By Joel A. Hess –
This past Sunday, our church celebrated the confirmation of a bunch of our kids, my son included. Poor kids. What are we doing? Thirteen and fourteen year olds promising to be upstanding members, givers, and receivers in the Church, to hold to the teachings of the Church according to the Small Catechism, even to suffer death than to fall away from the faith.
By Bob Hiller –
My good buddy, Rev. Eric Eichinger, has written a wonderful book on Olympic runner and missionary Eric Liddell. I’m honored to have him contribute this piece on the Jagged Word. Check out his book here!~Bob
By Paul Koch –
I have a confession to make, I’ve never really liked the phrase “sharing Jesus.” I’m not sure why, but it has just always sounded weird to me. But I hear it all the time. I was watching the call service for the new pastors from the Seminary in St. Louis and the preacher must have emphasized over a dozen times the need to “share Jesus”. You must share him with the people, share him in this or that particular way, go out of your way to share your Lord. It makes it sound like you’re sitting down next to your neighbors with a big bowl of Jesus and you’re inviting them to dig in and get a bite. Like he is some sort of quantifiable substance that is passed back and forth. And it all sounds so easy, right? Just share him! Well, it’s not such a simple and straightforward task. It’s complicated. We have difficulty sharing Jesus with our own family and friends, let alone people we don’t know all that well. So just to say that you need to or ought to share Jesus doesn’t actually do much.
By Bob Hiller –
One of my great regrets from last year’s “Here We Still Stand Conference” (There are only 165 tickets left! I’d better get some kickback for that plug…) was not hearing Steven Paulson’s interview on the Thinking Fellows. But I understand he is quoted to have said something like, “America was designed to destroy Baptism.” I have thought a lot about that quote. It is wonderfully accurate. This country is built on free choice, self-assertion, and personal responsibility. Our philosophical contribution to the world is pragmatism. All of this is opposed by a God who chooses to save with a promise hidden in a handful of water.
By Paul Koch –
One of the things that comes with affluence is the ability to hide what is ugly. Think of the stereotypical modern suburban home in Southern California where the mother of 2.5 children heads off to lunch with her girlfriends to show off her newly augmented breasts and face lift. The father who always has the latest iteration of whatever car demonstrates his upwardly mobile career path. Or the home with the perfectly manicured front lawn and well-appointed accent trees to give it that picturesque setting that is the envy of the homeowners’ association. Everything is beautiful. Not because it was beautiful by nature or happenstance, but by dedication of time and money what was viewed as ugly is soon plastered over.
By Paul Koch –
The smorgasbord that is American Christianity is a plethora of material for running jokes and cultural commentary. Not only is there a conflict between people of the Christian faith and those outside the Church, but there is also an ongoing conflict within Christianity. The Baptists are pretty sure that the Catholics are going to hell, the Lutherans continually frustrate and confuse the Presbyterians (but let’s be honest that’s not hard to do), the Catholics think everyone else is just throwing a temper tantrum and will come home eventually, and on it goes.
By Paul Koch –
The life of an individual Christian is a life that is lived in tension. I know, this isn’t new to you, but it is worth our focus today. The life of a Christian it is not a perfectly stable existence. It is organic. It shifts and moves. It flows from highs to lows as experiences and outside forces come crashing into our beliefs. There is a temptation to paint the faithful with a broad and even brush. We want to say that the Christian life is filled with confidence and stability, that those who go to church and receive the gifts of Christ will all experience similar things, have similar convictions and be set on similar paths throughout their journey. But that simply isn’t true. On any given Sunday morning there are a wide variety of emotions and fears and worries that grip the people of God. There is a tension between the promises you all share in the gifts of Christ and the varied life experiences you have. Sometimes, that tension can be pretty brutal.
By Paul Koch –
There is great comfort found in the traditional liturgy of the Church. When you wander into a congregation gathered around the gifts of Christ, the liturgy of their worship provides a rhythm and focus to the things that are happening. There is a movement and purpose that aids in carrying the individual from whatever was going before that moment into a genuine experience with the Almighty located in Word and Sacrament.
By Joel A. Hess –
A young pastor was enjoying a children’s message with a bunch of elementary kids (if you can’t handle pastors talking to little kids in the Divine Service, please exit). He asked the kids, “What do you think Jesus said when He rose from the dead?” One girl responded, “Tada!” Everyone laughed. Yes, that may be the real reason why people demand children’s sermons.
By Paul Koch –
I have realized that there are many texts from the Word of God that I call my favorite. But this one from John 20 is without a doubt my all time favorite text in Scripture. Okay, it’s at least in the top five. You see, it is an honest and powerful story that gives incredible comfort and encouragement to the church today. On the evening of that very first Easter day, the disciples of our Lord were locked away in hiding because they were afraid, and rightly so. Their teacher, their Lord, had just been unjustly tried and brutally beaten and crucified for all to see. Now sure, Peter and John had seen the empty tomb and Mary had proclaimed the incredible news that she had seen the risen Lord, but they were still processing it all. They were still trying to figure out what it all meant and what they were supposed to do next. Huddling together, locked away, seemed like a good idea.
By Cindy Koch –
Yesterday, you stepped right into the most emotional time of the year for any Christian; Praise songs and prayers, tears and guilt, suffering and death, celebrations and shouts for joy. The week leading up to Easter Sunday tells the epic story of our Lord Jesus Christ. The transition from happiness to despair in this single week leaves us exhausted, but also satisfied. This story is important. You can feel it.
By Bob Hiller –
Mark Twain once said “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
This Lent my congregation has been working through the book of James. I’m convinced there is no better season in the church calendar for this book. After all, Lent is for repenting over sin and the Law in James produces that sort of thing in droves! James is not one to hold back in attacking anything that has even a hint of sin in it. He is the example of how to preach the Law. This is not to say there isn’t a ton of gospel in this epistle (there is!). But when James goes after sin, he shoots to kill.
By Paul Koch –
As a preacher I have tried over the years to understand the situation in life of those to whom I preach. I try to imagine what things are like from your point of view. What is it that brings you into this church in the first place? What are you hoping to get out of it? When it gets to this point in the service, when it’s time for the sermon, are you excited? Do you expect big things? Or are you just hoping it won’t be too long? See, some folks come to church looking of a little bit of a spiritual high, a jolt of the good stuff to keep your going through another week. Then there are those that come to church because they are hurting or confused or feel lost in life and so they come seeking direction and healing and hope. Some, no doubt, aren’t all that sure why they are here. It is simply what they do, they’ve done it for years and so they show up as part of routine and habit.
By Joel A. Hess –
Keith was bent over with the pain. “Pastor! I’m scared.” They came in with cords and needles and tied him up as if they were tying up the illness. I held his hand and prayed. He squeezed tightly. All he saw was illness, pain, death, hopelessness.
By Cindy Koch –
Piles of whites, baskets full of darks. Towels, socks… Oh look, there’s the muddy jacket we’ve been missing. Hours of sorting, stain removing, washing, drying, hanging, folding, returning everything back to the closet drawers. As I’m putting away the last of the PJs and my laundry basket is finally empty, I glance at the little white hamper in my daughters’ room. It’s half full. And the laundry cycle is never over.
By Bob Hiller –
This past Sunday, the power went out in our church while I was preaching. Perhaps it was an act of God trying to save His dear flock from my sermon or the devil trying to silence the Word. Or most likely, it was a problem with the power lines. Regardless, our congregation was left in the dark. We have screens in our sanctuary to guide the service, but they were gone. It was not easy to read the bulletins for the few who actually had them. Further, our recently purchased hymnals have not yet been stocked in the pews, so we couldn’t reference them. We had no music to sing with as both the organ and piano flows through the sound system. What were we to do? Just quit and go home? After all, it is tough to carry on in the dark.
By Graham Glover –
I spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill these days. Sometimes I interact with Members of Congress, other times their Staffers. A lot of time I just watch. But no matter who I’m talking to or what I’m observing, the one thing that is blatantly obvious, even to the political outsider, is how divided the people are who make up this place. While our institutions aren’t broken, our people clearly are, and it’s not getting any better.
By Joel A. Hess –
Most churches have that cute, little sign planted near the exit of their parking lot that tells parishioners, “You are now entering the mission field.” This reminder is founded on the faulty premise that the driver was not previously in the mission field as she sat in church, as if she has it all together. She’s saved. Now she needs to get more Christians, like Amway or any pyramid scheme business.
By Paul Koch –
Tradition is an important part of our lives. Sometimes we scrape against our traditions, especially if they are in our way, or somehow slow our progress. Of course, there are traditions that we don’t really understand, and so we would rather not worry about them. Yet traditions are important. They carry with them an ancient understanding of things, a working of the world and our place in it. Our traditions are how we can evaluate new things, how we can understand worth, and even how we chart the future. No matter how cutting edge and modern you might be, we all have traditions that we value. All of us have traditions that we think should be upheld. In fact, we all know that when long held traditions are done away with, there will be consequences. Therefore, older generations will shake their heads at younger ones when they change a tradition because they know it will lead to something unpredictable.
By Bob Hiller –
This past week, Time Magazine ran a number of articles and vignettes on what one might do to live a longer life. And this was great news! After all, death is the worst! We’re all trying to avoid it, or at least put it off as long as possible. So, thankfully, Time Magazine has the secrets you need to live longer, happier!
