March 2025
Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. – 1 Peter 2:5
Grace and peace to you all! I pray this finds you well and that you see the blessings of God all around you.
Lent is swiftly coming upon us, a time when we consider the time Jesus spent in the wilderness. We consider what we really need, as opposed to the things we simply want. We see things through a lens of scarcity, thinking back on the times we found ourselves in the wilderness, whether literal or metaphorical, and what it can teach us.
The obvious answers come readily: food, water, shelter. These are the basic needs of survival. But to thrive, we need so much more. As Luther states in his Small Catechism, each time we pray for daily bread, we pray for “food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright workers, upright and faithful leaders, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”
Many of these seem obvious, but at the very last, Luther mentions friends and neighbors, and these are vital to our well-being. We humans are social creatures, living best in a society to which we contribute and which supports us in our needs. We care for each other and use our strengths where others are weak; in return, we look to them to do the same. No one of us can do everything, and we must rely on each other to rejoice when we succeed, mourn when we hurt, and encourage when we feel disheartened.
This is the heart of Christian community, a community we enter into through the waters of baptism. We do so not simply to be connected to God, but to join ourselves to the community of faith we see and the broader body of Christ throughout time and space. We baptize publicly so that we may profess our intention to join with the gathered believers and so those believers may welcome us with open arms and hearts full of joy and love, a dim reflection of the wondrous, unfathomable love of God through Jesus Christ.
We will be having a New Members class starting on March 13th where we will discuss what it means to become part of this community. What does it mean to willingly enter into fellowship with the congregation at St. Luke’s Lutheran and the Body of Christ as a whole? This class is open to anyone who wants to be a member, anyone who is considering it, and anyone who just wants to show up to remind themselves of some of the lessons from Confirmation. It will run for 4 weeks, and then, as we celebrate Christ bringing new light and life into the world, we will welcome new members on Easter Sunday and welcome new life to our congregation. Anyone who is interested should talk to me, and I’ll make sure we have everything we need.
I look forward to moving into this time of contemplation when we consider how we are meant to live in community with each other, praying that we may see ourselves as one community of hope, faith, and love.
Amen.