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Trinity Lutheran Elkhart Homilies

Author: Trinity Lutheran Church

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You can find our weekly homilies (sermons, messages, etc) here.
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March 27, 2024 at 12 noon
March 25, 2024 at 12 noon
March 26, 2024 at 12 noon service.
March 24, 2024
Too often we have a false perspective of our suffering and only want to escape it.Jesus wants to show us through his suffering that there is some good in our suffering.Jesus welcomes us into his wounds so that we can see that perspective. 
The great spiritual paradox is shared by Jesus today: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” (John 12:25).This is not self-hatred. It means that you think so little of your life in comparison to how much you love God, you are willing to sacrifice your life. Which is how you save it.The key to this is just like how a side “falls to the ground and dies” - it cracks open and gives way to life.  So also our hearts must crack open in vulnerability. There is great risk in this, but it is also the birthplace of love. So we sacrifice our self-preservation which resists this and we find love. 
Apologies, the gospel reading was not recorded correctly by Pastor Vieth so please skip forward to 1:40. Thank you
Today, Jesus asks us to sacrifice our crooked, disordered desire so that he might give us a greater, divinized desire. This is terribly difficult because our desires seem to be one of the deepest things about us. Satan has manipulated us into thinking that we are the only ones who can fulfill those desires. Yet, our hearts have become enslaved and have lost their freedom, leaving us looking only for the next pleasure, hit, high, or ecstasy that just might fulfill or satisfy them. We constantly choose darkness over light. In the midst of this, God shows his love for us by sending his Son in the flesh and we have shown our love back by loving the flesh more than the Son. This is horrifying, yet Jesus pursues us all the more. He doesn’t leave us because he knows what’s at stake. He doesn’t want our eternal exile, but our eternal freedom. He keeps pursuing us, even through the excruciating pain of the cross, not only because his desire is for us but because he knows that our hearts will only be satisfied if they desire him. Jesus asks us to sacrifice our desire because we don’t desire enough. He wants to divine our desire so that we can experience the One who can fill our hearts and our desire infinitely: himself.
There is objective truth.The more we hold onto our own, subjective truths the more they kill us. Jesus who is THE TRUTH comes to free us from the lies that deceive us and reminds us of the truest thing in the world: God and his love for us. 
Your body is the Temple, a temple - where God dwells. So sacrifice your body - give the gift of yourself. 
Do the opinions and approval of certain people matter more to me than what God thinks of me?If He mattered most, how might this liberate me?
Today Jesus is giving you and me, Abraham and Isaac, Peter and the disciples, and the whole church catholic a test: will we choose God or will we choose the treasures of God? Too often we choose the treasures of God because we think they’ll relieve our anxiety and worry and give us security. The truth is, though, that that is far from the truth. The more we try and hoard our treasures, the more worried and anxious we become. In that anxiety and worry, we try and rebuke Jesus when he comes to try and heal us. When we do this, he says to us what he said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God but of men.” He doesn’t say this to hurt us or to cast us into the darkness. On the contrary, he tells us this so that we would be reminded of who we naturally are and to lead us to the place where all of these treasures are sacrificed so that we might receive of the true riches of heaven thus freeing ourselves from all anxiety and worry.
Our theme for Lent this year is “Sacrifice.” Sacrifice is natural to humans - because love sacrifices and humans are made to love - just like God. We see his love above all in his sacrifice. Which calls us to respond in the same. This week we are called to sacrifice our comfort. Because comfort makes us believe we are in control. But ironically, comfort begins to control us as we want more and more of it. But when we sacrifice our comfort we give control of our lives to the one who is in control, the one who loves us.
Our theme for Lent this year is “Sacrifice.” We begin our journey on Ash Weds with this invitation: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 
Transfiguration SundayFebruary 11, 2023
February 4, 2024
For His Glory is why we built our beautiful church. But For His Glory is why we live. Those 3 words become the measure of our lives. God does not need us to give him glory. But he gives his glory to us so that we can enjoy him and be all that he made us to be - full of his glory. 
January 21, 2024As Jesus calls his first disciples, he tasks parents to form them as His disciples. Our Lutheran School extends this holy calling. 
January, 14, 2024
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