Author: carlock

Not everyone recites the Lord’s Prayer in the same manner. Even within our own congregation, some prefer to use the phrase “forgive us our trespasses” while others prefer “forgive us our debts.” This Sunday we will be taking a closer look at this phrase. While there is value in both recitations of the prayer, understanding this petition in the context of debt can provide context to what Jesus is seeking. The forgiveness of debt has been a central theme in Scripture since the Exodus. God desired for his people to live in a different manner from the surrounding world. In celebration of the Sabbath day, the Sabbath year, and the year of Jubilee we see a model for how we should live as the people of God. In seeking to forgive and be forgiven of debt in all its forms, Jesus is inviting us to take charge, to turn the world around and change the global pattern of retribution and vengeance, control and oppression. In forgiving and being forgiven of the debt we owe to each other and to God, we experience freedom to engage in our own exodus from slavery to the patterns of this world. Please join us this Sunday we continue to see a better understanding of what we recite in the Lord’s Prayer, and don’t forget about our corresponding study and discussion of prayer at 9:00 in the parsonage.

Since I will be at the New Day conference this Sunday and Rev. Herb Knudsen will be filling the pulpit, I do not have my regular post about this Sunday’s sermon. Instead, I thought I would briefly post about my upcoming ordination on May 1. While ordination can seem focused on one individual, ordination affirms the call of God to each member of our community of faith. In our baptisms, we are all ordained into ministry to fulfill our own callings as we seek to follow the example of Christ. While the ordination service recognizes a representative responsibility for the ordained, I hope we all will come away renewed in our own commitment to our individual ordinations as we seek to fulfill our mission to love God and neighbor. I look forward to sharing this day with the congregations of both Eureka Christian Church, my church home which supported me throughout my journey to ordination, and Carlock Christian Church, the new home which has come to mean so much to me.

This Sunday we will be continuing our study of the Lord’s Prayer with the petition to “give us our daily bread. ” In asking for our daily bread, we remember our reliance on God. We recognize that our lives are a gift from God and that we are daily dependent upon him. But there is another side to this petition that we often do not recognize. In praying for our daily bread, we are also asking God to give us the grace to know when enough is enough. To help us to say no when the world entices us to claim for ourselves more than our share. In this way we begin to recognize what it is we need rather than what it is we desire.

The kingdom of God is often a difficult concept to grasp. According to the book of Mark, the theme of the preaching of Jesus was the kingdom of God. It is a central concept in many of Jesus’ parables. The coming of the kingdom is also something we pray for each week when we recite the Lord’s Prayer. This Sunday we will continue our study of this prayer and focus on what it means to pray for God’s kingdom to come. We will see that praying for the kingdom of God to come is a call to action. It indicates a willingness to let go of whatever other allegiances we have to the old kingdoms to become part of the revolution that God has started. In praying this prayer, we recognize that God is calling us to collaboration. While we may be waiting for God, God is waiting for us to continue the work that Christ began. Also, remember that our new Sunday School class on prayer begins this week at 9:00. I hope you will consider participating in what I expect will be valuable and challenging study of the meaning of prayer.

Prayer is one of the most important parts of our spiritual life, but it can also be misunderstood and mysterious. Each week we recite the Lord’s Prayer as part of our worship service. But with repetition, we can allow things to become mundane and lose sight of it significance and meaning. This Sunday, we will begin looking more closely at the Lord’s Prayer. We examine not only what we can learn regarding how we should pray, but also what we can learn about God and our relationship to God. As we embark on this new beginning as a church, prayer will be an essential component of aligning our purposes with God’s purposes and recognizing our dependence on God for our transformation. We will supplement our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer with a Sunday school class on prayer which will allow for discussion and questions regarding this essential part of our spiritual life as a congregation. God is bringing transformation in our church, and I hope you will join us as we learn how to participate with God in this transformation through prayer.

Throughout Lent, we have been looking at things we need to let go of in our lives: sorrow, shame, self-preoccupation, control, anger, and judgment. We need to let these things go because they keep us looking backward, rather than forward. This Sunday as we celebrate the resurrection, we will see in Mary Magdalene’s interaction with the risen Christ a model for embracing new and abundant life by not holding on to the past.
Please also join us for our Maundy Thursday service at 7pm and our first Easter Vigil on Saturday at 7 pm. May this Easter be a time for us to celebrate new life in Christ.

I recently heard someone say, “You can’t hate someone if you know their story.” It is easy to lose sight of who people are as individuals and the stories which have shaped them into who they are by focusing only on their identification with a group or stereotyping them based upon their behavior. However, we see in the ministry of Jesus a desire to know people as individuals and a refusal to turn anyone away regardless of which groups they were identified with. As we continue our Lenten theme of “Letting Go,” this Sunday we will be discussing “Letting Go of Judgment.” In order to be a people of reconciliation, we must be willing to lay aside our preconceptions of others and be willing to embrace them for who they are, regardless of where they come from, what they have done, or what they identify themselves as. In fact, many times it is from those who are defined as “other” that we have the most to learn about God.

One of the most difficult things to let go of is control.  When life becomes difficult or we face uncertainty in the future, we often want to take the situation into our own hands.  Rather than seeking to fulfill the purposes of God, we want the security of planning our own outcomes – outcomes that we desire.  In the example of Jesus, we see a willingness to surrender.  Even in the face of the cross, Jesus prayed “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.”  This Sunday, as we continue our theme of letting go, we will be discussing let go of control.  Specifically, we will be examining how we are able to surrender to God by following the example of Jesus as he prepared in the wilderness for the beginning of his ministry.

Sorrow is something that has touched all of our lives. Many within our congregation have suffered deep loss. Unfortunately, too often in our churches we do not allow the opportunity for expression of that sorrow as part of our worship. But while we tend to neglect this topic, it is an unavoidable part of our spiritual life and its expression is vital if we are to move forward through our sorrow. This expression is nowhere more clear in scripture than in the psalms of lament. This Sunday, we will be continuing our Lenten series with “Letting Go of Sorrow.” By examining a psalm of lament, we will see how the expression of our sorrow can allow us to see that no matter what darkness we are enduring, there is still light.

All of us at some point in our lives have engaged in conduct or made decisions for which we feel a sense of shame. While shame is a common experience, not everyone is able to escape its effects. Shame can be a powerful emotion. It can have significant consequences for how we view ourselves, how we interact with others, and how we relate to God. For those of us who live in a small town, shame can be a prominent feature of small town life. Unfortunately, it can also be prevalent within the church. As we continue our Lenten series “Letting Go” this week, we will be examining the ability and the need to let go of shame if we are to live our fullest lives in Christ. In Isaiah 54 we read, “Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; do not be discouraged, for you will not suffer disgrace; for you will forget the shame of your youth.” In Christ we need not carry the burden of shame for in Him we find new life, a life of forgiveness and acceptance.