From the Pastor – April 2024
Every year on March 25, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord. A quick look at the calendar and some simple math will show you why we celebrate Christ’s conception on this day: Christmas is 9 months later. For those familiar with the Church Year, as well, you will notice something else. The Annunciation always falls in Lent. Sometimes it is early in the season, other times in the middle. This year it actually fell on the Monday of Holy Week. We at Wheat Ridge didn’t publicly celebrate it, but maybe some of you did in your personal devotions.
I say all of this because there really isn’t a better time to meditate and ponder on the incarnation of our Lord, His humanness in every aspect of the word, then during the Annunciation and Holy Week. Christmas is all fine and good. And don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful to find that bundle of joy in the manger as a newly born infant. But Jesus, in His humanity, began to walk our road 9 months earlier. And so in the course of a few days this year we were able to ponder how God truly became man and endured everything it is to be human, just like us: from conception to death.
Just a couple of days ago, on April 12, a number of us from Wheat Ridge Lutheran, along with about a hundred or more other LCMS Lutherans from the Metro area, accompanied by thousands of others, gathered on the capital steps in Denver for the Colorado March for Life. It was here that we heard from pastors, state legislators, and medical workers about the work being done to protect the lives of those most vulnerable among us. They also spoke about how it is that we can/should walk along with those scared mother’s who find themselves at the crossroads of abortion and joyfully bringing their children into the world. Much work is being done! Much more work still needs to be done!
What struck me the most was the common sense of caring for all involved in this issue. The Church and the individual each has their own role to play in this arena. As important as it is for things to be accomplished on the legislative level, for the most part none of us will ever have much to do with those sorts of things other than to cast a vote every so often. But what we can do, and what we should do, is care for our neighbor; not the imaginary one that is out there in the ether somewhere, but for the one that is right in front of us.
We all know of pregnant mothers and scared fathers. They may sit next to us in the pew or perhaps they live next to us in our neighborhood, most certainly they are members of our own family: children and siblings and cousins and nieces. It is in these personal relationships that we have the best opportunity to share the love of Christ, to express to them that they are not alone, and to ensure them that we will be there to help them in real and tangible ways as they navigate the struggles of pregnancy and parenthood.
Wheat Ridge Lutheran has done a wonderful job at this for as long as I can remember. And I have no doubt that we will continue to do so, both as individuals and as a congregation. I thank you personally for the love that you have shown your neighbors in the things of Life and encourage you to continue to do so. (For anyone who would like to be involved in a more “structured” way, remember WRELC has a Life Team. If you would like more information please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or Sara Smith.)
The Church is the place in which God’s people join together in order to receive the good gifts from God. Most importantly that begins with the things of the Gospel and the forgiveness of sins. Continue to have those sins pronounced forgiven and the shame of past actions covered in the blood of Christ, whatever those sins might be and wherever that shame might come from. But the Church is also the wonderful place in which we can join together as brothers and sisters in Christ to rejoice in each other’s happy times and to suffer along with those who mourn. Like I have already said, WRELC is a wonderful community of sinners saved by Christ who selflessly serve those in need around them. I could not be more proud and more humbled to be your pastor. And prayerfully we will continue to be a Church that cares for her neighbors for many more generations to come!
Rev. Eli
