A word from the Pastor

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Lenten greetings to you all in the name of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ!

I want to tell you about an exciting opportunity coming up in April. I (Pastor) will be travelling to Nepal with another LCMS pastor to teach the catechism and Christian worship. This will be now the third journey overseas from Calvary in just a few months! Makia Adler departed for the Dominican Republic (en route to Belize) in December, our mission team travelled to Thailand in January, and now I’ll be in Nepal in April.

There has been a surge of evangelism in Nepal in recent years, and there are many newly-begun churches with a zeal for Christ. The Holy Spirit is growing the Church on earth. And He can use me and others to help strengthen the church by providing sound teaching that helps root budding faith in something deeper than emotions and feelings. In Nepal, I will seek to show Christians by my life and words the foundation we have in Christ and his word. Our faith is begun and nourished and strengthened and made steadfast by the power of Christ, a power we take into ourselves when we are taught the word, when we live out our baptism and when we receive Christ’s body and blood. I’m looking forward to helping people understand the ways in which Christ makes us “rooted and established in love” (Eph 3:17) in the Church.

I serve as secretary for a small mission organization called South Asia Lutheran Mission (SALM). The non-profit was started by a missionary who we served with in Sri Lanka, Pastor Edward Naumann, and it is with him that I’ll be travelling to Nepal this April. SALM exists to fund theological education and produce theological resources throughout the world, but especially in countries in South Asia.

If you are looking for ways to give during Lent (or in general), consider supporting SALM financially (see below). Funding supports (1) educators: for example, in 2025 SALM funded over a dozen locally-taught educational camps in Nepal and India on the Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession. Funding supports (2) translation work: all translations are made publicly available on the SALM website for free, and we currently host translations in Nepali, Tamil, Hindi, Sinhala, Punjabi, Kannada, Urdu and English. Funding also supports (3) the publication of new resources in English (for subsequent translation).

I’m looking forward to this trip, and I pray God will use me as his instrument. I especially hope to encourage and support the faith of our hosts, Tika and Rabindradas. (Please pray for them.) In a quickly growing church, having no seminaries or bible colleges, these men travel and train laypersons as well as pastors in the Christian faith. May our time together with these men strengthen both us and them! “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine” (Romans 1:11–12).

I give thanks every day for the mutual support and encouragement we are allowed to give to each other as Christ’s body in Wray. May he bless our life together and strengthen us that we may be a blessing to many others!

Lenten Joy!

Pastor V

Check out SALM: SouthAsiaLutheranMission.com

Give by check: South Asia Lutheran Mission, 782 15^th St, Oakmont, PA 15139

OR

Give online: SouthAsiaLutheranMission.com/support

Dear Friends in Christ,

On the first Sunday in February many churches celebrate the purification of Mary and the presentation of Jesus in the temple. In Levitical law, Women were required to show themselves to the priest 40 days after childbirth to be declared ritually pure. The details for these rules can be found in Leviticus chapter 12. So this church feast day occurs roughly 40 days after the celebration of Christ’s birth at Christmas.

While many churches probably take this as an occasion to place focus on Mary, as Lutherans we rightly keep the focus always on Jesus. In fact, it is quite remarkable that even though Mary bore the innocent Son of God, who never knew sin, still Mary needed to be purified from childbirth. Mary gets no special dispensation for conceiving miraculously or for giving birth to a truly perfect child.

From the perspective of Jesus, we see God’s concern for the human race. Jesus does not enter the world as God’s Son in a pristine, sanitized environment. He enters all of the messiness of our world: he is born to a young woman who was probably suspected of marital infidelity (due to the unique circumstances of his conception by the Holy Spirit), he is born as a human being in the usual messy mode that humans enter this life, his mother needs to be purified after giving birth to him (though he came to make all things pure), he himself as Mary’s firstborn must be redeemed at the temple (though he came to redeem all the human race). Here in the first 40 days of Jesus’ life on earth we see God’s intention to save the human race thoroughly and completely. God’s loving purpose is carried out as Jesus enters our race to truly become one of us in order to raise us back to God.

Jesus comes to purify the human race. Meditate on this theme with me for the remainder of this letter.

Impurity is a threat. Impurities in building materials can undermine the integrity of a structure. Impurities in the air of a surgical operating room can lead to dangerous infection. Impurity in food can lead to sickness. These visible, physical realities serve as analogies for invisible, spiritual realities. Think of the church as a body (Eph 4:1–16). Now if one member of the body becomes impure, it negatively impacts the entire body. “If one member suffers; all suffer together” (1 Cor 12:26). So, for example, if one member allows bitterness towards another member to live and grow and fester, the hurt from that impurity of heart will eventually be felt by all the members.

Christ’s church is composed entirely of sinners: this is true. God forbid Christians ever view the church as a place only for holy or pure people. Many have this perception of Christians and for that reason they avoid the church. No, the church is a community of sinners. But it’s a community of people who confess their sins, admitting their brokenness, receiving God’s forgiveness, and extending that forgiveness and reconciliation to all.

The impurity of heart that can seriously harm the church, then, is an attitude that rejects the forgiveness of Christ. A grudge held against someone else is a continual rejection of what Christ says about that person. In other words, Jesus says, “So-and-so is precious and valuable to me enough to die for her,” but I say, “No she isn’t; look at this thing she did, etc.” Jesus says, “She is covered by my blood, forgiven,” whereas I keep holding up the ways she’s disappointed me.

So the church functions properly as a body if everyone believes in reconciliation through the blood of Christ, forgiveness, and unconditional love. Anything that fights against this (whether an unwillingness to forgive or an unwillingness to turn away from sin that’s been forgiven) introduces impurity and infection into the community of the faithful. Impurity is dangerous, threatening the life of the church. And, as each one of us is born and raised in sin, we each of us carry within us the seed of sin, which, if allowed to sprout and grow and flourish, will produce the fruit of spiritual death not only for ourselves but for those around us.

So as Christians, we gather around the body and blood of Christ which make purification for sin as they enter into our being. We have to recognize the danger we are in personally, and the danger we place our family and fellow Christians into, if we are not consistently inoculated against impurity of heart by the body and blood of Christ, the medicine of immortality.

But in addition to this warning, we should also realize the greatness of God’s invitation when the Lord’s Supper is offered to us. Here, 40 days after his birth, Jesus is presented in the temple for the first time in his earthly life. Now, the temple was covered with depictions of palm trees (paradise) and cherubim and seraphim (heaven). Christ Jesus is presented in the temple—God’s presence— in Luke chapter 2 so that you might be presented in His body in God’s presence in heaven.

If the president of the United States personally invited you to have dinner at the White House, you would probably be very excited, regardless of your political persuasion. But here the creator of the universe, the fountain and source of all goodness, invites you to dine with Him every Sunday. He who occupies the center of everything that we call good wants you near Him every Sunday. How exciting! Amazing how easy it is to think so little of such a tremendous offer.

God’s peace and joy be yours in this Epiphany Season as we grow up more and more into the love of Christ.

In the name of Jesus,

Pastor Vanderhyde

Happy New Year!

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? I haven’t committed to any yet (which is probably a bad sign). It’s not a bad idea. It’s a new year; you have a clean slate, as it were. It’s nice to start fresh whenever you can. We heard this at Calvary’s New Year’s Eve service: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone. Behold, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Christians especially understand the blessing of being given a fresh start. We understand that we don’t deserve another year. We’ve bungled the last year badly enough, and the year before that, and the year before that. When we say on Sundays — “We justly deserve Your temporal and eternal punishment” — what we mean is that if God ended our lives and ended the world at any given moment, He would be entirely justified in doing so.

When it goes wonky and the perfect circle breaks, the artisan balls up the clay and starts over again. Unlike clay, we are given a choice by God: the choice to love or to hate, to give or to take, to forgive or to hold a grudge, to live meekly or to embrace anger, to be generous or to be miserly. And each of us has gone wonky. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—each of us—to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). Each one of us this past year has chosen the bad and neglected the good. Each one of us has bungled it. So we don’t deserve a new year. We don’t deserve a new day. We don’t deserve a fresh start.

This should be the focus of your meditation as you enter the new year. We’re used to thinking about resolutions this time of year, and this isn’t wrong. But we should first and foremost be thinking about God’s mercy, because he has given us something we have never earned for ourselves: another year, another day, another breath, another chance to choose the good and reject the bad.

As for a fresh start, though, we’re much too cynical about our human nature than to think that the change in calendar year will change us into entirely different people. Our New Year’s resolutions are surface level. “I’m going to run five miles every week.” “I’m going to cut out chocolate.” “I’m going to read a book a week.” No one ever made a New Year’s resolution like this: “I’m going to stop choosing evil.” And no one could keep it if they did. So the new year and the new day and the new breath are all gifts from God’s merciful goodness, but they’re not in and of themselves the fresh start we need.

The long, slow, difficult process of straightening us out begins with us being joined to Christ. “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18). Christ joined himself to our human race in the mystery of Christmas, and we are joined to him in the mysteries (or sacraments) of the Church. Within this ordinary water, this ordinary bread and wine, these ordinary words, Christ binds himself to us.

Without Christ our resolutions will lack resolve. Without Christ we won’t have the strength to keep any resolutions that are worth keeping. But joined to Christ, we receive the precious gift of resolve. In Christ, God sets us on a path towards a heavenly way of life where we always choose good and always turn away from evil. So Christ is the fresh start. Christ is the “new day.”

Could you imagine all of the resolutions it would take to cover each and every one of your imperfections? We’re complex beings, which means getting corrected and healed and perfected is a complex thing. It would be overwhelming to take on as a DIY. But thanks be to God the instructions for this new way of life are simple: remain in Christ. Follow Christ. Be where Christ is. Let Him do the heavy lifting. Being in Christ, we have great confidence that all will turn out right. Being in Christ, we are certain that we are not condemned to an eternity of bungling it, of going wonky at every turn. Being in Christ, we are heaven-bound with Him, forever rejoicing in the Year of the Lord’s Favor.

God Bless you this 2026 and forevermore.

Pastor V

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

That’s how I feel whenever Advent and Christmas roll around. There’s nothing better. Think with me for a minute. There’s something lovely about this holiday season. There’s something pure about it. We hope for snow (at least I do) around this time of year, and snow makes everything look white and clean and covers over the dead ground. The decorations and the lights are bright and cheery, they lift your spirits. They kind of warm you up inside. The music is hopeful, celebratory. Strange, though, isn’t it? It’s the coldest, darkest time of year.

“Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely…think about such things” (Philippians 4:8). As pure and as lovely as the holiday season is, “Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer” (Beautiful Savior, LSB 537). Jesus came to the darkest place ever, to the ugliest situation, and he brought light and purity. He came to our cold, loveless world and brought the warmth of divine love. What we experience during the holiday season is like a tiny glimpse of the heart-warming, uplifting, cleansing work that Jesus brings to you and me.

The joy and happiness of the holiday season never last. And unfortunately, winter does. It usually carries on for another few months. The darkness and the cold and the dead ground outlive the burst of holiday cheer.

A Christian doesn’t need to bury the Christmas lights and get rid of the tree, just because Christmas has become commercialized. What a Christian gets to do is what our commercialized holiday season cannot do and never has done: make it last all year. Christ doesn’t just banish our darkness at Christmas. He does it for a Christian every time he hears God’s word, every time he receives Christ’s body and blood. Christians walk in the perpetual brightness of Christ’s word and holiness. The purity of Christ covers the Christian’s ugliness and brokenness, her faults and her failings, every time she hears the words of Christ her Lord saying, “I forgive you all your sins”—better than a blanket of fresh fallen snow.

“Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,” and every Sunday is a Christmas. This is, in fact, why we sing a Christmas song every Sunday. “Glory be to God on high, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.” We sing the angels’ song every Sunday, because every Sunday is a Christmas. Every time we hear God’s word, every time Christ is present to us, every time we are cheered by being with Christ who lives in our brother or sister—it’s the most wonderful time.

So, Happy Holidays! And Merry Christmas! And may Christ, who comes to live in your heart, produce in you that Christmas cheer all year.

Pastor Vanderhyde

“It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to you name, O Most High” (Psalm 92:1). “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, for his mercy endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his mercy endures forever” (Psalm 136:1–3).

It is quite common around this time of year to hear people saying things like, “I’m grateful because…” or “I’m thankful for….” Being “thankful” in this way is easy. We are “thankful” when things go well for us, when the sun is shining, when we have what we wanted. But to live a life of Thanksgiving, this is entirely different.

More than a once-per-year holiday, Thanksgiving is a way of life, a way of being. It is a willingness to allow our perspective on life to be challenged and upended by God’s perspective, with the call to believe that the will of God is always best. The evidence which daily life presents us with (through our experience with others and our interactions with the media) so easily leaves us with a bleak outlook. But God invites us to join the faithful, and see the world with the eyes of Christ.

Jesus Christ, on the night when he was betrayed, gave thanks. All evidence to the contrary (he was to be tortured and killed within 24 hours), Jesus gave thanks as he instituted the Thanksgiving Meal, the Eucharist, as it has been called ever since. Here in Jesus’s Thanksgiving, we find the source for a divine calm in the midst of life’s storms. Here, we find the remedy for bitterness, resentment and anger. Here at this meal, Jesus invites us to walk on the Way of Life with him, to be brought from an earthly to a heavenly perspective. He invites us gradually to let go of our notions of the sort of life we are entitled to. He invites us to let go of our designs on our own life, and instead to receive God’s design for our life as a heavenly gift.

Thanksgiving makes life into an adventure. Each new step, each bend in the road becomes an opportunity to seek God’s face. With an unshakable confidence in God’s goodness to us, nourished by the body and blood of Christ, life’s uncertainties drive us again and again to prayer, entreaty, lament, repentance and thanksgiving.

“May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:11). “I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart” (Psalm 138:1). “Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples!” (Psalm 105:1) “We give thanks to you, O God; we give thanks, for you name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds (Psalm 75:1).

Fall was always my favorite time of year, growing up. For me the season was (and still is) full of anticipation. I looked forward to school starting, to Halloween, to Thanksgiving, and to Christmas. I still love the onset of winter, as the days become crisp and the nights call for a fire in the stove and extra blankets.

Since it’s October, this newsletter is all about Halloween and the Christian holiday that lies behind it.

What’s the Origin of Halloween (All Saints’ Day and All Saints’ Eve)?

The name Halloween comes from two words: hallow (that is, holy, as in “Hallowed be thy name”) and “een” which is a shortening of “evening.” The name comes from a less well-known Christian holiday called All Saints’ Day or All Hallows’ Day. The saints are the “holy” ones, or the “hallowed” ones, because Christ is in them making them holy. The word “saint” comes from the verb to “be sanctified,” that is, “be made holy”. All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day, is a celebration of those who have died in the faith, who were made holy by Christ’s Spirit living in them. All Saints’ Eve or All Hallows’ Eve is simply the night before All Saints Day. Bear in mind, Christmas Eve isn’t the only “eve” Christians celebrate. This past April we celebrated Easter Eve with a wonderful worship service, also called Easter Vigil or Holy Saturday.

By the 4^th century A. D., Christians in various places were following an established tradition for celebrating all Christian martyrs on a particular day, generally near Easter or Pentecost. The proximity to these two significant days in the Church Year, Easter and Pentecost, can hardly be coincidental. It was their confident confession of the resurrection of the faithful that led these brave men and women to offer their lives for the name of Christ. Their faith, their obedience to Christ, their joy and their hope—all of these were fruits of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out on the church at Pentecost.

In the city of Edessa (modern-day Turkey), interestingly enough, the festival of martyrs was held annually on May 13. Historians have suggested that this date was intentional. The Roman festival of Lemuria culminated on May 13^th every year. Lemuria, an old pagan festival, was about warding off and satisfying vengeful spirits. People would walk through their house at midnight chanting prayers of exorcism and offering black beans to propitiate the ghosts that haunted them. So, choosing May 13 as the date for a celebration of Christian martyrs would have made a clear counter-confession in a superstitious culture. Christians would have stood out from the crowd in confessing their confidence that those faithful who have gone before us do not haunt the earth but rather enjoy the Father’s embrace.

Holding a feast day on November 1^st for all departed saints had become popular in Europe by the 800s. And by the 12^th century, the idea of celebrating All Saints on May 13^th had all but disappeared. In the year 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Saint Mary’s Church in Wittenberg, on October 31^st (All Saints’ Eve), which is why Lutherans also celebrate Reformation Day at this time.

What Does Celebrating All Saints Look Like?

Celebrating All Saints Day can include many things. Historically and globally, the festival can include:

—Receiving the Lord’s Supper in a worship service on November 1^st (whether or not this day falls on a Sunday). This is probably the most essential aspect of the festival, since in Communion, we actually join with “all the company of heaven” to “laud and magnify God’s glorious name.” In the Lord’s Supper we are united with Christ’s body of all times and all places.
—Commemorating those who faithfully departed life during the previous year by reading their names aloud along with the tolling of a bell or the lighting of a candle.
—Visiting the grave of the faithful departed to pray, eat food, and decorate the gravesite.
—Holding a vigil the night before. Graves could be visited during the vigil. A vigil often includes fasting, prayer and the burning of incense. The vigil of All Saints Day is called All Saints (or “Hallows”) Eve, which is where the word Hallow-een comes from.

So What?

Halloween is remarkable among American holidays in that it has entirely shifted from being a Christian holiday to a pagan one. Christmas and Easter still maintain their sanctity in the church, but All Saints Day is unrecognizable. And All Saints Eve? Might as well forget it. Rather than praying and fasting on the eve of the Christian festival, or visiting the graves of the faithful departed to pray and celebrate the resurrection of the dead, Christians take to the streets. They party into the night and gorge themselves on sweets. Nothing remains of the Christian holiday but the remnant of a name whose meaning is now mostly forgotten.

This is not meant to be judgmental. I’d be the first to admit that I grew up on trick-or-treating and there would be quite an uproar in my home if I decided to put my foot down and eliminate this enjoyable tradition from our family playbook. The challenge I want to pose is this: shouldn’t we, as Christians, feel an obligation to ask ourselves whether we shouldn’t be doing something else on October 31^st?

Perhaps my goal here is simply to invite you to question your obligation to participate in the festivities. After all, it is a sense of obligation more than anything that prompts you. You don’t want your kids to miss out. You don’t want your neighbors to think you’re a spoilsport. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed the Halloween party with the same friends for decades.

But just think for a moment about the radical contrast between the Christian holiday of All Saints/All Saints Eve and the pagan holiday Halloween. The purpose of the one is to:
—commemorate those who have departed in the faith.
—hold up their faith as an example for our imitation.
—meditate on our own mortality (which fasting helps with).
—deny ourselves and take up our crosses with fasting and prayer.
—strengthen our weak knees as we anticipate our own death.
—be reminded of the power of the resurrection.

The purpose of the other is to:
—have fun.
—dress up in costumes that may or may not glorify death, ghosts, demons, etc., (without any reference to the resurrection in Jesus).
—outdo our neighbors with outlandish costumes (i. e., spend lots of money).
—outdo our neighbors with outlandish lawn decorations (i. e., spend lots of money).
—consume more than appropriate amounts of candy, alcohol or both.

If you’re still reading this, I would guess you probably enjoy Halloween with temperance and moderation. So I’m not trying to accuse anyone. I am just trying to describe Halloween as I’ve observed it celebrated from my own experience and from TV, media, etc.

My conclusion is that America’s Halloween flips Christianity’s All Hallows Eve completely on its head. It glorifies death rather than resurrection, self-indulgence rather than self-denial, unrestrained fun rather than sober-mindedness, a love of self rather than a love of the saints, looking forward to candy rather than looking forward to the return of Christ. If it was just a fun cultural tradition, this comparison would seem unfair. But the fact that the pagan tradition has taken the place of the Christian one obligates Christians, I think, to take a step back and consider.

Perhaps now is the time to follow the counter-cultural example of the Christians of Edessa, who established a Christian festival on the exact same night as the pagan one. Only in our case, if we decided as a church to celebrate Reformation or All Saints Eve on the night of October 31^st, we would simply be reclaiming a holiday that was stolen away. What would this communicate? That there is another Way of being in the world, one that puts God and not myself at the center. Those who walk in this Way are in the world, but not of the world. They help and serve their neighbors. They work alongside unbelievers. They love them dearly. They even know how to have a good time. But they are not carried along with the world in the same flood of wickedness (see 1 Peter 4:3–5). They uphold life as a precious gift to be received with joy, but they also offer their lives willingly, confident that just as Christ was raised from the dead, so will they be.

Our Lord does not call us to withdraw from the world. We carry the light in us that will enlighten those who live in the darkness. We carry Christ. We cannot leave our neighbors without Christ. But our Lord does call us to be the church in the world. And this means making choices every day to walk in the Way of life rather than in the Way of death. And it means making these choices in community with one another. No one walks the Way of Christ alone. We do it together as the household of God, as the body of Christ.

“For none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Romans 14:7–9).

In Christ,
Pastor Vanderhyde

This past Sunday we had church at the park. What a blessing to have such cool weather with an abundance of shade and no wind—it was a perfect day.

For education hour, I told the story of Jonah from Scripture, and in this newsletter I want to share some insights I gleaned from meditating on the book of Jonah.

We approach Jonah from a New Testament perspective. This means we come to the person of Jonah already expecting him to point us to Jesus. This is because Jesus himself says in the Gospel that, just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, so the Son of Man will be in the belly of the earth for three days and three nights. But when we read the book of Jonah, we don’t actually find much that reflects a Christlike attitude or way of living.

At the beginning of the story, Jonah flat-out refuses to obey the word of God. Rather than humbling himself and acting as a servant should, Jonah makes himself the master of his own destiny. He flees in the opposite direction of Nineveh, where God had called him to go. It takes a great storm from the hand of the Lord, a trip to the bottom of the ocean, and three days in the belly of a giant fish to show Jonah that God was going to have his way. After Jonah’s adventure at sea, he does go to Nineveh, and he does proclaim the message that God gave him. But his obedience stops there—and it seems that it was obedience not of the heart, but merely of outward action. Jonah’s heart, we discover, is not with the Lord. The Lord wants to save Nineveh, but Jonah just wants to see it burn. Jonah becomes very angry when God relents of the disaster he had threatened. Jonah says that he would rather die than see these people forgiven. And this is where the book leaves Jonah: wallowing in a vengeful mire of selfish bitterness. Hardly a Christlike figure.

In fact, Jonah is so far from being in sync with God’s heart that he gives the very opposite message from what God wants mankind to hear. Jonah says that he would rather die than see men’s sins forgiven. But God’s message in Christ to the world is that God would rather die than hold man’s sins against them. Jonah’s mindset and his actions are all over the place. Jonah’s life is a chaotic mess because his heart is out of sync with God’s heart. Just as the storm rages out of control, so Jonah’s heart is a tempest of fear, anxiety, anger, and vengefulness. But there is one moment in the story of Jonah when the storm calms down—when Jonah’s heart comes into sync with God’s heart. Jonah’s life becomes harmonious rather than chaotic, and in this moment Jonah points us to Christ.

Jonah points us to Christ by his humility. For most of the story, Jonah sets himself up over and against God’s word and God’s will. He exalts his own view of what should be done with Nineveh and rejects God’s purpose of forgiveness through repentance. This kind of sinful pride pretends to exalt the sinner, and the sinner thinks in his pride that he is getting the upper hand. But pride is in fact a fall. This was how Adam and Eve fell from paradise in the garden—through pride, thinking they could be like God. So too, in the story of Jonah, there is a great fall. Rather than rising and going to Nineveh, Jonah goes down to Joppa. Then Jonah goes down into a ship headed for Tarshish. Then Jonah goes down into the inner part of the ship to sleep. Then Jonah is cast into the water, and he sinks down—to the point where Jonah says that weeds were wrapped around his head at the roots of the mountains. Jonah reaches the bottom of the bottom, the lowest of the low. He is confronted with death, and the terror of his sin rushes on him in a moment. And from under the sea he calls out to the Lord. In this moment Jonah’s life comes into harmony. God saves Jonah with a fish, which carries him alive for three days and three nights. And Jonah prays this beautiful prayer from the belly of the fish. It’s a song, meant to be sung, meant to show us that Jonah’s heart had finally come into harmony with God’s heart.

There, at the bottom of everything, Jonah remembered the Lord. He wasn’t exalting himself anymore, or looking down on the Lord’s will or word. He had only one direction to look, and that was up.

And this is where Christ comes in—Christ, who identified with us in our loneliness, in our sin, in our humble estate, as Mary his mother put it. God’s will took Jesus to the lowest of the low: “scorned by mankind and despised by the people.” Jesus didn’t exalt himself over God’s will. He entrusted himself into God’s hands even as death closed in around him. But his death proved to be the victory according to God’s plan of salvation from the beginning of creation. And after three days, Jesus rose. The grave spit him out—and so the grave will do for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

The story of Jonah teaches us what Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount: the blessed life is the life of the one who is poor in spirit, the one who is meek, the one who is a peacemaker. Life becomes harmonious when we are small in our own eyes and God is big—when “my will be done” turns into “Thy will be done.” And this kind of shift happens every time we enter the church and confess our sins, receive God’s forgiveness, and partake of Christ’s body and blood. This kind of shift happens when we humble ourselves and apologize to a friend, a loved one, or a neighbor. When we exercise our Christian faith, we meet Jesus in the low places. There he encourages us, feeds us, comforts us, gives us hope, gives us purpose, gives us meaning, and gives us joy. Because when we are weak, then we are strong. When we despair of our own strength, when we despair of the strength that the world has to offer, when we are brought low, then we remember to look up:

“And my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
Those who pay regard to false idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
But with the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

In Christ,

Pastor Vanderhyde