity way of identifying two differing communities. It would appear that the Peter and James have, when in their home ministry areas, fostered the idea that there is a greater social division too.  However, when Peter is 300 miles north of Jerusalem in a community of those who have never been circumcised, and during the time that he is with this community of people, he acts (as a hypocrite) in the way that would indicate that all over in Peter's ministry he has taught and represented himself to be a person who believes in the unity of the people in the church, regardless of where they are from or what physical action has been taken for them to identify as the people of Paul.  That takes us to another issue that Paul ultimately faces, about the validity of Baptisms, no matter who did them.  But this topic is for another time, and in reality, is really much the same as the one Paul is facing with Peter in this reading. We should all be familiar with segregation in the south of our nation prohibiting Blacks from sharing eating establishments, lodgings, swimming pools, and any number of things that we no longer see as issues thanks to the driving ministry of the Baptist church in the South of which Martin Luther King Jr. was a pastor.  Today we are shocked when somehow a person is seen as less than American because of the color of their skin, or their national heritage, or their sexual identity. As the Church has grown more mature in its Christology of inclusion we have watched as some of our brothers and sisters have chosen to form new churches because they just can live with the inclusivity of Christ, needing instead to divide and separate from those who have chosen to live into the truth of Christ's life, ministry, death and Resurrection which is for ALL PEOPLE!

At American we are really good about sharing Christian Fellowship through meals and gatherings around the important times of life, and just because Lutherans really know how to do food! Though our worship is a corporate experience, it really is also, in many ways, individual. Here is one of the problems for Peter. When more conservative Christianized Jews arrive at the meal, Peter attempts to withdraw from sharing food and fellowship with those people of Antioch, trying to avoid a conflict with those who believed that it was wrong for Peter to be eating and sharing fellowship with those "uncircumcised" people. Paul accuses Peter of being a hypocrite for his actions around this issue. It might help us to know that Antioch was really at the heart and center of the Christian movement in Asia Minor. I have to think that Peter felt that he was doing a good thing by breaking bread at table as a sign of the unity that already existed, but to pull back away from this sharing good fellowship really instead indicated that his heart was only in this for show.  Let's face it, many Christians live hypocritical lives, confessing their faith on Sunday morning, and rejoicing in Christ's gift of faith, but during the rest of the week, they live their lives as if they don't even know their Savior, because it would be a difficult time for them in their everyday lives as they relate to those who have no relationship with our Savior.  We need to have those relationships too by the way, praying for the Spirit's intervention to help us with words, thoughts, and confidence to be the very same person we are when we are in the Community of Believers together. I know this sounds like it ought to be easy, but so often we are afraid to try, or we close off Christ's love as the model we will live in every day. I think Peter must have been very embarrassed when Paul raised this issue before the present witnesses. When Paul gets into his Pharisee mode, he is a really forceful representative for Christ. We will have to wait to see if this is Paul burning bridges with Peter and the Jerusalem Christians. We need to know that the mission in Jerusalem will struggle, and only survives because of Paul's drive to move the whole of the Church to understand that the only necessary force for unity is Jesus Christ.

Next Week there will be no Bible Studies through New Year’s, and January will be Bible Study light because I will be away for my brother's celebration of life in Michigan.

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim