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WE WERE HONORED to welcome our missionaries in Argentina, David Wunsch and Kate Lawler to St. Paul’s Saturday, February 4th. David preached for our 5:30 pm Saturday service. His sermon is posted here. Pastor Grube’s sermon for Sunday services follows below. + + + Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. Amen In this season that follows Epiphany we have the Gospel readings that describe the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the events that came before. To remind ourselves, on Epiphany Sunday we read about Jesus’ baptism; what follows in Mark’s Gospel is his desert/wilderness experience and temptation by the devil, the calling of disciples and the start of his ministry. These reading give us an early understanding of Jesus’ mission, though this also continues to evolve. These texts also point to a most common, yet challenging question about our work as missionaries, that is almost always asked of us by supporters of our ministry. It usually goes something like this: “Besides sending in our missionary
sponsorship funds, what else can we be doing to support your ministry in This is a genuine, heartfelt question. |It reflects a spirit of generosity and giftedness that is manifest all over the ELCA in congregation after congregation. It is this acted-upon understanding of your giftedness that makes our particular ministry as ELCA missionaries possible. We are grateful for this support and for the privilege of serving in God’s name on behalf of all of you. As I reflect on the many times the “what else can we do for you?” question has been asked of us over our six and a half years of mission service, I now understand that the deeper, underlying question is the one Jesus also was struggling with as he prepared for and then began his ministry. This more profound question is really about wanting to know what Gods asks of us as a faith community, but also as parents, as children, as part of the ELCA, as citizens of a country. What does God want of me? This question burns within us, as it should because it is likely the most important life question we will ever ask… and the answer – or answers -- may actually surprise us. Because life’s most important questions are tough, we need help in answering them, even when the answer to our question is a series of more questions. Children’s literature is an interesting place to look because when we talk to our kids, we have to make life’s thorniest issues understandable to them. The Three Questions is a story for children that tells of a young boy “Nikolai” who is uncertain about the right way to act in life and goes around asking his animal friends the following: “When is the best time to do things?” “Who is the most important one?” “What is the right thing to do?” The Children’s story finishes when Nikolai has the experience of discovering and then saving the life of a baby panda bear and her mother when they are pinned under a fallen branch during a raging storm. A wise old turtle sums up what life taught the boy by stating that the only important time is now, the most important one is the one you are with, and the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. This children’s
version of a famous Russian short story allows us to see that Jesus’ also
learned from the events – the experiences – that unfolded before him in life. The
experiences described in these Epiphany readings shaped him and gave him the faith
intelligence to discern and clearly see his calling on earth. At his baptism the Spirit from above
descended and a voice said that He is the one, God’s son. But this same Spirit drove him into the
wilderness so Jesus would know first-hand the sin that separates humankind from
God. With the intensity of these
first-hand experiences fresh at hand, Jesus preached that the time is
“fulfilled, the (Jesus) answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message
there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Jesus knew when he needed to act: now; for whom: his neighbors; and what he had to do: proclaim the Good News. So what about
us? What is God asking of me, of you, or
this community or our whole church? To
dig a little deeper, I would like to return to Nikolai’s three questions and
reflect on these from the perspectives of our experiences of working with
Lutheran churches in Let’s start… “When is the best time to do things?” The Best Time: NOW Some U.S. visitors to our companion Lutheran churches in Latin America are surprised to hear what gets talked about in church, sometimes directly from the pulpit: destruction of the environment; human trafficking; fair trade and unfair trade; human rights abuses and HIV/AIDS. Why is this? For one, these “wilderness experiences” that
make evident the brokenness of the world are very close by in a literal,
geographical sense. In our home congregation in But just as importantly is our thinking about time: God’s time, Kingdom time. Each Sunday we pray “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What this means among Latin American Lutherans is that God’s Kingdom is inaugurated, though not yet realized. Inaugurated, though not yet realized. We pray in present tense; “come”, not “will come someday in the sweet by and by.” The world’s wilderness experiences are our own to address because we are end times actors. What we do matters… a lot. We have work to do. Think about our ELCA tagline, God’s work. Our hands. This realization gives intensity and new meaning to the commitments Christians and others can take on NOW to right the so many ways the world is wrong. Now we turn to … Who is the Important One? Who is our neighbor? A missionary colleague in Bolivia once took a blank piece of white paper and drew two intersecting straight lines on it to create four squares. In each of the squares are various combinations of the concepts “people like/not like me” and “people geographically close to/far away from me.” What he said is that
in the United States churches generally understand the “important ones” for local
mission to be the people like me (ethnicity, income, language, education) who
are close to me. We visit a lot of ELCA
congregations and I would say that in most cases he is probably right. For global
mission, the “important ones” are not like me and live very, very far away,
like say, Our neighbors who are different - but live very close by - are generally not considered part of a local mission strategy, especially if the goal of mission outreach is an invitation to join the worshipping community. In the ELCA there are many exceptions to this norm, but they continue to be exceptions. In John 2:46 we hear Nathanial asking Phillip in reference to Jesus, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?,” an unimportant town on the wrong side of the tracks. In these post-Epiphany Sundays we’ve also been reading that Jesus seems to be drawn to fishermen when seeking disciples. What makes a fisherman qualified to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? When Jesus speaks to the Samaritan women at the well, he is speaking with the “definitely not like us” crowd that lives much, much too close. So, when reflecting
on the “important one” for mission, we need to think about our own experiences
of putting people into these boxes in this way.
In Finally, what is the right thing to do? Here the answer has two parts: the “how” and the “what”. How we engage is global and local mission is just and maybe more important than what we do. For the “how”, we can think in terms of a prepositional make-over. Let me explain. Implicit in the “what else can we do” question we started with is a “do for you”, and sometimes even a “do to you”. We need to convert our “fors” and “tos” into “amongs” and “withs” so we can do mission with and among our neighbors. Recalling the Easter story from Luke 24, we walk together with or among the companion we meet on the Road to Emmaus who we realize is the Christ in the breaking of the bread. “Cum pan” – with bread -- literally in Latin and Spanish is where we get the word “accompaniment” which is the ELCA’s vision for mission. This is the “how”
that brings us to the “what”. The answer to the “what” is our own
conversion. When we are asked how
many converts resulted from our years of missionary service, with great
confidence I can say: At least one, me. The
encounter with the Christ that I have come to know among the people in Sorry wise children’s story turtle, on one point we can’t agree. To “do good” is simply not good enough. Only the “good” we can do “with” and “among” the beautiful diversity of all of God’s people - near and far, like and different - that is capable of transforming us in the process can be called “right” in the eyes of God. If the good you do is not transforming you, please stop and ask “Why isn’t it?” The renowned 20th Century Protestant theologian Karl Barth said in one of his later writings, “God’s divinity rightly understood includes his humanity.” This humanity we know best and most fully in Jesus Christ. In Christ we know the power and meaning for our lives of the love of a living God. The Jesus that we know in the scriptures is where humanity meets God and God’s plan for us is revealed. It is in Jesus Christ that our questions come home to rest and where we find meaningful answers. Through Jesus’ own life experience, through his own words and actions, we know that the best time is now because the Kingdom has come and workers are needed to bring it to completion; the important one is likely sitting or living right next to you or across the world, but is likely not the one we were expecting; and the right thing to do starts in our own hearts. Amen. + + + SERMON +5 Epiphany B TEXT: Mark 1:29-39 DATE: February 5, 2012 St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Dallas Robert
Benchley’s Law of Distinction
states, “There are
two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world
and those who don’t.” Or Dear Abby: “There are two kinds of people in the world, those who walk into a
room and say, ‘There you are!’ and those who say,
‘Here I am!’ ” Or
the quick-witted son of a father who grossly miscalculated the time it took to drive to camp, who said to his father, “Dad,
there are three kinds of people in the world, people who can do math, and people who can’t.” I’ve often said, and to some of you, there are two kinds of
people in the world, those who have and those
who need, those who give and those
who receive. Because sometimes, we’re the ones who are in the position
to help, and sometimes we’re in
the position of needing help. And I’ve found that those of us who are used to being the
givers and helpers often find it difficult
to accept help from others. But
at different times, or at the same time, in different circumstances, we are both. In the
gospel reading, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who need help, and those who need to
give help, those who need care, and those who need a
calling, those who need to be raised, and those who
need to be restored, those who need succor, and those who need to
serve. And
Simon’s mother-in-law is both of those people. Jesus
and his four newly-called disciples leave the synagogue in Capernaum on a Sabbath morning after Jesus has wowed them with his teaching and casted out a demon as a show of his teaching. And
they head across the way to Simon’s house – the home of one of his newly-called followers – for a Sabbath afternoon rest at home. Unfortunately,
when they get there, they discover that their host has been taken ill with a fever. I imagine
Jesus has barely stepped into the house when someone – maybe Simon – comes to him to tell him that their host, his
mother-in-law is sick in bed with what, in those days, may well have been a death sentence. I
can imagine Jesus casting a quick eye skyward as he thinks, “Lordy, what is it
with all these sick people?” But
he doesn’t hesitate to take her hand and lift her up off her bed.
Healed. He
raises her, her life restored, her body well. And now, because
Jesus has raised her up and healed her from her debilitating fever, now she can be and do what she is called to
do, now she is restored to being the hospitable
host she is, and serve her guests. Let’s
be clear, Simon’s
mother-in-law doesn’t serve because she’s a woman and all her guests are men. For that
sake, I wish the story had been about Simon’s father-in-law. But I
suspect, because his mother-in-law is living with Simon, that she is a widow. No,
Simon’s mother-in-law serves them because she’s the host and they are the guests, because tradition and culture dictate that she serve her
guests with the hospitality both she and they expect. But
mostly, she serves them because she is a disciple of Jesus and serve is what Jesus does and what he calls his disciples to do, and what he has just restored her to do. And it’s
not just about setting the table and preparing the meal. This is
the sabbath; the meal was prepared yesterday. It’s
about things like washing feet, quenching thirst, it’s about providing the resources to meet
the needs of her guests, it’s about serving Jesus-style just as Jesus has restored her to do. So
see, Simon’s mother-in-law is both kinds of people: the kind that needs to be healed, helped, raised up, and the kind that needs to serve, help, live out her
calling. So which
one are you? Now? Yesterday,
you might have been a different kind of person. But now,
which kind of person are you? One
who needs help, or one who needs to give help, one who needs care, or one who needs a calling, one who needs to be raised, or one who needs to be restored, one who needs succor, or one who needs to serve? Which
one are you? Now? Or, maybe
it’s more like, in which ways are you in need of healing
now and in what ways are you needing to give and
serve now? What
we discover from Simon’s mother-in law is that Jesus is there to raise and restore, to care and to call. Jesus
is the one who heals and serves the both parts of us no matter which we are now. He lifts
us up to life – forgiven life, eternal life, abundant life – in the sacrament of baptism, and in every return to baptism throughout our daily life and routine when the fevers of the world get the best of
us, or the fevers of our own desires overtake
us, or the fevers of suffering, illness or
death threaten us. Jesus
is there, present, and lifting us up no matter how far we feel we have fallen. The
promise is always there. The
baptismal waters are always fresh. The
life is eternally ours. And in
that life – forgiven, eternal, and abundant life – given to us by the Lord of life, we are freed and empowered, restored and called to the service we are
intended for. And Jesus
is there, too. Serving
as a model for us of service, living according to the ways of the reign of God, guided by the Spirit and clear in his purpose and vocation, Jesus
is there in our calling, too, calling us to serve and live with a clear sense of purpose and an empowering sense of vocation. So what
has God called you to? What has
the life that Christ gives you restored you to do and be as a follower of Jesus a bringer of the kingdom of God and a servant as Christ serves? You
may not be called like Jesus to move on – going from town to town proclaiming the kingdom of God and casting out the world’s demons. Some
people are. You may
not be called like Kate and David, our missionaries in Argentina who visited us
last evening, to go to a foreign country, learn a new language, live and work in a new culture, teach and learn, give and receive, accompany and companion different people. Some
people are. But
you do have a calling. Maybe
not in world-changing, cosmic ways, maybe not in frenetic and driven ways, but certainly in the everyday routines of daily life. We
are called to live our lives with Christ’s calling in the backs of our minds, on the tips of our tongues, and in the depths of our hearts. For most
of us, that calling is to live our lives in the
world as witnesses to the ways of God’s kingdom and in service to those among us in our own particular way. Martin
Luther may have the clearest reminder to us about how we might discern what our own particular way is. “How is
it possible,” he said, “that you should not be called? You will
always be in a station [of life]. You are
either a husband or wife or son or daughter or male or female servant… “See,”
he continues, “since now no one is without some command and calling, so no one is without some kind of work… All,
therefore, are to…do faithfully what they are commanded and serve God…” Martin
Luther, WA 10.1.1:308-309 Our very
stations or roles in life and relationships to others are the starting points for how we witness to the ways of God’s kingdom and serve those among us. So,
which kind of person are you? And
what has God called you to do? Back to top |
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