Holy Week

      Greetings in the name of our Triumphant King.  I was supposed to preach Palm Sunday; however, we got about six to eight inches of snow Sunday.  It has just started snowing Sunday morning but Pastor asked me not to come because he was worried I wouldn't make it back home after the service.  So now I am preaching tonight instead.  I worked over eight hours Sunday moving snow, which I loved.  Then I survived three days of classes before the break this week.  Today I slept in, made chili, and made a few slight changes to my sermon.  I am writing this quick, going to practice my sermon, and then its time for supper and church. Tomorrow, I plan to work on some homework and get a head in the quarter.  Then Saturday and Sunday, Erin and I are headed up to Nate's in Decatur.  Mom, Dad, JoAnna, and Steven are all going to be there too.  This is Erin's first time meeting the Richter clan.  Hopefully all will go well.
     Monday, I plan to work in the office for my boss most of the day.  Then Tuesday classes begin again.  I will try to write another blog Monday, letting you know how preaching and the weekend went.  Here is my manuscript for the sermon I am preaching tonight.  It is from the Old Testament lesson from Palm Sunday: Deuteronomy 32:36-39.

          Have you ever observed someone working and you thought to yourself “there has to be a better way to do that?”  I have worked many jobs over the past nine years of my life.  From janitor to bank teller, from road crew to a cook, and through all of these jobs I have had many experiences.  The one thing almost all of these jobs had in common was trying to find the best way to get the job done.  I would be assigned a task and then either shown or told how to do it.  I would begin doing the task, but would immediately begin to try to think of an easier or faster way of doing the job.  Most of the time these were pretty tedious, mind-numbing tasks, such as painting, mowing, spraying, etc.  Now I am not trying to say that I was smart enough to come up with some grand solution for everyone of these situations.  I am just simply saying that I occupied my time by trying to think of a better way to do the task.  The truth is it was my laziness that would cause me to want to be done with the job and therefore my mind would begin thinking of every possible solution to getting done faster.  I always wanted to do a good job and an efficient job, but if there was a way to do this in a faster manner, I always figure why not.    However, even if I was able to come up with some better to do it, my boss or co-worker would normally not let me do it.  They told me to do it how I was told to do it because that’s how it is suppose to be done.  While this was frustrating, it was what I was told to do, so I did it.  Plus I was getting paid by the hour!  The point is the job got done, but the work seemed counterintuitive.  

            Our text for today comes from Deuteronomy 32 as I just read.  This chapter is towards the end of Deuteronomy when the forty years of wandering in the desert is coming to an end and the people of Israel are about to cross into the promise land.  Moses knows his time is almost up.  He knows he will not enter the promise land, he knows Joshua is the one he will hand the reins over to.  This speech is one of Moses last parting speeches to the people of Israel, and this song is both a hymn of praise but also a way for them to constantly be reminded of all that God has done for them.  After he speaks the words of this song, he tells them,

Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law, For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. 

This beautiful song includes so much if you go read the whole chapter. But this morning I want to focus in on the one line in verse 39 where it says, there is no god besides me, I kill and I make alive.  You see Moses at this particular point in the song is reminding the people that their God is the one true God.  The very same God who promised to deliver them out of Egypt and He did just that.  The very same God who made the original covenant with Abraham, promising that his seed would be the seed of blessing for all nations.  He tells them this is the God who has promised to be with His people, to deliver them, and to free them from their sins.  Then we get this line that we are looking at today and Moses shows us how God works.  He is telling us that this is the way God has chosen to fulfill those promises.  God kills and God makes alive, this is how He will complete the task at hand, this is how He will get the job done.       

            But this is where people get frustrated and they think to themselves that God has chosen a counterintuitive way about accomplishing His work.  Like me painting a classroom, their minds begin to wander and they think there has to be an easier way God could do this.  You see the problem is mankind disobeyed God’s word and broke the relationship we had with Him.  We are all sinners and are no longer able to have the relationship God had with us before the fall.  When mankind fell to sin and destroyed this relationship, God now had several options.  He could have just destroyed all of creation.  Erased everything He created and just started all over, but we know that’s not what He did.  So now He had to find a way to fix that broken relationship.  This is where some people try to come up with their own way of fixing the problem.  Some suggestions I have heard are:  Why didn’t God just kill the devil when he fell away from God?  I mean the devil was created as an angel, but then rebelled against God and lead his rebel army away with him.  And it is true God could have just killed the devil and his demons before they had the chance to tempt Adam and Eve.  But He didn’t.  Or another suggestion I have heard is: Why didn’t God just forgive Adam and Eve, just let that one mistake be a onetime free be and let them continue to live in the garden?  Again, He is God, He could have done this, but He didn’t.  There are many, many more of these suggestions that human minds have come up with that seem like a better way for God to fix the broken relationship.  But God doesn’t do any of them.  And it doesn’t matter if it seems non-logical, or counterintuitive, or backwards to us, God has chosen His way of fixing this relationship. 

            But then I have to stop and wonder why are we so quick to judge how God works?  After all, we are the ones who broke the relationship.  And not just Adam or Eve, but all of us, you, me, and the like.  We are all sinners that go directly against God’s word, disobey Him, rebel against Him, and sin day in and day out.  We do not fear, love, and trust in God above all things.  We fear things that can hurt or kill the body like dangerous animals or evil men with weapons, but do not fear the one who can kill the soul.  We love ourselves, our possessions, or our money, but do not love the one who first loved us.  We trust in superficial things like karma, horoscopes, or the basic principle that all humans are morally good, but do not trust in the one who provides all things for us.  We do not love the Lord our God with our heart, soul, and mind.  We do not love our neighbors as ourselves.  Instead of uplifting and protecting our neighbor’s reputation, we deliberately gossip and talk badly about them.  Instead of honoring our father and our mother and others in authority, we think that we know better so we can just do whatever we want anyway.  We lust, cheat, steal, lie, and then justify it all with excuses at the end of the day so we can sleep at night.  We are the ones to blame, we are the ones who are guilty, we are the ones who turned away from God.  And yet we still think we know better than God and think if only God had done it this way or that way it would have been better.  His way just doesn’t make any sense! 

            Well you know what; God did not choose to do it this way or that way.  He chose to do it His own way.  He is God, He can do whatever He wants, and instead of critiquing His work, we should be thanking and praising Him that He did it His own way.   

            This text is perfect for Holy Week.  Last Sunday was Palm Sunday, the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem as the triumphant king.  People shouted out and sang loudly, Hosanna, to the son of David, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.” This is how Holy Week starts, at the pinnacle of Jesus’ ministry.  However, as we move forward to today and the rest of this week we see God’s chosen way of fixing this relationship in action.  We are the sinners that Jesus died for, but God the Father is the one who ordered Jesus to be killed.  This was His plan of fixing the relationship from the very beginning.  He had His Son killed on Good Friday in order to pay the price for all of our sins.  But then only three days later on that very first Easter morning, God made Him alive again.  Jesus, fully resurrected in the flesh walked out of that tomb, is now truly the triumphant king.  God killed His own Son, and then He made Him alive again and this is the way he chose to do His work.  This is how He chose to give you and me the life we don’t deserve. 

            However, God’s work is still not done.  He is still working to fully fix and restore our relationship to Him.  Just as God put His own Son to death but then brought Him back to life, all those who were here Sunday witnessed God working this exact same way again as He put His son Lucas to death and brought him back to life by the water and the word.  He did this to us all at our baptisms.  By the water and the word we die the same death Christ died on the cross, but through the same water and word we are made alive and live the same life that Christ lives.  This is how God works to bring us our salvation and make us His holy children.  This is how He gives us our eternal life that only God is able to give to us because this is how He chooses to redeem His people from their sins, and this includes all who believe in His name and have been made His through baptism.  It includes you, it includes me, and today it includes Lucas. 

            So as we continue ahead through this Holy week, we left Sunday morning singing loud hosanna to our king.  Then today and tomorrow as we come back, we grieve the suffering and death of our Lord, knowing it was for our sake He was killed.  But we remember this verse from Moses’s song that reminds us that our God who puts to death, brings back to life.  And on Easter Sunday we sing our Alleluias as loud as we possibly can, thanking Him and praising Him for bringing His Son back to life through the resurrection and bring us back to life through our baptism.  And on that Final Day, when God’s work is finally finished, and every knew bends and every tongue confesses Him Lord as we heard in the Epistle reading today, that is when our relationship with God will finally be restored back to perfect.  We will be resurrected in the flesh just as Christ was when He walked out of the tomb, and spend the rest of eternity in His presence.  Moses told all of Israel in that this is how God works, and we know this truly is God’s life saving work for all His children. 

In the name of Jesus, Amen.  

BLESSINGS ON YOUR EASTER!!!!!   HE IS RISEN, HE IS RISEN INDEED!!!!

Spring Joy

     Greetings to you all in the name of our Triune God.  As the weather continues to get nicer, I am getting busier and busier.  Last week we had our first softball game for IM's.  We won and it was so much fun to be playing again.  Last night I played with the golf team for the first round of the season.  The course was not in very good condition but I still played decent.  It took two holes to shake off the rust and find the old swing again. I need to spend some time on the driving range fixing and tweaking a few things, but it felt good to be back out on the course.  I am still trying to work out two or three days a week, play basketball one or two days a week, and now softball will be twice a week and golf will be twice a week. This is the very reason I took fewer credits in the spring because this same thing happened last year and I remembered how active I always am once the weather is nice again.
     Classes are going well and are really interesting.  For my Matthew class we are supposed to read the entire book of Matthew (in English) three times a week.  I read it three times the first week and only got two in last week.  I read it once today for this week, but it really is fun to feel like you know the book and see patterns and themes you have never seen before.  I am also working on reading the entire New Testament once through this quarter.
      For field work church I am still doing liturgy every non-communion Sunday and reading the lessons every communion Sunday.  We are still working through the Psalms in my Bible Study every week, and this week I preach.  I am excited because on May 26th I will be doing the entire service by myself.  Pastor will be on vacation so he asked me to cover for him. I will be doing liturgy and preaching for the first time in one service. I also get paid for doing it since Pastor is gone.
      Other than all the sports and activities, classes and homework, and field work church, I am still trying to spend time with Erin and with Logan while he is down here student teaching.  Erin is back in classes and so she is busy reading and studying every night again, but we are still able to find time to hang out.
      I will post my sermon manuscript on here this week after I get it officially completed.  My thought for today comes from Bible Study this last Sunday.  We covered Psalm 25, (look it up and read it). It is a beautiful prayer written by David, but it is especially amazing because it is an acrostic poem.  Each new line starts with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  Now this cannot be seen in the English, but it pretty cool in the Hebrew.  However, when you look at the prayer, it is a great example of how we should still pray today.  He starts out by praising God and telling Him he trusts in Him.  Then he asks for protection from his enemies. Then the vast majority of the middle of this prayer is looking inward, confessing to be a sinner, and asking God's guidance and instruction to avoid these sins in the future.  He then ends the prayer again asking for protection from all of Israel's enemies and prays for the chosen people of God as one voice.  We can pray like this too.  The thing I especially like about this prayer is that as I continue to struggle with the sinner saint paradox, it reminds me I am not alone and shows me an example of how to handle it.  We all know David was a sinner and knows what it feels like to feel guilty and sinful because of what he has done.  However, even though David was a sinner, he knew he can still trust in the Lord.  He shows us in this prayer that it is in these struggles that we turn our trust to the Lord and ask for His guidance and instruction as we continue to live in an evil world.  He shows us how we ask for God's help as we try to live the best we can for Him even though we know we are sinners.  We fail daily, but because we are part of Israel, God's chosen people, we know we have a God who has redeemed us through His Son, and therefore we are justified saints through the life, death, and life of Jesus Christ even though we live as sinners in this present evil age. We are justified because we live in the hope of our justification on that Final Day, and until that day comes we continue to pray this prayer asking for God's hand to keep us in His people.  All Praise Him who has called us to be His people, and who has justified us through His Son making us sinners His saints.
Please Pray Psalm 25 

Spring Quarter

      Greetings to you all in the name of our Heavenly Father.  With almost an entire month having gone by since my last post, I have some catching up to do.  I survived final's week and actually made it through the hardest quarter of my seminary career.  The amazing part is I not only made it through but was even able to keep my grades up as well.  Praise be to God who was with me through it all.  I feel like I learned so much last quarter, but I am happy it is over.
      I had an amazing two week break between the quarters.  It was just a relaxing and restful break with no homework due or any worries.  I spent the first weekend, which was Valentine's Day weekend, with Erin.  We went out for a nice steak dinner and had a great weekend together.  Then that Sunday she had to go back to Indianapolis for her last two weeks of clinical and I headed to Decatur.  I spent Sunday and Monday at Nate's hanging out with him, Kari and the boys.  They did not have school on that Monday because it was President's day, so I had a good day spending some time with the boys.  Then I headed to Nebraska.  I spent Tuesday through Saturday in Seward seeing college friends and Bill and Jami.  That was the week they got all of the snow, which I was super excited about.  My friends that were doing their student teaching had a couple of snow days so we got to actually hang out and have some fun.  Then I went to Iowa for a couple days.
      Then on that Tuesday when the big snow storm was moving through Missouri and eastern Iowa, I was supposed to go back to St. Louis.  I went through Kansas City instead of the normal route of going east through Iowa and then south.  I had good roads the whole way except in Kansas City.  I had one close call where a semi cut me off and I missed his back wheels by literally inches.  Again, the Lord was with me and my angels were working hard to keep me safe.  I made it back to St. Louis that night.
      Wednesday, two of my my friends, Chris and Sam, and I went headed out to Kentucky.  We spent Wednesday through Friday completing the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.  This is seven bourbon distilleries that are a part of this "trail".  If you take all seven tours and get a passport stamped by all seven, you have completed the trail. You mail in your passport and they mail you back an official Kentucky Bourbon Trail t-shirt and your passport back.  I am proud to say we did indeed complete the trail.  The seven bourbon distilleries were: Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, Heaven Hill (Evan Williams and Elijah Craig), Woodford Reserve, Wild Turkey, Four Roses, and Bourbon Town Branch.  I listed them in the order that we visited them.  It worked out to be an amazing trip.  We had three private tours because we were the only ones there and most tours only ever included one or two others besides us three.  I learned everything you could ever want to know about bourbon and I gained an appreciation for good sipping bourbon.  I would highly recommend this trip to anyone, because even if you are not into bourbon, the trip is still an amazing sight.  The scenery of the Kentucky countryside as you drive from each one to the next is beautiful.  Also, the distilleries themselves are beautiful old buildings and some were almost like small villages.  Four Roses looks like a Spanish mission and Woodford Reserve is a historic land sight for their old beautiful limestone buildings.  Maker's Mark is literally set up like a village with the buildings looking like houses and stores.  We saw huge horse ranches where the Kentucky thoroughbreds were running along the black wood fences.  It is a beautiful part of the country.
     The only hiccup we had along the way was the brakes went out on my car.  Luckily it happened between spots and not while we were driving.  I found a local mechanic who was able to get me in the first thing the next morning and got them fixed.  He was a nice guy and the price was not bad at all.  I always worry about things like that because they really have you in their hands.  I had no choice but to get it fixed and he could have charged me basically whatever he wanted, but luckily he was a fair and honest guy.  He even showed me some other things he recommend I get fixed before they go bad.
      The trip was actually pretty cheap since hotels and gas was split three ways.  The tours only cost an average of five bucks a tour. I did end up buying two bottles of nice but not expensive bourbon.  I bought them because they were the smaller distilleries's bottles that I cannot find in St. Louis.  I also got an awesome souvenir set.  I bought a shot glass from each distillery and then I got an actual bourbon barrel stave which I am going to use as a shelf to put all the shot glasses on.  This was pretty cheap since shot glasses were always the cheapest thing in the gift shops and the stave was cheap too.  I mailed in my passport and am now waiting on my t-shirt.  If you have any other questions or are actually interested in this trip feel free to contact me and I will tell you more.
       One of the coolest parts of the trip was one night we were playing cards in the hotel lobby.  A guy our age came up and asked if he could play too.  We gladly greeted him and introduced ourselves.  We found out he was a union construction worker and there were a bunch of them there for hazardous material training classes.  We ended up meeting several of them, but there were three who sat with us and talked with us most of the night.  All three had lived a long hard life.  The one guy was 19 and was already married, divorced, and had a two year old son.  The guy who played cards with us was 24, had a daughter, and was engaged to a girl who had a son.  The third guy was only in Kentucky on court order.  He had been in jail in Jersey and they agreed to let him out if he went and lived with his father in Kentucky.  All three had been to jail at one point or another, all three were working back breaking jobs just trying to make a living and get their life back on track for their kids or themselves.  The one from Jersey told us he had read the entire Bible in jail but didn't really understand it.  We ended up spending the rest of the night building relationships with all three and witnessing when we could.  Sam even gave his bible to the one who had read it and not understood it.  He put his email address in the cover so he can ask any questions he had.  When we finally called it a night the one who was playing cards with us got very serious and earnest and thanked us for what we had said and done.  We did end up exchanging contact information with him and I hope to keep in touch with him every once in a while.  It was amazing how a simple card game led us to sharing the Gospel with three guys who needed to hear it.
      Spring quarter is looking to shape up to be a very good one.  Erin is back in St. Louis again, which I am very happy about.  She loved her clinical in Indy, and was sad to leave.  I am glad she had such a great experience, but am glad to have her back too.  She starts classes again Monday.  Logan got here last night and we are going to hang out later today.  I think I am going to thoroughly enjoy the classes I have this quarter and the lighter work load will be most enjoyable.  I am working more hours again now that I am not swamped with classes.  I got another job where I will be putting several hours in as an office assistant for my old boss Kim. They rearranged who was head of what and my old boss Kim got moved to Residential Administrator.  She was sad to lose me so she offered me this new job and I gladly took it since it will provide me my most hours now.  It is really nice cause I can go in whenever I want and work, but don't have to go in if I am busy.
       My thought for the day comes from the sermon I heard this Wednesday.  The sermon was part of a series and the theme was light versus dark.  It was a good sermon, but one of the bad things about taking classes at the seminary and especially homiletic's classes, it becomes very hard to just listen to a sermon.  Instead, your mind begins to think of what you would add or subtract to the sermon if you were preaching it.  It takes work to make sure you are intentionally just listening to the message as it is.  However, Wednesday night as I was listening, I thought I knew where he was going and I waited for him to get there.  He never got to it though and I realized I had done it again and tried to make it my sermon. While he was preaching about dark versus the light, he used the illustration of a family vacation of going down into the caves and then coming back out into the light.  It was a beautiful illustration, but I heard this light and dark contrast with the idea of a cave being dark in a Lenten sermon, and my mind could not help but go straight to the tomb of Christ.  His dead body was laid in dark cave where there was no light.  The light of the world was shut-in in complete darkness and for those three days it seemed as if the dark, or evil had won.  However, on Easter morning when the women showed up at the grave there sat the tomb open and empty and sitting on the rock was an angel who was like lightning and white as snow.  Even the one who came to announce that the light of the world had conquered the darkness was seen as light.  We have our hope and joy in our faith because of the fact that even that dark tomb was not able to defeat our Lord.  No darkness can overcome the light we have in Christ.  I kept waiting to hear this, but he never preached it.  Again, it was a good sermon with the same message that our light has defeated the darkness of our world.  However, I just thought it would be good to remind myself and all of you that our Lord not only spent his life in the "darkness" of our world for 33 years, but He spent three days in the absolute darkness of the tomb, and He rose victorious over all darkness once and for all.  Praise be to Him who sent His Son to die in darkness, in order to rise victorious and be our eternal light of the world that we cling to faithfully.
Dear Heavenly Father, 
Please use this Lenten season to remind us of the suffering, pain, and death Your Son went through for our sake.  Help us to repent of our sins, beg for Your mercy, and cry out for Your Spirit to be our guide strengthening us in our faith, in the one true faith of You until our final day.  In the name of our Savior who is the light of the world, Amen.