Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study on Nehemiah 8:9-18 (July 18, 2024)

July 18, 2024: Tuesday Bible Study on the Old Testament book of Nehemiah 8:9-18

My dear Bible Study Group, Thank you for your prayers for Jesse on the Prayer chain last evening late. For those of you not on the prayer chain, Jesse was to have teeth extracted today, but the appointment ended up being a consultation with the surgeon who will propose the surgery to Jesse's insurance. Otherwise, the bill will be $3,700. Yikes! Now we will pray for the insurance folks to give it all the go ahead. Remember that we will show a newly released family movie on Saturday at 2PM at the church. It is a current movie that did very well at the theaters. We will be showing it in the air-conditioned office due to the temperature of the Sanctuary at that time of the day. Also, this Sunday is Christmas in July, and we are asking you to bring a dozen of your favorite Christmas cookies to share in the Narthex after church. A week from tomorrow our Foodies of Faith will dine at the Cheesecake Factory at Tucson Mall at 11:30AM. Please sign up at church or call the church office if you are planning to come. 520-237-6442.

It has been a couple of weeks since we have been together to study Nehemiah. We had the July 4th holiday, and then My family was on vacation for the week after that. It is good to be back with you. In today's reading we find ourselves seeing the response of the Judahites to the reading of the Torah (the Law of God), which includes the 10 commandments and so much more. Remember that these people have just finished the wall and gates around Jerusalem and have already been away from their farms and businesses for quite a while. During this time, those who opposed the Judahites were working to undermine them, and there was also a great deal of usury between families within the Judahite community, which ultimately was forbidden by Nehemiah as the building of the wall progressed. In today's reading we are at the point where the wall is done, and now it is time for the people to make their life commitments to the way in which the LORD desires the people of O.T. to live in relationship with Him, and with other people. So, the Law is read, and the people start out with great enthusiasm, which begins to wain as they realize all that is being asked of them. It is like coming to church with all of the excitement of God's action of Love for our lives through Jesus Christ, excited at the freedom that we have from our sin, but then realizing that the Gospel is really about the very same covenant with God as the Judahites had, and still have today. It says, "I will be your God and you will be my people, if you are obedient to my law" The difference between the old covenant and the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, is that our obedience, when we fail, is met head on by the humble sacrifice of our Savior who pays the price and judgement of death so that you and I do not need to. Indeed, we will be found not guilty of our sin, because of Christ. However, like the Judahites, that does not mean that we can dismiss our part of the commitment in the relationship with God. Jesus Makes that all very clear, "You are to love the LORD with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as you love yourself." This then is our way of saying thank you for the great gifts of God's grace. So, we may not like everything that the Gospel presents to us, but we must know, just as the Judahites had to know, the covenants are not a contract free of our participation. So, Nehemiah gets it. He says, when you have made this commitment, it is time to feast, to prepare food for those whose lives have had little time, who lack the money, and celebrate for the next 7 days! And this happens annually. For you and me the Feast is the grand meal of Holy Communion which restores us to Christ every time that we receive it. And for us, this great Feast comes three times each year in its glorious power and love, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. It is in these feasts, our joy is renewed and celebrated right along with the Hosts of Heaven. I have to admit, I am so happy that you and I are not required to build a tent to live in on the roofs of our homes, or in our back yards, of on the land which we may own, but that became one of the demands of the new commitment to God as a reminder of the time of wandering in the wilderness and of God's provision in the face of very difficult times. No matter what is going on in our lives, the feasts of communion, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost are really meant to restore our love of God for all that God has done! In our next reading from Nehemiah, we will talk about the place of confession and forgiveness in our relationship. God bless you all. This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 11:27-33 bible study (July 16, 2024)

July 16, 2024:  Tuesday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 11:27-33

Good morning my dear friends and students of Scripture!

I was taken up with two 18-year-olds getting registered at Pima Community College earlier this morning. I am back to my computer now. Here are a couple of reminders for you about special opportunities at American Lutheran. This Saturday we will view a newly released movie at 2PM. We are planning to watch it in the air-conditioned office space. Snacks and water will be provided, and you can certainly bring your personal favorite too. On Sunday, we will celebrate Christmas in July. We will sing many of your favorite Christmas Carols. After church we will celebrate with each of your shared dozen homemade cookies. Melody and I have decided that we will make a batch of Loretta Olsen's oatmeal butter Christmas cookies. They almost melt in your mouth. For this event we will be in the narthex of the worship space. Water and coffee will be available. On the 26th of July, our Foodies of Faith group will gather at the Cheesecake Factory at 11:30AM. Please sign up at church so that we know to expect your attendance. It's a pretty busy couple of weeks coming up, and at the beginning of August we have the start of school for many of our children in the parish.

In out reading for today, we find Jesus revisiting the Temple. This is evidently at least a few days after he drove the buyers and the sellers out of the Court of the Gentiles. It is a little difficult for us to understand what an extraordinary experience this must have been for Him, and for those present who were there to listen to the conversations, teachings, and questions which many well respected rabbis shared while strolling on the East side of the Temple Gentile Court.  There you would find 35 massive Corinthian columns, and they might also be walking on the West side of the Gentile Court.  On that side of the court, you would find 162 marble columns that were 8 feet in diameter.  It must have been quite a sight. It was here that Jesus did what the other scholars were doing. When posed with a question of whose power He did all of these things by. In the typical style of the learned scholars who walked there, Jesus posed a question to them about John the Baptist. Did his power in baptizing come from people, or from God. It was a question which really caught them off guard. To say that John's authority rested in human power would make many who believed in John coming from God would get fired up and reject the Temple wholesale. If John's power in Baptism was from God, then they would have to admit the flaws in their thinking. The Truth never finds itself standing in silence, but lies and deceits, when revealed, literally have nothing to say.  Any answer they would provide would reveal who they really were.

It is always the reality that those who are caught in the kind of lies that were used against God's only begotten Son, survive only in the darkness, but the Light of Christ's Truth, uncovered the killing hearts of those leaders. revealing in His resurrection Christ's victory over darkness and death. The hatred of people's hearts creates dangerous and troubling lives for all who find themselves trapped in the dangers of revenge, destruction, and selfishness. Christ has come to break the bonds of sin and brokenness that all too often fill our lives, and cause harm for those we are called to love.

Today's study is a little short, but Monday we will move into chapter 12 where Jesus will speak to those life-darkened teachers and leaders via the means of parables. They cannot understand through this teaching style either.

God bless your day, and I hope that you will be with me on Thursday.

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 11:22-26 bible study (July 15, 2024)

July 15, 2024:  Monday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 11:22-26

Good morning fellow Bible Study friends. Thank you for your willingness to rejoin our group after an extended week-long vacation for my family and me. We had a staycation here in Tucson at a local resort. Our sons were in and out throughout the week, and Melody and I alternated nights at home during the week. That meant that we did not have to pay someone to stay in the house, and thankfully, it all worked out very well. I hope your home and you were OK through that pretty tough storm that rolled through the center of Tucson last night. There was a great deal of tree damage downtown which we saw coming through when we were on Broadway after our son's late basketball game last night on the northwest side of town. We had little rain, only a little wind, and hardly knew that the storm was taking place in another part of our community.

In today's reading, we find Jesus offering His guidance on prayer. We always need to remember that we may be reading in Mark with passages out of chronological order. Today's reading is one of those. This teaching of Jesus about prayer and the faithful person's relationship with God, and other people, is one of the specific sayings of Mark which appears to be connected to the passage on Christ's "blasting" of the fig tree.  In this passage we find echoes of Jesus' teaching in the Gospels which reminds us that we are to love God more than anything else, and we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And at the heart of this is our faith in God! So, let's move on to talk more specifically about prayer.

A first step in faithful prayer is confession of our brokenness and offering thanksgiving for Christ's compassionate sacrifice for our very lives. Prayer in private is personal, giving us an opportunity for intimate conversation with God. I know that Christ gave us the perfect prayer in the form of the Lord's Prayer, and you and I know this prayer by wrote, but it is also to have such a love for God, and to remember God's love for us, that we pray with that intimacy filled with faith, hope, and love for God's desire to provide for us every good thing for which we pray.  We are often timid about how much we think God is willing to do in the answer of our prayers, however, Jesus makes it most clear, that in answer to our prayers which are filled with hope, faith, and love, God will even answer with actions beyond our expectations, like moving mountains.  For the Jew of Jesus time, this phrase about "moving mountains" was used to mean that a person of faith could pray to God and receive the solution of the faith questions of the heart for those for whom that teacher bore the responsibility. This ability to remove difficulties comes to those who live with intimate faith in their lives. If we have real faith, through our prayers, God can give to us the ability through our faith to deal with difficulties which we face, and also to discover ways to erase those same kinds of difficulties in the lives of those for whom we are responsible. These folks are our neighbors. Let’s ask ourselves if we are truly willing to acknowledge before God the nature and magnitude of our own struggles, and through faith, to receive God's answer to our prayer.  (like it or not!)  We can be confident of receiving from God those answers which are good for us to know, but if our prayer is for something which God does not find good for us, we need to know that the “no” of God's answer is still the very best one for our own well-being.  All too often people think that God's no means that God did not answer at all. That response from God requires our humble obedience too.

The second step in our prayer journey with God is to fill our hearts and minds with expectation when we offer our prayers to the Father. When I pray the prayers of the Church on Sunday morning at worship, it is my every expectation that God will answer our prayers, prayers offered filled with expectation for their granting by the LORD. It is an incredible experience that our Father in Heaven hears every prayer. The ones we offer aloud, and those that are only in our hearts, for which we are too humble, or perhaps, too afraid to speak, even when they are being offered through me on a Sunday morning.  This past week, our council president at American celebrated the life of her mother, age 100, as she passed quietly into the kingdom of the LORD in Heaven.  In these most difficult times, it is so important to seek the LORD'S guidance and help. Our prayers at the bedside of our dying loved-one, are filled with the hope and expectation, that through Christ, our treasured family member, or friend, or work companion have been received into the loving arms of the Savior as they journeyed through the grave and gate to eternal life.  I offer these prayers with humble hope and expectations. When we are ill and needing the restoration that only God can give, our prayers are offered with that very same hope and expectation, while we know that it is God's will that is ultimately done. Paul prayed to God for healing of that "thorn" which he bore in his life, knowing that God heard, and chose to not heal but to help Paul see the power of God's love for him, and as a teaching time for him, through which he came to accept this illness as an important part of his ministry and life. 

The third step is the one in which we humbly offer prayers of charity for others, thanking God for His own charity in our unworthy lives. If we are bitter because our own lives have failed to live up to the prayers that we have asked and asked and asked of God, then we are very likely to think our prayers seem to not be heard. Our prayer is certainly most effective when we are in this intimate relationship with the Father through His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. This is a relationship which does not yield bitterness but finds joy in all of the blessing of God in our own lives, in the lives of others with which we have been blessed. I talked yesterday in my sermon about the adoptions of five of our children. Like the births of the other three, I was amazed at the gift of life in every one of our eight children, moved to tears at births and at the final words of the judge at the court that the other five would be ours too! Though, like me, they have their own struggles in life, they are the amazing gift of the LORD in my life! They are such a rich blessing of love, hope, and faith for us. Is our life really busy as mid 70s adults?  Absolutely. While others retire, travel, and live on wealth that has been accumulated, we instead have chosen a really different path of loving God first, and then moving our lives to provide opportunities and love for our five children who were considered unadoptable. I want you to know that the blessings of God have surrounded us through our love for Christ, and the gift of faithful people who surround us every day. The words of Scripture guide us to pray constantly, so, pray, pray!

With love for the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ, Pastor Kim