St. Luke Columbus

When Mary visits Elizabeth, Elizabeth is shocked and says, “Why am I so favored…?”  The NRSV re-words her question, “Why has this happened to me…?”  Regardless of how it is worded, Elizabeth is surprised and taken aback by the grace she’s experiencing by Mary’s visit.  Mary, in whom the Savior of the Word dwelled in bodily form, visits Elizabeth and gives her a day she would never forget.  Might we do the same for others?  What if we set out to make someone’s day this holiday season?  After all, the risen Christ dwells in our lives as well.  God, through Mary, gave Elizabeth a day she would never forget.  Might God be asking us to do the same for others?  Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

In the morning, many of us ask, “What should I do today?”  We think of tasks and obligations and make plans to carry them out.  Do we ever ask, “Who should I be today?” or as we look at the holiday season, “Who should I be this Christmas?”  What difference would it make if you did?  During Advent, we anticipate the coming of Christ, his first coming in his birth in Bethlehem and his second in glory.  He comes as a who first...a person in the flesh.  He shows up intentionally before he does anything.  The readings this week lead us into how we might show up during the holidays:  joyful, attentive, gentle, generous, peaceful...not as an obligation, but in response to all God has done and is doing in our lives.   Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

As you look at what is happening in our world and individual lives, you may be thinking, “Evil seems to be winning. Where is the God of justice?” God brings justice through Jesus alive in us and everything is made new. The Hebrew prophets Malachi and John the Baptist proclaimed that God’s justice was coming. God’s justice came in Jesus. God’s justice is backward from the world’s justice. God’s justice flows from God’s grace found in Jesus and not from the world’s karma justice. At the same time, God’s justice calls for a response of trust in God and living in obedience to God’s values. When we trust in Jesus and seek to live by the Lord’s values, God’s justice overcomes the evil injustices of our time, and lives are changed to be more like Jesus.   Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

Decades ago, U2 sang, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”  The phrase is not only a great lyric to a legendary song, it reflects the condition of our hearts at different points in our lives.  The deeper question becomes, “What is your heart looking for?”  Contentment?  Peace?  Love?  Joy?  Acceptance?  When we live in Christ, we find what our hearts are looking for and what our souls long for.       Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

God makes our generosity extraordinary. God takes what we give to his mission and multiplies it to produce an extraordinary and eternal difference in our lives and the lives of others. When we sacrificially and cheerfully give first to God, our lives are extraordinarily changed. God uses all our offerings to bring his extraordinary mission into reality.         Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

As Christians, we live our lives always in view of the cross.  God has generously given us all things, including himself, and asks us to live in this way of generosity.   The question Capital One asks consumers is, “What’s in your wallet?”  God asks, “What’s in your heart?”  God doesn’t need our time, talents, and money, but we need to be generous.  It is not only good for us, it is also what God desires of us, that we live with glad and generous hearts.     Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

Hope is the confident expectation that what God has promised will happen. The dictionary defines hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” But hope is less about feeling and more like trust. Faith and hope are synonyms in the theology of the Bible. Hope is forward-looking and, therefore, hope is less about proof. But our hope becomes more confident when past events provide proof for our hope.   So, we hope in Christ based on the historical events recorded in the gospel narratives. We know, however, that our hope in Christ can fluctuate from a shaky wish on one end to a confident expectation on the other. What can we learn about hope from the Apostle John’s account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead? Can what we learn move us towards a more confident hope that we will be raised from the dead to eternal life in the paradise that Jesus has prepared for us. How can a more confident hope change our daily lives?   Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Lu

Luther dreamed and worked for a church that was free from the demands of the leaders in the church of his day.  The reforms he led became a movement founded in the freedom of the Christian.  The desire for freedom continues to this very day as Americans debate about what freedom means as it relates to government mandates about masks and vaccinations.  Christians today, in America, can model and help create a future for all of us as we use our freedom, not to do what we want and demand our rights, but to serve our neighbor in love.  We can help a culture confused and conflicted over the nature of freedom by living free lives in the Gospel in service to the neighbor. “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.” ~Martin Luther Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

Alisha joined the St Luke staff this year as Children and Families Ministry Director. Her message today centers on relating joy and finding joy at different times in her faith journey and the impact it has had on her. We hope this message encourages you.  Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

Jesus is called a prophet, teacher, miracle-worker, Messiah, the Christ, Savior, and Redeemer among other things.  The writer of Hebrews adds two more, “Pioneer and Perfecter” of our faith.  (The King James Version uses the word “author” instead of “pioneer”.) This week we’ll lean into the implications that Jesus is truly what Hebrews testifies to, that he writes the story and perfects the same story, of our individual and collective lives lived by faith. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, when Christ calls us, he bids us to come and die. Pastor Mike taught last week that we church for a cause bigger than ourselves, but first we must be transformed by Christ and that takes sacrifice. To live and love like Jesus will take sacrifice. In a move that is incredibly counter-intuitive and countercultural, we church because Jesus bids us to come and die and live a life that is sacrificial for the sake of the world. It is here that we find our purpose.   Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

The church is a cause greater than ourselves, the Kingdom of God.  As the church, we are invited to participate in the ongoing revelation of the Kingdom of God in this world.  We pray for its coming weekly and, at times, daily, in the Lord’s Prayer, and we participate and co-create the Kingdom where we are with God by the Holy Spirit.  Just as Jesus sent the 72 out to do the work of the Kingdom to places maybe they had never been and with people with whom they had never spoken, and to do things they couldn’t ever do on their own, so Christ sends us out as ambassadors for the Kingdom.     Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

The community and friendships we experience in church are immeasurably life-giving. The love we show one another is a witness to the world. The most profound aspect of our family of faith may be that each of us church with people who are different from ourselves - people with whom you would not easily choose to hangout. It is a great witness to the world that each of us church with people who are ethnically, culturally, politically, economically, and other ways different from ourselves. This reflects the kingdom of God that Jesus ushered into the world, that is the body of Christ today, and is to come in the paradise of eternal life. Being in a church with different people helps us to grow to be more like Jesus, who was often criticized for churching with people that the religious leaders thought he should not be with.    Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

St Augustine said the church existed from all eternity whenever people loved one another.  The unconditional love and acceptance we share with one another is where Christ dwells fully among us.   The church is an alternative community where we love as Christ loves.  Out of this love flows genuine community established on the foundation of unconditional love and acceptance.   Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

In our lives that are so often fickle and uncertain, the discipline of regularly attending church fills us with God’s unwavering and certain hope. Each week, as we hear, see, taste, smell, and feel the gospel of Jesus, the solid foundation of a confident hope is fortified within us. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

One of the most fundamental skills in life is to be able to adjust well to things beyond our control.  Our lives are filled with circumstances beyond our ability to control them.  We experience situations that are adverse, often we end up feeling helpless and frustrated, wondering what to do next.   Psalm 131 and Jesus’ experience before his crucifixion show us how to adjust our attitudes and outlooks as we experience adversity. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

As we grind through our daily lives, we screw up. In our self-centered drive, we violate God’s values and hurt others. In the mirror of honest self-reflection, we see what we intuitively know about ourselves – we fall short of God’s way of living. If we were left with only the mirror of honest self-assessment, we would have no hope and we would fear our deserved judgment. In Christ, the condemning mirror becomes a window to see God’s unfailing love for us.   Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

In this new post-pandemic/resurgence world, the need for the touch of community seems even more important than ever.  After a year and a half of keeping our distance from one another there is a hunger to be in the presence of one another.  Community cannot be fully formed at a distance, or through a screen.  True community and the blessings of community occur when we are present with and for one another.  We were designed for community and in community we find grace, peace, and belonging, and extend the same to others.    Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

In our culture, we have a tendency to worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship. This leads to work that can be anxious toil. Psalm 127 and the other passages point towards God’s way out for those of anxious toil.   Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website

Life can be overwhelming at times, so much so that we search for relief from the fears, pressures and worries that face us.  Psalm 121 invites us to focus on God who not only gives us all things, but also protects us everyday of our lives.     We abide in peace as we trust God   Subscribe to stay updated with the latest content. Follow St Luke Lutheran Church: YouTube Instagram Facebook Website