Pastor Schroeder

Sermon Text: Numbers 16:23-40

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If it happens in a prison, it’s called a riot.  If it happens on a ship, it’s called a mutiny.  If it happens in a home or a classroom, it’s called disobedience. If it happens in a government, it can be called an act of treason, a coup, an assassination, or a revolution—depending on the specific action and how successful it is.  And if we kept going, we could come up with plenty more synonyms for “rebellion” in the English language.  Why so many words for rebellion?  It must happen a lot.  Rebellion is a common theme in world history, rebellion is a common action in a world of “haves and have-nots,” and rebellion is a common attitude in people like you and me. 

Pastor Knickelbein

Text: Luke 23:39-43

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Jesus we will ponder now On your holy passion;
With your Spirit us endow For such meditation.
Grant that we in love and faith May the image cherish
Of your suffering, pain and death That we may not perish

Pastor Bitter

Text: Jeremiah 26:8-15

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If you take some time to travel around Europe, you’ll probably notice the massive cathedrals built in many of the cities and towns.  If you do a little reading on the history of these structures, you’ll see that some of these churches required hundreds of years to build.  Each generation set their minds to the task, with workers knowing full well that even though they might spend their whole career working on this project, when they died it would only be one small step closer to completion than when they were born.  But they stuck with it, and over a course of generations, magnificent works of art and architecture were constructed through sheer resolve and determination. 

Pastor Robinson

Sermon text: John 11:45-53 

During the Vietnam War, an army press officer is supposed to have said, “We had to destroy the village to save it.” There’s some controversy about whether or not he actually said that. But if he did, do you think he was trying to contradict himself? More likely, in the heat of questioning, he failed to see the irony of his statement. This year during Lent, we’re talking about irony—about situations that are different from what you would expect. Tonight, I want to focus on unintentional irony. Sometimes we do and say things that are ironic without even realizing it. Tonight we have just such a situation before us. Caiaphas, the high priest, makes one of the clearest statements of gospel you’ll ever find—and he never even realized it. His words are tonight’s irony of the passion: It is better that one man die for the people.

I.

Pastor Leyrer

Text: Joshua 7:16-26

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Dear Friends in Christ, Even if you grew up going to Sunday School or Christian Day school, it is entirely possible you never heard this story before.  Or if you have, it’s one you haven’t remembered or thought a lot about until it appeared as our first reading today.

Pastor Schroeder

Text: 2 Samuel 24:10-25

It’s a common mistake to underestimate the cost of decisions that one might make.  We could use the example of kids who want to buy a pet.  They save their allowance until they can afford the purchase price of a dog or cat, but they don’t always think about the ongoing cost of food and vet bills and cleaning up after them.  Or consider a teenager who saves up as much money as he can to buy a used car, but once the money is spent, he discovers all the additional ongoing costs of insurance, and gas, and oil changes, maintenance and repairs that are needed to keep it running.  A young couple uses up their savings for a meager down payment on their first home, only to find out in their first winter there that they need a brand new furnace that wasn’t in the budget.  In all of these cases, someone was more than willing to make a sale, but the buyers wind up in over their heads because they didn’t understand the true cost of their decision. 

On this Ash Wednesday, as we look at King David’s example from 2 Samuel 24, we are reminded of how often we are tempted to make decisions that come with a much higher cost than we anticipated.  Why would we do such a thing?  The devil is a skilled salesman for sin, and he is so adept at laying out the intended upside of sinful choices without going into the details of what those choices might cost us in the end.  And we all know his tactics, because we have fallen for them so many times. 

Pastor Bitter

Text: Psalm 148

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The Superbowl just might be the biggest spectacle in sports, perhaps rivaled only by the World Cup and the Olympics.  The players who are stars of the game will be household names for many Americans, and the glory, the honor, the respect, will carry on for some time.  But it won’t last forever.  Perhaps some of you may have seen two former Superbowl champions honored at Thanksgiving during half time of the Packers-Bears game. The ceremony was to honor former quarterback Brett Favre by retiring his number, and during the ceremony a golf cart came out onto the field carrying the famous Packers star from the 60s, Bart Starr. 

Pastor Leyrer

Text: Psalm 78:1-7

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Dear Friends in Christ, You’ve probably heard someone tell you the old joke that three things happen as you get older.  The first is memory loss and the other two they’ve forgotten.  If you’ve ever walked into a room to retrieve something but then found yourself at a dead stop because you couldn’t remember what it was, or if you ever missed an appointment, a meeting or a social engagement and the only excuse you can offer later is “I forgot,” you know there is more truth to that old joke than we’d like to admit.