From Pastor Lamb
Those of us who are people of the Church
are now in the season of Pentecost. This is
a season of hearing the teachings of Jesus,
praying about them, discussing them,
sharing them, wondering about them,
singing about them, asking questions about
them, and living as if they were Important
to us. It’s good that this season is long!
In worship during July we will be reading
from the gospel according to Matthew,
from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome,
and from a few major Prophets. The
teachings of Jesus that will be looked at this
month will all involve his central theme: the
kingdom of God. (By the way: Matthew,
like other devout Jews of his time, felt that
God’s name was too special and sacred to
be used in common conversation, so he
often refers to the kingdom of God as the
kingdom of heaven; they mean the same
thing.)
The kingdom of God (or heaven) is
something you may have heard about but
thought it referred to what happens and
where we go after we die. It is much more
than that. In fact, Jesus seldom spoke of life
after death. The vast majority of his
teaching about the kingdom of God was
about what ”kingdom living” looks like
every day. We can hear this in the prayer
Jesus taught his disciples, in what we now
call the Lord’s Prayer: “God’s kingdom
come on earth as it is in heaven.”
We will hear this month how Jesus
compares the world around us to the
kingdom of God. As we listen to, pray
about, sing about, discuss, ponder, and
share this, maybe we will learn ways to
more fully live the kingdom life while still
living in this world, a world that looks at life
much differently.
We have much to learn. But we have a
teacher that is truly the best. Come and
see.
+ Pastor Lamb
St. James Lutheran Church, Rudyard Michigan 