Month: February 2022

Our February 13 Sunday worship service is available on video through Facebook. You may view it without being a member of Facebook. We are excited to say that our Sunday 8 & 10:30 am services are open again for in-person worship. Services will continue to be streamed online.

The February 20 Sunday worship service will be held with in-person attendance. We have returned to regular in-person worship services. With an upturn in county COVID cases, we recommend masks even for those who are vaccinated.

It is scheduled to be streamed live on the DeSoto Redeemer Facebook page. We will post a direct link to the recording here as soon as it is possible after the service.

We are glad to share our worship with you. Click on “Contact Us” above to find out more about our faith family and what we believe.

Jeremiah 17:5-10 | Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15:12-20 | Luke 6:17-26

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

What is Paul talking about? What he is really talking about, or rather doing, is defending faith in Christ at its very core. What is the central message of the Christian faith? What is the sine quo non of what we believe? What do we declare, affirm and proclaim which no one else does? It is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, given for our sins, and through which, in faith, our sins are forgiven. The crucifixion and resurrection are the very heart and soul of our faith. It is a mystery, but it is a glorious mystery. And, it is something which cannot be apprehended by the head alone. It must be receive and held onto in the heart and soul, in faith.

The problem is, and always has been, that you cannot prove the Resurrection, but then again, God doesn’t desire proof. God avoids it. God wants faith. Even in the time of St. Paul, within about 20 to 30 years of the Resurrection, it appears from the text, there were those who denied the Resurrection. The reason is simple, and understandable. The Resurrection is well beyond our natural experience. It does not make sense to the head alone. It cannot be proved from our experience. But, neither can it be disproved. No, it must be received in faith, in the heart and the soul.

Faith alone can lead us to believe in the resurrection. It is too wondrous to be taken any other way. It is the heart and soul, the very essence of the Christian Gospel. Without the Resurrection, there is no Christianity; only Christ’s moral teaching of this world, good rules to live by in this life, but no hope beyond it.

And that is the problem. Already, in the Early Church, there were those who wished to reduce the message to mere morality. They dismissed the wonderful for the common, the extraordinary for the ordinary. “Give us the natural; we do not understand the supernatural, the Divine.” And that is the great mistake, “If it is for this life only that we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” It destroys the whole purpose of Christ’s mission to us and the world. It nullifies the Gospel. It leaves us with a dead Messiah, who suffered a horrible death for our sins, and God loses in the face of sin, death and evil. The moment of victory, is transformed to defeat. It is the Resurrection rather which declares God’s victory. To deny the Resurrection is to insult God. That is what Paul is saying. You would have thought that that was enough. But it is not.

We live in a world which has largely lost its sense of wonder, a sense of the supernatural, practically any sense of the Divine, especially of God working in the lives of people. We like to be able to explain everything, and anything. And yet, it is more and more apparent that we live in a world filled with people hungering for Divine assurance. It is because we desire hope, and an explanation is not a word of hope. Explanations too often leave us in despair. I love studying the sciences, especially physics. But, even science, ultimately leaves us with only probabilities. That is particularly true of physics. Some may despair in this. I find it fascinating. People are searching for something to have hope in. They won’t find it from this world.

Our hope must come from beyond ourselves. A student once wrote to me, as I am teaching him about World Religions no less, “I only believe in science. I believe that only science can save the world.” I wrote back, “Has it ever occurred to you that to a large degree, it has been science which has gotten us into the present predicament?” I didn’t include that a good portion of our advances in science has come from military development and warfare, which is a continuing predicament. I hoped that my retort would set him thinking. I should have told him that “Theology is the Queen of the Sciences.” That would have really confused him. Hope must come from beyond us. When left to our own devices, we are left with our own devices!

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Actually, there is a lot of Gospel in that sentence. God has not just pitied us, but moved with compassion towards us! He gave His Son, so that all who believe in him might be saved. So that, we might hope beyond this present circumstance, and our own chaos, as well as chaos of the cosmos.

We have the hope there is something greater; God’s love shown to us in Christ that we shall be made whole and restored, in Christ, through our faith in him as Our Risen Lord. The foundation of God’s expression of love for us is Christ. We behold God in the face of Christ. Others are to see Christ in us. Christ is raised by the glory of God to show to all that God was reconciling this sinful world with its creatures to himself through Christ. The Resurrection is the sign of the Victory won by Christ. God, in Christ, victorious over sin, death and evil, and in faith, we are given hope beyond hope. We don’t hope in this life only, we hope in the God who gives Life, Who is Life. We have faith in Our God, who raised Christ to life from the dead, and joins us to that same Resurrection, and its hope, through our baptism into Christ.
Pastor Rose

Due to a loss of electrical and water service, the worship services for February 6 had to be cancelled. The following are the scripture readings and sermon that would have been featured that day.

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EPIPHANY

Isaiah 6:1-8 [9-13] | Psalm 138

1 Corinthians 15:1-11 | Luke 5:1-11

Luke’s Gospel lesson today is an interesting one. It is referred to as an “epiphany call” story – the Isaiah text is another one. What happens here is that a person has a sudden epiphany, realizes that they are in the presence of God – fitting since we are in the Season of Epiphany, and at the same time is called to a special task by God.

In Luke’s story, the people are crowding in, pressing in, on Jesus, to hear the Word of God, so to get some elbow room, and a better venue for preaching and teaching, he decides to go seaborne. He sees some fishermen nearby, out of their boats, mending their nets – a never ending task for fishermen. He just climbs into Simon Peter’s boat, and asks to be taken off a little bit from shore, so he can preach from there. Simon, and probably his brother and partner Andrew as well, not wishing to be inhospitable, do as he asks. They probably kept on mending their nets while Jesus taught. When Jesus has finished, he decides to repay Simon for his kindness. Simon Peter isn’t exactly thrilled with the idea. They have already fished all night, and caught nothing – reminds me of a couple of fishing trips which I’ve been on. It is also similar to the post-resurrection account which we find in John Chapter 21, and how Jesus lets the disciples know that it is he on the beach. But they put out to deeper water, and lower the nets. This time, they have a catch, not one or two, but so many that the nets are straining, and beginning to break, and the struggle to haul in the nets is causing the boat to flounder. He calls for help from his other partners, James and John. Both boats are then filled with fish.

Then comes the epiphany, Simon realizes that he is in the presence of something greater than himself. Jesus is a force to reckon with, and with this ability, his power must come from God. That is the first part of the epiphany, Simon knows that he is in the presence of the Divine. Then comes the second part, Simon Peter knows his place. He is not divine. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Notice it is said with an exclamation point. Simon is scared to death, and with good reason. To behold the divine historically implies the death of a sinful mortal.

Jesus’ response, and this is the call narrative part, is a classic response to those who are in the presence of God, and know it. “Do not be afraid;” There is a reason to be afraid, but I’m holding back. “From now on you will be catching people (fishers of men).” That I think is a great description of evangelism, fishing, catching people. “And, they left everything and followed him.” When God calls you personally, you follow. There is no if, and or but. You follow.

We are all called. That is why we are here. We are joined in faith. God has called us, we are baptized into Christ, confirmed in the faith, nourished at his altar. We too are disciples of Christ, called to carry a message. We are called for the same reasons as the disciples, we are God’s creatures, and he loves us, in spite of our sinfulness. We are forgiven, and told not to fear, and somehow, God works through us, through His Holy Spirit. That is Good News. That is Gospel.

The Bad News is that too often, we are afraid to do that, be worker for God, fishers of men, catchers of people. We are afraid to share the Gospel, to tell Christ’s story, to tell our story. This is especially true for the mainline Christian denominations, Lutherans in particular. And, I think the problem, once again is television. Here’s why.

When we watch a TV evangelist, what do we usually see and hear? Nine times out of ten, a person who looks like a maniac, ranting and raving on a stage (because he or she can’t manage to stay in the pulpit). A stage fits, that is often where actors are to be found. Telling people about all of the terrible, awful, sinful things that they have done, thought about doing, and will do in the future. Then, end with “But Jesus loves you anyway.” I’ve always felt that disturbing, not comforting, nor enlightening nor even evangelizing. I see people selling fire insurance. Come to faith, or roast in hell! There is something wrong here. I don’t hear a whole lot of Gospel here. True, this type of preaching appeals to certain types of people, and I often worry about that type. This type of fishing for men, or catching people, is like fishing with a stick of dynamite. The explosion stuns the nearest ones, and you pull them in before they recover. The rest of the fish by then, have hightailed it to another part of the lake. For some time, I’ve been reading the NT, about 60 years or so. Jesus and the apostles don’t work that way. I don’t believe that we should either. You don’t free sinners’ consciences that way, rather they become more enslaved to the mess their lives are in. And, they then come to fear what little hope that they may draw from that message. It is almost like a resurrection of the Spanish Inquisition whose motto was, “Become a God loving Christian, or we will burn you at the stake.” I’ve always worried about that kind of religious thinking. In contrast, we are told, “God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” John 3:17. There is too much condemning out there, and not a whole lot of saving. Although a favorite question is, “Are you saved?” “Yes, we believe and are baptized.”

What do we read in the NT? When confronted with the presence of God, the risen Christ, the Holying Spirit, we, like Simon Peter, already know that we are sinful. Most people do. What do we then share? Our God turns to us, sinful creatures that we are, and says, “Do not be afraid.” Welcomes us! What the early disciples did in their evangelizing was simple. They told the story of Christ. They told people what the Gospel of Christ meant to them, how they felt the love and presence of God in their lives, what God has done for us, and that they believe it. That is all. That is enough. That is fishing for men, casting out the net of the Gospel, and pulling people’s consciences and souls to God. Pulled to our merciful, graceful, loving God. That is what we are called to do, and to do it in all of our words and speech, truth and deeds. How Christ has changed our lives, how we see life. That is what we are to do, share what we have heard, and believe, so that others may be drawn to faith through our example. Sharing the Gospel, that is evangelizing. That is the Good News to which we have been called, to share it, as we have received it.
Pastor Rose