Endure… and Share Life

Malachi 4 & Luke 21:5-19

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with just a few of the people who are considering or planning to join this congregation.  Mostly when we gather, it's a chance to tell and listen to stories. What are the circumstances of our lives that have brought us together at this place and time and called us into community? Our stories are very different, yet here we are being church together. We are making commitments to give some of our time and some of our resources to do good together... We are committing to share life's joys and sorrows. We are ready to show up for each other to grieve in times of loss and celebrate each joyful milestone.

Yesterday, there were several things I would have liked to do. I was signed up to attend the Johnson symposium at Holy Trinity on “The Spiritual Price of the Doctrine of Discovery” featuring Mark Charles; I also wanted to be with Joy McElroy as she gathered with Monica Jones and family in the loss of their dear son. The property team had a planned fall clean-up day here at Christ… Then, instead of all that, on Thursday, we learned of a family death that took us to Iowa yesterday. What began as a 10-hour commitment grew into a much longer one when the son of the deceased, the cousin we are closest to in that part of the family, ended up hospitalized with emergency surgery. We waited throughout the afternoon with his wife and kids and heard about their week... A week where one parent had died, and on the other side of the family, a parent had surgery and now a surprise surgery coming to their own household... There are absolutely times in life when it seems like... What is next?

I know that you know what this is like… to have the challenges of life come to you one after another in a way that seems like all at once.

And it seems like Malachi, the prophet, and Luke’s community also know this reality all too well. Malachi is imagining an end to all corruption and evil… where God has burned it all down… yet out of the ashes, wellbeing and healing rise up like a phoenix.

Luke’s community is experiencing war all around, the fall of an empire, a total collapse of the system as it has been and severe persecution on all fronts – religious persecution as well as political persecution, suffering, imprisonment… yet in those terrible circumstances, Luke writes that the people of Jesus’ way will be given words and wisdom and in Jesus’ own words we hear: “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” In life’s most fearful, challenging, difficult times, that is when we have the opportunity to develop endurance - to grow deeply, become wiser, share life that become soul sustaining, gain what lasts.

So, when I gathered with the newcomers and longer timers last week, I shared this article with the group. Will the ELCA be Gone in 30 years?[1]In this article, author Dwight Zscheile points to church statistics that point to no future for our larger church... So why in the world would I bring that article to a group of people considering membership?
After all, who wants to join a sinking ship? Nobody.

But here's how the article continues... it names how even with smart, faithful leaders, the forces dismantling our church (big picture) are strong – 

1) We live in a culture that makes it hard for people to imagine and be led by God.

2) We aren’t clear about what’s distinctive about being Christian.

3) For these reasons, church isn’t helping many people make meaning of their lives.

So, then, Michael Binder and Dwight make some suggestions… 

1) Rediscover and reclaim practice that Christians have always done—prayer, Bible study, service, reconciliation, Sabbath, hospitality—and make these the center of our life together with ways we can all practice them in daily life.

2) Shift from performative to participatory spirituality.

3) Listen

4) Translate for cultures that are not our own

5) Experiment

6) Share

Are you beginning to hear what I hear in this? As I read that list of characteristics of a path for living, vital churches, I do think that Dwight could be describing this congregation.
Sure, there are ways that we can grow in any of these areas (like any community)… but also, I think there are many ways we embody this vision.

In the gospel today, Jesus describes a reality that is as old as time...
It’s a picture of the world-as-we-know-it ending.

And I'm pretty sure that there has not been a generation that hasn't thought... It's now. The end is now. There are certainly wars and rumors; we’ve had our share of betrayals, we’ve seen plenty of death…

I heard a story this week of a new pastor who entered his new congregation and said on the very first Sunday, “You lied to me when you called me here. You said you were dying, but actually, you’re dead.”
I imagine that several jaws dropped open before he said, “But that’s good news because our God is all about resurrection.”

So… do we have 30 more years… or 10? Or 150? Maybe those are not the right questions.
Maybe a better one is to wonder, whatever our number of years… What should we be about in the meantime? Luke repeatedly describes a God who uses unlikely witnesses... We are this time's unlikely witnesses. We are the ones we've been waiting for...you might call this the gospel of anti-defeatism.

This what it means to share life. Together, we endure… and even thrive.
We each give what we can and even more because of the deep trust that God will take what we are able to give and multiply it. There are seasons when we appear to have nothing to give and seasons when we can give much... But because we commit to share life together, we help one another endure as seasons and circumstances change.... And we grow into something more together than we could ever be alone.

Natalia, Mike, Kristie... We are so glad and grateful that you have joined in this ministry and that we get to officially welcome and receive you as members today. We are so glad and grateful for those who will join next week, too. With you, our community becomes a fuller version of the body of Christ than we could ever be without you... 
We are ready to reclaim the central things, to practice and listen, translate, experiment and share life with you.

Hold onto this blessing from Jan Richardson:

God of making and unmaking, of tearing down and re-creating, you are our home and habitation, our refuge and place of dwelling. In your hollows we are re-formed, given welcome and benediction, beckoned to rest and rise again, made ready and sent forth.[2]

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[1]https://faithlead.luthersem.edu/decline/

[2]Jan Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas, page 41.

Free to Share Life

Jeremiah 31 & John 8

Here is Jeremiah’s vision of God’s relationship with people one day…

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people… they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.

And in contrast, we over-hear this uncomfortable conversation between Jesus and some of his own people who believed in him—when Jesus dared to tell them to continue on this path, following his word and witness and that the truth could set them free…

It becomes uncomfortable because instead of acknowledging that not one of us has the whole truth, they say, “How dare you imply… no, actually say, that we’re not already free?”

They say they have never been slaves to anyone…

Forgot about Joseph and his brothers, forgot about Moses, the Passover, and the journey away from Egypt, forgot about 40 years wandering in the wilderness and the Babylonian captivity… forgot that even right now, they were a small minority pressed down under the authority of the Roman Empire.

But before our mouths drop open in surprise at those people and their forgetting of their own story… 

We take a deep breath & remember…

When someone comes critiquing—or even if we just hear it that way—we can get just as defensive.
We can come on big when we’re feeling small.  

We can get just as confused about our identity and priorities… we can forget that our identity is not based on our country of birth or our present citizenship or even the most powerful stories that have shaped our lives so far… we, too, just as easily can forget that it is actually in God that we live and move and have our being.

So we live our life somewhere between Jeremiah’s vision—where we are so interconnected to God that we know God deep within—and our real-life struggle to become free, free enough to share life in community from the least to the greatest.

In the gospel of John, Jesus wants to abide with us.

It’s all about relationships.

It’s not about assenting to doctrine, it’s not about certainty.

It’s coming together to learn to be in the world in a new, renewed, hope-filled way.

Everyone is bound to something… the things that hold you back or hold you down… everyone needs to be freed.

This week, ISAIAH gathered pastors and imams—Christian leaders and Muslim leaders—from all over the state of Minnesota and talked about what is at stake if we as people of faith are quiet and passive in this time when there is such a need to organize for change for the common good. When white supremacy and homophobia are growing in strength, when places of prayer have been bombed, when people of faith are terrorized, when water protectors are burned out and humiliated, where parents and children are purposefully separated, when immigrants are treated as those without rights & human dignity, when lies are spoken as if they are truth… it is not only our nation’s identity and our personal and collective freedoms that appear to be at stake but much more globally, the health and wellbeing of the whole earth and all its creatures.

So, one faith leader rose to his feet and said… “It is a risk to be involved, to work together in an organized way for justice and the common good, but it is a good risk. And we may well find that doing nothing (or not enough) poses a far greater risk.”

The cost is too great if we give allegiance to the wrong gods… 

And so Jesus longs to free us.

Jesus wonders, “Who do you want to belong to?”

And hopes and prays that our response might be—to you, Jesus. I belong with you. We belong with you.

Karoline Lewis writes, “Loving God and loving your neighbor could very well be the freedom you desperately need -- a freedom from your own self-absorption, loneliness and disconnection. A freedom from self-sufficiency and self-reliance. A freedom from the pain of not belonging and not being known… The words of John remind us that we are indeed bound and shackled… loving God or neighbor is rarely at the forefront of what we do and what we say.[1]How do we become free enough to embrace truth?

Today, we get to witness the Confirmation day of Abby, Gabe and Leo… and it has been my joy to meet with them over these past weeks and listen to their thoughts about faith right now as new high school students. You’ll hear from them directly in just a few minutes and you’ll get to hear for yourselves… but let me say now how grateful I am to hear about those you look to in faith—

a Sunday school teacher passionate about digging in to God’s word, a grandmother who is a model of presence & serving and another grandmother who is not just a servant of God (as you described) but a partner with God, who delights in co-creating together with God.

Today, we recognize together that God made promises to you in baptism that we all reaffirm with you again now at this milestone.

Together, we will renounce all that keeps us from relationship with God.

We’ll speak the Apostles Creed—but again, not as an exercise in assenting to doctrine—but as an invitation to a relationship of trust with God – Parent/Creator; Jesus who lived and died among us and was raised from the dead; and the Holy Spirit that breathes into us the power to live within this community of promises.

These are the kinds of conversations we can have in church. Conversations about how a life with God shapes our actions, opportunities to come together and decide how to act more powerfully for good. We find out here how to know God’s truth so that we can be free from paralyzing fears and inability to act and instead moved by the truths that we coming to know and we have been learning for years together…

Here are the stories that Leo and Abby and Gabe shared that are important to them - 

How Jesus multiples the small gifts we have to share to feed a whole community… 

How God has a plan that is already in motion and we can partner in it….

How God has given us the gift of this community to love us just as we are and keep loving us into who we are becoming.

All this season as we meditate on the opportunity to Share Lifetogether, your witness today reminds us that God keeps re-forming us, keeps inviting us to the freedom found in life with Jesus, keeps inviting us to remember that we belong to each other in God. Today, you will share your hopes, your words of faith with us. Today, you will receive our blessing. Truth: it is a risk to be involved… but it is a good risk.
We are grateful for your life and witness, for your courage and this day’s reminder of how very good it is to share life with you.

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[1]Karoline Lewis, “Freedom & Obligation,” Dear Working Preacher, Sunday, October 22, 2017

Mustard Seed Moments

Habakkuk 1-2 and Luke 17                                                                            

Habakkuk has been complaining to God… and for good reason, it seems like. Here are some of the words from chapter one that give context to the parts we read… 

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgment comes forth perverted.  – Habakkuk 1: 2-4

Not one but two people came to me this week with stories of people from their circles of family and friends who lit into them because they attempted to speak words of justice & mercy, love on behalf of the neighbor… and the speakers could not hold back their harsh & violent words of judgement. In both cases, the conversation had to be stopped by the listener… and the person had to seek safety. It is not easy in these times to speak up for our most vulnerable neighbors – the migrant, the poor, the trafficked…

Habakkuk cries out to God for help in making God’s vision crystal clear to people… a vision of God’s involvement with those who most need our neighborliness… a vision that even runners can read as they trod on in this marathon of life, and this vision is to NOT GIVE UP in God’s never-ending love, to not lose faith. Although the arc of the universe seems incredibly long, we can have faith that it bends toward mercy for all those pressed down. Oppression will cease!

Jesus speaks the same language in the gospel of Luke – although it can be hard to find it in this complicated little chunk of the story. Just before the part we read, Jesus is telling followers that there will always be plenty of ways to sin. So, when others ask for our forgiveness, we need to be ready to repeatedly forgive them.

That sounds so incredibly hard that the disciples say, “Increase our faith.” 

How often we worry that what we have is not sufficient!

Jesus responds with a couple of metaphors – the first is to say that we don’t need more faith. Faith doesn't work like that. You don’t think you have enough? You don’t think you’re capable? But this is God – God who creates out of nothing! The tiniest seed grows into a massive bushy tree… all you need is right here. You have within you the power to forgive… but maybe accessing that power, that faith is the biggest challenge.

Why? Well, maybe it’s because we have been so ingrained to work for the reward. I will give a certain amount of service and hopefully, hopefully that will add up to favor with God and people. We’ve earned the weekend. We’ve earned this vacation. We want to hear words of thanks (or we don’t…). We want to be congratulated in our accomplishments. We want to believe that we have earned all the good in our life…

(and worse, that others have earned the bad in their life)… 

Even though this is all myth, we can get caught up in it because it’s been around in the human family maybe since the very beginning. Our nation is built on it. Our church is not immune to it.

However, this spirit can block us from seeing the gifts Christ has given us. It can block us from extending grace and forgiveness toward others. It can make us judgmental, overtly saying our judgments out loud or passively holding judgement in our hearts toward others… that usually comes out… eventually.

In view of all this—the injustice of our history, the injustice all around, the inability to forgive that lies within us, the conscious or unconscious desire for rewards & punishments – we cry out to God with Habakkuk, “How long?” We cry out to Jesus with the disciples, “Give us more faith!”

God’s Holy Spirit, who lovingly surrounds and lives within us at all times – as close and as nourishing as the breath we need to live – reminds us how we have enough. All we need is here. The resources we need for life are present within and in community. There is enough for each and enough for all.

This is a very, very challenging word from God because we face a barrage of counter messages. We hear that we are not good enough, not smart enough, not rich enough, not capable enough, not working hard enough, not beautiful enough… and to this whole barrage, Jesus says, “No. You are enough.” Look at this tiny seed, notice your immediate judgement at how insignificant it is… but within it is potential life and growth that we actually have experienced...

We have seen how weak our faith has been, how close we have been to giving up, how we have failed, how fragile we are… and yet, how God has accomplished so much through and within and sometimes in spite of us. 

We are serving food & warm drinks to our neighbors as I speak!

We are beginning re-construction of the kitchen because together, we have raised funds we didn’t know were there already…  and because there is trust (however small) that God will provide through us for the work God wants to accomplish in and through this community… And God will keep providing as long as we have even a seed of faith, the seed that allows us to release what God has first given us—our time, our money, ourselves—in offering to God’s mission and vision here and now.

It is an incredible gift and challenge to be invited into Christian community, a group of people attempting to listen for God’s voice together, a group of people attempting to practice God’s ways, a community failing and forgiving, trying again and again to be re-oriented in the way that the Holy Spirit leads… and we are impatient, often, with God’s timing and how much waiting there is for God’s love and mercy and justice to fully appear. We pray for it and hope for it… and still, it is hard to wait. It is hard to grasp God’s way… we feel like all we’ve got is this little seed, but with this seed, Jesus promises to do amazing things. Watch for them—mustard seed moments—when you notice someone exercise great humility, compassion, faith, leadership. And watch for how within you, within us, this seed is ready to grow.

Taking hold of life… together

1 Timothy & Luke 16

In our Confirmation Deep Dive gathering last week, we had the opportunity to go to Camp St Croix and be led by the YMCA staff there in a variety of group-building, trust-building activities. We had to practice passing on messages non-verbally to build a little structure out of objects together. We had the opportunity to climb a tall, tall rock wall & support each other from the ground as belayers. Check out the Christ Facebook page for a few of those photos!
But the activity that I immediately knew I would tell you about in detail was the maze. Our small group was invited to put on blindfolds & then stand in a line, putting their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them (and just to be clear, this was a mix of kids from eight congregations, not just our Christ kids). The YMCA counselor told them all to follow carefully as we moved into the woodsy area into a maze. There was no talking allowed in the maze but at any time, if anyone needed help, they should just raise their hand and ask for help.
Now, maybe it’s helpful to know something the students did not know yet… the nickname for this maze is the “help maze.” It’s a maze you can’t get out of until you ask for help. The chaperones knew this, the counselor knew this, but the students didn’t know this… we watched as the youth moved through the maze. The counselor announced several times. “This is a really challenging maze to get through. Don’t talk but at any time, if you want help, just raise your hand.” This announcement was made periodically at first but with increasing frequency as the minutes ticked on… and no one, I mean no one, raised their hands.
The chaperones watched… and it was kind of amusing at first but as the students began to get frustrated, one foot in front of the other, around and around and around the maze… I began to wonder how long it would take before someone, anyone would ask for help. The counselor whispered to us… I’ve seen a group of adults go at this for 45 minutes. And then, it got meaningful for me.
How much of life is like this? We think the game is one thing – make it through the maze. Figure it out. It’s all on you (or me). We know the rules - you’re definitely NOT supposed to ask for help, even if someone is repeatedly offering that instruction, we’re pretty sure we’re not supposed to follow it. So, they walked and walked even though the whole maze was about 12 square feet.
The counselor invited the youth to ask for help maybe 45 times, and I started getting worried. The helper in me was just going crazy. I piped in, “If you’re getting tired of this, don’t worry, just raise your hand and ask for help.” When finally one student raised a hand, we lifted the rope with relief and whispered, “That’s the whole point, to ask for help.” But that student looked so surprised, I asked, “Did you mean to raise your hand?” And she said, “Actually, I was just trying to reach for the rope.” “Oh well,” I said, “We mistakenly thought you were asking for help.”

Finally, finally, one by one, all but two of our group were out of the maze. The YMCA counsellor decided to call it so we could move on to the next activity. I told the last two students the real goal… and they said, “We were just too stubborn!” During this whole time, I was thinking… and these are church kids! We think that we’re communicating loud & clear – this is church – this is a place where you can ask for help! But really, maybe all our talk about helping is heard this way… we are the helpers, and it makes it harder than ever to receive the gift of help from God, from each other. 

When we hear this story of the rich man and Lazarus, there are things that are noticeable right away and then there are things that I notice more because of the experience with the Camp St Croix “help maze.” The thing Luke wants to make sure that we know about life with Jesus is that the categories of rich and poor are not going to stand, the categories of oppressed and oppressor will be eliminated, if you have been laying in the street with hardship and some rich guy with an important name has been feasting while pretending that you don’t exist… just to say, in heaven, we will know your name. But there’s more, even though the rich who have always been served will think you should still be serving them… that’s not going to be allowed anymore. You aren’t going to have to rescue and serve the people who have been brutal to you or who have simply pretended you don’t exist. In God’s reign, injustice ceases, the pecking order is over… and Luke invites us to imagine, that new order has already begun… because after all, like the rich man’s siblings, we have the words of the prophets, don’t we? We have the witness of those who saw Christ, risen from the dead, don’t we?

This week, several of my friends shared widely these words, part of the speech Greta Thunberg, 16-year-old climate activist, offered to the UN Climate Action Summit leaders (and the world) in New York:

"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe."[1]

This is actually a statement of great faith in spite of the evidence—a refusal to believe that people cannot or will not act, a refusal to believe that people really know and understand, a refusal to believe that others are evil. And yet, Greta calls world leaders and each of us to action in a way that is not that different from Luke’s teaching tale of the rich man and Lazarus. 

Our world is suffering. People are hungry, they need a place to sleep and shower and charge their phones. They need to be seen. Black and brown and tan and white neighbors need this church to see them, but especially we need to see those who we are best at ignoring, those who have experienced devaluing for generations, who have continually been subject to violence to their bodies and communities.
Our world is suffering. Birds, even common birds like sparrows, are vanishing from North America."The sheer scale of the bird decline meant that stopping it would require immense effort, said Dr. Young, of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Habitats must be defended, chemicals restricted, buildings redesigned. 'We’re overusing the world, so it’s affecting everything,' she said."[2]And the quality of our water, how we use & abuse it, needs our attention from ground water to rivers to oceans that we depend on for life.

There are plenty of reasons for us, if we have been like the rich man - ignoring the needs of Lazarus - to wake up to the needs of Lazarus in our midst… to turn to one another, keep learning each others’ names and enter into deep community with one another across human-made chasms for the good of each person and the good of the whole creation.
And if we have been Lazarus, laid out in deep suffering, then can we be open to the ways that God is holding us in the bosom of Abraham, ready to help and protect in time of need? The God who knows our name, who even in our deepest sorrow has laid out a table for us, who is ready at the slightest raise of the hand to pull us out of the unwinnable games of life and give us help—through helpers who are right there, just waiting to offer love and compassion and comfort.

Here is what we are called to do with what God has first given us—our names, our resources, each day of life that we have left, no matter the number of days… we are to set our hopes not “onthe uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment… to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share… storing up… the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that [all] may take hold of the life that really is life.” – 1 Timothy 

Don’t those words from Timothy sound so much like Christ’s mission statement?—We are a diverse community brought together by the grace of God to share with others what we ourselves have received—this is how we become not only those who help but because of God’s grace, those who can receive what we need for today at this generous table, nourished for tomorrow so that we can live generous lives so that all people, the whole creation can take hold of life… together.

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[1]Greta Thunberg, UN Climate Action Summit speech

[2]New York Times article based on a study published in the journal Science

Choose Life

Deuteronomy 30 & Luke 14

This week, the sermon is mostly a weaving together of four women preachers’ voices – Dr. Kathryn Schifferdecker (in blue), the Rev. Dr. Mitzi Smith (in purple), Angela Denker (in green) and Lee Ann Pomrenke (in orange). In addition to being pastors, they are two Bible professors, a journalist and a writer who is a member here at Christ – the intention here is to amplify their voices.

“This is one of those weeks when, after reading the Gospel lesson, you might feel like putting a question mark after the usual [response to the gospel]: “The Gospel of the Lord (?)”

After all, Jesus is advising “hate” for family members. "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

It seems like we shouldn’t even read a text like this, especially on a day when we are having “Rally Sunday,” beginning the program year—Sunday School, Confirmation, Bible study, and all those good thigs. What a day to talk about hating one’s family![1]

But be careful, dear preacher (Kathryn writes) not to soften too much the word of challenge in the text. While Jesus is not literally advising hate against one’s family members, he is warning his listeners about the risk inherent in becoming his disciple.”

“Becoming Jesus’ disciple is not for the faint of heart. It involves the possibility of alienating family and friends who cannot understand or support a commitment that seems foolish. Discipleship has a real cost to it, so count the cost, Jesus says, before making the commitment, just as a builder must count the cost of construction before beginning a project. Right now, we certainly know about that as we consider the plans for renovating the kitchen and wait, wait, wait for that final maximum price.

Commitment is not an alien concept to us, especially at this time of year. The school year is beginning or has recently begun. Many of us are getting back into the schedule of various commitments we’ve made—some of these commitments involve a good deal of sacrifice in terms of time and money

Still, the challenge in this text is real. Christian discipleship is not something that can be done only in our spare time, after all the other commitments have been met. Jesus isn’t asking for our leftovers. Jesus wants us—our love, our time, our resources, our work, our commitment—in order to live out what we pray: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And that kind of discipleship may very well put us in conflict, if not with family members, than certainly with the expectations of many of those around us.”

Mitzi Smith challenges that one must be willing:

• to champion the cause of the poor and dis-eased;
• to view one’s calling as more expansive than the confines of the church;
• to sometimes buck traditions—and those who view those traditions as infallible;
• to live a life of relative poverty, unwilling to take bribes and to amass wealth on the backs of the oppressed and unaware;
• to struggle for the alleviation of poverty and a living wage for all at the expense of one’s own privilege; and
• to expand one’s conception of “family” to include neighbors far and near.[2]

“Perhaps what Jesus means by hating family is to refuse to live by narrow, exclusive ideas of family when it comes to meeting human needs and contributing to the wholeness of all human beings.”

That is something people of Christ have been practicing for years… but still, even those who have been practicing find themselves challenged to live into the risks Jesus invites more deeply. Jesus often pushes farther than we want to go for the love of those we still are not fully seeing.

Compassion is not the absence of fear but the overwhelming, undeniable summons to engage in acts of love and justice. If [we have] a narrow view of family and values… we will not take risks for the most vulnerable…”

“Jesus started this teaching by asserting that his disciples must be willing to hate their family members and life itself, and he ends with telling the crowd that they must relinquish all their possessions…

Jesus’ [call] that the traveling crowds relinquish their possessions is a challenge to reject greed, hoarding, and overabundance… and in favor of sharing [to eliminate poverty].We are a society that encourages greed over giving, hoarding over sharing, and overabundance as a marker of social status... What humans have created, [what we have inherited & participate in], we can eliminate by daily recommitting ourselves to the God who loves compassion, mercy, and justice.”[3]

And I think this is what the words of Deuteronomy mean—choose life. Set in a context of religious nationalism and its “ever-present threat of idolatry, Moses is urging his people to commit, heart and soul and body, to a vibrant relationship with the God in whom they live and move and have their being.”[4]

We too struggle with competing loyalties… and our only way out is to look to God. Today, we’ll participate in God’s Work, Our Handsservice projects after worship in order to practice compassion and mercy together. Next week, we’ll have an Isaiah training that will give clear tools for practicing justice. In worship just after this message, we’ll look over the Autumn Menu of Opportunities together, fill them out & turn them in. The intention is not to make any of us more busy, not to add more duties to our ever-growing schedules, but the intention is to give some ways to stop our striving, to gather in Christian community, to serve and grow together, so that we can keep the main things the main things. So that we can daily recommit ourselves to the God who invites us to choose life.

There are many good things on that Autumn Menu… Dear Church, Global/Local Mission Event, Opportunities to support Shobi’s Table and Daily Work…

One thing that is not in the menu (that we missed) is our Books & Brunch group, just started this summer – this month, we’ll meet on Saturday morning, September 21^st… new comers are welcome!

At Books & Brunch this September, we will talk about the book Red State Christiansby ELCA pastor Angela Denker. She interviewed people throughout the nation to understand what happened in the 2016 election and here is what Lee Ann Pomrenke, our host for this month’s conversation, wrote in her review of the book:

It is a terrible feeling, being blind-sided. Election Day 2016 left me staring down my own ignorance and resulting shock that so many of my fellow citizens voted for the candidate I thought had disqualified himself repeatedly. So many Christians…  but then Lee Ann describes what she learned.

Yes, there are so many problems we need to confront as Christians with different views and priorities, truths and biases.

Lee Ann instructs, “What we can control most in that process though, is our own approach. We cannot risk continuing to talk past each other, or lobbing insults at one another…  We have to talk about race without naming the other “deplorable,” to make ourselves vulnerable and humble while honestly trying to hear each other. We know how to do this since confession and forgiveness are the marks of our faith. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for those who feel powerless, undervalued, or no longer seen. We declare that losing our power in Christ’s love is the goal of our faith. And we know how to host a funeral, where grieving the loss of those we hold dear and hope in resurrection are deeply intertwined.”[5]  

Angela, the author of  the book Red State Christians, writes this in Living Lutheranabout the process of interviewing people for the book: “In a fragmented America, I learned that hope is best found not in places where it’s easy to hope but in places (and in churches) where hope is seen against a backdrop of death. This kind of hope—the kind formed by Jesus and preached by [pastors] in central Pennsylvania and Appalachia [and so many other places]—is the kind of hope that endures.

In all my travels across America, telling stories of Christians and Christian leaders in red counties from New Hampshire to El Paso, it’s this one that gives me hope for the future of the Lutheran church—a future rooted in survival, humility and love against all odds.”[6]

Peter J. Gomes once wrote, “Jesus did not die in order to spare us the indignities of the wounded creation. He died that we might see those wounds as our own. Jesus died that we might live, and life fully and hopefully – [that’s] ‘full of hope” – not in some fantastic never-never-land not yet arrived, but in the ambiguous reality here and now. Look at the cross and the suffering bleeding Savior. Beyond tragedy is truth redeemed. Look and live!”[7]

There are many things we will have to let go of as we follow Jesus into the future, but the promise is that as we let go of all that possesses us and put our trust in God, as we practice confession and forgiveness, as we love mercy more than life (as we are risk-takers for justice), we will taste and see the gospel, God’s good news, at work, not just for us but for all.

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[1]Workingpreacher.org, author: Kathryn Schifferdecker is Professor and Elva B. Lovell Chair of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, Dear Working Preachercolumn for 9/8/2019

[2]Workingpreacher.org, author: Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith is the J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., Commentary on Luke 14: 25-33

[3]Workingpreacher.org, author: Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith is the J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., Commentary on Luke 14: 25-33

 [4]Workingpreacher.org, author: Carolyn J. Sharp is Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Yale Divinity School, Commentary on Deuteronomy 30: 15-20

[5]Lee Ann Pomrenke, Nuance and Kinship: A Review of Red State Christians, Episcopal Café, August 3, 2019.

[6]Angela Denker, Lutherans Build Bridges in America: My journey to writing Red State Christians, Living Lutheran, August 15, 2019  Author’s note: As I researched Red State Christians, I was indebted, as well, to other Lutherans across the country who opened their homes and churches to me. In the book you’ll read about guns and Christianity from ELCA pastors in rural Iowa, Minnesota and New Hampshire. You’ll meet farm families in Missouri from the congregation of Stephen Zeller and his wife, pastor and writer Kimberly Knowle-Zeller. You’ll meet Rose Mary Sánchez-Guzmán, pastor of Iglesia Luterana Cristo Rey, who ministers to migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso and who took me with her family into Juarez, teaching me how to cross the divides that have broken the heart of America’s churches

[7]Peter J. Gomes, Sermons (New York: Morrow, 1998), 72.