Tag Archives: Ephesians

Gate of Heaven

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

16th Sunday after Trinity

September 24, 2023 AD

Old Testament: I Kings 17: 17-24
Epistle: Ephesians 3: 13-21
Gospel: Luke 7:11-17

 

Then [Jesus] came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him to his mother.

Saint Luke 7:14, 15

We read in the Gospel for this Lord’s Day, “Jesus went to a town called Nain and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.” The city of Nain was about five miles southeast of Nazareth where Jesus had grown up in the home of Mary His mother and His foster father Joseph. It’s also not far from Mount Tabor which is thought to be the place of Christ’s transfiguration. The city of Nain survives to the present day as a village called in Arabic Nein. It seems that the name Nain was taken from a Hebrew word which means pleasant, delightful and Nain does have a fine view of the Plain of Esdraelon and there is a spring that makes possible groves of olive and fig trees.

But as Jesus and His disciples and the great crowd approach the gates of the city they encounter an utterly familiar, completely ordinary scene: a scene experienced by countless people countless times every day in every part of this fallen world. A funeral procession of mourners, a body being carried to the grave. But what then happens is utterly OUT of the ordinary because this procession to the grave is met by another procession: a procession of life consisting of Jesus’ disciples and a great crowd and Jesus with them. THIS procession is a procession of LIFE because Jesus is the Lord of Life who said, “I AM the resurrection and the life, the one who believes in me — though he were dead — yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in ME shall never die.” And those WORDS are not JUST words! They come to life as the Lord of Life has compassion on the widow following the dead body of her only Son to the grave. You might say that here these two processions collide, the procession of death and the procession of life — and LIFE triumphs! JESUS who IS the resurrection and the life triumphs!”

“Do not weep” He says to that sorrowing mother. He goes and He touches the bier “and the bearers stand still. ‘Young man, I say to you, ARISE!’” says Jesus and the dead man and begins to speak “and Jesus gives him to his mother.”

Jesus not only GIVES life. Jesus IS the Life just as He says, “I AM the way, the Truth, AND THE LIFE…I AM the resurrection and the life.” To this fallen, death-bound world the One who IS LIFE has come. In dying He DESTROYS death and in rising from the dead He bestows everlasting life not only on us human beings but on the whole death- bound creation. For the Apostle Paul says that — in a way we cannot now even dimly imagine — “CREATION ITSELF will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” And in his vision while exiled on Patmos, Saint John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, saw a NEW heaven and a NEW earth where there are no tears, neither sorrow nor crying for — as John writes — “the former things have passed away.” I love those memorable words of the late Vladimir Lossky: “An infinite ocean of light flows from the body of the risen Lord.” “AN OCEAN OF LIGHT FLOWS FROM THE BODY OF THE RISEN LORD.”

“From the BODY of the risen Lord” because HIS body is the body of God the Son who IS Light and Life from all eternity, made FLESH of the virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit. I love the words of one of the great FATHERS of the Church, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, when he explains the meaning of Jesus’ touching the bier which held the corpse of the young man. Saint Cyril says:

“The Lord Jesus works the miracle NOT ONLY by WORD of mouth, but also by TOUCHING the bier — so that we may know that the sacred BODY of Christ has power to save mankind. For it is the Body of the One who is LIFE and the FLESH of the omnipotent Son and Word of the Father whose power it possesses. For as iron applied to fire will do the work of fire, so FLESH, after it has been united with the WORD who gives life to all things, ALSO becomes LIFE GIVING and a banisher of death.”

And how wonderful it is that this LIFE-giving Body of Christ is mysteriously yet truly given to be our Food in the Sacrament of the Altar. Christ’s BODY is LIFE-giving Food, Christ’s BLOOD is LIFE-giving drink: the Medicine of Immortality, the Pledge of the resurrection.

So there before the gates of Nain the procession of LIFE collided with the procession of DEATH – and LIFE TRIUMPHED! REMEMBER that EVERY LORD’s DAY is a little Easter because ON this day the Lord rose from the dead. And because of the Gospel read today, we are on this Sunday perhaps more conscious of this than we usually are. Just as EASTER is the glorious triumphant CROWN of the Christian YEAR so also EVERY Sunday is the CROWN of the week. On THIS day Christ speaks His WORD OF LIFE. On this day Christ who IS LIFE gives Himself to us in that wonderful Sacrament of Life and Love. The ancient Christians knew and understood this in a wonderful way and nothing could keep them from coming to receive their risen Lord and Savior in the Holy Mysteries of His LIFE-giving Body and Blood! How WONDERFUL it would be if we Christians in these gray and latter days could recover this joyful consciousness of EVERY DAY as the DAY of Life and Light, the DAY of the Savior’s resurrection!

Amen

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Parish Newsletters

Our Saviour Parish News, May/June, 2023

OUR SAVIOUR LUTHERAN CHURCH

3301 The Alameda
Baltimore, MD 21218
410.235.9553
May/June, 2023

THURSDAY, MAY 18, 7:30 PM
ASCENSION DAY—FESTIVAL DIVINE SERVICE

SUNDAY, MAY 28, 11:00 AM
THE DAY OF PENTECOST—FESTIVAL DIVINE SERVICE

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are the three chief festivals of the Christian Year.

This year Pentecost falls on the last Sunday in May. But before we come to Pentecost we celebrate Ascension Day, which is always the sixth Thursday after Easter Day because it was on the fortieth day after His resurrection that our Lord ascended into heaven. Preaching on Ascension Day, Saint Leo the Great (A.D. 400–461) had this to say: “Since, then, the ascension of Christ is also our exaltation, for there is hope that the body will be summoned whither the Head has preceded in glory, let us give worthy expression to our exceeding great joy and be glad in fervent thanksgiving. For today we have not only been confirmed as possessors of paradise, but in Christ we have scanned the heights of heaven. Greater benefits have we obtained through the ineffable grace of Christ than we had lost through the malice of Satan. Those whom the raging foe had thrust from their first peaceful dwelling, the Son of God has united to Himself and has placed them at the right hand of the Father.”

Ten days after His ascension, on the Day of Pentecost, Christ sent the Holy Spirit to His disciples who then proclaimed His saving work to people of many languages gathered in Jerusalem. The Savior’s victory for us was accomplished on the cross, revealed in His resurrection, and proclaimed on the Day of Pentecost when three thousand people were baptized and so added to the Church. Saint Luke tells us that the members of this first Church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). And so it has continued as the churches throughout the world have continued to gather every Lord’s Day to hear the teaching of the apostles in the words of Holy Scripture and in the preaching, and as the risen and ascended Lord gathers His church into one body through the gift of His holy body and precious blood in the Sacrament of the Altar.

And so it will continue until the Lord Jesus comes again in glory.

The first Sunday in June is the Festival of the Holy Trinity, commonly called Trinity Sunday, and the last Sunday in June is the 493rd anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession by the Lutheran princes and cities to Emperor Charles V. These two festivals are connected because the Augsburg Confession begins by confessing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity which shows that the Lutheran confessors did not imagine themselves to be “founding” a new church but continuing steadfast in the faith the one Church that has been in the world since the first Pentecost. Through His incarnate Son God has revealed Himself as the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—one God. This is a great mystery—the mystery that God Himself is no solitary being but communion in love who in love redeems the fallen world. What happened at the Reformation is that everything in the church’s life that had obscured the truth that our salvation is wholly the gift of God’s love was removed so that the pure Gospel of God’s saving grace could shine in all its splendor. We remember that in his 95 Theses Dr. Luther wrote: “The true treasure of the Church is the most holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.” This is what is confessed in the Augsburg Confession, and so important was the Augsburg Confession to those who built our church that on the cornerstone, right after the name of our church, we find the letters “U A C” which stand for “Unaltered Augsburg Confession.” Christ alone is our Savior and He bestows salvation through the preaching of the Gospel, through Baptism, Absolution, and the Holy Sacrament. Through these means of grace the Holy Spirit brings Christ to us and us to Christ who brings us to the Father.

The first Free Flea Market of this year will be held on Saturday, May 13, 9:00 AM–12:00 PM. We always need volunteers to help greet those who come and hand out items. Saturday, June 10, will be our second free flea market. We are grateful to Judy Volkman who has taken the lead in making this happen. This is a way of reaching out to our community and sharing with others what God has given us.

The spring Voters Meeting will be held after Divine Service on Sunday, May 21. Every member of Our Saviour, eighteen years and older, is eligible to vote. At this meeting we will elect the Church Council and approve the budget for fiscal year 2023/2024.

I wish to thank our members who helped with this year’s Saint Mark’s Conference: Paul and Mary Techau, Bernie Knox, Richard Brown, Jake Mokris, Ben Orris, and Ted Jones. I have heard good things from those who attended the conference and who are looking forward to next year’s.

We continue to remember in our prayers James Bauman, Louis Bell, Dana Carmichael, Maggie Doswell, Quilla Downs, Bunny Duckett, Albert Ford, Frank Ford, Iris Ford, Yolanda Ford, Sean Fortune, Helen Gray, Queenie Hardaway, Gloria Jones, Althea Masterson, Mary Mokris, Julia Silver, Lawrence Smallwood, George Volkman, Dennis Watson, Gary Watson, Jean West, Wayne West. Maggie Doswell continues to recover at Cadia Healthcare, 4922 LaSalle Road in Hyattsville, MD 20782. Yolanda Ford remains at Future Care, 1046 North Point Road, Baltimore, MD 21224; Louis Bell at Autumn Lake Healthcare, 7 Sudbrook Road, Pikesville, Md 21208; Queenie Hardaway at Augsburg Village, 6825 Campfield Road 21207.

Please remember to bring food items for the GEDCO food pantry and personal items for the Helping Up Mission. The need continues to be great, even daunting.

The Sunday morning Bible class continues to study Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Come join us! Questions are very welcome!

Please let me know if you are unable to come to church and wish to receive Holy Communion at home. Email me at charlesmcclean42@gmail.com or call me at (410) 554–9994. Please let me know if you need a ride to church and I will see that that need is met.

I have been invited to the 175th anniversary of Saint John’s Church in Springfield, Pennsylvania, which will be celebrated on Trinity Sunday, June 4. I served there as pastor from 1976 to 1982. Kathy Panek became organist at Saint John’s the same year as I began my ministry there and continues as organist to this very day. Our good friend, Pastor Noah Rogness, associate pastor at Immanuel Church in Alexandria, will be here in my absence.

In his presentation at Saint Mark’s Conference, Pastor Kurt Reinhardt of Trinity Church in Kurtzville, Ontario, showed us how even when most alone a Christian’s prayer is not solitary. In all our prayers we pray with the entire communion of saints in heaven and on earth—as we say at every celebration of the Holy Eucharist: “Therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we laud and magnify Your glorious name…” As those baptized into Christ and His Body the Church we are never alone. We pray as our Lord and Savior commanded and taught us: Our Father… In that awareness let us continue in prayer for one another, for the whole Church and for the whole world.

Affectionately in our Lord,

Pastor McClean