Friday, 22 November 2024

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Living in grace through Holy Communion. What a more fitting celebration to focus on than the Lord’s Supper as we remember His last meal on earth with His beloved disciples and the instruction to continue this Sacrament in His church for perpetuity.

There are many beliefs regarding Holy Communion, some of those beliefs ending up being deemed “cheap grace” because the bread and wine are of no significance in that belief structure.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers this definition, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, (it is) baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal admission. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

The one thing that is for certain as we gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper is the fact that Holy Communion is packed with power. Reality is, anything associated with grace is packed with power, the very power of God.

Luther refers to the sacrament of Holy Communion in many ways but all point to the same thing, the grace of God, the forgiveness of sin, the very presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

The words of Jesus were a covenant, a new covenant, a promise from God Himself, and when God makes a promise, as we see everywhere in Scripture, He keeps the promise.

The promise here – this cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sin. And when there is sin forgiven there is Grace present.

With that said, how can we not come to the Lord’s Table, especially on Maundy Thursday, and experience the miraculous presence of the One who invites us here?

How can we the people of Lake County not embrace the power of God’s love and forgiveness?

When we gather as one in Christ, miracles happen. We become a family working together to make our town something special.

God has plans for us, he shows us every day, every time we experience something that makes us feel uncomfortable or incomplete.

Join us Thursday at First Lutheran Church and be part of the process of renewal in Lucerne!

Worship on Thursday evening will be at 6 p.m. but come early because prior to the service, we offer a soup supper at 5 p.m.

Good Friday’s service is at noon and Easter Sunday we gather for Bible Study at 9:30 a.m., worship at 11 a.m., a hot Easter lunch following the service and then an Easter Egg hunt for the kids at 1 p.m.

Chris DelCol is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Lucerne, Calif. The church is located at 3863 Country Club Drive, telephone 707-274-5572.
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Living in grace through obedience, the same obedience that Jesus showed us by being obedient unto death, even death on a cross, all for the sake of love for us, to give us grace of an eternal nature.

It never ceases to amaze me how God works. He is an example to us in all we say and in all we do. When James and John wanted to be No. 1 and No. 2 in Heaven (Mark 10:37ff), Jesus reminded them of their real place in the pecking order of life.

If they were to be disciples of Christ, they must not be in positions of authority where they received the glory that the Pharisees and chief priests demanded, rather as lowly servants, obedient to their brother; for as a servant to our brother, we become No. 1 in the eyes of the Lord.

But that is tough duty! When you are an obedient servant you must accept the reality that there is no glory, there is no life on easy street, there is no fame or fortune, and that you are no better than the next guy; essentially it means becoming a slave to servanthood.

There is no doubt that when we live in grace through obedience, we will gladly accept the need for absolute humility, absolute servant-hood, absolute dependence on the very grace of God.

Unfortunately, that is against everything the world wants us to be; a society that believes the world revolves around me in a me-centric culture.

What the world needs to revolve around is the cross of Christ and the very obedience, servanthood, and humility that goes with being a follower of the one who was nailed to that cross.

That kind of servanthood must be the basis of the recovery of Lake County.

Can you imagine what would happen if we applied the same principles of serving Lake County as Jesus did serving others throughout His ministry?

What might we imagine and how can we apply those principles here and now to approach the imaginable possibilities?

Jesus is a risk taker of the highest order. We need to ask ourselves, can I remain in my comfort zone and truly serve him right here, right now? Am I willing to put others ahead of myself? Am I willing to take the risk?

Consider this, in the parable of the workers in the vineyards (Matt 20:1-16), Jesus ends the parable by saying, “the last will be first, and the first last.”

Can we do that here in Lake County?

And my answer is a resounding, “In Jesus’ name, yes we can” by being servants.

Bottom line, our task here is significant, but if we all become servants, willing to be obedient, willing to take the risk to respond to God’s word, and then working collectively towards the common goal of the restoration of a beautiful town like Lucerne as an example, it will happen.

But we must first be last.

We will dig deeper into this at First Lutheran Church on Sunday, March 18, so please join us for Bible Study at 9:30 a.m., worship at 11 a.m. and a hot lunch immediately following the worship service.

This week we offer the community our monthly food cupboard from 1 to 2 p.m. If you are in need of food, personal hygiene products, clothes or even diapers, please come and join us and let us be your servant in providing this much needed assistance.

Chris DelCol is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Lucerne, Calif. The church is located at 3863 Country Club Drive, telephone 707-274-5572.
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The continuing legacy of the Native American people is one of courage and tenacity against seemingly insurmountable opposition. Because of this, maintaining our traditions is a paramount task.

Efforts to keep our ancestors’ legacy alive take many shapes, with our cherished cultural traditions forming the necessary underpinning for our resolve. It’s through engagement with those traditions that we have been able to preserve our culture in a rapidly changing world.

Perhaps foremost among these cultural traditions is storytelling, a cherished ritual that gave vivid life to a system of values and beliefs for countless generations of listeners. For a culture that thrived without written language, these stories were the sole method through which our people learned about their cultural heritage. Storytelling isn’t just the medium for sharing Native American history, it is Native American history.

These cherished narratives were more than just history lessons, however. Legends and myths have been the delivery method for valuable allegories that conveyed meaning to a multitude of relevant beliefs, often even imparting a system of values, ethics and morals to Native Americans for generations. Although every tribe is unique, their stories share similar attributes, in establishing and reinforcing the values common within each tribe. These parables were entertaining, to be sure, but also formed the basis of a rich, shared culture.

The intertwining of history and tribal culture happens in the dramatic telling of traditional stories. Take for example a variation of the Habematolel Pomo creation legend. An especially illuminating origin legend, which research shows was one of many, centers on the land we call home, around Clear Lake. This land, according to one telling, once called Maiyi, was the sacred site where the lake that bestowed life upon our people was formed.

According to this tribal mythos, our people were hewn from willow sticks by Wolf and Coyote. In a different version, Coyote traveled to an old village of Yobutui, just southwest of the present town of Upper Lake. This old village had been inhabited by the people who lived on the earth before the great World-fire. Coyote eventually made Yobotui his home where he built a dance house and created people from feathers of birds. Our indelible connection to the land is made clear through these fantastical tales, so that generations of tribal youth can learn and understand our bond with the Upper Lake area through sacred lore. This, for all of us, internalizes the value of the land.

When we say that Native American storytelling propagates culture, it’s important to remember that culture is multifaceted. It’s not just a way to give personality to phenomena, but to reinforce mores and values. Especially when children are the audience, these stories demonstrate the ideals of behavior, to inspire the young and keep them respectful of familial traditions, so that they can live on in the manner of their forebears.

Many of these stories are considered today an attempt to make sense of the natural world. Ascribing natural phenomena to the emotional whims of powerful deities is recognizable as an early method of explaining things that were then unexplainable, like the forces of weather and gravity. Native American mythology may not have the same scholarly following as some of their European counterparts, but the stories’ similarity in tone and message make apparent the universality of such a communication system. To understand Native American storytelling is to understand something fundamentally and intrinsically human.

Legends and myths have been the delivery method for valuable lessons and morals to Native Americans for generations. These parables served as a form of entertainment but also were a reason for families and groups to gather, for esteemed elders to reinforce their importance and younger members to learn their valuable lessons.

The Native American storytelling tradition demonstrates the universal tendency to communicate through stories. Allegorical tribal stories that have survived to this day, like the Hitchiti Tribe’s. The Heron and the Hummingbird and Crow Brings the Daylight of the Inuit people are striking in comparison to Aesop’s fables of ancient Greece, which similarly feature anthropomorphic animals in morality plays meant to illustrate cultural values.

We can acknowledge similarities with other cultures while respecting the traits that make our stories fundamentally ours. For countless centuries, native tribes were the only humans to know the American continent. Through stories like the Cheyenne people’s Yellowstone Valley and the Great Flood, these silent landscapes become vividly alive and are endowed with meaning. It’s tales of the land, the animals on it, and fantastical tales of the spiritual being that populated it that color the rich tapestry of Native stories, and make them uniquely ours.

The vibrancy of our ancestors’ stories is often lost in contemporary life or sadly in cultural arrogance that “my” definition of a Tribe’s culture is “the” definition. While cultural values come to the fore in the storytelling tradition, it also served to bolster and shape individual identities. Tribe members were able to add their personal touches to each narrative - perhaps altering the stories slightly over time, but keeping in the tradition of disseminating treasured beliefs. Our history is a tapestry, a collection of distinct personalities linked together to form something greater than the individual, indeed greater than the whole.

To let this fall into distant memory would amount to an erasure of the people who carried our rich cultural heritage through immense challenges. This diversity of narratives reflects the diversity of our people. When looking back, it can be tempting to neglect this fact, describe our ancestors as a monolith of values that we carry on. While there are certainly many universal qualities that we hope to emulate, the truth is that these past generations contained a diversity of voices and minds equal to that which we see in the present.

Preservation efforts have sought to keep these stories alive while respecting the multifaceted cultures from which they came. Initiatives like PBS' “Circle of Stories” are helpful in imparting this message to the larger world, but it’s essential that we don’t mistake such outside interest for true viability. It is by looking inward, at the strength we’ve cultivated over countless generations, that we can find the story of our own lives.

Sherry Treppa is tribal chair of the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake, Calif.
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As we enter into Holy Week we can’t help but focus on living in grace by being humble just as Jesus humbled Himself.

We are forever reminded as Christians that the events of Holy Week are an example of what our lives in humility ought to be like.

We see that humility begin as Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday knowing the shouts of joy that day would turn to screams of hate and ultimately His death on Good Friday.

Clearly Holy Week was a humbling time for Jesus and an eternal example of our need to be humble in this world. With that said, what is it like to live humbly?

Real humility is bowing down and washing someone’s feet, or embracing a leper, or having a centurion of Roman stature accept the reality of God before him and seeking help that only Divinity could provide.

Perhaps humility is accepting the need to be a servant to all no matter what the cost, or maybe looking past the desire to accept glory or be prideful and instead turn it over to the only one who deserves it, or maybe offering forgiveness to someone of their sin in an effort to be like Jesus who forgave everybody.

In Lake County there are many ways to be humble.

The most important is by being a servant to the lowliest of the low and accepting of the fact that through this humility, we can do wonderful things – and do it all without expecting glory through of a prideful attitude.

You see, the problem with pride is that it puts you in opposition with God. There is only one who can receive glory, and when we try to steal some of His glory for ourselves, we commit the same sin that caused Satan to be cast out of heaven.

That’s why the Bible says that God did not choose the wise and the beautiful and those who had everything together to do His work.

He chose the weak, the poor, the sick because they understood the only way they could ever accomplish anything of any value would be through God’s power.

And so, whenever something good happened, they would naturally give all the glory to God. They get this from living in absolute humility, just as Jesus did.

With that said, what we need here in Lake County is:

– more servants and less pedestals;
– more you and less me;
– more give and less take;
– more laughter and less depression;
– more agape and less eros;
– more good and less evil
– simply, more Jesus and less Satan …

When you are on your knees, it is amazing what you see in front of you, beside you, and on top of you.

You see a county in desperate need of grace and you see a cross where we can get it.

We will dig deeper into this on Palm Sunday, March 25, so please join us for Bible study at 9:30 a.m., worship at 11 a.m. and a hot lunch immediately following the worship service.

All are welcome, so please come as you are.

Chris DelCol is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Lucerne, Calif. The church is located at 3863 Country Club Drive, telephone 707-274-5572.
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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – If you’ve ever wondered about what happened to the Lake County redevelopment effort to reduce blight and improve the economy on the Northshore, it turns out to be a subset story of all redevelopment agencies in California.

Basically, redevelopment was funded by a state revolving loan paid back with the incremental increase in property taxes for a city or county. This was called the tax increment financing program, or TIF.

Gov. Jerry Brown stopped the TIF program that has been used since 1945 to revitalize slum areas and kick start local economies.

Brown, when mayor of Oakland, revitalized that city using a TIF program, but the view of the redevelopment program changes based on where you sit and the economic times. So if you’re curious, check out “The Life and Death of America’s Biggest Redevelopment Program.” You can still find it online: https://nextcity.org/features/view/tax-increment-financing-programs-california-redevelopment-agencies.

For Lake County District 3, the County Redevelopment Agency’s Northshore revitalization program using TIF consisted of purchasing Holiday Harbor, the old Lucerne Hotel known by many as the “Castle,” and a blighted shoreline in Lucerne.

When the state scuttled redevelopment, the county land purchase projects completed were the addition of beautiful Alpine Park lining the shore of Lucerne and a mostly restored Castle. There were additional projects such as repaving Upper Lake’s Main Street. Nothing could be done with Holiday Harbor except fence it in and put it up for sale.

For Lucerne, the improvements were not quite enough to kickstart change. Water prices had increased for 14 years, putting a stranglehold on pocketbooks and Highway 20 frontage businesses. Stores closed and new businesses had trouble getting through a first year. The fundamentals for a good economy were still not right and the job not finished. Lucerne remained a great promise with empty storefronts.

The issue became even more acute since fire disasters resulted in a loss to the county general fund. This fund fuels needed public services, not to mention law enforcement.

Until the burned areas’ economy returns, improving the potential economic engine in the Northshore with its 70,000 vehicles per week using Highway 20 is paramount. No other highway travels through the county with stunning views of both the lake and hills, passing directly through so many towns and by store fronts. Not a place for billboards.

An almost two-year effort working in the Public Utilities Commission world resulted in the private water company restructuring its pricing to stabilize the Lucerne water rates to a lower level. A couple of the many empty storefronts have now filled with hopeful entrepreneurs whose view is now on what else needs to be done.

One important detriment is the deferred maintenance on the Lucerne Harbor, which was built 50 years ago and only dredged once.

The harbor complex is a parking lot and launch ramp with breakwater, noted for trees and shrubs growing in the sediment and lack of tie-down docks for visiting boats. These were never put in although the space would allow for it.

Boats launch but go elsewhere to tie up and no one can visit Lucerne from another part on the lake to have lunch or shop as they do in the districts with city ramps. The beautiful park calls but boaters do not answer.

The county was aware of the problem as harbor dredging was put in the 2014-15 budget as a first step, but diverted instead in 2015 to dredge Holiday Harbor’s access channel. Holiday Harbor was up for sale although no redevelopment funds were available to refurbish it.

Funds to dredge the Lucerne Harbor were again placed in the 2015-16 budget but once again redirected to Holiday Harbor for retaining wall maintenance. It’s hard to sell a harbor if it’s falling apart.

No funds were budgeted for Lucerne Harbor in 2017 because of continuing fire disaster conditions and it seemed the first step would not be completed for the docks to be added.

In 2017 a State Boating and Waterways grant application was submitted for dredging and additional tie-downs. This was turned down by the state because it didn’t meet their criteria.

The only hope became the sale of Holiday Harbor and some funds directed to Lucerne Harbor.
Holiday Harbor has now sold and the time for completing a vision is here.

A viable Lucerne Harbor will not only improve the chances for filled storefronts but also improve the image of the Castle awaiting its next occupant.

It’s all about completing the job that was envisioned so long ago and not forgetting, it’s about the fundamentals.

Jim Steele is the District 3 supervisor.
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Living in grace by faith, faith we receive from God, faith promised in the gospel of St. John who writes, “John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life … whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” This is the faith that saves.

When you look at this passage as a Christian and see the term “believe” you may conclude that it would be ludicrous not to believe in Jesus.

But, a believer does not necessarily believe in Jesus. A person can believe and put their faith in a variety of things, not just in God.

As a believer you may have faith in something false, perhaps one of the following:

– Money means everything;
– Power over others is a certain way to glory;
– I am better than you.
– Lucerne isn’t worth my time. Say what! Where that attitude exists, it must be changed.

The most unfounded belief in our world is that money can buy happiness. People believe that is a fact, but it is not. We’ve seen this numerous times and the fact remains, money cannot buy happiness. In fact, it often results in disaster.

An example is the story of the fellow who won one of the first lottery draws ever held in Canada. It was $1 million, tax free. That was in the 1970s, some 45 years ago, a lot of money back then and it remains so to this day.

It was the worst thing that could have ever happened to him. He lost his wife and kids, his respect for himself and others, he became a drunk and womanizer, and he died in a car accident in a fit of rage.

The only thing money bought him was a beautiful coffin for burial and a one-way ticket to hell because he believed in one thing and one thing only; money is my god.

So, what does wealth have to do with our task here in Lucerne? My friends in Christ, if there is one thing we don’t have to worry too much about here in Lake County is wealth. That’s because there is very little of it around.

What we must worry about is what happens when we have to deal with other side of the coin, poverty.

When people don’t have the resources to survive, the only hope they have is other people who are willing to do whatever they can to provide assistance, help revitalize the area, getting all people in the community engaged, and spreading the gospel so everyone can prosper through a revitalization of Lake County.

This means all people working together and sharing of their time, talents and resources, and believing that through faith in Jesus, we will all survive and thrive.

That is the foundation of faith – believing that Jesus died for our sins on Good Friday and rose again on Easter with the promise of eternal life. It is living in grace by faith.

We will dig deeper into this on Sunday, March 11, so please join us for Bible Study at 9:30 a.m., worship at 11 a.m. and a hot lunch immediately following the worship service.

All are welcome so come as you are.

Chris DelCol is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Lucerne, Calif. The church is located at 3863 Country Club Drive, telephone 707-274-5572.

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