Contributed by Pastor Seth Moland-Kovash
All Saints Lutheran Church
Palatine, IL

Warm-up Question:  How easy do you find it to forgive a friend when something bad happens that is clearly their fault?

Finding fault and placing blame are things that all people do. Somehow it just seems to make us feel better when we can place the blame for someone on someone’s shoulders. Of course, it only serves to make us feel comfortable if we can place the blame on someone else’s shoulders. There are times when placing blame isn’t just a matter of words, but of serious consequences: sometimes thousands or millions of dollars, or other punishments.

One way that this happens is through medical malpractice lawsuits. A doctor or hospital can be sued for malpractice if a mistake is made in treating a patient or something is overlooked that should have been seen or treated.

One current proposal that is part of the debate on the healthcare system as a whole is to limit the amount of money that could be awarded to patients or families in malpractice cases. Called “tort reform,” one proposal would limit the amount of money that people could win to $500,000 for punitive damages and $250,000 for “pain and suffering.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this change would save the government $54 billion over the next 10 years.

Some say that the legal awards need to be limited to be reasonable and to cut the costs that doctors have to pay for malpractice insurance. Others say that there is no amount of money that should be considered too great for the family of someone who has died because of malpractice. 

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think? Should there be a limit on the amount of money that a doctor or hospital would have to pay in a malpractice case?
2. If someone you loved died because of a clear case of malpractice, how much money do you think would be a fair punishment?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, November 1, 2009 (All Saints Day).

(Text links are to oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year B at Lectionary Readings.)

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

• Isaiah 25:6-9 or Wisdom 3:1-9
• Psalm 24 (5)
• Revelation 21:1-6a
• John 11:32-44

Gospel Reflection

Lazarus was dead. He was dead and buried and in the tomb. Jesus was late. The emergency message had been sent, but Jesus wasn’t there at the right time. Mary (Lazarus’ sister) said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” What do you think that she felt Jesus could have done? Whether she was right or not, she felt that Lazarus would not have died if Jesus had gotten there in time. Perhaps there was a hint of blame in her statement.

Where is God when it hurts? Why doesn’t God seem to be around to help me now like he helped all those people in the Bible? These are common questions that come to our minds when something bad happens. We want to know where God was and why God let that thing happen. In this story, we see that people even during the Bible times had the same experiences. Mary wanted to know why Jesus hadn’t gotten there in time. She wanted to know why this bad thing had to happen to her family. She was in pain.

And Jesus had healing for her pain. It wasn’t like anything she could have imagined. She imagined that, if Jesus had been able to get there before Lazarus died, then Jesus could have healed him. But once he was dead, Mary thought that was the end of the story.

Today, on All Saints Sunday, we remember again that death is not the end of the story for any of God’s saints. Your grandmothers and grandfathers, any of God’s children who have died, are alive again. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Nothing can separate us from God’s love; not even death (Romans 8:37-39).

Discussion Questions

1. Tell about a time you were in pain and wondered whether God was even there.
2. Have you seen signs that God is there in painful times? What do those signs look like? (Hint: Look at the other people in the room… they may be the signs for you)

Activity Suggestion

Create an “All Saints” remembrance with your youth group. Bring a memento or photo that makes you think of someone who has died. Tell your friends about that person. Say, “I am thankful to God for ________ because __________.”

Closing Prayer

Good and gracious God, we thank you for all the saints you have given us who have shown us your love and your mercy. Help us to continue to live as your faithful children until the day when we are reunited with all your saints. Amen.

(Or use the prayer for the “Rememberance of the faithful departed” found on page 82 of Evangelical Lutheran Worship.)

Contributed by Pastor Seth Moland-Kovash
All Saints Lutheran Church
Palatine, IL

Warm-up Question:  What is your favorite billboard that you’ve ever seen? Why did it catch your eye and why do you remember it?

Signs can be literal things that have words and pictures on them to give us a message. They may be billboards advertising a certain store or product. They may be political signs telling us who we should vote for. They may be signs at your church telling you about the next big event.

But signs can also be metaphorical. They can be things that happen that give us a message. We sometimes talk about things as signs of the times. For instance, it is a sign of the times that you probably do not have a record player in your bedroom. It’s a sign of the times that major world events sometimes get reported on Twitter before television.

Whenever there is bad news (economy, war, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina) we obsessively look for “signs of recovery.” For example, this story about Hurricane Katrina recovery talks about the rebuilding of houses in New Orleans on raised platforms. Some homes are being rebuilt with the first story being all garage or something else before you get to any actual living space.

These rebuilt homes are a sign of recovery for New Orleans.

Discussion Questions

1. If you traveled to New Orleans for the Youth Gathering, what were signs of recovery and new life that you saw there?
2. What would be signs that would make you really say that New Orleans had recovered from Hurricane Katrina?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday,  August 2, 2009.

(Text links are to oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year B at Lectionary Readings.)

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

• Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
• Psalm 78:23-29 (24, 25)
• Ephesians 4:1-16
• John 6:24-35 

Gospel Reflection

The crowds that gathered around Jesus wanted to see a sign. They wanted something they could look at and they’d know what it meant, just as clearly as we see the golden arches and know what that means.

They followed Jesus to watch all that he did, all his healings and all his teachings, and tried to interpret the signs. But just as it is hard for us to sometimes interpret the signs (Has New Orleans recovered completely, still recovering, or not recovering at all?), it was hard for them to understand the signs they were seeing. They missed the point. They asked for more.

In the Gospel of John, the things that Jesus says are sometimes hard to understand. He isn’t perfectly clear all the time. In this case, he wasn’t either. He didn’t explain all the signs to the crowds. He didn’t tell them what the signs meant. In fact, he kind of acted like a sign. Like a sign on the road points the way to an exit or to a gas station or a restaurant, Jesus pointed. Jesus pointed to God. He said that it was God who gives us the bread and everything we need. It’s God who makes it so we are never hungry or thirsty again.

Jesus used his teachings and his miracles, and the way he lived his life, to point the way to God, like a sign. Who and what do you point to?

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think Jesus was trying to point people toward?
2. If your life were a sign, where would it point people? Toward God? Would people know about God if they looked at your life? What does you life say about your Creator?

Activity Suggestion

Use your youth group to become a human sign. What do you want to show the rest of your congregation? Think of a message. Perhaps it’s something about being grateful to God. Perhaps it’s something about service to others. Then SHOW them. No words allowed. Be creative. 

Closing Prayer

Good and gracious God, use our lives as signs to point the world toward you and your love. Amen.

Contributed by Pastor Seth Moland-Kovash
All Saints Lutheran Church
Palatine, IL

Warm-up Question: People often talk about the importance of making a good first impression. Do you think it’s really all that important or not? Why?

One of the hallmarks of the legal system in this country is the idea of a trial by a jury. Part of that process is that the jury is supposed to be impartial; they are not supposed to have made up their minds about whether you are guilty or not guilty before the trial starts. They are supposed to make their decision based on the evidence and what they hear in the courtroom, not on what they knew about the situation before the trial even started. We often talk about this in terms of an impartial jury: you have the right to be tried by a jury who is impartial, who has not already decided whether you are guilty.

Finding an impartial jury can be difficult sometimes when cases get a lot of media coverage or are very high-profile. When celebrities or major politicians are on trial, or when crimes get a lot of coverage, it can be hard to find 12 people who are impartial. Sometimes defendants gain the right to move a trial to another city, county, or even state, so that they can find a jury of people who have not already made up their minds or been influenced by the media or other people in the community.

Consider the difficulty in finding unbiased, fair, impartial jurors for the following cases:

A story of trying to find an impartial jury in the case of someone accused of starting wildfires in southern California that ended up killing 5 firefighters. 

• Rod R. Blagojevich, now former governor of Illinois, was impeached under accusations of criminal corruption, wasting taxpayer money attempting to sell Barack Obama’s vacant senate seat. Blagojevich has made the rounds of TV talk shows, radio shows, and has been highlighted in newspapers and Web publications around the world. He is still awaiting trial.
• Or talk about a court case in your area that everyone seems to know about, or has strong opinions about.

Discussion Questions

• Why is having an impartial jury so important? To the defendant? To all of us?
• If you had heard a lot about a case, like the wildfires or political corruption in these stories, would you be able to judge someone fairly who was accused of the crime? How difficult would it be for you to put aside your assumptions and weigh the information and arguments of both sides?
• On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being not at all; 10 being always open and receptive), how open are you to receiving new ideas, opinions, or different views from other people? How would you decide that a person was trustworthy or worth listening to?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, April 26, 2009.

(Text links are to oremus Bible Browser Oremus Bible Browsernot is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year B at Lectionary Readings.)

• Acts 3:12-19
• Psalm 4 (3)
• 1 John 3:1-7
• Luke 24:36b-49

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

One of the hardest things about learning anything new is when we think we already know the answer. We think Sarah’s mean and snobby so no matter how she acts toward us, we are not going to like her. We think something that weighs more should fall faster than something that is lighter, so we won’t believe it until we see it — sometimes we don’t even believe it then!

The same thing is true about God. We think we know things about God, and it’s hard to hear or accept anything new. We may think that God could never love us because of the bad things we’ve done, so it’s hard to hear that God will always love us, no matter what — end of story!

In today’s Gospel reading, Luke 24:13-49, two followers of Jesus are walking along the road after what had happened in Jerusalem on the day we call Good Friday. They hadn’t heard about Easter yet. They thought Jesus was dead and everything was over. The Gospel lesson tells us that Jesus came along and walk with them, but “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

Eventually, the two people recognized Jesus and he explained everything to them. But maybe they needed a fresh, unbiased start — sort of a do-over. Maybe they needed to not see him as Jesus for just a minute so that they could get past their preconceived ideas and assumptions about his death. Maybe they needed their eyes to be closed for a little bit, so that they could be opened again and see something completely new!

Discussion Questions 

• What would it be like to meet someone walking along the sidewalk who you thought was dead?
• Do you think these followers learned the lesson of Jesus’ resurrection better because they had to learn it this way? What impression would this situation have made on you if you had been one of the people walking on the road with Jesus?
• How would you go about telling the story of Jesus in a believable, trustworthy, truthful way? How would you tell it to different people? A stranger? A close friend?

Activity Suggestion

• Arrange with your congregation’s Sunday school leaders to teach Sunday school for a day, especially the very young kids. They will love having youth around to teach them. And you’ll get to teach young children something completely new… it’s all new to them!
• Create a list of things you believe or know about God. Create another list of questions you have about God. Use the lists to stir up discussion, study, curiosity, and prayer.

Closing Prayer

Faithful God, we thank you for always finding ways to reach us and to teach us. We pray in the name of your risen Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.