Rev. Don Erickson

  So, instead of an intro meant to grab your attention, I’m going to trust you’re already attentive and get right to the text. There are 3 points and an application I’d like to share with you. My first point: the key to Jesus’s ministry of healing is his ministry of attentiveness and presence.  Our healing story from Luke 13 is one of a number of healing stories where Jesus first notices someone struggling, suffering, at wit’s end, and either calls them over as we see in Luke 13 or goes over himself to give that person his undivided attention.  Often, we’ll see the refrain moved by compassion in these kinds of stories. Christ’s ministry of presence precedes his ministry of healing. They go together. So, Jesus sees the crippled woman, and while it doesn’t state this, compassion must have welled up in him. He calls her over and they interact.  Yes, there’s power in intention. If our intention is deep enough, it has effects on our actions. But we shouldn’t forget about ...

I’ve always loved lullabies. My mom has confirmed how as a toddler I’d let it be known that I liked “that other one.”  Not that one, That other one: From the youngest of ages, I preferred Brahm’s lullaby. Still do. I’m sure my mother singing me off to sleep began my love of not just lullabies but music in general. As a kid, hymns and lullabies went together. Along with those classic lullabies, my mom also sing hymns and praise songs, and carols at Christmas time. My mom also prayed with me. A simple, prayerful refrain she often said and still says comes from our Gospel reading this morning, “Peace, be still.” That refrain is its own kind of lullaby. The link between Christian faith and lullabies, sometimes called cradle songs, goes way, way back. When you think about it, the Christian faith’s two most central figures have infant tales. There’s baby Moses and his story of being secured in a basket and placed in the Nile to be adopted and raised by the Pharoah’s daughter. The movie P...

My mom is profoundly faithful. She struggles with Parkinson’s, her body has gotten weak, her frame as skinny as can be, her muscle control very limited. But her faith, it is as strong as ever. Her life of prayer as alive and as potent as ever. Her love of God as real as ever.  There’s something else that hasn’t waned as a result of Parkinson’s. Her belief in the reality of the end times. Almost every time she sees me, she’ll say the Lord’s coming back soon, implying that I be ready. Now, she’s been saying this since I was 5 in 1976! And folks like her have been saying it since the beginning of time. But that we be spiritually ready whatever the case may be – that is always good advice. Jesus, Paul, and the early Christians all believed the Kingdom was coming very soon, at any moment.  In our gospel reading Jesus is pointing to the end times when he will return again to forge God’s kingdom. What my mother makes indirect – you better be ready – Jesus makes direct.  "Be dres...

Do you treasure Christ? You get his message. You hear the gospel reading and you likely nod along. Yes, as Jesus notes, treasuring material things is a sad predicament. We can only gather so much, and we know deep in our hearts we can’t take it with us. What’s more, material things don’t embrace us or cry with us in our grief. To treasure material wealth means a sad, empty existence. Thankfully most of us treasure simpler things – the togetherness of our families, the enjoyment of a meal with friends, the love and companionship of a life partner. But let me ask you and myself, too – do we treasure Christ? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this metaphor, the metaphor of a water tank and a fish. For a fish, the water it swims in is all there is. Water for a fish is essential to its existence. The water it swims in is its world. To treasure Christ means to value him so much that he becomes the water, the living water, we swim in. The Evangelical Christian tradition informed my childho...

In Luke 11, we have Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. We’re much more familiar with Matthew’s because it is the one we recite. A few lines are shared between the two, five in total – Our Father Hallowed by thy name Thy kingdom come Give us this day our daily bread Forgive us… as we forgive  "Thy kingdom come" is especially important to focus on for it ’s Jesus's central vision. Repeatedly, Jesus refers to his dream of the coming kingdom, a kingdom that is also right now waiting to happen.  God’s kingdom actualized here on earth - that's the endgame. What marks the kingdom yet to come but at the same time here and now waiting to be cultivated? Well, it’s crucial we start with the preposition “of God.” It’s God’s kingdom we’re talking about.  Are we talking theocracy here? While the answer seems to be yes, we should remember the truest definition of God the Bible gives. God is Love.  The kingdom of God is a kingdom of love.  Instead of theokratia – rule by Go...