Sermon Audio

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*All sermons by Rev. Oehler unless otherwise noted.

1.29.12 - Love Builds Up

1.22.12 - This World is Passing Away

1.15.12 - Speak, for Your Servant is Listening

1.8.12 - In Jesus

1.1.12- A Sign

Sermon Archives

Pastor’s Corner

Christians and Pagans

People turn to God when they're in need,

plead for help, contentment, and for bread,

for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death.

They all do so, both Christian and pagan.

People turn to God in God's own need,

and find God poor, degraded, without roof or bread,

see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death.

Christians stand with God to share God's pain.

God turns to all people in their need,

nourishes body and soul with God's own bread,

takes up the cross for Christians and pagans, both,

and in forgiving both, is slain.

German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the poem above entitled “Christians and Pagans” in 1944.  This piece of poetry ends with the author proclaiming that “God takes up the cross for Christians and pagans, both.”  A recognition that Jesus Christ’s death on the cross was for all people. 

We are entering the season of Lent – a time to remember the sacrifice that God’s Son made for every human being.  Lent is part of the liturgical year that calls us to examine our relationship with God through Jesus Christ and to remember his taking up the cross for us.  Lent is a season that we are asked to practice the traditional spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, penitence, and almsgiving.  

I would add that this is also a time to add participation in the worship and work of the church.  Let me invite each of you to join your church family for Wednesday evenings Open Door worship beginning at 5:30 p.m. and the Greater Woodbury Cooperative Ministries Bible Study at St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church beginning at 7:00 p.m.  The season of Lent is a time to reconnect with The Presbyterian Church at Woodbury, reconnect with other followers of our Savior, and reconnect with the One who took up “the cross for Christians and pagans, both.”