New semester begins at LTS - Hong Kong

This is how the semester begins at the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Hong Kong. With Word. With the Sacrament of the Altar.  With the Communion of Saints including students and professors from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Germany, the USA, Sweden, and more...

The semester begins with  radical trust & hope: we are here for a purpose. We will be given what we need to succeed.

The sermon is punctuated by a real live illustration:  We are not like monkeys!  the preacher says.  In the animal kingdom the fittest survive, the strongest get ahead, those with power are the first to eat and only then do they let the subordinates get to the leftovers.  But those who walk with Jesus are learning to be strong servants who serve the weakest ones first, and well.

Just then a monkey comes tumbling off the wall next to the seminary chapel windows.  He was pushed off the wall by a bigger monkey.  He shrieks, and everybody smiles.  It is as if he has said, Listen! This is important!

We move forward with open hands, needing this bread given for those who are weak.

"I am the Bread—living Bread!—who came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this Bread will live—and forever! The Bread that I present to the world so that it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self."   -- Jesus  (as translated by The Message version of the Bible, John 6:51)