Sunday, March 10th Information

Theme for the season of Lent (February 14 – March 29, 2024)

Listen! God is Calling.

The Season of Lent

Excerpt from: “Listen! God is Calling.” SEIA Synod Resource written by the Rev. Erika R Uthe Director for Evangelical Mission, Assistant to the Bishop Southeastern Iowa Synod, ELCA

Theme Verse: Behold, I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

-Isaiah 43.19

Theme Write-up: If Epiphany is a season of answering the question, “Who is God in and through the person of Jesus Christ?” Lent, I think becomes the season of, “How then shall we live?” It is a season of contradictions, a call back to the spiritual practices that ground the life of disciples throughout the millennia, and a call forward to the lives God is calling us to embrace, individually and communally. It is a season that calls us to live in the tension of confession and forgiveness, death and resurrection. In this particular Lenten series, “Listen, God is Calling,” we explore how Lent is a season of ancient practice and courageous experimentation, of prophetic dreaming rooted in practiced tradition.

If you would like to read more information about the season of Lent and the resource we will be using for the season, click on the link below.

https://www.seiasynod.org/lent

Worship Musicians (Ardor)

The musicians for worship can find the service orders and music in the crate on the back pew in the sanctuary for each week of the month of February. The musicians will rehearse from 9 – 9:45 am every Sunday morning. All are welcome! Contact the office if you plan to help lead worship.

Sunday School

The Sunday school classes (youth and adult) will meet on Sunday from 9:00 – 9:45 am.

Worship Information

You are invited to join All Saints Lutheran Church for the Worship Service at 10 am on Sunday! It is the 4^th Sunday in Lent.

Week Four: Listen, God is calling you to love

Verse

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. – Numbers 21:4-9

Overview

On this fourth Sunday of Lent once again we find the Israelites in need of saving, ironically in the midst of their current salvation operation. You see, it doesn’t seem like we always have the same idea about salvation that God does. These Israelites had been crying out for salvation from the Egyptians and God delivered them safely through the Red Sea. In the midst of the dry desert, God provided them manna and quail, water from rocks, light at night, and shade by day. Yet this desert life was not quite what the Israelites had in mind – while they were free, they were missing all of the amenities of their past life. Even though they had steady and promised access to food, they ‘detested it’ and complained.

I wonder how often we let our inner Israelite take over our own prayer for salvation today. I admit that it’s happened to me a time or two: I pray for something and God’s solution doesn’t match what I *actually* wanted, and so I complain. I didn’t mean that, God! If you’ve ever dealt with this yourself, I bet you can understand God’s frustration that God delivered on what was requested and the people were upset anyway. In a very human-like response, God retaliates with poisonous snakes set loose among the people. (There are some extremely problematic parts of this whole narrative, which we will pass over for these purposes, but would be some good fodder for conversation another time.)

In a clear foreshadowing to Christ’s own crucifixion, God instructs Moses to construct a bronze serpent and raise it up on a pole for the people to look at and be saved. Jesus himself notes this connection in his conversation with Nicodemus as he once again foretold his own death and resurrection. Nicodemus has come to have this conversation with Jesus because, well, Jesus isn’t quite what the teachers of Israel were expecting. Israel was waiting for their next King – the one who would come and rule with justice and righteousness, setting up God’s kingdom in this time and place. Yet Jesus tells Nicodemus that the world doesn’t need a king of righteousness – the world needs light and love. Deliverance wasn’t from oppressive tyrants, but rather from the darkness of evil. “This is the judgement: that the light has come into the world and the people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

There are an unfortunately large number of instances in the history of the church where it turns out that our own idea of ‘salvation’ ends up being something other than God’s love for creation and leaves a trail of harm, disillusionment, and oppression in its wake. Even worse, this damage is done in the name of Jesus, placing stipulations and requirements on the gospel. You must believe like us, act like us, love like us, worship like us, submit to everything we deem is true. We don’t need to get into the plethora of examples, but even after Martin Luther set in motion the reformation in 1517 with his (at the time) earth-shattering teaching that God’s grace was free for everyone based on grace alone, the church has continued to get it wrong.

It is so much easier for us to try to tell God how it is supposed to go rather than believing that simply by looking to Christ, lifted high on the cross, the whole world can find salvation. As we find in Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Ephesians 2.8-10) Listen, God is calling us (church) to keep our eyes on Jesus, and in so doing embody the love for which God created us. This love is a no-strings-attached love, one which is unafraid of the light shining on our deeds. It is a church full of life and faith, with minds open to God’s salvation, a church who isn’t afraid of going into the world to meet their neighbor, and one whose eyes are fixed on the Tree of Life, Jesus Christ.

So often it feels like the church is in Nicodemus’ shoes, just trying to catch up to what God is doing, and we find out that we’ve been out in the dark, expecting something different. ‘How can these things be? the church asks, echoing Jesus’ own questions about Jesus’ teachings. While clinging to the cross of Christ has been of utmost importance since his own life on earth, it feels even more imperative in these days as forces that go against God seem to be everywhere. Some of them are even parading around using the name of Jesus as a robe, taking the name of God in vain and committing acts of sin and violence against God’s beloved children. It is now that the church must not weary of finding life and light in the shadow of the cross, knowing that it was not glory and power which Jesus came to give, but in humiliation and suffering he entered our brokenness to redeem it.

Only in the cross can we find the courage we need to follow Jesus and proclaim that the immigrants and refugees are welcome, that love is love, that imperfect and broken people are worthy and beloved, that racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all other -isms are works of darkness and stand in judgment in the light of Christ. Listen, God is calling us to do the new, old thing again and again and again – to live in love and life at the foot of the cross.

By the Rev. Erika R Uthe Director for Evangelical Mission, Assistant to the Bishop Southeastern Iowa Synod, ELCA

The fourth of the Old Testament promises providing a baptismal lens this Lent is the promise God makes to Moses: those who look on the bronze serpent will live. In today’s gospel Jesus says he will be lifted up on the cross like the serpent, so that those who look to him in faith will live. When we receive the sign of the cross in baptism, that cross becomes the sign we can look to in faith for healing, for restored relationship to God, for hope when we are dying.

Numbers 21:4-9

Though God provides food and water for the Israelites in the wilderness, they whine and grumble. They forget about the salvation they experienced in the exodus. God punishes them for their sin, but when they repent God also provides a means of healing: a bronze serpent lifted up on a pole.

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

You deliver your people from their distress. (Ps. 107:19)

Ephesians 2:1-10

While we were dead in our sinfulness, God acted to make us alive as a gift of grace in Christ Jesus. We are saved not by what we do but by grace through faith. Thus our good works are really a reflection of God’s grace at work in our lives.

John 3:14-21

To explain the salvation of God to the religious leader, Nicodemus, Jesus refers to the scripture passage quoted in today’s first reading. Just as those who looked upon the bronze serpent were healed, so people will be saved when they behold Christ lifted up on the cross.

Fellowship Time following worshipYou are invited to stay after worship for refreshments and fellowship time. This takes place in the gathering space.