What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21 • Psalm 104:24-34, 35b • Romans 8:14-17 • John 14:8-17, (25-27)

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

(In Yoda voice) “Mmmm…yes, strong in you all the Spirit is…mmm…Blessed you all are, mmm….a great movement in the Spirit this day, I sense… Laugh at me do you, but joke not I: prophets among us there are…and the Holy Spirit says those prophets you are!”

Pentecost makes prophets appear…and the Holy Spirit has made each and everyone here…a prophet, an interpreter, a visionary, a dreamer. In Pentecost we become an intermediary between God and the world God loves. Yes, some prophets look and sound like Yoda from Star Wars: wise, old sages who seem to be able to perceive the world at a different level than us… But all of us, have received the gift that empowers us to each get in touch with the world, and see it as God sees it…that’s all a gift of the Spirit.

Pentecost can be a day where we celebrate the past, where we focus on the birth of the church, on how the church used to be so great, on how great we all are. But we have to ask the questions: “are the best days of our church behind us or ahead of us?” “Is the church intended for our own sake or for the sake of the world?” Pentecost reminds us that with the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are re-oriented towards a promised future. Pentecost does not just happen on Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost happens when the Holy Spirit opens us up to become a part of the future that God is calling us as the church to be.

“Was ist das?” “What does this mean?” the people who experienced the first Pentecost needed to have it interpreted. What does it mean that God makes possible communication across culture, race and tribe—that God crosses the artificial boundaries we construct between one another? What does this mean? It means Pentecost is happening. When the Spirit feels Peter, and Peter feels the Spirit, the Spirit comes and walks alongside him and puts into his mouth words of the past, words of the prophet Joel, words that can show everyone what this present event means for the future of all who see Pentecost happening. Peter’s tongue starts to move, and he raises his voice, and he proclaims a Pentecost sermon:

“God declares that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” (Acts 2:17-18)

Pentecost turns us into prophets who are given a common language. We’re given the language of faith, a language we learn from the first language of faith—Scripture, with its images, words, phrases and stories, that gives us tools to frame what God is doing in the world. What was God doing at the first Pentecost? Peter interprets through Joel: God pours out God’s Spirit upon all flesh. The Spirit is showing up, and Pentecost is happens. Wouldn’t that be a great bumper sticker? Wouldn’t it be great to see on a car or on a billboard: “Pentecost Happens”?

Pentecost does happen today, as it did on that first day, when the Spirit trumps individualism by bringing us together into community. Pentecost happens today, as it did on that first day, when the Spirit trumps the “professionalization” of the church—of passing off ministry to someone else—by empowering mutual ministry among us all. Pentecost happens today, as it did on that first day, when the Spirit trumps private ownership of our selves, our families and our stuff by drawing us together to summon our gifts for building up the common good. Pentecost happens today, as it did on that first day, when the Spirit trumps the babbling loneliness of isolation by building bridges across differences to create belonging. That’s the work of the Spirit! That is what the Spirit does! Dear people, the Holy Spirit is at our backs today…the Holy Spirit is on our tongues today..the Holy Spirit is in our hearts today…making us into interpreters who see the Spirit at work and names it as Pentecost.

“In those days, I will pour out my Spirit and you shall prophesy.” The Holy Spirit comes to make us prophets. Prophets are visionaries, and dreamers. Prophets cannot know the future. Prophets are not fortune tellers. Prophets interpret what’s happening in the world through the language of faith.

We’ve all seen those conferences that happen at the United Nations or at a conference
where people are from different countries, and we see them speaking another language—but we hear an interpreter speaking English? Pentecost shows us there is an important difference between translating and interpreting. Translating is done word for word, sitting down with a dictionary and writing as precise a correlation between the two languages as possible. Interpretation on the other hand is spoken in the moment. It is only made possible by the Spirit. Interpretation is not word for word. It’s impossible to say in one language exactly the way it’s understood in another. But in the space between the languages we speak, the Spirit makes it possible for the tone, style and meaning of the language of faith to reach us, and through us to reach someone else, and through someone else to reach the whole world! The Spirit fills the space between us. The Spirit gets the message across. The Spirit makes us prophetic interpreters.

Today’s Pentecost is not a celebration looking back. It is a beginning, a launching pad for the next chapter in the continuing prophetic ministry of United Lutheran to interpret the good news of God’s love in Christ Jesus made active through the Spirit to our community. The Building Faith and Future Capital Campaign commitment cards and prayer cards will be offered in just a few moments. Looking back at what we’ve done so far in this campaign we have much to be thankful for. However this begins the next chapter in our life together at United Lutheran. While the coming summer months will be a respite from the more active energy of this campaign and of the Sunday School year, an important prophetic task lies before us. When we return to our fall programming, a process awaits us. Before us lies a process of gathering, discerning and articulating a shared dream and vision for the future of our congregation. Such a process takes time—9 months, a year, perhaps 18 months—and components of it look somewhat like the process the church went through in 2007 in the midst of putting its paperwork together for the call process. The Holy Spirit has gifted this church with much through which we already interpret the gospel to the world: with excellence in worship, a passion for social ministry in the community, an emerging group of young adults… Now it is time to examine through a visioning team, through one on one interviews with people in our community, through gatherings, through Scripture and prayer...how it is we want to articulate our gifts the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us and interpret them to meet the needs of our community. The Holy Spirit is behind us and setting our tongues on fire for this interpretive, prophetic task ahead of us. I am excited to begin this next chapter with you! We will get there. Pentecost happens and will continue to happen, bringing people together around word and sacrament to speak the common language of faith…sending us out into the world so we can bear witness to the good news of God in Jesus. Through Pentecost tongues, Pentecost lips and Pentecost hearts, we can interpret God’s blessing to the world. So come. Come Holy Spirit. Come. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 16:16-34 • Psalm 97 • Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 • John 17:20-26

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. ¹⁷While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” ¹⁸She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. ¹⁹But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. ²⁰When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews ²¹and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” ²²The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. ²³After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. ²⁴Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. ²⁶Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. ²⁷When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. ²⁸But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” ²⁹The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. ³⁰Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” ³¹They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” ³²They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. ³³At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. ³⁴He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.


Jesus prayed: "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

We arrive at a day in the church year today that can quite frankly be lonely. We have shared in Easter resurrection for six weeks, and the feastival of the Ascention of Our Lord happened this past Thursday. Jesus now sits in heaven. We with the disciples are left in Jerusalem still down here. Pentecost is just around the corner, but not here yet. Jesus has gone to be with God, and God has not come down as the Holy Spirit that we celebrate on the 50^th day of Easter, which is Pentecost.

After six weeks of Easter, we may have given up on new life. We may be at our wit’s end. We have been looking at the lessons of Acts in this season of Easter, and seeing the resurrection new life all over the mission of the early church. But yet we look around the world and may not see Jesus having an impact. Suffering, loss and pain have not left the world. We do practically need seven weeks of Easter in order to get it into our bones that Jesus has set the world right and made us whole, but even by this last week of it…we can still be left wondering, doubting and gasping for a sign of God’s presence. We can begin to seek to find shelter amidst what seems like a world gone mad, a world lost in violence, greed and corruption.

But even when we have given up on new life…even when we are at our wit’s end…Jesus intercedes for us. Jesus puts the disciples and us at peace because he lets us know he is in charge. He came to set things right on the third day and that has not changed. Even when we can no longer pray for new life…Jesus prays for us. As he is with his disciples the night before he concludes his journey to the cross, he prays to God for we who do not want him to leave. He prays: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one….so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (Jn 17:20, 23) Jesus prays even for we who cannot yet believe he has set new life beyond the cross as the new reality that surrounds us.

Today as part of the Building Faith and Future Capital Campaign we are being invited to a week of prayerful reflection on our hopes and dreams for the future of United Lutheran. As we consider our commitments to be made next Sunday, we ask ourselves the question: how will we carry out our mission to worship God, serve others and nurture our faith into the future? We are now invited to prayer this week to talk and listen with God about this campaign we have been hearing about since Easter Day. We pray this week confident that Jesus does not just pray with us—he prays for us when cannot pray, or do not know what to pray for. Jesus has hopes and dreams for this church and its future. Jesus makes us one this week in his prayers that bring us together under the place that is safe, where we can trust the shelter of his raised, open, praying arms.

I invite you this week to use this prayer devotional booklet that is in your “Invitation to Prayer” packets as your daily devotional prayers this week. You are invited to add one of these testimonies and Scriptures that have been carefully put together by Darlene Hug and Steve Vejcik for our spiritual food for the week. We will be receiving these same devotions as e-mail devotions each day as well—so we can all stay connected as one in prayer and reflection this week. This week we are a church keeping vigil with the God whose Christ always keeps vigil over us. God is at work in us, and holds us all together, even when we cannot believe or trust… even when we may not know what our future holds.

This Easter season we have been hearing stories from the early mission of the church in the Book of Acts. In this time of crossroads in our community of faith, we have been telling these wonderful stories that remind us of who we are and why we are here, and what are the characteristics of an Easter church. Today Acts reminds us that the hold that Jesus has on us is not a hold of fear or captivity. Jesus’ hold on us is a spacious, healing harmony that he has already brought about at the resurrection dawn. The story begins when Paul and Silas are jailed for Paul’s casting a demon out of a possessed girl who was being extorted for financial gain. But prison walls cannot separate Jesus who remains at one with Paul and Silas. God busts their jail loose with an earthquake, as if all of Creation cannot wait to be set free from all the forces of decay that defy new life to join with Jesus.

“Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” (16:28) Paul speaks these words to a jailer who after the earthquake is full of guilt for his role in maintaining a punishing confinement of criminals. He is about to die by suicide. It is hard this week not to picture this jailer without picturing of the death by suicide of Chicago Metra rail executive Phil Pagano last weekend. Mr. Pagano faced charges of embezzling company funds—but even at the moment when he very likely felt most alone, Paul’s words contain the promise that was being spoken to Mr. Pagano, just as he speaks them to us who stand today between the loneliness of Ascension and Pentecost: “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” As we confess in the Apostles Creed, we believe we are baptized into a “communion of saints”, who stand with us and intercede for us, with Christ. “[They] are all here”…at all times, at all places…even when we cannot pray for ourselves. Along with Jesus, they intercede for us.

In recent weeks I discovered the ELCA has an online prayer network—a place where people can go and type in a prayer request, and know it will be prayed for by a congregation assigned to pray these prayer petitions. With just a few keystrokes, we can remember too that even in a week as this where we focus on praying for our own church, we as a congregation are a part of a wider praying church, where Jesus is holding us together in the harmony of his “hidden wholeness.”

In this week of prayer I now ask you to pray with me now. I invite you to join hands with those near you. The Lord be with you. Let us pray.

Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time to make our common prayer to you, and you have promised through your Son that where two or three are gathered in his name, you will be in the midst of them. (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 86) Throughout this coming week, O Lord, form us together as your prayerful people. Even when death and pain surround us, pray for us; make us one under the arms of your gospel of new life in Jesus. Work out in us that which is pleasing in your sight for the good of United Lutheran. May your prayers for this church empower us with dreams and visions, faith and generosity to give glory to your holy name. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, May 9th, 2010

Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 16:9-15 • Psalm 67 •Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 • John 5:1-9

During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us."


^101112131415

Let’s be honest: we Christians don’t have the best of track records. Our history is replete with countless examples of what I’ll call “the mission impulse gone awry.” The list could go on and on: the Crusades of the Middle Ages seeking to Christianize Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land through violence…the Christian missionary conquests and subsequent annihilation of native cultures in North America, South America, Asia and Africa… We have a track record of taking the good gospel news of Jesus and demanding and imposing that others experience the gospel as we understand it. But even among those whom we so desperately want to share Jesus…among those we desperately want to go out and change…God can disarm our emotionally charged expectations with surprising graces in those very people. God can open our hearts to realize God could be at work in the most unexpected of places.

Desmond Tutu, the former bishop of an Episcopal Diocese in South Africa, a man who is a faith hero to many, a man who led the successful fight end discriminatory separation of blacks and whites in South Africa, said in a radio interview last week: “…if those white people (that is, the Dutch colonizers of South Africa) had intended [to keep] us under, they shouldn’t have given us the Bible. Because, whoa, I mean, it’s almost as if it is written specifically just for your situation.” Through God’s Word, God’s mission found a way not to oppress the black people of South Africa, but to liberate them from believing they were biologically inferior. When they heard in God’s Word that everyone is created in the image of God, that everyone is a “God-carrier”, it put joy in their hearts.

The apostle Paul had that zealous mission impulse to share the risen Christ: to go to new lands and bring God to them. When Paul receives a vision to go on a mission to the Roman colony of Philippi, his appetite is starving to share God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus because he had just been shut down and forbidden by the Holy Spirit to go on two other missions. Paul was ready! He was going to make it happen…or so he thought!

But in Philippi, Paul’s mission draws him to a place of prayer by a river. And there, as Paul preaches and proclaims the good news of Jesus, he discovers that God’s has already been at work in Philippi! It is no accident that God opens the hearts of Lydia and her household to be baptized at a place of worship by a river… God has a long history of doing missionary work through rivers.

It was a river that began the Holy Scriptures, as the last scene in Genesis of the garden of Eden. This was a river that nourished Creation, but because of Adam and Eve’s turning away from God they were denied access to that river of Eden. But it is at that same river that God concludes the testimony of the Scriptures, in today’s vision from the Book of Revelation. Through God’s river of life, God invites us to drink from God’s nourishing waters, to see them flowing bright as crystal, coming down from the throne of God, right through the middle of the city of Jerusalem. (Rev. 22:1-2) This is a river of God’s life given for the sake of the world…the river of salvation history…and this is a river the flows under our feet as we sit here today. This river of God, this river of life, flows among us today—because Jesus places us in this river without us taking one single step. But this river of living water is Jesus Christ himself…who lived, died and rose again for the whole world, he floats us into the ever-flowing, continuously moving story of God’s mission: a river that flows through the life and history of Israel, that flows through Jesus’ saving work, that flows through the mission of the early church, that flows through our very own worship here today!

It is no accident that Jesus finds a way into the heart of Lydia through Paul’s preaching…at a place of worship by a river. God’s mission shows up at rivers. God’s mission shows up at places of worship like where Lydia and her household hear Paul preach. But wait. Mission—in worship? Does that make sense to us? Isn’t mission supposed to happen outside of a place of worship? Often we think of Paul as a missionary, or other missionaries as people going out to evangelize and proclaim the gospel overseas…or somewhere else. But mission is not only the work of evangelists. Mission does not only happen in other places. God’s mission happens here. Now. We are missionaries here, today. As one of my colleagues says, “Worship is mission.” Worship is mission just as much as the worship at Philippi was God’s mission that reached the open heart of Lydia to receive the gift of new life in Christ.

Mission is not about what we do…it’s about what God does. Being a part of the river-flow of God’s mission—that’s about recognizing and being aware of what God is up to…and giving God the credit for the amazing work God does! When God gathers us together, we believe that something missional will happen. When we worship, God moves our hands to extend peace with a stranger, or an estranged brother or sister in Christ we disagree with. When we worship, God speaks words of life into our lives through the Scripture texts that may just happen to be appointed for that day, and that touch right at the heart of what’s happening in our lives or in our world. When we worship God uses our hands to put offerings in a plate that reach missions—like this month’s mission that God will use to bring together in reconciliation incarcerated parents and their children.

It’s about time God starts getting credit for all the missional work God is up to. We often say that coincidences, or things that happen that we don’t expect are “lucky”, they’re “fate”, or “meant to be.” I say those moments…are God moments. It’s time luck, fate or destiny don’t get the credit…and God gets some worship for all that God’s up to! This week in our congregation God’s mission brought people home from the hospital! This week God’s mission comforted people who were facing life-threatening illnesses! This week God’s mission brought food to the table of hungry people in our community through the PADS program! All because of God! When we get surprised by God in these ways, instead of saying we are “lucky”…we can say, “That’s God!” or “I love when God does that!” When we start noticing all the ways God’s mission is alive in the world, it’s hard to find where the river of God’s saving, healing, reconciling mission is not happening!

We’re in the midst of a busy capital appeal called Building Faith and Future. It’s busy with activity right now. But when we look back at this time years later, and see where God’s missional river took us…we will see that God’s mission was not something we imposed on others—but something that God did in us to show us what God was up to all around us. We will see God’s mission did not just happen in other countries. God’s mission did not just happen in Tutu’s South Africa. It did not just happen through evangelists or pastors or chaplains. We will see that the river of God’s mission flows also through the heart of the worship of this faith community—where we give praise to God because of Jesus who lives among us. In this community, worship is our heartbeat, it is our lifeblood, is the river through which our lives, and the life of God’s love for this broken world flows. It is a love that flows deeply and widely. It is a love that takes us to places we never dreamed of—all without moving a single foot. And looking back we may ask, “How did we get here?” “How did we make it through that period?” And the answer will surprise us then as much as it does today. “It was God! I love when God does that!” Amen.