22nd Annual Live Nativity

Join us tomorrow and Sunday, Dec . 10 & 11 for our annual Live Nativity, 4:30 - 8:00 pm
Admission is FREE!  Refreshments are served.  We are handicap accessible.

Every 15 minutes or so, a continuous reading of the Nativity story is revealed beneath a deep starry night sky over a stable in Bethlehem.  Angels will announce the birth of the Savior.  Shepherds and kings will travel to Bethlehem to find the new infant king.  What will you find there?

It’s easy to feel lost at this time of year.  Aside from being overwhelmed by all the secularism that drowns out the whole reason we celebrate Christmas at all, recent years have battered our sense of direction, leaving us wondering if we are on the right path, feeling lost.

But… Because we are children of God, we have been given the greatest gift of all time - the gift of Jesus, God’s Son, our Savior.  Because of this gift, we have hope.  And that hope shines like a Star over a stable in Bethlehem.

In the stable, you will find what your heart seeks.  In an infant king, God’s Son born in a stable, we meet the Good Shepherd who guides our ways and shows us the path to a relationship with God that is full of peace and joy and love.  In this stable we find that we are not lost, but found, loved and cherished…because we, too, are children of God, the sheep of His fold.

The wise men appeared to King Herod and asked, “Where is He who has been born King? For we saw His star and have come to worship Him.”   Even the wise men were searching for something…someone…that would answer their prayers and guide their paths.  They found Him in the stable.

At Easter, we look within the empty tomb, feeling lost, knowing that our Lord has died.  But the angels ask, “Whom do you seek?  He is not here, He is risen!”  In the Easter Resurrection our feeling of being lost is replaced with the joy of being found, claimed by God and deemed worthy of His love.

Be like sheep, follow the sound of your Shepherd’s voice and wander into the stable.  Grasp the gift within… the love of God incarnate in His Son, Jesus, Immanuel, God with us.  Our God is a God of abundance, and there is love and hope enough for all the lost and all the found.  

See you in the stable.   Baaaa-baaaa-baaa.

St. Andrew Lutheran Church
335 Reynolds Ave.
Parsippany, NJ  07054
(973) 887-6713

Jesus is a gate

Picket or wrought iron?  How about human flesh and bone…?

Yesterday was commonly called “Good Shepherd Sunday” for the reference to the Gospel lesson of the day.    In this Gospel lesson (John 10:1-10), Jesus says in verse 7, “I am the gate.”

We’ve often seen pictures of Jesus carrying lambs or walking with a shepherd’s staff, but, as Pastor Fred noted on Sunday, “it would be interesting and I doubt we’ll ever see Jesus pictured as a gate.”

In his sermon, Pastor Fred explained that this phrase would have created a different image for the people of Jesus’ day than for us.  Instead of a gate swinging open and shut, envision the shepherd lying across the doorway between large stone walls that would encompass the sheep pen.    In this way, Jesus tells us that He will be that shepherd guarding the opening in the wall, sleeping across the threshold,  the gatekeeper through whom everyone and everything would have to pass by in order to get to the sheep.

We can take comfort in this image of Jesus as “the gate.”  No one will be able to get past Him into the fold to harm us.  Not one of us will be able to stray away from the fold without His knowledge.

Stubborn, nudging and stinky sheep that we are, we may push through the gate and go astray; but Good Shepherd that Jesus is, He will know where we have gone and will find us and guide us back to His protection.  We will follow Jesus because we know His voice.  The familiarity and love of the Good Shepherd will comfort us and call us back to the safety of His care.  “The stranger, they will not follow,”  John 10:5

Thank you God for giving us such a devoted shepherd that He would lie across the threshold to keep away the bad guys and keep us safely within the fold…always on watch.  

He stretched out upon a cross to be a gatekeeper to death.  What better shepherd could we want?

What do you think of this image of Jesus as “the gate?”

www.elcaAndy.org
Come worship with us: 8:30 & 10:45 am Sunday
One service 9:30 am beginning Memorial Day weekend