Claimed, gathered and sent

Thanks to Rev Abi for this morning's prayer. Lord, Come be the salt in our life that we then can be the salt in other’s lives. Lord, Teach us how to not be stumbling blocks in the little one’s lives. Lord, teach us to accept each other even though we are different in our practices and our form of worship and church government. Lord, Teach us to be the salt that this world needs. Lord, help us in our walk to be your disciples. Lord remind us it is for such a time as this that you have called us to be your disciples, to spread the salt of your grace and love in this world. Lord remind us to spread your hope in a world that sometimes feels hopeless. Amen flickr photo

Here is the sermon I'm preaching this morning at Rural Lutheran on the gospel text Mark 8:31-38. +++ In the book The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning describes a common myth that flourishes today. It goes something like this: “Once I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, an irreversible, sinless future beckons. Discipleship will be an untarnished success story; life will be an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness.” This myth has done great harm because it misrepresents the way Christian life is really live The problem is, our daily experiences fly in the face of this idea. Some say it’s simply because we don’t have enough faith. If we only said and did the right things, we could have, as one televangelist suggests, our “Best Life Now.” In today’s gospel, we find ourselves arriving seemingly in the midst of an already unfolding drama. Today we are at the turning point of Mark ’s gospel between Jesus ’ Galilean ministry a...

A number of years ago, I worked at McDonald's. No matter how I washed my uniforms, no matter what I used, they smelled like McDonald's food. People could tell where I had been just by the smell. Last week the smell of turkey wafted through the house thanks to a revgalblogpal recipe. Everything goes in the crockpot: turkey breast, cranberry sauce, and onion soup mix. Then you just let it cook for about 10 hours. It's so easy. And it smells and tastes delicious. And of course coffee! Yum. Even people that don't like coffee enjoy the aroma. What is our scent? In this passage , Paul speaks of the believer having an aroma...the "aroma of the knowledge" of God that is to be spread everywhere. We are an aroma to the people we encounter daily and an aroma to God. Can people tell where we've been, who we've been with by what we smell like? So, how do we smell like Jesus? Spend time with him. Hang out with him. Learn from him. Abide in him. Everyone will...

Parts of the lectionary readings from Tues. really got me thinking. I could not decide which reading to meditate on. Something in each one grabbed me. Ps. 149:4 regarding the Lord's pleasure in his people, Exodus 40:38 -- God's presence with the people through each part of the journey, and 1 Thessalonians 4:10-12 with its instructions on how to live incarnational lives. So these bits from the readings all seem interconnected. I had a great diagram of this in Word, but don't know how to add it here, so just imagine a cycle of the above in a circle: 1. God's delight in us. 2. His presence every stage of our journey. 3. Living an incarnational lifestyle--bearing witness of his presence in our lives, and then back to #1 bringing us full circle. Speaking of full circle, remember what we read from Acts on Sunday? Ah yes, the all too familiar story of Stephen's stoning. Martyrdom was the stage of the journey where Stephen found his Lord's presence. He bore witn...

This is one of the most balanced, well thought out posts I've seen in a while on a Christian approach to poverty and living a simpler lifestyle. You will find it at http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/ . Powered by ScribeFire .