5/9/21 - 10:30 AM - 6th Sunday of Easter - Acts 9:36-42 - Hatred is rolled away!

Please go to our online Friendship Register if you were able to join us for online worship https://forms.gle/fP2yNuc98PD4xriC7 or Text your names and the date to (920) 362-7118 or (920) 949-1038. Announcements for the week - http://www.mzluth.org/wp-content/uplo... 5/9/21 - 6th Sunday of Easter - Acts 9:36-42 - Hatred is rolled away! --------- The Easter Season After forty days of repentance and prayer, the Church bursts forth in jubilant praise at the Resurrection of our Lord. The Bride of Christ welcomes her Bridegroom back from the dead. Easter is as the pinnacle of the Church Year, the oldest festival and season celebrated by the worshipping Church. For a full week-of-weeks (49 days) the Church celebrates the resurrection of Christ on the Sundays of Easter which culminate on the 50th day, Pentecost. The Sunday - Christ for us aims at visible results that show the life of Christ in us. Hatred is rolled away! ------- First Lesson: Acts 9:36-42 Peter hurried to help a servant of servants. He was not too busy or too important. He did not feel himself “put upon.” Tabitha, for her part, could not preach and did not teach. Tabitha just helped those she could as best she could. She didn’t look for a great reward. She quietly went about her business using the talents and other gifts that God had given her to show her love to Christ in loving service to those who could not repay her. When she died, those who mourned were the evidence of her faithful loving service. When she was raised from the dead, we have no record that she entered a convent. She doubtless continued as before. But the seed planted by her works the first time around now blossomed and bore fruit when the hidden power of her faith became evident at the miracle of her rising. We can imitate her first works; it would be a good funeral for any of us indeed if our funeral would be like hers almost was. Second Lesson: 1 John 4:1-11 For the fruits to be good their source has to be appropriate. That’s why we have what to others may seem a mania for pure doctrine. The love and the works of love must come from union with Christ and from nourishment that Christ gives in his Word. Anything that looks like love but does not have Christ and his Word as the source is plastic fruit, not the real thing, no matter how real it may look on the outside. Real love in God’s eyes (as distinguished from the world’s eyes) is in accord with the truth of God’s Word. No matter how noble or beneficial or heroic the acts of one only in the world are, they are not the same thing as the works of the Christian motivated by the love and work of Christ. Love one another as Christ has loved. Love one another and know the difference between Christ-like love and the love of the world. Gospel: John 15:9-17 The Feast of the Ascension is right around the corner. With Christ’s visible presence removed, how will the world see him? It should see him when it sees us. That we would strive to reflect in our lives the love of Christ and his obedience to his Father for us is not optional for the Christian. The branches, to connect with last week’s gospel lesson, bear corresponding fruit of necessity. To spur us on Jesus gives us a new title; he calls us his friends, those with whom he has shared the heart and mind of God. Friends share common interests. They have a certain equality even. Their goals are similar or the same. Their likes and dislikes are alike. That Jesus has been our friend has no greater proof than in what he did for us on the cross. Now we get to look like his friends by the way we are with one another. Love each other! ------- New NO FEE electronic giving.* https://myvanco.vancopayments.com/cgi...