First of all, I want to say thank you.

Thank you to the choir and bells for sharing their talents this Christmas. Thank you to the readers. Thank you to Karen and Michael for putting in so much time, effort, energy, and expertise into this Christmas. Thank you to Cindy for always working ahead on bulletins. Thank you to the altar guild and trustees and everyone else who decorated for Christmas. Thank you to the preschool teachers and Sunday school teachers who put together the children’s program a couple of weeks ago.

And thank you to the entire congregation for your care and support as Stephanie and I celebrated our first California Christmas. It is by no means the first Christmas we’ve spent away from family (or snow), but it is always a joy to find that wherever God leads us, there are always people who will welcome us and love us.

After three sermons and three services in three days, I’ve been taking some time to rest and reflect this week. So the second thing I’ll say is this:

Isn’t God amazing?

Truly. I hope you can find five minutes to put down your phone, shut off the TV, lock out all the noise, and simply bask in the ridiculous wonder that is Christmas. Imagine, the cosmic Christ, a being and person who has existed forever, restricting Himself in form to become a limited, dependent baby. There’s nothing to compare it to. There’s no metaphor to better understand it. It just is.

And it is wonderful. It truly fills us with wonder.

God’s blessings on your week.

Pastor Andy

The fires blazing around our state have raised quite a bit of fear and anxiety. I know a lot of you have family and friends in the Paradise area that were affected by the fire. Many have lost homes. The latest number I saw was 63 deaths. I pray that number doesn’t go up.

The response to this tragic event has been an emotional one. For some, the fear and anxiety has been turned into compassion. I’ve heard several people asking about how they can send aid and support to those who have been devastated by these fires.

I’ve also heard some people’s fear and anxiety turn into a less helpful direction, one of blame and anger and bitterness. Sometimes politicians get the blame. Sometimes landowners. Sometimes God.

And for some, fear and anxiety has turned into silent hurt and unspoken despair.

Sometimes in such situations it is easy to feel like God is distant, like He is refusing to show up. It’s hard to have hope in a God who is absent, aloof, distant.

But that’s not the God we have. In just a couple of weeks Advent will begin. It’s a time when we look with anticipation and hope for Christ’s coming. We focus both on Christ’s incarnation, when the Son of God was born as a human being, an infant in Bethlehem; and on Christ’s return, when He will come again to raise the dead and recreate the heavens and the earth.

But Jesus comes to us today as well. He is an ever-present help in times of trouble. He is a prayer away. He is listening. He cares for you. Jesus comes to us in His Word and He has provided three main ways in which that Word comes to us. It comes to us in oral, written, and sacramental forms. We hear God’s Word proclaimed in absolution, in sermons, in conversations with our fellow Christians. We read God’s Word from the Scriptures in worship and in our homes. We receive God’s Word in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. His Word is placed on us and in us in tangible, visible ways.

God is not distant. Even though we experience great tragedy and loss, God has not and will not abandon us. Loss of house, loss of family, even loss of life cannot separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus. We are loved with a relentless, ever-present love.

God’s blessings on your week.

Pastor Andy

One of my goals for 2019 is to spend more time studying some of the books of the Bible I don’t know very well. One such book is Leviticus. Last week I listened to the entire book, and I’d like to share a thought I had from Leviticus involving slavery.

In our day and age, it seems obvious that owning people is deplorable and unthinkable. Still, forced labor and exploitation are very real and prevalent problems throughout the world. From America’s earliest days through the Civil War, and even after, American church bodies have tried to deal with the question of whether slavery was a sin. While many church bodies have long-opposed slavery, few were able to articulate from a biblical perspective why slavery was evil and should be abolished.

I think Leviticus can help us make such an articulation. In Leviticus 25, God commands Moses to make sure none of the Israelites are sold as slaves to other Israelites. The reason he gives is this: “For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 25:42). Since God saved the Israelites from slavery, slavery was not permissible for them ever again.

Now that Jesus has come, God’s people are from every race, tribe, nation, language, and people group. Jesus dies for all people. He brings all people out of the kingdom of darkness, the dominion of Satan and into the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Light.

Jesus’ death and resurrection delivers all people. We are all on equal ground before God. There is no male or female, no Jew or Gentile, no slave or master. We all stand before God as people who have been bought by the blood of Jesus; therefore, we cannot be sold for any price to anyone. Since Jesus has saved all people from the slavery of sin, slavery is not possible for all of humanity ever again.

Since this is the case, how we treat other human beings is very important. While we may not be tempted to enslave others, we are often tempted to demean others, to gossip about them, to make them look bad. This is not acceptable because Christ has died for that person you love to gossip about. Christ has shed his blood for that person you make fun of. As we seek to follow Jesus, we must remember that every person’s life has value, value determined by the blood of Jesus.

God’s blessings on your week.

Pastor Andy