What are the opening hours?

Monday 10am - 1pm Tuesday 10am - 1pm Wednesday 10am - 1pm Thursday 10am - 1pm Friday 10am - 1pm Saturday 5pm - 6pm Sunday 11am - 12pm

http://www.triunelutheran.com/, https://www.instagram.com/

Triune Lutheran Church, 4810 W Mill Road, Broadview Heights, OH (2026)

10/19/2026

Whose Image Do You Bear?
Texts: Exodus 33:12-23 | Matthew 22:15-22

This week we picked up right where last week's golden calf story left off — and what follows is one of the most audacious prayers in all of scripture.

Moses refuses God's partial arrangement. God offers an angel; Moses refuses. God offers to accompany Moses personally; Moses refuses that too. He will not go forward unless God goes with all of them.

"If your presence will not go with us, do not carry us up from here."

It is a confession as much as a petition: the gift without the Giver is not the gift. And then Moses says something that cuts right to the heart of what makes any community what it is — we will be distinct from every other people only if you go with us. Not because of our history or our theology or our programs. Only because of whose presence accompanies us.

God grants it. But Moses isn't finished. Show me your glory, he says.

What God offers in response is breathtaking in its honesty: you cannot see my face and live. But I will put you in a cleft of the rock, cover you with my hand, and when I pass, you will see my back.

Not God's face. God's back. We see God more clearly in retrospect — in the pattern of grace already passed through our lives — than we predict where God is going. And what passes before Moses is not power or judgment but goodness, and a name: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.

Life goes on not because Israel deserved it. Life goes on because God is free and gracious and merciful.

Then the scene shifts to Jerusalem, and a trap. The Pharisees and Herodians come to Jesus with a question designed to destroy him — is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?

Jesus asks to see the coin. He doesn't have one. The Pharisees produce it — in the Temple — which means they have already answered their own question.

Whose image is on it?
The emperor's.

Give to the emperor what is the emperor's. And give to God what is God's.

Here is what most people miss: the word for image is the same root used for the image of God in Genesis — the imago Dei. The coin bears Caesar's image, so it belongs to Caesar. But what bears God's image?

Every human face does.

Give to God what bears God's image. Which means: give God yourself. All of you. There is no corner of human life that falls outside the claim of the One whose image you bear.

The Pharisees came with a question about taxation. Jesus sent them home with a question about themselves — and about us.

The invitation is to live our lives as though God is present — to show up as players, not pawns; to look back and recognize the goodness already received; to hold the tension between keeping ourselves and giving ourselves.

Whose image do you bear?

We gather on Sundays at 11:00am | Triune Lutheran Church, Broadview Heights, OH

10/14/2026

Meditation: God Is a Verb
Texts: Exodus 32:1-14 | Matthew 22:1-14

Find a comfortable place to sit.
Take a slow breath in — and release it.
Let the noise and demands of the day settle for just a moment.

We begin with an honest question.
Not a theological question. A personal one.

Is there a place in your life where you relate to God more like a possession than a relationship? Where you've tried to make God predictable — safe, visible, manageable? Where you've wanted God to stay where you put God?

If there is, bring that place gently to mind. Hold it. Don't judge it. Just notice it.

✤ ✤ ✤

The Israelites at Sinai were not wicked people. They were anxious people. Moses was gone too long, and in his absence the uncertainty became unbearable. So they did what anxious people do: they made something they could see and hold and point to. Something they could carry in front of them and call God.

The golden calf was not a rejection of God. It was an attempt to domesticate God — to turn the verb into a noun.

We do this too. Not with gold. With certainty. With doctrine used as a weapon. With the comfortable assumption that we already know exactly what God is and what God requires.

Gently ask yourself: Where am I trying to possess God rather than participate in God? Where is my golden calf?

Sit with that. Not with shame. With honesty.

✤ ✤ ✤

In the wedding banquet parable, the most unsettling figure is not the guest who refused to come. It is the guest who came — but arrived without allowing the invitation to change how he showed up. He wanted to be at the table without risking what the table requires. He was present, but closed. An observer, not a participant.

It is possible to attend worship, to say the words, to do all the right things — and remain fundamentally unchanged. To show up to the feast in our old clothes, on our own terms, keeping the relationship at a careful distance.

Gently ask yourself: Where am I showing up to the feast — to worship, to prayer, to community — without allowing any of it to actually change me? Where am I an observer when I am being invited to be a participant?

Sit with that. Not with judgment. With curiosity.

✤ ✤ ✤

Moses shows us what the alternative looks like. He holds the relationship open from both sides — refusing to let God retreat and refusing to let the people be abandoned. He argues, he intercedes, he appeals to God's own character. He is not watching the covenant from a safe distance. He is in it.

And God — who is a verb — changed God's mind.

This is the God we are invited into relationship with: responsive, relational, genuinely moved. Not a noun to be possessed. A verb to be participated in.

Gently ask yourself: What would it mean, today, to be a player rather than a bystander — to hold the relationship open, to show up fully, to risk being changed?

✤ ✤ ✤

Close with this prayer.

Gracious God, I confess that I have tried to make you manageable. I have wanted the certainty of a noun more than the vulnerability of a verb. I have shown up to the feast on my own terms, unwilling to risk what the table requires.
Forgive me for the golden calves I have made — the ways I have tried to possess you rather than participate in you.
Help me to be a player, not a bystander. Help me to hold the relationship open — to show up fully, to risk being changed, to let your invitation do more than change me. Let it transform me.
You keep showing up. You keep inviting. Teach me to do the same.
Amen.

10/12/2026

God Is a Verb
Texts: Exodus 32:1-14 | Matthew 22:1-14

God is a verb, not a noun.

That single sentence unlocks this week's texts from Exodus and Matthew — and it names something we need to hear right now.

A noun is something you can possess, define, control. A verb is something you can only participate in — or miss. And the most persistent human temptation, in every age, is to turn God from a verb into a noun. To stop the action. To freeze the relationship into something manageable. Something ours.

The golden calf is that impulse in its most obvious form. The Israelites don't abandon God — they make a version of God they can see, direct, and carry in front of them. And Aaron announces a festival to the LORD. The divine name is the same. The theology is entirely different. This is the subtlety of religious idolatry: it doesn't announce itself as idolatry. It announces itself as faithfulness.

Sound familiar? Every time religion is used as a weapon — insisting a managed, domesticated version of God is the only true one — a golden calf is being made. The shape changes. The instinct doesn't.

Jesus' parable of the wedding banquet traces the same impulse in three increasingly subtle registers: the guests too busy with their lives to show up at all; the radical opening of the invitation to everyone from the roads, good and bad alike; and then the most unsettling figure — the man who came, but arrived without allowing the invitation to change him. An observer, not a participant. Present, but closed.

Moses shows us what the alternative looks like. He holds the relationship open from both sides — refusing to let God retreat into destruction, refusing to let the people be abandoned. He is not a bystander. He is a player.

And God — who is a verb — changed God's mind. A God who can be genuinely moved is more God, not less.

God keeps showing up. Keeps inviting. Keeps searching the roads for guests.
The question is whether we will come — and whether, when we come, we will let the invitation do more than change us. Whether we will let it transform us.

This week's reflection, "God Is a Verb," is on the Digital Sanctuary [https://www.triunelutheran.com/reflections-1] and available for download.

We gather on Sundays at 11:00am | Triune Lutheran Church, Broadview Heights, OH

10/07/2026

Meditation: I Am Because You Are
Texts: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-22 | Matthew 21:33-46

Find a comfortable place to sit.
Take a slow breath in — and release it.
Let the noise of the day settle.

We begin with an honest question.
Not a theological question. A personal one.

Is there a place in your life where you relate to God more like a set of rules than a relationship? Where you keep the whole thing at a safe, manageable distance — following the guidelines, checking the boxes — but not quite showing up?

If there is, bring that place gently to mind. Hold it. Don't judge it. Just notice it.

✤ ✤ ✤

At Sinai, God descends in fire and thunder — and the people pull back. "You speak to us, Moses. We'll stay over here."

They want the words without the Word. The commandments without the relationship that gives them meaning. And who can blame them? Relationship is unpredictable. Law is manageable. We can comply with rules without being changed by them.

But the Ten Words are not rules. They are the shape of a life already loved. A covenant already offered. God doesn't speak them as a test — God speaks them as an invitation.

Gently ask yourself: Where in my life am I keeping God at a comfortable distance — preferring the clarity of obligation to the vulnerability of relationship?

Sit with that. Not with shame. With honesty.

✤ ✤ ✤

The African concept of Ubuntu says: I am because you are. My humanity is bound up in yours. Love of God and love of neighbor are not two things — they are one reality, two faces of the same coin.

Think of someone in your life — or a group — whose flourishing you find difficult to celebrate. Someone whose belonging feels, somehow, like it costs you something.

Gently ask yourself: Where does the logic of scarcity — of winners and losers, of who deserves what — shape the way I see my neighbor?

Sit with that. Not with judgment. With curiosity.

✤ ✤ ✤

The tenants in the parable exclude themselves. God does not cast them out. They make the choice — again and again — to want the fruit without the relationship. And God keeps inviting anyway. Keeps hoping. Right up until the last.

The invitation has not been withdrawn. Not from them. Not from us.

Gently ask yourself: What would it mean — today, in one small way — to stop managing the relationship and simply show up to it?

✤ ✤ ✤

Close with this prayer.

Gracious God, I confess that I often prefer the clarity of rules to the vulnerability of relationship. It is easier to comply than to be changed. Easier to keep my distance than to show up.
And yet you keep inviting. You keep hoping. Right up until the last.
Forgive me for the ways I have wanted the fruit without the one who planted it. For the ways I have kept you at arm's length while still claiming the benefits of belonging.
Help me to remember that I am because you are — that my life is bound up in yours, and in the life of every neighbor you have given me.
Teach me to show up. Teach me to trust the relationship.
Amen.

10/05/2026

I Am Because You Are
Texts: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-22 | Matthew 21:33-46

This week the lessons take a closer look at something most of us thought we already knew — the “Ten Commandments.”

Only the Hebrew tradition doesn't call them commandments. It calls them the Aseret haDibrot — the Ten Words. And the first word God speaks isn't a rule. It's relationship: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." God doesn't open with law. God opens with a story of liberation. These words aren't the price of God's grace. They are an invitation to live into it.

The African concept of Ubuntu says it beautifully: I am because you are. My humanity is bound up in yours. The Ten Words aren't a checklist for individuals — they are the charter of a covenant community, the founding document of a society built on mutual care, shared dignity, and solidarity. You cannot separate love of God from love of neighbor. They have always been two sides of the same coin.

The parable of the wicked tenants makes the same point in a different century. The tenants want the vineyard without the owner — the benefits of the relationship while keeping the Relationship itself at arm's length. And God keeps inviting anyway. Keeps hoping. Right up until the last.

Here is what the parable will not let us miss: the tenants exclude themselves. God does not cast them out. They make the choice. And that same choice is always available to us — to turn God's invitation into an obligation, the covenant into a checklist, the relationship into a transaction. And then wonder why we feel so far from God.

The question is the same one it has always been: do we want rules, or relationship?

Want to go deeper? This week's reflection — "I Am Because You Are" — is up on the Digital Sanctuary [https://www.triunelutheran.com/reflections-1] and available for download.

We gather on Sundays at 11:00am | Triune Lutheran Church, Broadview Heights, OH

10/01/2026

The Life You Were Made For - Learning to Trust

What makes a life of shalom actually possible when the circumstances are genuinely painful? This month's reflection explores trust — not as intellectual assent or forced feeling, but as the practiced conviction that Love is more fundamental than fear.

Want to go deeper? The full article and a guided contemplative meditation are waiting for you on the Digital Sanctuary [https://www.triunelutheran.com/room-to-grow]. Take a few quiet minutes to sit with the question: What are you made for?

09/30/2026

Meditation: Is God Among Us or Not?
Texts: Exodus 17:1-7 | Matthew 21:23-32

Find a comfortable place to sit. Take a slow breath in — and release it. Let the noise and the demands of the day settle for just a moment.

We begin with an honest question.
Not a theological question. A personal one.

Is there a place in your life right now where you are asking — quietly, maybe without even naming it — "Is God among us or not?"

A place where the fear, or the need, or the exhaustion has filled the entire frame. Where you have been so consumed by what is wrong that you have lost sight of what is present.

If there is, bring that place gently to mind. Hold it. Don't try to fix it or resolve it. Just notice it.

✤ ✤ ✤

Israel had seen the plagues. Crossed the Red Sea. Eaten manna. And still, when the water ran out at Rephidim, the question came: "Is the Lord among us or not?"

Teresa of Avila said our greatest problem is that we live as though God is absent. Not because God is absent — but because our crises have a way of filling the whole room.

Take a breath.

Think of the place you just named — the fear, the need, the exhaustion.

Gently ask yourself: In this place, what am I expecting God to do before I trust that God is here?

Sit with that. Not with judgment. With honesty.

God sent Moses back to Horeb — the mountain of the burning bush, the place of the original call. At the burning bush, Moses had asked for a sign. God's answer was uncomfortable: the sign would come after he acted. He had to act first, and the sign would meet him on the other side.

Gently ask yourself: Is there something I am waiting to see before I am willing to act? Before I am willing to trust?

What would it mean to take one step — even a small one — before the sign arrives?

✤ ✤ ✤

In the gospel, Jesus speaks of a son who said no — and changed his mind and acted. The Greek word is metanoeō. To change direction. A reorientation. A turning toward what is actually real.

We are always being invited to turn.

Sit quietly for a moment with this:

Gently ask yourself: What would it mean for me — today, in one small way — to change the direction in which I am looking for God?

✤ ✤ ✤

Close with this prayer.

Gracious God, I confess that I often live as though you are absent. Not because I have stopped believing — but because my fear, my need, my exhaustion fills the room, and I lose sight of you.
Forgive me for waiting for the sign before I act. Forgive me for demanding that you prove yourself before I will trust.
Help me to turn. Help me to take the next step, even without certainty. And remind me, in that acting, that you have been standing before me all along — in the very place, the very call, where it all started.
I am not alone. You are here. Amen.

09/28/2026

Is God Among Us Or Not?
Texts: Exodus 17:1-7 | Matthew 21:23-32

Teresa of Avila observed: " Our greatest problem is this: we live our lives as though God is absent."

This is the focus of this week’s texts.

Israel in the wilderness had witnessed the plagues, crossed the Red Sea, received manna. The evidence of God's faithfulness was overwhelming — and still, when they hit Rephidim without water, their world collapsed. "Is the Lord among us or not?" Everyone was caught in their own crisis. Moses was afraid for his life. And God moved anyway to meet the actual need — calling Moses to the rock at Horeb, the same mountain where he encountered the burning bush.

That detail matters. At the burning bush, Moses had asked for a sign. God's answer was uncomfortable: the sign would come after he acted. Moses had to act first. And now he's standing at Horeb — inside the very call where it all started. Karen Armstrong puts it plainly: we can only know God once we act. The sign reveals itself in the acting, not before.

In the gospel, Jesus tells a parable about two sons asked to work in the vineyard. One says no and goes. One says yes and never acts. The Greek word for the first son's change of mind is metanoeō — repent — which simply means to change direction. A reorientation toward what is real. The tax collectors and prostitutes — the people furthest from religious respectability — are entering the kingdom first. Because they turned. Because they acted.

Matthew's gospel begins with Emmanuel — God with us — and ends not with an ascension but a promise, "I am with you always." The whole story is held together by the reality of presence.

God's answer to Moses was not a lecture on faith. It was presence. "I will be standing before you." In the place where you are. In the very call where it all started.

We are always being invited to turn. And God is always already there. 🙏

Want to go deeper? This week's reflection — "Is God Among Us or Not?" — is up on the Digital Sanctuary [https://www.triunelutheran.com/reflections-1] and available for download.

We gather on Sundays at 11:00am | Triune Lutheran Church, Broadview Heights, OH

09/23/2026

Meditation: The Evil Eye
Texts: Jonah 3:10—4:11 | Matthew 20:1-16

Find a comfortable place to sit. Take a slow breath in — and release it. Let the noise of the day settle.

We begin with a question. Not a hard one. An honest one.

Have you ever felt troubled — not that something bad happened to you, but that something good happened to someone else?

Not envy, exactly. Something sharper. The sense that their blessing has somehow cost you something. That their gain is your loss.

If you have — and most of us have — you have experienced what the ancient world called the evil eye. Not a curse. An orientation. The way of seeing that turns every gift into a zero-sum calculation.

This week, Jonah has it. And the first-hired workers have it. And God — in both texts — simply asks a question neither of them answers.

That question belongs to us now.

✤ ✤ ✤

Take another slow breath.

Think of someone in your life — or in the world — who has received something you didn't think they deserved. A second chance. Recognition. Forgiveness. Belonging.

Notice what happens in your body when you bring them to mind.

Gently ask yourself: What story am I telling about what they received?

Sit with that. Not with judgment. Just with curiosity and honesty.

Now think of Jonah — who knew the covenant creed by heart. Gracious. Merciful. Slow to anger. Abounding in steadfast love. He believed every word of it for himself. He simply did not want it extended to Nineveh.

Gently ask yourself: Is there anyone — a person, a group, a community — to whom I am privately withholding the grace I know God offers?

And the workers received every penny they were promised. Their anguish had nothing to do with their own portion. It was about being made equal to someone they considered less deserving.

Gently ask yourself: Where in my life does equivalence feel like injustice?

✤ ✤ ✤

Neither Jonah nor the grumbling worker answers God's question. The book ends. The parable closes. The silence is ours to fill — not in a single moment of resolve, but in the slow daily practice of retraining the eye.

Of noticing when the scarcity gaze rises. And choosing, again and again, a different way of seeing.

Sit quietly for a moment with this:

What would it mean — today, in one small way — to receive another's blessing as abundance rather than subtraction?

✤ ✤ ✤

Close with this prayer.
Gracious God, I confess that I do not always see clearly. There are places in me where I measure your generosity against others — and feel diminished by what they have received. Forgive me for keeping the books you never asked me to keep.
Retrain my eye. Help me to see not through scarcity but through the abundance that is your nature. Where I have withheld grace, open my hands. Where I have begrudged another's blessing, open my heart.
I cannot do this on my own. But I trust that this retraining is the very work you are doing in me, even now.
Amen.

09/21/2026

THE EVIL EYE
Texts: Jonah 3:10—4:11 | Matthew 20:1-16

This week's sermon asked an uncomfortable question: Have you ever been troubled — not that something bad happened to you, but that something good happened to someone else?

Not envy, exactly. Something sharper. The ancient world had a name for it: the evil eye — the scarcity gaze that sees another's blessing as your own loss.

Both texts this week put that instinct on trial. Jonah isn't angry that God failed him. He's furious that God was exactly who Jonah always knew God to be — gracious, merciful, ready to relent — and extended that mercy to Nineveh. The people Jonah had decided didn't deserve it.

And in the parable, the early workers receive every penny they were promised. Their outrage has nothing to do with what they got. It's about what the latecomers got. "You have made them equal to us." That conviction — that another's elevation is your diminishment — is the engine of so much of the polarization we are living through right now.

Both texts end with an unanswered question. Should God not be concerned about Nineveh? Is your eye evil because I am generous? Neither Jonah nor the grumbling worker answers. We are the ones who must.

The Dream of God runs on sufficiency for all — grace available at every hour, invitation extended to the last as fully as to the first. The evil eye is the scarcity gaze. And the work of faith is the slow, patient retraining of that gaze toward a world where there is, against all our zero-sum instincts, enough for everyone.

Want to go deeper? This week's reflection — "The Evil Eye" — is up on the Digital Sanctuary [https://www.triunelutheran.com/reflections-1] and available for download.

We gather on Sundays at 11:00am | Triune Lutheran Church, Broadview Heights, OH

Triune Lutheran Church

10/19/2026

10/14/2026

10/12/2026

10/07/2026

10/05/2026

10/01/2026

09/30/2026

09/28/2026

09/23/2026

09/21/2026

Address

Opening Hours

Website

Alerts

Contact The Place Of Worship

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request

Monday	10am - 1pm
Tuesday	10am - 1pm
Wednesday	10am - 1pm
Thursday	10am - 1pm
Friday	10am - 1pm
Saturday	5pm - 6pm
Sunday	11am - 12pm