The Week of Judica (Lent 5)
Eric Gill, "The Good Shepherd"
Notes from Grace
This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! Plan on joining us for our Midweek service, Wed. at 6pm, our last Lenten Midweek this year. Our theme is Jesus' promise: "neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand."
What's Happening This Week?
- Mon-Thurs, 8am-11am: Little Lambs'
- Mon-Tues: Pastor in Casper for Wyoming District Commission on Mission Services and Board of Directors Meetings
- Wed, 6pm: Midweek Evening Prayer Service followed by dinner
- Thurs, 9:30am: Adult Catchesis
- Sun: Palm Sunday, Bible Class 9am, Divine Service 10am
Looking Ahead
- Mon-Thurs, 8am-11am: Little Lambs'
- Tues, 9am: Little Lambs' Easter Program
- Tues, 6pm: Council and Elders
- Wed, 1:30pm: Afternoon Circle
- Thurs, 9am: Little Lambs Singing at Countryside Care
- Thurs, 6pm: Maundy Thursday Divine Service
- Fri, 6pm: Good Friday Tenebrae Vespers
- Sat, 6pm: Easter Vigil Service
- Sun, 8am: Easter Divine Service, followed by breakfast
Devotional Life
- Keep up with your scripture reading as we head into Holy Week. One great idea is to read through the Passion Accounts from each of the four gospels: start here and read through to the end in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Another option would be to follow the daily readings from this plan. Or you could begin this plan to read the whole Bible.
- Prayer is another central aspect of Holy Week. Jesus' prayer in the garden is a large part of John's passion especially. Spend these coming days praying to God the Father, who loved you so much that He gave His Son to save you from your sins, to God the Son who loved you so much that He was willing to suffer all, even death to win your salvation, and to the Holy Spirit who loves you so much that He still brings the forgiveness, life, and salvation that Jesus won for you through God's Word and the Holy Sacraments. So take a look at this guide to prayer for each day of the week.
- View artwork of your Lord's suffering and death to help bring to your heart and mind the shape that God's love took for you.
Salt, Light, & Signs of the Times
- With Holy Week coming, consider this article about talking to your family and neighbors about the Good News of Jesus dying and rising again:
Games of every description and on every imaginable platform, sports news that can fuel our betting, instantly available lewdness – all these are ours anywhere all of the time. You could think of any other number of substances, foods, toys, clothes, or anything else a person might buy, subscribe to, or rent, but you could not think of how any of this has made our families stronger, our lives more purposeful and meaningful, or our hearts less terrified of insignificance today and death tomorrow.
The hunger and restlessness of hearts that are not at rest in Christ is of course everywhere. The hunger pains are numbed by the possibility that we could find something else that would bring us happiness if we had a little more money or square footage on our lot or a better job.
In a famine it is not necessary that we become gourmet chefs. People are starving to death. They need a square meal, not caviar. Their flight into every strange spiritual practice and religiopolitical superstition is evidence of starvation. Their desire to numb their lives through entertainment, gluttony, and distraction is evidence of starvation.
Feed them with the Bread of Life. Give them old, reliable words, the very Word of God, for their hearts to fasten on.
...
If our family, friends, and neighbors (not the hypothetical ones, the ones across the street from our churches and our homes) don’t hear what God has said about who they are (boys and girls, no third option, for example) and what He would have them be (honest, brave, loving their families, for example), how will they ever know that they have a Father who has some kind of standard for life, that their lives are not collections of random events strung together until death stops it all? In 2020 you saw how many people just wanted someone else to tell them what to do. Why not have them listen to the only true God tell them the truth of what to do and to leave undone instead of the traditions of men created to enslave them?
- Did you wonder at all what the picture on the cover of the Lenten Schedule I mailed to you was all about? Here's your answer.
[T]he value of any particular belief or effort cannot necessarily be judged by the amount of courage it takes to defend it. Foolishness can very easily be mistaken for courage. Genuine courage can only serve as a natural application for objective truth. It results in a willingness to live and die for truth when living for it will be hard and dying for it will be easy. But it only really associates so viscerally in this way with truth, not lies. Dying for a lie is not courage but foolishness.
Foolishness, not cowardice, is courage’s truest opposite.
Foolishness thinks going against natural law and touting one’s confused sexuality is brave. Foolishness believes disrupting a pro-life rally by shouting “My body, my choice!” takes guts. Foolishness believes that canceling someone for expressing an opposing opinion is valorous. Foolishness thinks that a fifty-year-old man who leaves his wife and children to live as a six-year-old transager/transgender girl is valiantly embracing what he feels is his most authentic identity. On similar fronts, foolishness believes creedal things such as pledges and confessional statements of belief are dangerously divisive. Foolishness considers tradition, whether wearing vestments for worship or favoring marriage between one man and one woman, as blind conformity that suppresses progress. Foolishness believes that historic rites and ceremonies, whether kneeling for prayer with hands folded, eyes closed, and head bowed, or standing for the national anthem with your hand over your heart, are all mechanically spiritless and often representative of past oppression.
But in reality, why is foolishness so opposed to these things? Firstly, foolishness cannot tolerate anything that would bind the subjective desires of the radical self to someone or something else’s standards. This intolerance foretells the Last Day’s future turmoil. When the divine lights come on at the Last Day, the radically individualized self will be measured against God’s standards, not its own.
- That's it for now.
In Christ,
Pastor Sherman