Adults - Tri County Lutheran Parish

June 22, 2020 by brendat Leave a Comment

Good News For Cowards

Devotional for the week of June 21st, 2020

Jesus is more straightforward in today’s gospel than we might want to hear. He makes it strikingly clear that there is danger in this life, especially in following Jesus in his way of love, mercy, justice, and compassion. There is danger because many forces oppose God’s way because of fear, greed, and selfishness.

Just by saying these things, Jesus raises our anxiety and provokes our own worry. But he doesn’t leave us there. In fact, he says outright, “Do not fear” (Matt. 10:28). And beyond that, he tells us why we do not need to be afraid: “You are valuable to God.”

We might feel like cowards at times. Fear grips us. We find it difficult to act for the sake of the gospel when there is risk, be it physical, social, or financial. The word coward comes from the word for “tail,” like an animal putting its tail between its legs. We want to put our tail between our legs and hide.

Jesus summons us to something else: courage. The word courage comes from the word for “heart.” Sometimes we say to someone facing a difficult time, “Take heart!” Courage enables a person to act even though they are afraid. They act from their heart, their sense of who they really are. Jesus tells us who we really are: we are valuable to God, so our lives matter. We will not be forgotten or abandoned, especially when we face troubles. This is our heart, our courage.

Jesus also says, “It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher” (Matt. 10:25). Jesus faced ridicule, rejection, suffering, and death for his commitment to God’s kingdom of love. We are not alone in our attempts to walk the way of love, mercy, justice, and compassion. Jesus, our teacher, walks this way with us. Take heart!

Devotional message and art based on the readings for June 21st, reprinted from sundaysandseasons.com.
Copyright © 2019 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.

June 8, 2020 by brendat Leave a Comment

Triune God, Triune Church

Devotional for the week of June 7th, 2020

On this Trinity Sunday, we hear Jesus’ final words to his disciples. They are words of sending, command, and blessing. They include the great promise, comfort, and empowerment: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

The rest of Jesus’ message is all about what happens until the end of the age. In the meantime, the church is active in sharing the good news, baptizing, and teaching the way of Jesus. This is done at Jesus’ command and under his authority with people of all nations. The word “nations” doesn’t quite capture the breadth of what Jesus means. The actual term in Greek is more expansive, including all ethnicities and cultures. Instead of a blank, monochromatic sheet of paper, the church is a colorful patchwork quilt of people pieced together, stitched together, and united in the love of Christ.

Today we celebrate that we know God as Trinity. The Trinity serves as a model for the life of the church: God is not one-dimensional, but multifaceted. The Trinity is not monochromatic, but rather a swirling, colorful dance. There is no division in the Trinity, but an indwelling of the Spirit, the gentle authority of Christ, and the blessing of the Father.

In a world that is often polarized and divided, and in which marginalized groups face persecution and strife, we are called as followers of Christ to live beyond borders and division. The church is to be a gathering of peoples made up of every type of human distinction. By gathering all varieties of people into Christ, we live into the embodied reality of our triune God. May we be emboldened to do so, knowing that we are accompanied and empowered by our Savior “to the end of the age.”

Devotional message and art based on the readings for June 7th, reprinted from sundaysandseasons.com.
Copyright © 2019 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.

May 19, 2020 by brendat Leave a Comment

I’ll Not Turn Away

Devotional for the week of May 17, 2020

It’s all about the relationship of love. Love is the first and the greatest of commandments, according to Jesus. This is the gospel of the Lord!

The two men seemed dissimilar in almost every way: their color, their age, their education and careers, their families and sexuality, the worlds they knew and the lives they had lived. All of it registered as a natural, albeit unconsidered, divide. When circumstances they could never have anticipated brought them together, the two began to accompany one another through years of capsized lives. They walked side by side in body and spirit, carrying along one another’s stories, fears, losses, regrets, and joys, each daring to let them slip into his heart. Amid the ebb and flow of seasons, the unlikely companions discovered in one another stories that were their own. Something of each of them was in the other.

Call this grace: the wretched demons of loneliness that had haunted both men stumbled, adrift in the wake of the companions’ fellowship.

Still, they knew that parting was ahead. The days of walking, conversing, and trusting the companionship would soon come to an end. So they began to speak of their impending separation in this way: “This is my promise: I’ll see you on the other side of this.” It was repeated with other words, which always meant “I will not turn away from you.” Call this the gospel story.

Grace is found in mystery, when strange circumstances confound expectations. Love is found in experience, when trust is discovered and nurtured. In a form we are not looking for, another—the Advocate, Comforter, Counselor, Spirit—will come to us.

“I will not leave you orphaned,” says Jesus. “I am coming to you” (John 14:18). It’s all about the relationship of love.

May 11, 2020 by brendat Leave a Comment

Along The Way

Devotional for the week of May 10, 2020

The underground railroad that saved the lives of countless enslaved husbands and mothers and babies tortured by America’s original sin of slavery depended upon safe refuge along the journey to freedom—a place prepared.

Through desert dangers where thieves waited and beasts preyed in the night, weary travelers along the Silk Road took restful shelter in inns along their way—a place prepared.

From the dense streets of Kolkata, India, where poverty’s scourges lie thick over crowds of people, and disease lingers in the sluggish air, humble compassion clad in white and blue saris gathers the wretched into a home for the destitute and dying—a place prepared.

Around the globe, in the midst of despair, people fleeing from war die in the sea, are lost in the desert, swarm at borders, scale walls, weep at fences, hang on trains, trudge every landscape imaginable hoping for a home at the end of a trail—a place prepared.

Jesus promised the most remarkable thing to his disciples: “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). And they asked, “Where? We don’t understand! Show us!” Jesus’ answer to his disciples does not offer a spiritualized road to heaven or a settled spot in Galilee, but it does offer all that matters: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus is the destination and the path. There is a refuge—a place prepared—in his love. The home of peace and safety that we all long for is found in Jesus. Jesus is with us all along the roads, streets, and alleyways, in places unseen and unknown. Jesus is with us, goes before us to prepare the place, and shows us the way.