Redeemer Lutheran Church

Worship service scheduled for 9:30 AM tomorrow, January 18th, has been cancelled in anticipation of snow and sleet. Pastor Bob will lead a brief devotion online at 9:30. Please use this link to join:

Redeemer Lutheran Church Welcome to Redeemer Lutheran Church Lancaster, Pa. May the Abiding Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ fill you with joy and peace. Redeemer has ministered with the people of Lancaster, Pa. for more than a century, serving as a center for worship, faith formation, and mission to our neighborhood and t...

February 1 - New Service Time at Redeemer 9:00 a.m.

Because of our collaboration with Hamilton Park UCC, the regular Redeemer Sunday service will begin 9:00 a.m. starting February 1. Please join us at this new time!

As beautiful a hymn as "Silent Night" is, the nativity was likely neither calm nor bright. Two terrified first-time parents, stranded and unhoused far from home, surrounded by strangers, bedding down in the only place they could find, probably praying the baby wouldn't come until things got better.

But he did come. In the dark and the messiness and the unsettledness, he came. To us a child is born; to is a son is given.

If we want to keep Christ in Christmas, if we want to find the savior the angels sang about, perhaps we should look where he was found the first time: among the marginalized, the poor, the unhoused, the terrified. It's not likely to be calm, or bright. But the glories that streamed from heaven afar into that stable all those years ago are still streaming. Into shelters, and alleyways, and soup kitchens, and all the other places we seldom think to look. The incarnation keeps happening. The Savior keeps coming. And we can still find him, if we keep our eyes open, and look in the right places.

"José y Maria", Everett Patterson, 2014