Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 8:38 – 9:1 bible study (April 8, 2024)

April 8, 2024:  Monday Morning Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 8:38 – 9:1

Christ Is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed! May the Hope of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you in every part of your life. In the Resurrection Christ has driven the darkness and power of death away. Christ is victorious! Life, forgiveness, and Salvation belong to us through His victory. Now death is no longer able to separate we who believe from God. Please pray for Martha's family as they await her (mother, grandmother, and great grandmother) journey through death's gate as she prepares to join Christ's triumphant heavenly kingdom. Please remember Steve who is having surgery in about two weeks, and Kandice, Jeff, and Pastor David who are battling very difficult to treat cancers.

Thank you all for your prayers and support during Melody's recovery from knee replacement surgery last week. I know that God find's great joy when we come together as sisters and brothers in Christ to offer Christ's care for those who are ill or recovering.

bible study

I am out of the office for at least one more week, but I will continue to offer online Bible Studies, and I will be at Church on Sundays to lead worship, and to share music with you. Today we are going to cover only a few verses of Mark 8 and 9.  Mark 8:38 helps us to see the confidence of the Savior as He grows closer to the conclusion of the journey to which God has called Him. Jesus is certain of the choice He has made to be guided by the Father. When others might be very doubtful of what is coming, Jesus knows that his enemies will succeed in taking Him to the Cross, and His death. Christ's detractors believe that in death they will have defeated Jesus and the Truth which He taught, and as this all unfolded, they would be able to save their own power and wealth. Jesus knew that the evil He defeated would never now be able to hide the truth. The truth is not defeated! I had to think that even the disciples may have had their doubts about how things would go moving forward without their Master guiding them every day. What would happen to the important work that Jesus did, if they were unable to really meet the task ahead? However, within a few decades, the Christian message was on its way through Greece, and Italy, and the people who bore its message were continuing to grow the Church. We know this to be true because we have the letters of Paul and the Disciples that help us to understand what was going on, and how quickly Christ's Word continued to move. But what about today? Nearly every congregation in our nation has seen a decline in active members since the pandemic.  Though there were only about 200 members of the Way religious group after Christ's death, the work of the Light of Jesus Christ was not, nor will it ever be, defeated by darkness and evil.  It is an interesting time to be a clergy. But I come to you today to say the Light will never be defeated by darkness. The journey of the faithful may be many decades long once again, but our faithfulness will never fail to carry the Light and Truth, it's power will continue to be with Christ's faithful children and the church.  Though things look tough right now in terms of the survival of the of once vibrant places of worship, you and I can have the confidence of Christ, the Church is here to stay today, tomorrow, and always. Remember! Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 8:37 bible study (March 26, 2024)

March 26, 2024:  Tuesday Morning Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 8:37

Blessings and Peace to you this morning.  TEP has thrown quite a wrench into our schedules at church this week, and for everyone who lives in this part of Sam Hughes.  Please keep an eye on your emails and messages through the rest of this week.  We may be sending out a notice about a changed schedule if our power is off for an extended period of time.  I am going to keep today's Bible Study pretty brief, this week there is just a great deal of things that need to be taken care of as we proceed through Holy Week and on to Easter morning.  Please remember that Easter Festival worship is at 10AM.  It is preceded by Easter carry-in breakfast at 8:30AM.  Please bring your food items in early.  The warming cabinet will be on for keeping food hot.  We have decorating in the sanctuary and parish hall beginning at 10AM on Saturday morning.  Please join us to help out.

New Testament Bible Study

This morning, we are in chapter 8 of the Gospel of Mark verse 37.  This Proverbial style verse from Mark 8 has that ring of wisdom in it.  What the world thinks creates life, is not as it appears when we are listening to the humility and sacrifice which Christ is prepared to offer so that abundant life may endure, that is life with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that it may fill our hope, and drive our living once we have come to faith in Jesus Christ as the only True Savior of all of us.  Remember that what we are talking about is how does the life we live fit into God's measure of our lives?  It is how God sees our full participation with Him in our living, serving, and sacrificing.  Will there be too much of me and not enough of the Great Commandment in my living?  When we try to understand what this kind of living is, we must turn to the only one who has ever met God with humility, commitment, and holding to the life that God wanted Him to live.

1.       The world's mark of success, and most certainly this is true in today's world of social media, is popularity.  All too often people sacrifice principle for popularity!  What we will learn in our faith journey is the answer to how important this life we have lived is.  This can be answered by asking what we will face at the end of this life.  Who will be most important?  Has my life made me popular with people? vs Have my principles pleased God?  The One before whom we will stand at our physical life's end will not be other people, but only God.  We can only come on the knees of our hearts to endure God's Judgement.  The certainty of our faith in Christ is what will indeed help us through the judgement.

2.      People, all too often, with their desire for the "things" of this life, which in other's eyes are signs of our success, are nothing but cheap accompaniments to what is really important.  Everything that we have deemed as the significant sign of our success is transient (temporary).  What lasts beyond all that is temporary lasts into eternity.  Morality and ethics are too often set aside for a bigger pay check, when a vocation of helping others that pays far less, is bound to be carried far beyond one's life, especially by those who have received the benefit of  their compassion, grace, and real involvement.  It is what has been chosen over greater wealth and has brought great joy in heaven also becomes so important in our relationship with God. 

3.      All too often people are willing to sacrifice eternity for the moment.  What works best for all of us who believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is to think about the choices and decisions in life, and what will bring the greatest joy to God!  We all need to start every day by positing this question to ourselves in our morning prayers, and in our responses to God's guidance through the Savior, and then to intentionally move through the new day centered in Christ, and His pathway of Love.

I will be back with you in two weeks.  I am taking time off to be with Melody during the early part of her surgery recuperation.  There will be no Ezra study on Thursday this week.

In Christ's Love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 8:36 bible study (March 25, 2024)

March 25, 2024:  Monday morning Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 8:36

Dear Ones in Christ, this morning we are in the first day of Holy Week.  It began yesterday at the end of the worship service as we read chapters 14 and 15 from the Gospel of Mark.  This traditional reading helps us to move quickly from the amazement at the miracle cures, from the Teacher's parables, and from the lack of understanding that the disciples seem to display as Christ tries to move them into a very different circumstance for their lives, and even more importantly, for His.  Throughout His ministry, Jesus has modeled the behavior for ministry to which the Gospel calls all of the Baptized in Christ.  Please pray for the Church across this planet.  Pray for Francis, Pope of the Catholic Church all over the world, and pray that our Lutheran conversations and dialogues with them will continue to provide for shared ministries and greater understanding of each other's faith and practices in the Name of our Lord.  Pray for all of the victims of cancer, those we know, and those who are yet to discover that this disease will impact their lives.  (Jeff H. Kandice K, Pastor Dave, and Katie who is the great niece of our member. And pray for me as I now meet with a new urologist tomorrow.  My PSA results will indicate if my cancer has grown and expanded, which will take me on to the next level of oncology treatment.

Start your day with God's Word

In today’s brief, one verse passage, we are called by Christ, along with His Disciples, to understand that it is really important how we live our saved by Christ lives.  Salvation by the action of our Savior on the Cross becomes a deeply personal, and often an emotional and private part of our lives.  But today's reading from Mark offers us a caution about what having faith in the Savior is really all about.  Hiding, or hoarding, the Good News because it is such a special part of our lives is not the intent of Christ for us.  Like Jesus, we are to live humbly in faith, setting our feet on a pathway of activity for the sake of the Gospel, not for our own pietistic experience.  It means using our time, our very lives, to live by the example and action to which our faith is meant to be lived.  Hiding in the hills around the city, in the privacy of our surroundings, so that we might pray and quietly absorb this great gift of Love that is Jesus Christ, and His sacrifice for the defeat of the consequences of our sin, death, are ours to use to build our courage and strength for action!  Christ's words here in Mark 8:36 make it clear that we are to take action out in the world to make a difference. I can tell you that we have been challenged many times over our late in life adoptions of Josiah, Jesse, James, and Jared, (yes, they are all Biblical names, like our older boys, Jeremiah, and Joshua)  All of our conversations were about how God had blessed us, and back then, had given us an empty, very large home in which to live.  We prayed and set out with confidence in God's call to live the Gospel, licensed to provide foster care, and we kept for adoption the boys who were not going to go home, back to their birth families, and we prepared for the energy that we both knew that it was going to take to start another family in our late fifties and sixties.  Somehow God kept informing us that each of our boys was to be ours, and we knew it from the time that they walked into our lives.  This was to be part of setting aside our quiet retirement years to do the Lord's work.  The other part of course was to continue in pastoral ministry as long as God would make it possible.  I watched my father retire at 58 years and spend the rest of his 32 years of retirement living a quiet and comfortable life.  I know that is not what God has in store for me, and my life partner.  Our days are often busy beyond belief, and there is certainly not the energy that we had with the first group of four children, which also included another adoption because God had placed it on our hearts to do.  All five of our adoptions were to bring the love of Christ into the lives of children who were considered challenging for placement and adoptions.  God put these 5 on our hearts, and we became Dad and Mom for their lives, teaching them about Christ's Love, and what it means to serve in His Church even when you may not want to get up on a Sunday morning to set up the parish hall for a meal after church.  Here at American and through the shared love that we have with our boys and girls in the family, we have, in giving up our quiet later years, found abundant love and joy in serving the Gospel, and God has given us the real life that we know means Christ is with us, no matter what anyone has to say about it, unless they have come to experience it themselves.  Hard tiring work is grace-filled when we do it with Christ alongside of us every day, shaping our words and deeds, and living our lives for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God.   If we had not come to American in Tucson in 1991, to the love of her members, and the Grace of God which has grown tremendously in our community of faith, I am not certain that we would have had the courage to follow Christ's heart for the life into which He has brought us.  Thank You God!

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim