Tag: Messiah Crucified

AUTUMN GRACE & GRATITUDE

As I write this October newsletter article, it’s the first day of Fall (September 22nd) and it’s three days before the beginning of the Hebrew festival of Sukkot. In our American life, Autumn is marked by harvest festivals, Halloween celebrations, and the initial rumblings of plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And for the Church of Jesus Christ, Autumn is a season that the Holy Bible itself associates with themes of stewardship, harvest, gratitude, and the giving of thanks.

Ancient Israel knew this well. After the grain had been threshed and the grapes pressed, God commanded a joyful Fall festival called Sukkot — the Feast of Tabernacles. Families left their solid houses and lived for a week in temporary tented shelters called booths (or tabernacles). They remembered that God did not abandon them after they had fled Egypt, but he dwelled with them by tabernacling (or tenting) with them in the desert wilderness. They also brought the fruit of the land and appeared before the Lord at the place he chose. Deuteronomy is very clear about the grateful intent of this…

“They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed; all shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.” – (Deuteronomy 16:16b–17)

Notice that the giving of offerings comes in response to God’s blessing. Consequently, stewardship is not a tax levied on us by a distant God; rather, it’s the grateful response of a people who have already received God’s good gifts. In other words, the harvest is the Lord’s before it’s ours. We can only give back to God what he has first given to us. Therefore, we do not appear before the Lord empty-handed because he has not first appeared before us empty-handed.

Yet Sukkot was never only about the crop harvest. The temporary booths were a symbolic confession of faith. That is, we are merely pilgrims in this life. Our best houses are ultimately temporary. Our strongest barns will one day stand empty and derelict. Furthermore, this biblical feast did not only look backward to the desert wilderness. It also looked forward to a day when God would not merely visit his people for a time but permanently dwell with them forever.

While most Christians do not observe the festival of Sukkot, the foreshadowing and prefiguring of Sukkot have met their fulfilment ultimately in Christ. By God’s grace, the meaning of this Fall festival is completely fulfilled both already and not yet in Jesus Christ. Already the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Already the crucified and risen Lord is present through his Word and Sacraments, gathering a harvest of souls from every nation. And yet the Church and all creation await the return of Christ. Then and only then, at his great Second Advent to come, the booths of this age will be dismantled and the New Jerusalem will descend from on high, and the voice from the heavenly throne will be heard in full…

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with mankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” – (Revelation 21:3)

The biblical Greek word translated “dwelling place” in Revelation 21:3 is the word for tabernacle. So, Sukkot’s eternal meaning is completed in Yeshua (Jesus) the Divine Messiah. Here in Revelation 21, the temporal world gives way to the eternal world, and the impermanent realm gives way to the unshakable City of God. The temporary pilgrims become the everlasting household of God. God himself will tabernacle with a redeemed humanity forever — not for seven days as is symbolically observed during Sukkot, but without end in a world where death, mourning, crying and pain have passed away.

This is the free gift (by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit) that we have received from the One Lord and Savior who first pitched his tent in our human flesh 2000+ years ago, who bore our sins on a cross, and has risen to make us his own. Christian faith and life flow from here! Moreover, Christian stewardship and gratitude do not flow from a fearfulness that we haven’t given enough but from the confidence and blessed assurance that Christ our Savior is entirely enough (infinitely more than enough!), and he has gone to prepare a feast for us that has no expiration date.

So, this October, as the leaves change and the Sunday morning offering plate is passed, our congregation will continue doing two things at once: [1] We will give thanks for the earthly harvest we can see, and [2] We will look to the heavenly harvest we cannot yet see — the day when all believers shall not stand before the Lord empty-handed, because Christ himself will have filled every hand by his infinite atonement and unlimited grace freely received through faith.

Together in Christ, Pastor Tim

FAITH FOR ALL SEASONS

We all know that as sure as Autumn gives way to Winter, so too, Winter will eventually give way to Spring, and in turn, Spring will give way to the warmth of Summer. The seasons of the year continue to cycle onward, and we know how to read the signs of these shifting seasons. In Luke 21:5-9, the disciples of Jesus puzzle over his words of warning (and hope) concerning the chaotic transitions of the seasons of history, which oftentimes demolish our various societal and institutional edifices that we cherish. To the disciples in Luke 21, the cherished splendor and symbolism of the Jerusalem Temple seemed so beautifully transcendent and so solidly permanent. Yet Jesus warned that it would all pass away — that “not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” [21:6] as he said.

Of course, this pronouncement of the Temple’s destruction completely puzzled the disciples, because, at that time, the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was seen as a concrete sign that God was about to free his people and dwell with them again — just as in the days of the Ark of the Covenant and the entry of Israel into the Promised Land. Even the presence of John the Baptizer (a new prophet like the ancient Prophet Elijah) was something that raised expectations for the coming Messianic Age and Kingdom of God.

The stage was set for God to transform the world into his glorious Peaceable Reign — and God was doing exactly that, but not in the way everyone expected. In fact, God’s plan for humanity included his use of unexpected characters like King Herod and Pontius Pilate to accomplish his sovereign will. It also included unexpected events like Jesus’ suffering and Crucifixion. And, amazingly, it included unexpected events like Jesus’ Resurrection, his Ascension, and his sending of the Holy Spirit.

Consequently, in view of all these later unexpected events and mysteries, Jesus in Luke 21 said to his disciples (and to us), “By your endurance you will gain your souls” [21:19]. For as the old saying goes: It doesn’t matter what the future holds; what matters is Who holds the future. That is, our Lord and Savior holds our future in his hands — and not ours only, but also the future of the entire world and cosmos. So, in God alone we trust, and we endure by God’s grace granted us through his Word and Sacraments which create and strengthen true faith and new life within us.

God has an ultimate purpose and good future for his creation, and God is establishing his Kingdom in Christ no matter what unexpected turn of events might rattle us. For here’s the surprising paradox:  The new era of our Lord Jesus Christ did not start with a militant uprising of riotous mobs, but rather through the humble birth of a little child in Bethlehem, and through his later unexpected death on a cross. The Lord of Life was put to death, but death itself could not hold him.

Truly, the new age of Jesus Christ still comes through death and resurrection, and it comes to each of us through our Holy Baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ [see Romans 6:1-11]. Indeed, for all who are strengthened and kept by God’s grace in this dying and rising faith, we will gain our souls now and forever.

Therefore, we can view the seasons of conflict in our world with this divine perspective, placing our ultimate trust and hope in nothing and nobody other than the Crucified and Risen One, Christ the Son of God, our ever-present Lord and Savior. While continuing to pray for good order and healing during contentious times and conflicted seasons, we also continue to faithfully share the Word of God’s truth and grace (God’s law and gospel) for all people everywhere.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end — Amen!

Grace & Peace, Pastor Tim

IN CHRIST WE TRUST

Generally speaking, when we were little children, we viewed our parents through an almost entirely positive lens. They could do nothing wrong in our eyes. Later, when we became adolescents and young adults, we tended to view our parents through an almost entirely negative lens. They could do virtually nothing right in our teenage and young adult eyes. And periodically during adolescence, teenagers will slip in and out of a childlike orientation toward their parents as they grow. However, if we had a loving and faithful set of parents, we then matured to realize in our full adulthood (usually around 25-30 years of age) that our parents are basically good and decent people (despite their various imperfections), and that they actually know a thing or two regarding the most important matters of life.

In a similar way, our United States of America has arguably been in its adolescent phase of development in recent decades as our national life has been marked by a great deal of adolescent-like angst about our national history, heritage and identity. So, while some Americans maintain a childish view of the USA as virtually doing no wrong in the world, there are many Americans who view the USA through an almost entirely negative adolescent lens.

Of course, the truth is that there’s no such thing as a perfect nation. All nations have negative aspects to their histories and present realities. Yes our United States of America is not perfect, but our history and heritage are not a horrible travesty either. The USA has been, by far, and continues to be, by far, a great blessing within our world. Therefore, it is indeed right and salutary that we should have a healthy sense of patriotism for everything that is good and laudable about our national founding, history, heritage and identity, especially as we approach the coming Year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Twenty-six, which is the 250th anniversary year of the USA.

While acknowledging the bad historical aspects, and learning lessons from these without falling into a kind of national self-loathing, we can make sure to uplift and give thanks every single Thanksgiving Holiday for the great many good aspects of our nation over and above the negative — and it’s these many good aspects of our nation that our national symbols point toward and represent, particularly the US Flag. Consequently, as we are on the brink of the yearlong national celebration of a quarter millennium of federal statehood, I believe it is important to be mindful of the fact that our national inheritance is truly a great good overall — although we have at times failed to live up to our highest ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers. I also believe it’s important to remember on this coming Thanksgiving 2025, and over the 250th anniversary year ahead in 2026, that our two national mottos (like two strong national pillars) declare the following: In Deo Confidimus (meaning “In God We Trust”) and E Pluribus Unum (meaning “Out of Many, One”).

In his book Mere Christianity, the great Christian author and lay theologian C.S. Lewis wrote the following… “God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.”

As the people of the Church of Jesus Christ, we know this wonderful statement by C.S. Lewis to be most certainly true of both individuals and entire nations. So, no matter what, we recognize that it is in God alone that we place our trust and hope (first and foremost!), because our supreme citizenship is God’s Universal Kingdom of grace and truth in Christ Jesus our Lord. As it says in Philippians 3:18-20… “For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

And we also ought to recall the following biblical admonition from Psalm 146:3-5… “Do not put your trust in rulers, in mortals, in whom there is no salvation. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish. Happy are those whose salvation is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.”

The ever-flowing Fount of Life is our Lord Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah. Therefore, no matter what, let’s always remember our first citizenship in God’s Kingdom and our eternal salvation in, with and through our Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is in Christ alone that we the Church place our ultimate trust.

Christ is our King! And all glory, thanks and praise be to God Most High!

This November 2025, may you have a blessed All Saints’ Sunday (11/02), a joyous Christ the King Sunday (11/23), and a very happy Thanksgiving Day (11/27)!!!

By God’s Grace in Christ, Pastor Tim

PASTOR TIM’S ANNUAL REPORT

Over the past several years at Mt. Olive, we’ve been engaging with our community in new ways, especially through our annual Vacation Bible School and Trunk or Treat events. We are also in the beginning stages of a new relationship with Trail Life USA. And with Justin Tagawa’s input on our church council, we are looking into new ways we can utilize our church property for mission and ministry within our Crescenta Valley community.

In addition to all of this, we’ve started an outreach Bible study at Panera Bread Restaurant in La Cañada every third Saturday at 8:30am. We also have a Meetup.com page for this special Bible study, and we’ve had three Bible study participants join us from this social media page so far.

Regarding worship, we are rotating between three liturgies throughout the year: ELW 2, ELW 4 (which is basically LBW 2), and Victory Feast. Jim Tagawa has formed the Cross Street Kids group with our little ones, and they have presented various musical offerings for worship several times this past year. We continue to be blessed to have Sean Paxton and Angela Zelaya direct our choirs. Rita Kubela and the Sanctuary Decorations Committee continue to decorate the sanctuary for our annual cycles of worship. Furthermore, we are also holding joint worship services with Lutheran Church in the Foothills (LCIF) for Ash Wednesday and Thanksgiving Eve each year on a rotating basis.

Lastly but most importantly, we continue to faithfully offer Christ to and for all people. Our clear message to the Crescenta Valley community continues to be the following:

God loves you, and he has poured out his love for you in and through Jesus Christ. By his sacrificial death and resurrection life, Christ renews your life.

At Mt. Olive Lutheran Church we continue to proclaim Christ crucified for us and for all people. Visitors to Mt. Olive find God with his people. Every Sunday morning at 9:30am they find a grace-filled encounter with God through the Holy Word and Blessed Sacrament of Jesus our Lord, as well as through sacred prayers, time-honored hymns and spiritual songs. Moreover, every week at our midweek Bible study, and every third Saturday at our outreach Bible study at Panera, people find personal connection and spiritual relationship with each other around the Word of God within the Holy Scriptures.

May the love, grace and peace of Christ our Lord be with all of you!

Respectfully Submitted in the Name of Jesus Christ, Pastor Tim