We will be celebrating the 150th Anniversary of our congregation’s founding this year. The official date is in October – and comes from the history of Upper Fall River Lutheran Church’s founding. This is quite a milestone for us!
We have a history of showing folks around us that Christ matters to us. After all, that’s why there is a church in the first place – because we as the gathered followers of Christ are His body (1Cor. 12:27) here on earth. And through this Body Christ continues to work through us for the salvation of souls. Part of our work in each moment is to show His Truth, Beauty and Goodness to the world around us. We are now, after all, in Epiphany – the season of Light in which we consider His light coming to us and to this benighted world.
As His people we yearn to live in that light; we look for the warmth, the clearness of that vision, the growth of our souls that comes from being the presence of the fullness of God. And we want to share.
We’re told that there is no Truth, or Goodness, or Beauty; there is only “truthiness” or some shadowy hint of goodness that is an illusion; or that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” – that it changes with each hour and is not something that we can really share with each other. We’re being told that Truth, Goodness, and Beauty don’t really exist. They are just imagined – they are only whatever each person might think they are at any given time. If we follow what we are told, we find ourselves alone, wondering whether anything has any value, and unsure about everything.
Then we risk passing this lostness to our families as their inheritance. Or we risk looking into a mirror for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
But we have a history of showing folks around us that Christ matters to us. Because there IS Goodness, Truth and Beauty, and they are all tied up in Him. We show those around us that in this place we have all been “found” by Him and so desire to know more, to grow closer to that Image of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty that is Christ Himself. At its heart, that is what being a Lutheran Christian has always been about.
This is the inheritance that we still seek to lavish on the world around us; this is the inheritance that Christ gives us; this is the only inheritance that endures. We cannot be quiet and “let the next generation make their own decisions.” As the Body of Christ we long to give everyone we encounter what Christ has given to us; a yearning to someday gaze with our own eyes on Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. They will have no idea where to find Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.