Your Faith Journey - Finding God Through Words, Song And Praise

A special music performance by the Faith Lutheran Faith Bell Choir 

Special Music by the Faith Lutheran Chancel Choir.

What does it mean for us to name Christ as our King?  Whatever our understandable desire for strength and security, the leader to whom we look is the one who leaves behind all the strength and power and status, emptying himself and taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:7) in order to redeem those who are weak, vulnerable and lost.  And, guess what, that includes us!   This one whom we call “Lord” is the one who redeems us today, forgives us always, showers and bathes us in suffering love, and sets us free to stand with those in need around us as we see in them the very presence of the God who always takes the side of the vulnerable.

The Flutes of Faith performed two songs today, including Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee and Crown Him With Many Crowns.

This is special music and solo by clarinetist Michael Fox. 

Today's Sermon was provided by Rev. Dr. Niklaus C. Schillack, Director of Church Relations within Samaritas. The sermon was based on Luke 21-5-19.

To prepare for the upcoming election Pastor Ellen Schoepf led a Service of Prayer for Discernment & Healing on November 7, 2016.

On this All Saints Sunday, amid all the drama that is taking place within the world, within our culture and within our country, the good news is found in Jesus’ powerful, prophetic, and proclamatory words to us today.  God is the one who is ultimately in charge.  Jesus is describing the order of things in God’s kingdom and rule, and describing God’s love affair for humanity, for this whole broken, messed up world full of messed up people.  Jesus is giving a word that tells us, “You are loved, you are accepted as you are, I am with you in the mess, and I have made you my own.”  So, as we sing the songs of the saints of God we sing knowing that by the Spirit of the living Christ, we get to be saints too!

Special Musical Performance by the Faith Lutheran Chancel Choir.

Arise, O Church Arise, A Special music performance by the Chancel Choir of Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, MI 

If you have not yet heard, we are nearing the end of a brutal and bitter election season.  And, we are daily bombarded with words about truth and freedom.  However, on this Reformation Sunday, the good news that is before us is about a truth and freedom that are of ultimate concern, a truth and freedom that will change your life. Jesus is saying to each of us, “[Come, let go of your issues and get to know me.  Live in my love and live in my Word.] If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure.  Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you….[because] if the Son sets you free, you are free through and through.” 

A wonderful performance by the Faith Lutheran Church Joyful Noise Choir, a group of children under age 16 that share their musical gifts with all of us today!

We will never be free until we are dead to the whole business of justifying ourselves.  And, the really good news is that Jesus came to raise the dead!  Our situation is not hopeless because God is the master of impossible situations.  Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we are able to discover that we are freed from the burden of self-justification.  We are recipients of an amazing gift – God’s all-encompassing grace.  And that grace enables us to let go of self and go forth to love and care for all those around us.

Special music by the Faith Lutheran Chorale of Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

As we hear and try to understand the parable Jesus tells us today, just maybe the really good news for all of us is that God is the one who is like that widow – unrelenting, persistent, assertive – like a dog on a bone.  God is the one who does not and will never give up.  God has not, does not, and will not ever give up on us, even when we have acted as though we "neither feared God nor had respect for people."  Just maybe, the real message in this short little story is that, because of God’s great love for us, God became vulnerable like that poor widow, even to the point of being nailed to the cross like a common criminal.   And, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s reign has broken into this world and continues to break into our world, bringing forth justice for all people.  Now that is the kind of good news worth sharing.  That is the kind of message for which each of us can be like a dog on a bone!

The Faith Lutheran Chorale shared a musical presentation of I Will Awaken The Dawn

Today at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, MI, Jack Dingledine shared a stewardship temple talk about being good stewards for the Earth.

The healthiest people I know are those whose lives are not lived as the self-made man or woman, living within their protective boundaries.  The healthiest people I know are those whose very lives express deep gratitude as they have reached across boundaries to enrich and embrace others and be embraced by others.  The healthiest people I know are those who know that to be truly well requires the embrace of the alien grace of Christ’s daring love, the embrace of the God who crosses all boundaries to love us where we are and as we are and make us God’s own.

This is a special performance by the Faith Lutheran Chancel Choir of Sing to the Lord by Ken Medema.

In today’s reading, Jesus lays before us the importance of relational social issues as we live our lives right here and right now.  We are called to live into God’s dream of justice for this entire world.  God created us to live in relationship with all others and with the creation we have been given.  The abundant, eternal life Jesus calls us into comes through the community of creation, and that life starts now.  God calls us to enter into that life and seek abundant life for our neighbors and the whole world, the life made manifest and available to all in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord.