Central Lutheran - Spokane

Hi all –
Yesterday we ran into significant technical issues in the midst of our service. Those of you who have tried to watch the service have noticed that already. The livestream recording cuts off during the sermon. Here is a link to a mostly complete service pieced together with slides of the remainder of the sermon and a pre-recorded version of the “Hymn of the Day.” The livestream recording resumes just into the Intercessory Prayer.

I hope this provides a more meaningful worship experience than the previous recording.

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/eyhxkVHjqtE

Peace,
Pastor Dave

Third Sunday of Pentecost June 9, 2024After technical difficulties on Sunday, here is a mostly complete service with additions of final moments of sermon and a pre-recorded hymn.

Hi all –
There was a problem with the upload of the video last Wednesday that I didn’t become aware of until today. It only uploaded the first 55 seconds or so of a 4+ minute introduction. That error has been corrected and you can now see the complete intro here: https://youtu.be/CDTBsNQ9Sfc

Sorry for the inconvenience and confusion!

Peace,
Pastor Dave

Window Wednesday: An Intro Check in here every Wednesday to see a new video about one of our stained-glass windows!

This Sunday at Central

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Jesus makes this observation in light of charges that he is possessed. He is possessed, not by a demon, but by the Holy Spirit. We who have received the Holy Spirit through baptism have been joined to Christs death and resurrection and knit together in the body of Christ. Those with whom we sing and pray this day are Jesus family. With them we go forth in peace to do the will of God.
Read more at clspokane.org/this-sunday

COMING UP

Sunday, June 9
9:00 a.m. Central Lutheran Worship
10:00 a.m. Coffee Hour

Thursday, June 13
12:00 p.m. Lunch at Riverview

Sunday, June 16
9:00 a.m. Central Lutheran Worship
10:00 a.m. Coffee Hour
10:00 a.m. Council Meeting

Tuesday, June 18 - 28
Pastor Dave on vacation

Sunday, June 23
10:15 a.m. - Worship at Salem Lutheran

RIVERVIEW NOTES

The council has decided to hold our "God's Work, Our Hands" worship service on September 8th in the chapel at Riverview. This provides several opportunities for us:
- Giving the residents of the memory care unit and their families a congregation to worship with;
- A later worship time on Sunday morning that may accommodate additional attendees;
- Deepening our relationship with Riverview and the residents there.

Pr. Yvette and I will be working together to develop both a worship service and an accessible service project to engage in with residents whether they are our own members or others we might include. The possibility also exists of staying for lunch with our members.

Please put this on your calendar now and join us at Riverview on September 8. More details will be forthcoming!

JUNE JAMMIES IS HERE!!!!!
(A tri-parish project)

We will be collecting new pajamas to benefit local families in need. Please bring your Jammy donations to worship in the month June. Drop them off with an usher on Sundays. We are looking for kids sizes, but adults sizes will also be appreciated. If you would like to donate funds to the cause, folks from All Saints will do the shopping. Jammy up, its June!

PRAYER

Prayer is an important spiritual practice for our journey with Jesus. It connects us with him as we share our joys and struggles. It draws us into care and concern for others as we intercede with Jesus on their behalf. It reminds us that we are part of a created world that needs our help and we pray that God's creative energy will continue to renew its people and its places.

We continue to pray for...

Bev Ball, Pr. Lori Cornell (St. Mark's), Debra Gehret, Colleen Gilbert, Tom Rounds, and all those who are remembered in our daily prayers

We who have received the Holy Spirit through baptism have been joined to Christ’s death and resurrection and knit together in the body of Christ. Those with whom we sing and pray this day are Jesus’ family.

https://www.clspokane.org/this-sunday

Sabbath-keeping is meant for the welfare of all. Yet human beings can turn even the most liberating religious practice into a life-destroying rule. Our worship and our religious way of life are to lead to restoration: the hungry being fed and the sick being healed.

https://www.clspokane.org/this-sunday

Hi everyone –

Holy. Glory. These words in the psalm testify to awe at God’s transcendent sovereignty, fearsome majesty, and infinite mystery. No mortal can see God’s face or hear God’s voice and live. The fear expressed in these readings is personal - a living mortal in awe of the living God. In our age, awe at transcendent mystery tends toward the impersonal - at the invisibly small (in physics, quarks and strings) and the unimaginably large (space and time). Does anyone in our age still cultivate the fear of an unmanageable transcendent God, or is the notion too connected to images of a heavenly bully to be useful? Besides, Paul and Jesus each offer a picture of God’s immanence. Paul invites us to revel in God’s approachability, affirming that we can cry, Abba! Father! Jesus proclaims the most famous Bible verse of all, telling of God’s great love and desire to save.

But both Jesus and Paul testify that any presumption of easy friendship and comfortable intimacy with the triune God is as out of place now as ever. The immanent God is still the transcendent God! And it is still true: no mortal can see God’s face or hear God’s voice and live - even if the face and voice belong to Jesus through the Holy Spirit. The life God desires for us is accomplished through Jesus’ death - and through our own through baptism. Those deaths are as utterly terrifying as death always is, but with this grace: the death leads to our holy birth from above into a life where “we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:17).

To watch the service, click below.

Blessings on your worship!

- Pastor Dave

Worship Service -- The Holy Trinity (First Sunday after Pentecost) When we say God is the triune God, we are saying something about who God is beyond, before, and after the universe: that there is community within God. Our e...

Today is Pentecost! Let us celebrate that God sent the Holy Spirit to be among us.

Jesus promises his disciples that they will be accompanied by the Holy Spirit, and that this Spirit reveals the truth. We celebrate that we too have been visited with this same Spirit.

https://www.clspokane.org/this-sunday

Anybody remember what used to sit here? 😉

The heavens ARE telling the glory of God!

At our coffee hour on Sunday, we talked about the various images of Pentecost. (Next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday.) We talked about all the ways that the Holy Spirit "showed up" for God's people on that occasion.

I gave those gathered the same "homework" assignment I'm about to give you. Spend some time this week looking for where the Spirit is active around you...and IN you. I used this picture that I took Friday night at 11:30pm north of Deer Park.

The way that I see the Spirit at work in this beautiful image is not really in the appearance of the Northern Lights in our sky. That is a natural phenomenon of God's good creation which we are privileged to witness from time to time.

Rather, it seems that the Spirit was working in me at this moment: to cause me to look up through the sunroof at that moment, to catch my imagination with a starburst of grayscale rays emanating from a center, to focus my cellphone camera on that part of the sky. In the moment that my camera lens, aiming at the shifting patterns of light, revealed what appears to me as a dove, I felt like I was being reassured of God's presence in the world and in my life.

This is neither the only time or the only way the Spirit has offered me this reassurance. But it is the most recent and, frankly, the most spectacular.

Other times, and for most of us in the week ahead, it will be in more ordinary ways. If you are struck at some moment by a realization that the Spirit is at work in or around you, try to take a picture of it or something that represents what is happening.

Just as the Spirit represented itself as tongues of flame, multiple languages, and wind at Pentecost, it expresses itself today in lots of ways. See if you can catch it in action and send me a pic.

Today’s service for the 7th Sunday of Easter can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUjrbngkz1I

Blessings on your worship!

Peace,
Pastor Dave

Blessings on your worship!

Peace,
Pastor Dave

Worship Service -- Seventh Sunday of Easter The gospel for Easter’s seventh Sunday is always taken from the long prayer Jesus prays for his followers in John’s gospel on the night before his death, and...

Jesus’ desire is that his followers will be one as he and the Father are one. This oneness is not mere doctrinal agreement or institutional unity, but mutual abiding, interpenetrating life, mutual love, and joy. This oneness is the work of the Spirit whom we have received but also await. Come, Holy Spirit!

https://www.clspokane.org/this-sunday

This Sunday’s image of how the risen Christ shares his life with us is the image of the vine. Christ the vine and we the branches are alive in each other, in the mystery of mutual abiding described in the gospel and the first letter of John. Baptism makes us a part of Christ’s living and life-giving self and makes us alive with Christ’s life. As the vine brings food to the branches, Christ feeds us at his table. We are sent out to bear fruit for the life of the world.

https://www.clspokane.org/this-sunday

Congratulations, AGO Organ Academy 2024 musicians!

These young people and their music will give you hope for the future. Please join us this Sunday!

Take a look at the downloadable program now linked from the webpage:
https://www.spokaneago.org/organ-academy-recital/

As the vine brings food to the branches, Christ feeds us at his table. We are sent out to bear fruit for the life of the world.
https://www.clspokane.org/this-sunday

The Organ Academy members have glorious music planned for this program. You are invited!

Visit the website for full information and an advance look at the program:
https://www.spokaneago.org/organ-academy-recital/

This weekend the service is on YouTube! No in person service at the church. Enjoy this final installment of our "Wandering Heart" series as Peter meets the risen Jesus for a beach breakfast.

Second Sunday of Easter April 7, 2024John 21:1-19Though Peter’s story does not end with the conclusion of the gospels, we finish our series with Peter’s encounter with the risen Chr...