Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church

35660 Cedar Blvd Newark, California 94560
Phone (510) 793-1911 · Fax (510) 794-7292

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Pastor's Message

Barbara Caine

A long time ago, when I was a little girl, I often wished that I would be allowed to get mad. Let me correct that, I often wished that my “mads” would be taken seriously. I was the youngest child in my family and I was considered to be “cute.” (There is no doubt in my mind that my sense of humor was seriously stunted by this. My family would laugh at anything I did, so I thought I was funny, but I digress.) My family also laughed when I got mad. If my brother threw a fit my parents got very serious. My sisters would slam a door or throw a shoe and my parents would furrow their brows, or look distressed, but me? If I turned on my heel and flounced off in anger, it would be greeted by giggles or chuckles, or worse yet, guffaws of laughter.

I was thinking about this because we are in the middle of Lent. You may be wondering what my family’s insensitivity to my angrier feelings (at least that’s how I choose to look at it!) has to do with Lent! Well, a lot of the year, during worship, we focus on praising God in prayer and song. Alleluia’s rise from us in grateful choruses. Praise songs abound. We are an Easter people. But Lent is different, and I’m glad. Sometimes we just need to lament. To be angry. To be sad.

Lent is the time of year to consider some of our more difficult feelings for and about God. Lent is the time when we focus on just what Jesus mission means for us and how difficult that mission must have been for him to accomplish. At Lent, from the moment we receive ashes on our foreheads to Saturday evening before Easter, we consider just what it means to live as, and to be a forgiven person. It is a time to examine ourselves, our actions, and our motives. Do we understand that God’s grace as cheap or costly?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who was killed in a WWII concentration camp for opposing Hitler. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer wrote, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.¹

There are times in each of our lives when we are not proud of how we may have acted or what we may have said, when we have taken grace lightly. It’s easy to deny our sin and just rest in God’s grace, but that would cheapen when happened on the cross. Other times we may get angry with God and want to turn on our heel or shake our fist at God for the injustice in the world. It is then, too, that we can even more fully appreciate just why Christ came and how costly is his grace.

During this season, I pray that you will share your feelings, all of your feelings with God. Take them seriously, take Christ’s grace seriously, and you will be drawn even closer to the one who sacrificed himself for us, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

Blessings, Pastor Barbara

¹ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (MacMillan 1963)