Pastor’s Message
February 2012 Message
1 Corinthians 13 ~ † ~ The Gift of Love
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
When every February rolls around, our thoughts and hearts turn toward that one special day of the year — Valentine’s Day — when Love is the focus: the love for husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, children, parents or friends who have had a significant impact on our lives. Valentine’s Day is a day when these people are remembered and adored. It seems interesting to me that we need “One Special Day” to remember the ones we love and cherish and set it over and above any other day of the year such as birthdays and anniversaries. Shouldn’t it be a daily occurrence that we celebrate the love we have for each other? Emphasizing just one day seems (to me anyway) to only set up expectations and hopes around this one day of the year, a day that should really be no different from any other day of year. This day has been another one that seems to have been hi-jacked by commercialism and hype, a day which has its roots in ancient Rome and on which the Church recalls a martyred saint. Don’t get me wrong I am not trying to be a bah-humbug about Valentine’s Day — my grandparents, Edward and Gladys Christian, were married on February 14th, 1939.
The 22nd of February is Ash Wednesday a day that begins the season of Lent, a period of time when we set aside the normal complexities of life and contemplate, meditate and dedicate ourselves to consider the greatest day dedicated to love — Easter. This is the day Jesus Christ rose from the tomb, the day God sent humanity His Valentine giving us the greatest message on love anyone could ever received. (John 15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.) Jesus laid his life down because He loved us more than anything else in this world. He was willing to suffer and sacrifice His life for ours.
As we wonder what to do for our loved ones on Valentine’s Day, let us give the gift of love with the attributes that St. Paul’s Valentine describes in 1st Corinthians 13. Let those be the sweetest gifts that last long after the long-stem red roses have wilted and are thrown into the compost pile, and the taste of fine chocolates has melted away. Let love abide in all our thoughts, words and deeds the whole year through. Then as we move into the season of Lent may we turn our attention to the path that leads us to the cross and then the empty tomb and how those symbols of God’s perpetual, undaunted, and eternal love compare to anything we could give on Valentine’s Day. Let us give our thanks and praise to Jesus for his willingness to walk that path to the cross for us and be nailed to that cross for us, taking on our sin and receiving the punishment we deserve for that sin. Then on Easter morning, let us celebrate the greatest Valentine’s Day gift ever!
Blessings to you as we travel the Lenten path to the cross in reverence and contemplation of the one who ultimately traveled it for us, Jesus Christ.
Happy Valentine’s Day & Contemplative Ash Wednesday,
Pastor Paul T. Christian
January 2012 Message
2 Corinthians 5:17-20: So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
As I was thinking about this New Year coming up and all the changes that have taken place in this past year, the whole year at times seems like a blur – entering into the whole first call process, graduating from seminary, being ordained at the Synod Assembly, moving back from Gettysburg to the house we left to go to seminary four years ago and then being installed as your new pastor. Who would have ever believed that it would be possible for me to be called as your Pastor directly out of Seminary? I had hopes but because I knew how the whole process worked, I knew it would be very unlikely that it would ever have happened the way it did. No one person could have ever orchestrated what happened. I can only know and believe that it had to have been directed by the hand of God. I know in my heart it was God’s way of telling me to settle down and plant some roots. Since 1985 I have not lived in one place — barracks, apartment, house, or seminary housing — for more than 2 years. This rolling stone (me) never grew any moss. Now I think it is the time to sink some deep roots and let a little moss grow on this old rolling stone.
So as I pondered this new role I have as your Pastor, the verses from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians popped into my head. I am a new creation and the old has passed away. Together we, all of us are new creations. God has called us, you and me, to be ambassadors for Christ, to be his hands and feet in this lost and hurting world. We all are called to bring a message of reconciliation, a message of hope that the church is a place where all people are truly welcomed and received. The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer on Sycamore Street in Petersburg, Virginia is a place where the past is the past and the future is filled with hope of new life and new growth. It is a place where the Gospel is rightly preached and proclaimed and the sacraments are properly administered. This church is where all people are welcomed and made to feel like they are part of the faith family in this place. I enlist all of you to help make this possible in this place.
I thank God and all of you for the opportunity to serve Him and you in this new role as your Pastor and look forward as we minister to each other, to our communities and to the world.
Blessings as we celebrate the New Year and New Opportunities,
Pastor Paul
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