Pastor’s Post Feb 2014

PASTOR’S POST

Everyone has an agenda…even Jesus!

I’ve grown accustomed to February being a month of reflection for our Resurrection family.  We take the opportunity this month to thank God for His grace, His hope and His love actively working through Resurrection Lutheran Church in the past 58 years into the larger community.  This is also a pivotal time to consider where God is preparing to send us in the larger Hampton Roads community.

As we consider our Congregational Heritage, where we’ve come from and where we are going – I pray we also consider an essential truth so we are equipped by the LORD in our lifestyle of loving and serving the larger community.  That essential truth is this: Everyone has an agenda…even Jesus!

We all can readily admit the “baggage” that comes with the word agenda in our current world.  Let’s call a spade a spade and recognize that if someone says “so and so has an agenda” we immediately picture something negative, something sinister and something we should (probably) be resistant to.

However, as Christians we DO have an agenda (cue the sinister music here!).  All joking aside, we really DO have an agenda: to share the Promises and Love of Jesus Christ with the world!

Consider our monthly memory verse: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” – Hebrews 12:1

It is essential that we equip ourselves with the truth of our agenda.  Then we will be prepared to answer the foolish and illogical argument the unbelieving world challenges us with that no one should have an agenda.  The world has a heritage and agenda that it clings to…one that we struggle with as well – the heritage of sin, the heritage of doing things “my way or the highway”, the agenda of disregarding the 1^st Commandment which we’ve consistently accomplished (individually and corporately as humanity) since our first parents fell in the Garden of Eden and the only trophy that has brought us is death.

As we celebrate God’s love this month, we celebrate that God rescued us from our old, self-inflicted heritage of sin, death and our old heritage of hopelessly clinging to temporary earthly things that mean nothing when we die.  We celebrate that God has revealed His agenda, to deliver us from every enemy, especially from our sin and our death through His victory FOR us, by the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus our King and Savior.

Yes, everyone has an agenda, even Jesus!  By God’s grace, through the Promise of His Word and by His way of forgiveness we continue to take this heritage of our Congregation, God’s agenda out into the world…beginning with the many ways we love and serve our neighbors in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.  In accordance with Jesus’ agenda and in His Name, Amen!