Mount Calvary Lutheran Church - Brentwood, MO - 27 July and 3 August 2008

Class has been keeping me very busy this past week and I did not get a chance to put up a blog posting for last Sunday until now (the following Sunday). On both weeks, we returned to Mount Calvary Lutheran Church.

This week, Pastor Zimmerman and Kristen Schade, the organist, introduced the congregation to the Nunc Dimittis from LSB page 211. Mt. Calvary has a set of the blue Lutheran Worship hymnals in their pews, so I suspect that the congregation is preparing for a transition to the LSB. (I have not taken the opportunity to ask anyone about this.)

The sermon addressed the gospel reading, the Feeding of the Five Thousand. The sermon was titled "You Give Them Something to Eat!" When the disciples' solution to the peoples' problem was "send them away" the Lord told the disciples to meet their need for food!

Our Lord was teaching the disciples (and us), in a very concrete way, what he had already demonstrated. When he had left the crowd to find some solace after hearing of his cousin's death, the people had followed him. They needed him! And Jesus had compassion on them; he did not send them away. Whatever he was seeking for himself fell to the side as he reached out to heal those who had followed him.

Pastor Zimmerman noted that the disciples learned the lesson. He cited Acts 2 to demonstrate. On Pentecost, when three thousand people came to the disciples and cried out "what shall we do?", the disciples did not send them away. Rather they faithfully pointed the crowd to repentance and baptism into the risen Lord Jesus' name.

It surely did not stop there. The ministry of Christ through his body, the church, extended from Jerusalem to the entire world. Above all, we carry the good news (that's what "gospel" is, folks) of Jesus life, death and resurrection for us sinners. But, having been saved from destruction ourselves, we are bold to live out the complete trust we have for our Father by abandoning the cares of this world to reach to those in need around us. We serve our neighbor with love in the confidence that the Father is taking care of everything.

What do we do when this world has need? We pray: "Lord, have mercy!" Sometimes we pray: "Send so-and-so to minister to this need." Often, however, the Needy One has come to us directly and, by the grace of God working through the Holy Spirit, we have responded without thinking. In those moments, we have surely been Christ's Body, dropping our own desires, obsessions and convenience to the side, to minister to the need of our neighbor.