This past Sunday after worship, we debuted a new thing at University Lutheran. As a part of our “A Jesus Centered Community” annual focus we’re asking people to join us on a weekly “Red Letter Challenge”. This is based on the book and work of LCMS pastor, Rev. Zach Zehnder who encourages us to think about how we can live out the words of Jesus (printed in red letters in many Bibles). Pastor Zehnder’s first book encourages churches to do it on the pace of 40 days – but we’re slowing things down to 40 weeks.
This week we asked people to follow Jesus’ words from Mark 4:39, “Peace, be still.” Technically, Jesus says those words to the winds and the waves, but we’re taking them personally. The action we’re encouraging out of people is this: Set a timer for 5, 10, or even 15 minutes, and just think about Jesus. You would think that would be simple, but you’ll find a lot of things get in the way. There’s the “urgency of now” that makes you say that “I’m doing x thing right now, I’ll do that later…” There’s forgetfulness that makes you say “Oh, yeah, that was a thing…I forgot…” And there are all sorts of other things that will keep you from this — even if you want to do it.
This and all of the “Red Letter Challenges” are going to be manifestations of what we call “the Law” in Lutheran theology. The Law is the stuff that keeps us from doing bad stuff, reveals when we’ve failed, and puts us on the path to doing good stuff. The Law is great because God gave it to us, but the Law can’t save us, because we inevitably fail in keeping the Law perfectly.
To really make our “Red Letter Challenges” effective for our lives, we need to follow the Law with the Gospel. This week, the Gospel is that even if you forget to make time for Jesus, or if you determined other things to be more important, or whatever reason that you may have failed to complete this challenge —- Jesus is still with you. It’s not like He doesn’t show up if you don’t have a timer set. He’s already there, loving and forgiving you. Setting the timer just helps you see that a little better. So join us this week – you still have 3 days to set a timer and see that Jesus is there with you.