Gracious God, in your love you created us in your image and made us care for all the animals that live in the skies, the earth, and the sea. Bless our pets and all your animals, wild and tame. Help us recognize your power and wisdom in all the creatures that live in our world. Bless their variety and their own created beauty. Protect your creatures, and guard them from evil, and hear our prayer for all that suffer overwork, hunger, and ill-treatment.
Amen

Cruciformity: The Heart of Paul’s Experience of Christ

Paul was nothing if not someone overwhelmed by the love of God. He experienced the divine love, according to his letters, in Christ and by the working of the Spirit. In the visionary encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus Paul discovered a love that affirmed, deepened, and went beyond the love he already knew God had shown to Abraham and his Israelite descendants. In reflecting on this experience Paul felt ”taken over/apprehended/overwhelmed” by Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:12) and with awe exclaims, ”the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). This love became the driving force of Paul’s life when he came to understand how encompassing it was. Divine love experienced had to become divine love expressed.

What mattered most for Paul was not the experiences themselves, but what they meant for his life and the lives of others. Paul saw himself as a participant in and a continuation of the life-giving death of Christ Jesus, his Lord, that was narrated in the Gospel he preached and enacted in the worship of the communities he founded or with which he was involved. However, Paul does not limit this participatory experience in Christ’s death to himself and the other apostles. Paul makes it clear that conformity in the death of Christ—cruciformity–is for all believers.

Our Bible study this year will focus on Paul’s experience of Christ, his understanding of the experience, and what he thinks this means for all who follow Jesus as their Lord. Our study is a reflection on what it means for us to be ”in” Christ, ”with” Christ, ”according to” Christ, and ”for” Christ. We meet on the first and third Thursdays of the month.

“Therefore you will be the best philosophers and the best explorers of the nature of things if you will learn from the apostle to consider creation as it waits, groans, and travails, that is, as it turns aways in disgust from what now is and desires that which is still in the future. For then the study of the nature of things, their accidents and their differences, will quickly grow worthless. As a result the foolishness of the philosophers is like a man who, joining himself to a builder and marveling at the cutting and hewing and measuring of the wood and beans, is foolishly content and quiet among these things, without concern as to what the builder finally intends to make by all these exertions. This man is empty-headed, and the work of such an assistant is meaningless. So all the creation of God, which is skillfully prepared for the future glory, is gazed upon by stupid people who look only at the mechanics but never see its final goals…Look how we esteem the study of the essences and actions and inactions of things, and the things themselves reject and groan over their own essences and actions and inactions! We praise and glorify the knowledge of that very thing which is sad about itself and is displeased with itself!…But now it is wise men and theologians, infected by the same ‘prudence of the flesh’ who derive a happy science out of a sad creation….” Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans

“Give us devout and faithful preachers who communicate the wealth of your divine Word in truth and clarity.  Graciously guard us against divisions and heresies.  Do not focus on our ingratitude, by which we have long deserved that you take your word away from us.  Do not punish us as severely as we deserve.  Again we ask you to give us thankful hearts that we may love your holy Word, prize it highly, hear it reverently, and improve our lives accordingly…”

From Luther’s Prayers, Herbert F. Brokering (ed.)

“…it happens that sometimes we pray and do not receive it at the time; in spite of this one should not despair nor cease to pray. At times it comes when we are not praying for it, as God knows and wills; for it will be free and unbound: then man is distressed in conscience and is wickedly displeased with his own life, and it may easily happen that he does not know that Christ’s Passion is working this very thing in him, of which perhaps he was not aware….”

From:  A Good Friday Sermon on How to Contemplate Christ’s Holy Sufferings (1519)

Maundy Thursday Service:  a joint service with Trinity Lutheran, Resurrection Lutheran, Christ Anglican, and King of Glory at Trinity Lutheran 7:00 p.m.
Good Friday Service:  A joint service with St. David’s/Trinity and King of Glory at St. David’s/Trinity 10:30 a.m.
Easter Service:  at our regular time Sunday, 6:30 p.m. 

“This bread is our Lord Jesus Christ who feeds and comforts the soul.  Therefore, oh heavenly father, grants us grace that the life, words, works, and sufferings of Christ may be preached, made known, and preserved for us and all the world.”

From Luther’s Prayers, Herbert F.  Brokering (ed.)

“Teach us to realize that people cannot harm us without in so doing hurting themselves a thousand times more in your sight.  So may we show compassion more than anger to those who offend us, and pity rather than punish them.  Help us not to rejoice when misfortune comes to those who have not done our will, or who in some other way have displeased us with their lives.  May we not grieve when they have prospered.  Amen.”

From Luther’s Prayers, Herbert F. Brokering (ed.)

“Help us so that by our lives and works others may be prompted not to exalt us but to praise you in us and to honor your name.  Grant that no one may be offended by our evil works or shortcomings, and so dishonor and praise you less.  Keep us from desiring anything temporal or eternal that does not praise and honor your name.”

From Luther’s Prayers, Herbert F.Brokering (ed.)