Evening Prayer: Wednesday, March 30, 2022, 6:30 pm

 The livestream may be found here.

 Hymns: 

ELW  563 (WOV 728) O Light Whose Splendor Thrills and Gladdens

ELW 233 Let My Prayer Rise Before You

LBW 112, Part III (st. 7,8,9)  Jesus, I Will Ponder Now

ELW 251 (WOV 730) My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness

Some of these texts are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced here. Should you need an LBW or WOV for home use, please contact me and we will get you a copy free of charge.

Sermon, March 27, 2022 (Lent 4C)

 

'The extravagant gesture of the father, beyond any semblance of proportion, explodes the world the brothers live in, the world we live in. Deserve; owe; earn; but the father instead is full of joy.'

The Holy Communion on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 27, 2022, 10:30 a.m.

 The livestream may be found here.

 The Prodigal Son

 

Sermon March 20, 2022 - 3 Lent

'(I)t should be obvious that Isaiah 55 is not really talking about junk food. It’s junk ideas – and they usually attack us when we’re unfocused, when we’ve been working and dealing with all of the stuff life brings to us, and then the junk idea gets us. Junk ideas about God get in and fill our exhausted brains.' 

The Holy Communion on the Third Sunday in Lent: March 20, 2022, 10:30 a.m.

The livestream may be found here.

 

The Gardener and the Fig Tree

(Luke 13:6-9)

Lenten Minute - Thursday, March 17

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Did you know that he was not Irish, but English? Then why is he the saint of Ireland? Let us know in the comments.

The statement ‘We go to church to meet God’ raises the question, ‘Do I have to go to church to meet God?’

Yes, God is present everywhere in his creation: in nature, in the joy of family, in the togetherness of the national community, in the privacy of prayer. In that sense, one can be with God anywhere. And it is appropriate to remember that, especially at times when one is prevented from gathering with other believers.

But Martin Luther was very fond of reminding us that God is ‘God for us’ only in Jesus Christ. Nature can be destructive. The family or the nation can become oppressive. The private prayer unformed by the Word can become unhinged (think Tammy Faye Bakker and her prayer for an RV).

So we cannot use ‘God is present everywhere’ as an excuse for not attending worship. Christ is encountered in the community of believers gathered in his name. This is how he came to his disciples after the resurrection; when they were gathered together (even in a group of as few as two!) he appeared to them. Even when he appeared to one person alone (Mary Magdalene in the garden, Paul on the Damascus road) the appearance led them to the community of believers, to witness to what they had seen and heard.

If we use ‘God is present everywhere’ as an excuse to stay away from worship, we cut ourselves off from hearing what Jesus has to say to us and what he has to give to us. We also cut ourselves off from the other people that God has given us to serve. If you have used this phrase as an excuse for neglecting church, let this be your wake-up call. If you regularly attend worship, this is a call to be attentive to what God is doing in the service, how he speaks, what he gives.

Evening Prayer - Wednesday, March 16, 2022, 6:30 p.m.

The livestream may be found here.

 Hymns: 

ELW  563 (WOV 728) O Light Whose Splendor Thrills and Gladdens

ELW 233 Let My Prayer Rise Before You

ELW 345 (LBW 115) Jesus, I Will Ponder Now

ELW 251 (WOV 730) My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness

Some of these texts are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced here. Should you need an LBW or WOV for home use, please contact me and we will get you a copy free of charge.

Lenten Minute - March 16, 2022

‘The God of the universe loves me and invites me to meet with him? Amazing.’

This comment on yesterday’s ‘Lenten minute’ neatly encapsulates why we go to church. We go to church to meet God.

To say that, however, is to open up even more questions. Some of them are tongue-in-cheek: Shouldn’t meeting God be more exciting than my regular weekly Sunday church service? More to the point – can’t I meet God anywhere, at any time? Do I have to go to church to be with God, or to speak with him, or to hear him? And how does God meet us in church? How does he speak to me, or communicate with me there in a way that he doesn’t anywhere else?

But first, let’s define what it means to ‘go to church.’ Most of us call the building we assemble in the church. But it is the assembly of believers for worship that makes the building a church building. The word which we translate ‘church’ is the Greek word ecclesia, which means ‘assembly.’ It’s a pretty vanilla word in English, but it is the ‘assembly’ that is church. So when we say go to church it is not the building we mean, but the gathering, or assembly, of the Christian people to meet the risen Lord Jesus, which has been happening since the very first Easter.

What other questions or thoughts are raised by the statement ‘We go to church to meet God?’ And have you thought of ‘church’ primarily as ‘building’ or ‘people?’

Lenten Minute - Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Why Go To Church?

 

In the past, people went to church without thinking about it. They went because most people went. They went because there was nothing else to do. They went because their parents and their pastor (or priest) implied they’d go to hell if they didn’t.

 

But people rarely do anything without a reason anymore. And truth be told, we should be giving reasons for any expectations. Pastors should be explaining why Christians are expected to go to church. To simply say, ‘Do this,’ is not enough.

 

And so, for the next few weeks, I’d like to explore this question. Why do we go to church? Do we get any benefit from it? Is it important to be in God’s presence each Lord’s Day and on Holy Days? Is it rather like taking cough medicine, which you don’t like to do but need to do, or is it a joy to be in God’s presence?

 

Obviously, you can guess what some of my answers are going to be. But think about them for yourselves. If you go to church, why do you go to church? If you don’t go to church, why don’t you go to church? Are these the only questions we can ask, or do you have your own questions?

 

I look forward to exploring the questions with you.

 

Yours in Christ,                                                                              Pastor Frontz

Sermon March 13, 2022 - The Second Sunday in Lent

'Wouldn’t it have been nice if I would have just preached a nice short sermon about Abraham and his faith and how we should be like him? But it wouldn't do any good unless we consider how far we’ve fallen from the ‘living, daring confidence in God’s grace’ that Luther described as the content of faith?'

The Holy Communion on the Second Sunday in Lent, 10:30 a.m.

The livestream may be found here.

March 13, 2022

The Second Sunday in Lent

Sermon, March 6, 2022: First Sunday in Lent

The First Sunday in Lent

March 6, 2022

The Rev. Maurice C. Frontz III

 

‘Live not by lies!’[1]

 

On February 12, 1974, the day on which he was arrested by the Soviet government, the Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitysn released a text urging his countrymen to adopt this attitude towards life. He knew that public protest was impossible in the USSR, and that armed revolution of the same kind that had created the Soviet state was to try to accomplish noble ends by despicable means. 

The Holy Communion on the First Sunday in Lent, 10:30 a.m.

The livestream may be found here.

March 6, 2022

The First Sunday in Lent

 Jesus Carried Up to a Pinnacle of the Temple

 

Prayer Gathering for Peace at St Paul Cathedral, Oakland

Ash Wednesday Liturgy, 7:00 p.m.

                The First Day of Lent

Ash Wednesday

March 2, 2022, 7:00 P.M.

 

 

Ash Wednesday Liturgies, 12:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. today