Trinity Lutheran Church; Arendtsville, Pa

As Trinity joins in celebrating 500 years of reformation, we remember our roots as a people of the truth of God, experienced and lived out through the Gospel of Christ Jesus.

As Trinity skirts the trap religious leaders have laid for Jesus in today's text, we recall the proclamation of our baptismal liturgy: "You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever." We belong to God.

Trinity dwells in a gospel of being clothed with the gifts of Christ, and the responsibility that comes with such clothing. As we pray for the world to change, we look for the church to change it.

As Trinity hears a Gospel story of parable and murderous intent, we consider our baptismal callings as stewards of the gospel and how we respond when God calls us into action.

After hearing so many stories of God in Christ Jesus calling us to live lives of radical forgiveness and generosity, the text for today brings Trinity to the position of examining how (or if) our beliefs change in the Sunday and daily presence of God.

The parable of the landowner freely giving the same daily wage to all who worked regardless how long they worked regularly brings up issues of what is fair. Yet, today Trinity hears the landowner - and the Kingdom of God - is primarily concerned with being generous, making sure that all have what they need to live and thrive.

This Sunday, Trinity struggles with a parable of costly forgiveness, considering what the calling of Christians today might cost us.

As Trinity hears several pieces of familiar text, we work together to discover how they form an emphasis on justice for the most vulnerable. From our church building to our homes, from our giving to our spending, as individuals and as community, we look for the ways we are called to be advocates and caretakers of the most vulnerable in our communities while recognizing that we may all find ourselves vulnerable in life.

As we hear the familiar calling of Jesus to "pick up your cross," we consider what this looks like in today's world. Ultimately, we come to understand that Jesus' calling is full of blessing and grace for us and the whole world, even as the cross weighs heavily upon the church.

As Trinity dwells on a text involving the office of "loosing and binding" that Peter is called into, we look at our own actions of Confession and Forgiveness in the church, point to the central nature of God in Christ Jesus in these experiences, and our own callings of loosing and binding in today's world.

As Trinity hears a text about Jesus' almost not giving grace to all, we also hear good news; God's grace expands to each one of us, God's grace expands to those whom our society pushes away from us. Like Christ experiences, we are called to dwell with and beg on behalf of the modern day Canaanites of our society.

Trinity picks up from where it left off last week, this time with the text of Peter (briefly) walking on water in one hand and the news of white supremacists gathering in Charlottesville, VA in the other. Together, we recognize that at the center of our lives and faith must be the calling of Christ to be disciples in this world and nothing else. Though we may be called to things that feel overwhelming we must exit any and all boats Christ calls us out of, faithfully walk as far as we can, sink, and try again, trusting Christ to always be near.

Trinity engages this morning with a text that feels very familiar. This time, though, we wrestle with the question "What if Jesus' disciples said 'No'?" In this question, we are called to reevaluate how we view our discipleship in daily life, and whether Christ is truly central to all that we do.

Trinity continues its tour of Jesus' parables, this time met with the parable of the wheat and the weeds. While Jesus' explanation seems pretty cut and dry, we also remember as a congregation that we always hear Jesus words through his death and resurrection.

As Trinity enters a time of dwelling in Jesus' parables, we begin with the parable of the sower. Full of seed scattered everywhere, this text stretches our understanding of the bounds of God's grace and love for the whole world.

In the 11th chapter of Matthew Trinity hears a lesson that seems to be a soft message for all who eagerly answer Jesus' calling. And yet, in the text surrounding our lesson and in our own very lives we see that no one answers Jesus' calling fully, we all struggle with our own stubbornness in light of Jesus' teaching, and we are all met with a God who draws near, replacing a pattern of stubbornness with a pattern of grace.

As Trinity returns from its Summer Picnic on June 25th, we settle into a familiar text with a stressful, anxiety filled background of division. Nevertheless, God appears here to both draw us into communion with God's own self and one another for the sake of a gospel of grace and mercy in our world.

On this third and final Sunday of Trinity's focus on stewardship, we remember all the ways that God has blessed and gifted us individually and as a congregation for generations before us. Now it is our turn as Trinity to be the caretakers of these gifts of God, centered in the gospel message for one another, our neighbors, and generations to come.

As Trinity hears the familiar commission of Jesus for his apostles, we continue our focus on the gifts of God in our lives and what kind of fruits God grows through our stewardship.

On Pentecost Sunday Trinity celebrates the experience of being a congregation together, and how God has created, is creating, and will create good gifts through this congregation by the stewardship and sharing of our individual gifts