Pastor's Message

Dear members and friends of Zion,
Twice this month, I came across church texts that speak about us being “the hands and feet of Jesus’’. One text even went so far as to say ”The world can’t see Christ if it doesn’t see him in us.” This idea found its classic expression in a meditation attributed to Saint Theresa of Avila (1515-1582), where she says:
Christ has no body but yours, /No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks / Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
and in this country in Annie Johnson Flint’s hymn “The World’s Bible’’, published in 1934, where the second stanza states:
We are the only Bible/ the careless world will read.
We are the sinner's Gospel; we are the scoffer's creed.
We are the Lord's last message / given in deed and word.
Only to go on asking: “What if the type is crooked? / What if the print is blurred? What if our hands are busy / With other work than His? What if our feet are walking / Where sin's allurement is?”
Well, what if? Does it make the Lord’s salvation less real and effective? And even if our feet are taking great care not to walk “where sin’s allurement is”, but really try to walk in the footsteps of the Lord – at some point we all come to realize it that it just doesn’t work this way. The older I get, the more I seem to feel this.
I remember giving a spirited message at my ordination retreat in 1993, quoting Theresa extensively to my fellow ordinands and asserting our call to Christ’s ministry. I am a little more skeptic today. And there are things happening in the world, like that terrible earthquake in Haiti, that can bring us close to despair. How can we help? And why had so many people have to die? What does it mean, if Christ has no body but ours in a situation like this?
And then I read an article by a German theologian, Fulbert Steffensky. He struck a cord with me, writing: “Die Toten drängen mich, an Gott zu glauben. Die Opfer fordern Versprechungen, die größer sind, als mein Herz wissen und vertreten kann... Nein, es ist mir zu wenig, daß Gott keine anderen Hände hat als die unseren und kein größeres Herz als das unsere ... Nein, ich lasse Gott nicht davonkommen. - The dead urge me to believe in God. The victims demand promises that are greater than my heart can know and represent. … No, it is too little for me that God has no the hands than ours, and no greater heart than ours ... No, I don’t let God get off.”
Lent for me is a time to re-orient ourselves in just that way. It is a time to bring God back into the picture. And for me it always has been more about gaining insight, hope and faith, than giving up some thing. What we gain by observing Lent and by joining Christ on his journey to Jerusalem is priceless. This is the time of “sweet the moments, rich in blessing, which before the cross we spend”. They are rich in blessing, because they reassure us of what happened on Golgotha, where Jesus opened wide his arms on the cross and died – for you, for me, for us, for this world and all God’s children. We receive the good news of unearned deliverance, forgiveness, and salvation. We behold the Lamb of God, slain for us; the sacred head, sore wounded - and find solace in it. The good news is: the world wanted to get rid of Christ – and it could not. The disciples fled, Peter denied; even Christ lamented My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? – but he endured, and God did stay faithful to the end and beyond. Here, just by beholding, we find the peace the world cannot give. Because in the end, it is not I, not you, none of us that can or must bring salvation. In the end, it is here and in Him, that our salvation is freely given.
It is true that God wants us to be Christ’s followers, and that the world needs our testimony – but it remains a testimony. Gott sei Dank! Thanks be to God!
Wide open are Thine arms, / A fallen world to embrace;
To take to love and endless rest / Our whole forsaken race.
Lord, I am sad and poor, But boundless is Thy grace;
Give me the soul transforming joy / For which I seek Thy face. (SBH, 66, v.2)

Pastor Dr. Holger Roggelin