Pastoral Letter – Gloria Dei

Dear Fellow Members of the Body of Jesus:

During this Holy Lenten Season, we will be looking at “The Body of Jesus” as the Lent Midweek Theme at our sister congregation of Hope Lutheran Church in Countryside at their Wednesday Midweek Services. There are two ways that we can think of the Body of Jesus. One way is the manner in which I addressed you in the Salutation of this letter, “Members of the Body of Jesus.” In that case, I am referring to the Holy Christian Church as the “Body of Jesus.” That is a very biblical way of using that term. St. Paul uses the term that way in Romans 12:14, where he wrote, “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another,” and in Ephesians 3:6: “That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body, and partakers of the His promise in Christ by the Gospel.”

The other way that we speak of “The Body of Jesus” is in reference to the actual physical flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, His human body according to His human nature. This is what we will be contemplating this Holy Lenten Season. We confess that Jesus is the Immanuel, “God With Us,” that He is the very Creator of heaven and earth, come in human flesh, born of the Virgin Mary, in order to save us from our sin. This is the reality that we have just rejoiced in during Advent and Christmas Seasons.

This Lent, we will be looking at The Body of Jesus in His Holy Passion. We will contemplate the divine reality that Jesus bore all the sin of the world in His Body, so that we might be restored to God. As St. Paul wrote to St. Timothy, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory” (1 Timothy 3:16). And as St. Peter wrote in his First Epistle, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

You are invited to join your brothers and sisters at Hope Lutheran Church, 6455 Joliet Road, Countryside, for their Lenten Midweek Services. Ash Wednesday Divine Service with the Imposition of Ashes will be at 2pm on Wednesday, February 14 at Hope. The Service will be at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church at 7pm. The remaining Midweek Services will all be at Hope on Wednesdays at 1pm.

LENT MIDWEEK SERVICES at HOPE LUTHERAN CHURCH

February 21: “The Back of Jesus” (Isaiah 53:4-12, St. Mark 15:15-25)

February 28: “The Head of Jesus” (Genesis 3:1-19, St. Matthew 27:27-31)

March 6: “The Hands of Jesus” (Isaiah 49:14-23, St. Luke 23:33-46)

March 13: “The Feet of Jesus” (Isaiah 52:7-10, St. Matthew 27:33-44)

March 20: “The Side of Jesus” (Genesis 2:18-25, St. John 19:31-37)

HOLY WEEK SERVICES at GLORIA DEI LUTHERAN CHURCH

March 24: Palm Sunday (9 am)

March 28: Maundy Thursday (7 pm)

March 29: Good Friday (7pm)

March 31: The Resurrection of Our Lord/Easter Day (9 am)

My prayer is that, as you consider the Body of Jesus in His Passion bearing all of your sin, you would be drawn ever closer to Him. May our Lord grant you a Holy Lent, hearing His Word and receiving Him in His Body and Blood for your life and salvation.

In Christ,

Pastor Steven Anderson

“Come, Holy Spirit!

Fill the hearts of the faithful,

and kindle in them the fire of Your love!”

Dear Saints of God filled with the Holy Spirit:

June 5^th is the celebration of Pentecost. Pentecost means “The Fiftieth Day.” It was the Jewish Feast of Weeks, also called the Feast of the Harvest, or the Feast of First-Fruits as described in Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 16. “Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year” (Ex. 343:22), and “Count off seven week from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then celebrate the Feast of Week to the LORD your God by giving a freewill offering in the proportions to the blessings the LORD your God has given you. And rejoice before the LORD your God at the place He will choose as a dwelling for His Name” (Deut. 16:10-11a).

Pentecost was a time when the first fruits of the corn-harvest, the last crop to ripen, were formally dedicated to the LORD. Acts 2 describes how the Holy Spirit transformed this festival into the beginning of the Holy Christian Church. For it was on Pentecost, the Feast of First-Fruits – fifty days after the Resurrection of Jesus – that the promised Holy Spirit of God came to His Church, ushering in the New Testament Era of God’s Holy Church.

The 3^rd Article of the Nicene Creed is the Church’s confession of the Holy Spirit and of the Church that He calls into existence and still preserves. It confesses:

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church, I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sin, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

This Article of Faith is one of the most comforting parts of our confession as Christians – as it confesses that it is not we who are responsible for our salvation, but God alone, Who creates saving faith in us through the Holy Spirit given to us in Holy Baptism and sustained in us as we remain part of the holy catholic Church on earth. Consider these beautiful words that the Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther, wrote in his Explanation of the 3^rd Article: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called my by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith…”

We, who were dead in our trespasses and sins, could not somehow make ourselves alive. Someone had to come from outside of us to give us life. This is precisely what the Holy Spirit does in Holy Baptism – He comes and raises the dead. He gives us life in Christ where before there was only the death of sin. We confess about the Holy Spirit that He is: “the Lord and Giver of Life” (2 Cor. 3:17 and John 6:63). St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:17 declares, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.” Likewise, our Lord Jesus says in John 6:63, “The Spirit gives life…” This is the work of the Holy Spirit. He comes to you in your Baptism, giving you saving faith, and He continually comes to you in the Word of God and in the Holy Sacrament, keeping you in that saving faith. He is truly the very LORD and giver of Life.

What a joy it is to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost again this June 5^th, as we rejoice in the Holy Spirit, Who always points the Church to Jesus Christ and keeps you in the one true Faith, giving you life. I pray that you are in the LORD’s House frequently this summer, receiving His life-giving Gifts, and being faithful to His command to hold His Word sacred and gladly hear and learn it. Let us joyfully confess the words of the great Pentecost Introit:

“Come Holy Spirit,

Fill the hearts of the faithful,

And kindle in them

The fire of Your love!”

In Christ,

Pastor Steven J. Anderson

Tag: Pastoral Letter

Pentecost: The Holy Spirit Gives You Life!