Solid Food - Ascension Sermon Podcast

Grace and peace to you, sisters and brothers in Christ, Summer is more than halfway over. We continue to journey through our summer series of "Walk This Way." What does it look like, practically speaking, to live this Christian life? This week our focus is "nurturing the young and the old." Recently, Ascension member Max Fuhrmann taught a class on aging. Currently, our campus is getting ready for...

Pastor Rick Ertel's sermon is based on Matthew 25:31-40. You are in for a fascinating sermon as he briefly gives us five ways to respond to Jesus' call to love and serve "the least of these." Be prepared! He even asks for a few people to give some brief answers to his questions, and there are interesting thoughts to share.

Grace and peace to you, my sisters and brothers in Christ,   "It is more blessed to give than to receive." These famous words are from Paul's farewell speech to the Ephesian elders in the book of Acts (20:35). Paul is quoting Jesus here. My question is: Do we believe it? Do we believe that giving makes us more joyful and more fulfilled than getting, hoarding, collecting, etc.? This question is not...

Grace and peace to you, sisters and brothers in Christ. Thus far in our summer sermon series, we have talked about what it looks like to walk as a Christian. First and foremost, we anchor our lives on Jesus. The "fruit of the Spirit" is the way in which we strive to treat one another, with attributes such as love and gentleness and patience. We are to be a people who practice forgiveness. And last...

Join us as we continue to "walk this way." So far our summer sermon series has noted that Christians first and foremost are people who follow Jesus. Christians are people who strive to live by the fruit of the Spirit. Christians are people who practice forgiveness and grace. This weekend, Pastors Tim and Chamie will team preach as they share how Christian faith is bigger than the things that tend...

Grace and peace to you my sisters and brothers in Christ,   So how many times are we called to forgive someone? The ancient law code said 3. That sounds fair, even more than fair, right? But then Peter, clearly wanting to impress Jesus and or his fellow disciples, asked, how about 7? You'd think they would be impressed. But then Jesus blew his disciples away. Some translations say that he responde...

Grace and peace to you my sisters and brothers in Christ, Living by the Spirit isn't easy! In fact, it's a fight. The apostle Paul even described it as a life-long, "good fight." None of us gets it right all the time. Sometimes we go for days, weeks or, I don't know, maybe even years (yikes) without experiencing it. But we are still called to live by the "fruit of the spirit" and not by the "works...

Grace and peace to you my sisters and brothers in Christ,   This weekend we begin a summer series called "Walk This Way." We thought summer would be a good time to go back to the basics of what it looks like to follow Jesus. I have long been inspired by pastor and author Eugen Peterson who saw God as the burning center of life which meant that Christian faith was not abstract or disembodied but in...

Grace and peace to you, sisters and brothers in Christ, We really love Pentecost. Yes, we know, we are, indeed, church geeks. But we think everyone should know how amazing Pentecost is. This weekend we will be team-preaching about wind and fire, about passion and the movement of the Holy Spirit, about dreams and visions, about being all together in one place and being sent out to go all over the p...

Pastors Tim and Chamie Delkeskamp talk about finding peace in this anxious world: "The source of peace has been waiting for us all along..." And the power of Christian community. In our reading this weekend, Jesus prays for unity among his followers. Resurrection life weaves us together in love and witness. 

Grace and peace to you my sisters and brothers in Christ, If you happen to be reading this on Thursday, Happy Ascension Day! Ascension Day is always celebrated 40 days after Easter, so it is always on a Thursday. But then, we as a church have the choice to recognize it on the ensuing weekend. And since over 75 years ago those who founded our church decided to name our community after this event, I...

Grace and peace to you my sisters and brothers in Christ, Imagine it is a last day… perhaps the last day of the school year, or the last day in the town where you have resided for 20 years, or the last day before you die. What might you want your last words to be? As Jesus' crucifixion was nearing, he said, "My children, I will be with you only a little longer… as I have loved you, so you must lov...

Grace and peace to you my sisters and brothers in Christ, This weekend we are celebrating one of the most complex and difficult human vocations there is. That is being a mom. The virtues of motherhood are many. For example: faithfulness, love — even when it is hard —  patience (thanks mom!), etc. And the task is to raise a human being to the point where they learn the same virtues. Accomplishing t...

Dear friends in Christ, This weekend is the third Sunday in the Easter season and I have the joy of sharing the sermon time with you as I preach on the Gospel reading of John 21:1-19. It's a fascinating post-Easter story of Jesus and Peter. Jesus, our risen Good Shepherd, asks Peter and us, "Do you love me?" and he tells us "feed my sheep." How best do we show Jesus our love and how do we feed his...

Grace and peace to you my sisters and brothers in Christ, This weekend it's all about old "Doubting Thomas." But it isn't really. Let me just dispel that myth right now. It wasn't just Thomas that needed to touch Jesus's wounds for reassurance, it was all the disciples. Thomas just missed Jesus' first appearance. So, maybe instead of calling him "Doubting Thomas" maybe we should call him "FOMO (fe...

He is Risen!  He is risen indeed!  You have probably heard the story before but this year, Pastor Chamie and I want to make sure that you know the whole story.  The history.  We want to make sure that you know that the grace God gives you through your faith is more than enough of what you need for your life. It's all been prepared.  The details have been attended to.  I am so excited to see you in...

There is an old phrase: The devil is in the details. It means that something may seem simple at first, but the details are often complicated and prone to causing problems. It suggests that overlooked or seemingly minor details can lead to issues or complications. But could we, followers of Christ, have our own phrase? Could we say, "Jesus is in the details?" I think we should. This week is the wee...

Did you know that the sense of smell is considered the best trigger for memory? According to scientists: "Unlike other senses, smell signals travel directly to the olfactory bulb, which is situated close to the amygdala (emotion processing) and hippocampus (memory storage), allowing for a quick and powerful memory trigger." And smell has a lot to do with our Bible story this week. It is a little s...

Luke is my favorite gospel, for many reasons. One of those reasons is that Luke is the only gospel writer who tells the triad of the "lost stories" – the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son. Whether these stories are old or new to you, I invite you to come to worship as we dig into Luke 15 and ponder both the simplicity and the profoundness of Jesus' telling these parables. And I will say...

Repent! What images and thoughts come to your mind when you hear this word? Is it a heavy one that conjures up John the Baptist-style street preachers? Is it one of those big heavy religious words that is only pulled out for big heavy religious situations? Martin Luther didn't think so. In fact, I get the sense that he loved this word. For him, repentance was a deliberate daily process that remind...

On this Lutheran Schools Weekend, we will remember how God was faithful to Abram. We will remember how God has been faithful to all his children and to generations of Lutheran students. We will hear a word of encouragement to keep walking in faith. Pastor Rich Gregory is preaching. He is also principal of Ascension Lutheran School and has deep knowledge of how this latest generation is approaching...

I am grateful to be on this Lent journey with you. This weekend marks the first weekend of Lent. As we gather for worship, we will hear the story of Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness. As I read this week's gospel, I recalled a song that I first heard while in seminary: Michael Card's "In the Wilderness." This is one of the verses: In the wilderness we're wondering For a way to underst...

Wouldn't it be nice if life offered easy answers? But the world is more complex and messy than that. 

If you have been on the Epiphany journey with us you know that we have been talking about living wisely and well as followers of Christ. You also may have picked up through our posts and "teasers" that there is a surprise coming this weekend in worship. What is that surprise? Come on… if I told you, then it wouldn't be a surprise. I can tell you it is about living boldly. Followers of Jesus have a...

It is the hardest personal teaching in the entire Bible. It is the one that challenges us the most. Are you ready? It's: "Love your enemies and pray for them." It's hard. And yet we are called to do so. So how do we do it? Well, it starts with realizing that we can't do it on our own. Next, we need to understand that we are loved by God so much that we can be generous with that love. In other word...