All Saints is observed next Sunday, November 3, 2024 at Bethlehem Lutheran Church. We will remember the Saints who have died in the faith over the past year and celebrate God’s love that never ends. Check out Ponderings this week (below) to reflect on the festival of All Saints.
Between Sundays for Week of October 28, 2024
Jesus lays out the path to freedom in just two short verses:
First: believe in Jesus.
Next: continue in the Word.
Then: know the truth!
Finally: be free.
If only it were that simple! The disciples are (rightly) skeptical and wonder aloud to Jesus: What exactly do you mean when you say, “you will be made free”?
As we confess in worship each week, we are captive to sin and can not free ourselves. But Jesus can (and does).
Martin Luther was acutely aware of this truth. He was tormented by his own sin, his unworthiness before God. In a famous letter he wrote to Philip Melanchthon, he proclaims: “Sin and sin boldly…” Sin and sin boldly. As a fallen humanity, we can do no other. He continues, “but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.”
We “continue in the Word” when we remember this core truth of our faith – that we do sin boldly and we believe and rejoice in Christ who loves us, forgives us, and frees us even more boldly. The power of what God has done depends on the fact that we cannot attain it for ourselves. We might try – searching for the quick fix, the easy way out, the sure-solution to change whatever circumstances feel particularly binding to us – but we will never be free by our own power or effort.
We are all captive to sin and cannot free ourselves. But we also have a God who has promised: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:33-34). We “continue in the Word” by the grace of God who has written that Word in our hearts and claimed us as God’s very own. God forgives our sin. God loves us through all of our curiosity and questions, all of our self-deception, all of our misguided efforts. God’s love and law are written on our hearts; no question we ask, no assertion we make, nothing we do or leave undone can separate us from God’s love.
Which means we do “know the truth”: God’s love for us never ends. So we continue to “Sin and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.” This truth has set us free.
Thanks be to God!
P.S. Watch Sunday’s worship service to hear Pastor Hoffman’s whole sermon (beginning around 21:00). View past services on the Share in Worship page of BLC’s website!
P.P.S. Recovery and rebuilding after the devastation of recent hurricanes requires partnership. Learn about Lutheran Disaster Response and support those affected.
Faith Connection at Home – Encore!
Patty Chaffee
Family Faith Formation Coordinator
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Ponderings
All Saints Day: November 1
All Saints Day might be considered a “thin space”: a place where ordinary life meets the divine and life and death almost seem to touch. Today we remember that we are still intricately tied to those who came before us, and we rejoice in the promise that we will be reunited with them in Christ. Where or when have you experienced a “thin space” in which you have felt connected to those who have come before you? In her poem below, Jan Richardson ponders the sacred connections we continue to carry with those who have died.
For Those Who Walked With Us
For those
who walked with us,
this is a prayer.
For those
who have gone ahead,
this is a blessing.
For those
who touched and tended us,
who lingered with us
while they lived,
this is a thanksgiving.
For those
who journey still with us
in the shadows of awareness,
in the crevices of memory,
in the landscape of our dreams,
this is a benediction.
Read more at the Painted Prayerbook.
