Bethlehem Lutheran Church

This week the Church enters Lent, the great penitential season of the church year. None of us likes to admit we are wrong, but we aren’t able to accept God’s unconditional love if we don’t do it. The Church has set aside this time to help us.
The word “Lent” comes from ancient words meaning “springtime.” If we embrace the season and allow ourselves to face up to our shortcomings and open our hearts to God through Jesus, this time can be a sprin...

Mark 9:2-9

The disciples were often baffled by Jesus. He was always doing unexpected things: talking to women he didn’t know, touching unclean people, slipping away just when someone was ready to make him king. And things were going to get stranger still. This man they believed to be the messiah, God’s anointed one, would be arrested like a common criminal and executed.

Jesus tried to help them, tried to explain what would happen and why. Even when Peter, James ...

Mark 1:21-45

In 1st century Palestine, when people encountered Jesus, they knew there was something different about him—he spoke with authority. Back then, and today, speaking with authority is enough to make people pay attention (or maybe even elect you to an important position), but if you don’t follow that up with positive action, people will lose interest and look for a better authority elsewhere. Jesus demonstrated his authority in dramatic ways—casting out...

Mark 1:14-20

What triggers a radical change? Disappointment? Desperation? Hope? Idealism? A word timely spoken? Any and all of these can certainly push us toward change, but the actual pivot point is often a person—someone who understands the disappointment or desperation, who offers hope, embodies the idealism or speaks the clarifying word. Jesus said “Follow me,” and people did. They still do. Why?

God’s peace,

John 1:43-51

During the time between Epiphany and Lent, we are looking at various ways that Jesus is made known to people and the attitudes that need to be overcome in the process. John presents an attitude easily recognized by us today –skepticism. As soon as Nathanael hears where Jesus is from, he is ready to write him off. Nazareth was a town of no special importance to the Jews. It was a garrison town full of pagan Roman soldiers, their gods and their ways. How could the Me...

With the celebration of Epiphany this Friday, we in the church continue to ask an important question, “Jesus, who are you?” Throughout Advent and Christmas we have heard answers—God’s son born of a young woman, a light in the darkness, the expected one, the messiah or anointed one, savior of the nations.

As he grew into adulthood and prepared for his public ministry, Jesus, himself, needed to be clear about his identity. At his baptism at the age of about...

A central theme of Advent is preparation.

We prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birthday by thinking about what the world was like before he came to earth as a baby and, as an adult, died to save us, and what it would be like now, if he hadn’t.

We prepare our hearts to receive him in the present by accepting his great gift of salvation and, with it, freedom from the power of sin in our lives.

We prepare for his return to earth in bodily form by living faithful...

Dec. 20, 2011
I was given a Christmas card this year showing Mary kissing her baby. It’s an intensely private moment—no shepherds, no angels, no kings, no threats, no mission to save the world. Just a loving mother and her baby. Cradled in her arms, he would gaze at the delighted shepherds and the worshipping kings. Sheltered in her arms, he would be protected from Herod’s threats. Blessed by her love, he would fulfill his mission. But now there is just a very young son ...

LUKE 1:26-38

We know very little about Mary, the mother of Jesus. From what we know of the culture of which she was a part, we assume she was quite young, fourteen or fifteen, perhaps, when Jesus was born. We know from the Bible that she was Jewish, devout, and a descendant of King David. We know she was the gateway through which Jesus entered the world, and that she was present at crucial moments throughout his life, including at his death. And we know she willingly played...