Can Lent be Relevant?

Good Morning!  Grace and peace to all of you this 5^th Sunday in the Lenten Season.  Now, I don’t know about all of you but 5 weeks into anything I tend to get pretty philosophical.  Whether its five weeks into a diet or 5 weeks into an exercise routine, we all begin to ask those really deep, introspective questions like  “My God, what did I get myself into?,” and, “Why in heaven’s name am I even doing this?”  Lent, it seems, isn’t really all that different. 

                We all know the rules for Lent, right?  It is a season within the church year that we are supposed to give something up for God, or if we’re feeling particularly medieval we end up lining our Friday meals with fish, but Lent just isn’t something we Protestants tend to do very well.  I think we don’t do it very well because we don’t really understand it.  As a people who tried like the dickens to get away from Roman Catholic tradition, I think Lent ends up being treated like crazy uncle Lew at those family holiday dinners – we all knows he’s there, he only shows up once a year, and we figure if we just ignore him long enough maybe he’ll finally go away.

                As far as church seasons go, I’ll admit it doesn’t have the rock star appeal of either Christmas or Easter, but that doesn’t mean Lent doesn’t have something very meaningful to bestow on now.  Traditionally, Lent is meant to represent the 40 days that Jesus was in the wilderness.  It is a time meant for reflection, of looking deeply inward, and learning to do without so we learn to rely on God.  But you may still ask me, “All that’s fine, Keven, but as you pointed out at the beginning I don’t know why I am doing this and quite frankly year after year, Lent has had no bearing on my life at all, save to make church services more depressing for about a month.  What is Lent’s relevancy for today?

The answer to that, oddly enough, is found within our gospel story.  John tells us that six days before the Jewish Passover Jesus has returned to the house of Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead.  Now that event was of special Jewish significance.  As modern readers of the ancient text we often miss the more subtle hints…no, not subtle, because they aren’t - The more silent hints at Jesus’ Divinity.  In the first century, it was believed that Leprosy was so terrible, so thoroughly deplorable a disease that only God could remove it.  So when our gospel writers have Jesus heal lepers, what are they saying?  When our gospel writers show that Jesus has complete mastery over nature, calming its chaos with but a word – what are they saying?  In the same manner, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead had special Jewish significance because God alone had that power, and now He was coming over for dinner.

Can you imagine?  I mean what do you do?  What food do you put on?  What serving wear do you set out?  Not only is God coming over for an extended brunch, but He’s coming after giving you a gift that literally no ever gets.  After getting your brother back from being four days dead, do you bring out your finest grilled cheese?  I mean, what do you do?  The reality is we would all do exactly what they did – pretend it’s normal.  I love how true to life this story is.  There’s Lazarus just hanging at the table with guys, pretending like nothing’s happened.  Martha’s in the kitchen as she always is, drowning out the awkwardness of the situation with the dishes, but Mary…Mary doesn’t.  Overwhelmed by everything that has gone on, overwhelmed by the gift of her brother back, overwhelmed by the radical forgiveness and love involved in giving that gift to a thoroughly unworthy and sinful family, Mary is the only one who reacts properly.  She brings out the most expensive thing in their house and she takes on the role of a servant, wiping Jesus’ feet with her own hair.  She opens the bottle of perfume and pours it on Jesus’ feet; wiping off the grime, the dirt, the many miles of Judean countryside in this one shocking act of humility.  With every pass over his feet, as her hair becomes caked with the dust of every mile that Jesus walked she is saying, I know who you are, and the dirt of this world does not belong on you.  I am the dirty one, thoroughly unworthy of the tremendous gift that you are given.  I am grateful. 

Yes, out of love, out of tremendous gratitude for having her brother returned to her, Mary shocks everyone in the house and breaks every … possible… Jewish taboo.  A lady of the house acting like a servant, doing the very worst of servant jobs, using expensive perfume rather than olive oil, and daring to even touch a man in a culture that did everything to keep them separate.  But out of the entire family, Mary is the only one who believes that God is to be valued more than custom.  Like any other shocking act, however, it tends to bring out people’s very worst.  When something happens that is sudden and, yes, even offensive, we aren’t given the opportunity to think, to keep up our normal appearance.  All we can do is react and so we see a window into everyone’s soul.  What lurks hidden beneath the surface becomes seen, and a person’s true character is revealed.  

It is here that Judas, the disciple who was about to betray Jesus, speaks.  And of course, of all the things that he would complain about it is about the money.  He does not protest Mary’s actions because she is taking on a task unworthy of her station; he is not objecting that Mary, a woman, is touching a man who is not her husband.  A person’s obsessions are often their undoing, and Judas’ eyes are on the very expensive bottle of perfume…watching as Mary first brings it out and reacting as its seal is broken and its contents wasted when olive oil would have sufficed.  It is this that Judas disputes, it is over this that his ire is raised – a glimpse into his true character that only now, years later, does our gospel writer mourn that he did not see.

John remembers how Judas objected that this expensive object wasn’t sold and given to the poor, but John, as he so often does in his gospel, tells his audience the truth in hindsight.  John says that in the end Judas did not really care about the poor.  He was a thief, obsessed with monetary gain, and  he used to steal from the common purse.  Judas, the namesake of Judah, not only the name born by the faithful kingdom of Israel but also the name of the honest brother amongst Jacob’s sons.  Judas learned that because of his namesake people would trust him.  He knew how to hide behind it, cover up his sin, and John speaks bitterly as a man who fell for it for years.

Now it must be remembered the risk that Mary is taking in doing this; that cannot be overlooked.  Their households are not ours, and it cannot be ignored that Mary has placed herself substantially in harm’s way by doing this.  Judas has rebuked Mary, and in that time and place when a male guest rebukes a female it is the man of houses duty to discipline her.  Women who performed such acts were regularly beaten for doing such things.  Hospitality was a matter of great importance in those days, and if it took punishing a servant or a sister to satisfy a guest, especially a deeply honored one like Jesus and his disciples, the men of the house did not hesitate to do it.  But before anybody can act, Jesus speaks.  Rather than address Mary’s behavior in any way, he calls out his own disciple for his lack of compassion.  “Leave her alone,” Jesus says, “she bought this perfume for the day of my burial, a practice that women regularly participate in.  You have the poor always Judas, but you do not always have me.”  In one swift stroke Jesus not only rebukes Judas but he also saves Mary, showing Lazarus he is not offended by her actions.  But there is something else going on here, something a reader needs to pay special attention to notice.  Whereas the other gospels have Jesus speaking in the future tense when describing this scene, John has Jesus speaking in the present.  Notice that Jesus does not say, “You will always have the poor”, “you will not always have me”, but rather Jesus says that right now you have the poor, Judas, but right now you do not have me.  You have chosen your obsession over me, my disciple; you have willingly chosen that which chains you down over your own Salvation.  Many claim that Jesus is foreshadowing his upcoming death, but that is not all that Jesus is doing here.  He is also giving Judas a dire warning.  Do not think your motives are hidden from me, Judas.  The others here are fooled by you, but I am not.  Everyone here has their sin, but the difference is you love yours and it is going to get you into dire, dire trouble.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason for Lent.  That is why the Church sets aside 40 days every year and asks us to take a hard look at ourselves, to take real and practical steps to not just see our sin but to show our Savior that we want to be free of them.  The Church does this because in her ancient wisdom she realizes any one of us can be the next Judas.  Any one of us can learn to hide our true selves from our brothers and sisters; to nurture our obsessions and learn to love our chains more than we love the God who wants to set us free. 

Sin has been described as spiritual insanity, a state of the human heart that desires the cancer more than the chemo, the love of the sickness to the point that we reject being well.  The Church knows we all suffer from this condition, and it knows it is difficult, but to prevent us from being the next Judas and suffering his terrible fate it recommends we do everything the disciples didn’t – that we enter a time of ugly reflection and that give up the things that chain us down.  Most people think Lent is about misguided notions of purity. I think if the Hebrew Scriptures teach us anything it is that chasing after purity is a fool’s errand - it is God who makes us pure.  Lent is not about getting to Easter as a purified human being.  Lent is about showing my God upon the day of His Resurrection that I have shed the chains that He died to rid me of.  Just like Mary’s Perfume, Lent is my paltry gift to God in response to all that God has done for me.  It is a chance to show the Divine that I do not value my obsessions more than I value Him.

And so now I must ask you, as the elected parish minister of this congregation, what are your obsessions?  What are the things that chain you down that you don’t want to be rid of?  Are you like Judas, do you obsess over money?  Are you afraid of not having enough or do you feel shame at not being able to pay your bills?  Turn those fears over to God, money will never make those fears go away.  Are you like Martha?  Do you obsess over your work?  Do you find that you can avoid awkward social situations by just going off and doing something?  Turn those anxieties over to God, turn them over before all you have is your work and no one to share them with.  Are you like Lazarus?  Do you obsess over propriety?  Do you value acting normal so you don’t feel embarrassed, pretending like nothing has happened so you don’t have to feel you owe somebody something?  Turn them over to God, turn them over before your obsession with propriety turns you into an ingrate, demeaning each and every gift you are given.  Don’t be like those people, don’t be chained down by obsession and fears.  Be like Mary, turn your worries, your fears, and your brokenness over to God.   Be like Mary, Be free.

Peace on Earth?

               Good Morning!  This year seems to have just whizzed by hasn’t it?  Indeed, every year I find the months seem to go a little quicker and the days fly by just a little faster.  And, in all honesty, though, ladies and gentlemen, for every year that goes by I wake up and find the world is just that much harsher, and the people in it just a little more cruel.  This year was certainly no exception, was it?  In 2015 so many names were brought to our attention, names like San Bernadino, Umpqua Community College, Planned Parenthood at Colorado Springs, and Charleston, North Carolina.  2015 also brought up other names, names like Islamic State and Boko Haram, the latter an African Extremist group who proudly proclaimed that they would marry nine-year olds, abducted some 270 school girls and forced them into marriages.  While we got those children back, our 6 month response time to that kidnapping was of little use to the young women who were victimized and the vast majority of whom are now pregnant.  And indeed, adding to this list that is already too long, we find also the names of Kim Davis, Missouri University, the Baltimore Riots, and finally Paris France.  It makes me just want to hide.  Yes, when confronted with the shear immensity of how violent and ugly our world is becoming it is easy to just want to lose myselves in the holidays, to envelope myselves in Christmas lights and tinsel, in presents, and carols – anything really.  Anything so I don’t have to admit to myself that this day there is not peace on earth and even on Christmas there is no goodwill toward men. 

                But in light of all the conflict and ugliness we have experienced this year, be they racial, religious, or otherwise, there is hope for all of this.  The good news is the world doesn’t have to be this way.  It doesn’t have to be angry, hurt, and confused and we do not have to respond to hate with hate, and in these regards I want to introduce you to someone.  He is not here right now, though I keep him with me.  You see, as I mulled over all that the world has been through this past year, my thoughts kept returning to my old mentor in seminary.  Now, as your pastor I want to affirm again that for us as Christians the answer is still Jesus, but I think there is a place for the people God puts in our path, and that our teachers and fellow humans often have important lessons to teach us about Him.  My mentor, as he referred to himself, was the right reverend Dr. Wilbur P. Stone.  He was a farmer, a businessman, a missionary, a pastor, and a professor.  He was a self proclaimed Congregationalist Baptist Pentacostal who also enjoyed the occasional Roman Catholic Mass. We didn’t agree on a lot theologically, but the loving heart of this man always struck me to the core.  As a Baptist minister he did not think a number of things were proper, homosexuality and homosexual relationships being one of them, but his response to his brother when he came out of the closet was just phenomenal.  When his younger brother told his family he was gay and in a gay relationship, much of his family left the dinner table never to speak to him again.  Wilbur just sat there, and in his fifties no less, as his brother turned to him through terrible tears. He asked Wilbur, “Aren’t you going to disown me too?  Aren’t you going to tell me what a sinful human being I am and tell me I’m going to burn in hell?” Wilbur turned to his brother and said, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, that is not for me to decide.  But I do know this, I am never going to abandon you, and wherever you are bound there will not be a day when you are not tripping over my love for you.”

                After my own study of the Scriptures and the history of the church, I disagreed with him that homosexuality was a sin.  Indeed, there is no evidence the church had much to say on the subject for its first 1100 years and had no problem producing wedding liturgy for same-sex couples.  But while we disagreed in theology we were in one hundred percent agreement over how that theology ought to be applied.  However, this is not the story I want to tell you about the man.  The story I am reminded of in these turbulent times is the story of Wilbur at one of his yearly Peace talks with Muslims in Eastern Africa.  While Israel and Palestine get most of the news coverage for peace talks in that part of the world, the fact is, as Wilbur and many others have found out, other places need them too.  And for many years Wilbur participated in these talks, addressing Muslim peoples pushed out of their homelands by their own Islamic brothers and pushed into tents where they had to rely on other peoples for food and water.  These talks of course had varying degrees of success but the time Wilbur remembered the most was one of the most recent. 

                These peace talks were always respectful, always non-violent, but this particular time a hard lined conservative Muslim imam found out about the talks and he butted his way in.  He was rude and he was quarrelsome.  He interrupted Wilbur’s points constantly, seemingly having a quote from the Qu’ran for everything Wilbur had to say.  At the end the imam got up and made a speech to Muslims in the crowd.  The word of God in the Qu’ran was clear, he said.  Wilbur and these Christians were infidels and even simply sitting here listening to them was nothing less than a show of disloyalty to Allah.  He called on the Muslim men listening to repent, to rise up and denounce these Christians as the faithless deceivers that they were.  Within moments some the Muslim men arose from within audience.  Steel in their backs and righteousness in their eyes, they stood up before Wilbur could even react.  Boldly they rose up and pointed their fingers at the Imam and said, “would you please just shut the hell up.”  They got up and told him that after being chased into the wilderness so many years ago by their own supposed Muslim brothers and sisters that they now knew why the Prophet himself sought refuge with the Christians when he was chased away by his own people.  Ugliness and hate in fact did NOT win that day, and years of hard work building peace amongst two very different peoples was not undone by one man’s self-righteous bigotry.  There was Peace on Earth in that little corner of the world and it was there because there was good will toward men.

                Our gospel lesson today is found in John, but today I want to talk about Luke’s gospel.  I want to talk about the Christmas story that tells of censuses and inns; of shepherds and angels.  I want to talk about that gospel, because in that gospel goodwill is absolutely the point.  When we hear Luke describe Caesar Augustus’ decree, we hear merely words of history, of a man just chronicling down facts as an accountant crunches numbers.  But what Luke’s gentile audience would know that perhaps we would miss is that the Jews revolted at every census.  Unwilling to be tracked by their government and unwilling to be recorded so they could be taxed, the Jews would be stirred up in Judea and would engage in violent riots.  As a Gentile Theophilus, a gentile friend of God, you would be constantly confronted with the often deadly actions of God’s people.  And while yes the Caesars and Rome were hardly above critique, that tax money supported the country in ways that people really benefited from.  It went to roads that kept trade healthy, it went to the courts so people could submit their pleas, and it kept the lands policed and crime down – in all except Judea.  That is why the story of Joseph and Mary obeying the census would be so shocking and yet so very vital.  Greek Historian Diodorus Siculus commented that the Jews considered all the world an enemy, but not these Jews.  These Jews did not revolt, they did not make war, they did not turn to violence.  For a Gentile believer in God this news was the world to you, for the long foretold and awaited Messiah did not come through the self-righteous and the war mongering, but through the peaceful and the obedient.  It came from Jews who obeyed the edict of their country, risking not only estrangement from their fellow kin, but risking their own lives and the life of their child in traveling the dangerous Judean countryside.  This was the Holy Family, the family that bore you as a gentile no ill will and was willing to burden itself, even endanger itself, for your benefit.

                And we find as we read into Luke’s story further that the goodwill shown by Mary and Joseph that day God would simply outdo.  We find that though His own people were typically inhospitable, that though none would share or even give up their own room for a pregnant woman and her family, that though it was amongst a people who had no more room for their king than a stable and a feeding trough, God bore them no ill will.  He came anyway.  Though the Jewish faithful had been groaning for centuries for a return of the Davidic King, it is both shocking and despicable the only honor reserved for those of the line of David was apparently that of a shut door.  But when God sent his angels it was not to punish, it was not to rebuke, but it was to proclaim the coming of the Messiah with Joy.  And the shepherds, unclean vagabonds and thieves to a proper Jew of the city, it was to them that the angels came.  Those who had been ostracized, those who were looked down upon, they were not missed.  In fact they were given a special invitation.  Though there was many a reason for God to be angry and incensed, rightfully indignant and in a mind to punish, it is the Incarnation, the birth of God as a human being, that we find God’s true character – Love.  God bears mankind no ill will, it is we who bear ill will for one another.    

         And so our gospel is like our lives this Christmas season.  We too live in a world that chooses to be harsh and inhospitable.  We too live amongst an unforgiving people who seem to always find a reason to have no goodwill for their fellow man, people who see the lives of their brothers and sisters as worth so much less than even the briefest false feeling of righteousness.  These people are absolutely in the world, but the good news is that we don’t have to be like them.  Just as God chose not to make mankind his enemy that fateful night 2000 years ago we can do that too.  We can choose to be like God, we can choose to leave the world of anger and fear and pride behind, we too can enter our suffering world with both love and joy.  We can choose to love people different than us, to respect and show kindness to people with whom we do not agree.  Through this we can have Peace on Earth!  This is not merely a numb and impotent phrase we tell ourselves this time of year.  It is not a set of tinsel-colored blinders we put every December the 25^th, it is a promise made by the Maker.  Peace on Earth is not only possible, but because of the work of Christ it is the inescapable reality. 

                Ladies and Gentlemen, the world is in turmoil.  It is suffering and in despair.  The violence and the hate of this past year have made it forget the very real hope we have for a better tomorrow.  It threatens to turn the Peace and the Joy of this Day into a mockery.  It will not succeed.  It will not succeed because we know of a better way, a way that answers anger with kindness, hate with love and fear with Peace, a way that began with God extending a hand of friendship and goodwill to an undeserving people that 1^st Christmas morning.  May we inject the world with that same Christmas grace every single day of the year.      

Amen and Amen.

July 5th Sermon: Let Us Not Be Distracted (Mark 6:1-13)

Good Morning and Welcome to Eastside Community Lutheran on this sixth Sunday of the Pentecost Season.  Our gospel lesson for today is one that puzzles a lot of people, so to begin today I thought I’d share one of my favorite puzzles.  It goes like this: Mary’s mother had five daughters.  The first was named Nala, the second Nele, the third Nili, and the fourth Nolo.  What was the fifth daughter’s name?  Any takers?  How about if I reword the puzzle this way:  Mary’s Mother had five daughters.  Mary’s first sister was Nala, Mary’s second Nele, Mary’s third Nili, and Mary’s last sister Nolo.  Who has to be the fifth daughter?  Mary!  If Mary’s mother had five daughters, one of them has to be Mary then, doesn’t it?  I love that puzzle because it relies on distraction, it gets your mind to wander elsewhere and not realize that the puzzle already gave you the answer you were looking for. 

Our gospel story is a lot like that.  When we read this text we often get drawn away on its tangents.  Why does the text say Jesus was powerless because of their unbelief?  Is Jesus like TinkerBelle from Neverland, do we have to clap and believe in him for him to exist?  Why are the disciples sent out without food, money or an extra tunic?  What is the point of that?  I could answer all these questions, and I will, but the fact is they are like the four daughter’s names in my puzzle, just distracting and not the real point. 

Let’s read our gospel story again, but this time let’s fill it in with some context and see if it doesn’t make more sense.   

          “After healing Jairus’ daughter, He left that place and came to his hometown of Nazereth with his disciples.   On the Sabbath, as was custom, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the fatherless son of Mary (in the ancient world, to name you the child of your mother and not your father was an accusation that you were born of adultery, everyone knew Jesus was not Joseph’s son).  Isn’t he the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?  And they took offense at him.

            Then Jesus said to them, "if the Prophet Jeremiah teaches us anything, it is that Prophets are not without honor - except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." By saying this, he reminded them that Jeremiah was a prophet before the fall of Jerusalem; that Jerusalem was Jeremiah’s hometown and his family rejected him.  Jesus warned them of the dangers of not listening to the bearers of God’s Word. 

            Because the Pharisees were already accusing him of casting out demons by the Prince of demons, doing deeds of power there would only have earned him more enemies and so he could not perform them.  He kept his miracles small in number and, laying his hands only on a few sick people and curing them.  Jesus was absolutely amazed at their unbelief.

Undaunted, he went about among the other villages to teach.  He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.  He ordered them to go as messengers with such urgent news that they took nothing for their journey except a staff and sandals; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, not even two tunics.  He ordered them to look as people with such incredibly wonderful and necessary news that they looked like they barely could get dressed before heading out the door.   

He said to them, "When you enter a house, stay there until you leave that place. Honor those who show you hospitality.  If any place will not welcome you, however, and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." 

So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent for the Kingdom of God was coming. They cast out many demons publicly, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”

A bit easier to understand this time?  It is rather strange and ironic, I think, that the pieces in here that distracted us in fact kept us from seeing the plain answer, which was namely that Jesus didn’t get distracted.  His priority was the Kingdom and he did not let things like his relationship with his hometown distract him from what was really important…making sure news of God’s Kingdom of Peace, Justice, and Healing reached the ears of those who had been waiting for it.  This plain truth now revealed and our hearts focused on that reality, what things might we learn from our gospel lesson? 

First, we can say with confidence that the story points out that only fools talk themselves out of a Blessing.  Rather than gratefully accept the teachings they admitted were wise and the miracles of healing that they proclaimed openly to be true they chose instead to be jealous and foolish.  Why is this fatherless goat able to do these things? Why should I pay attention to one who left my community instead of staying with his family business and helping us?  Rather than see the bigger picture of what God wanted to do in their lives they got distracted by their social prejudices, receiving a dire warning of judgment instead of the blessings God wanted so desperately to give.  Divine Blessing can come from anyone and anywhere.  If we would deny God’s blessings in our lives because they originated from an Arab, a homeless woman, or a person transitioning from a man to a woman, we will have failed to learn this lesson.  Let us resolve not to be like that.

Second, we should realize there is a flip side to the previous lesson: You cannot help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.  Jesus, the lion of Judah, who bounces all over creation, going from mountain tops to cities to villages to countrysides, to hometown synagogues, and back again  casting out demons, healing the sick, and proclaiming the Kingdom of God … at the end of the day even he decided it is best to let fools be alone with their foolishness.   Jesus doesn’t try to spend time arguing with them, he doesn’t try to convince them to see his side, and he certainly doesn’t apologize to them that they took offense.  Rather he remains undistracted.  The long awaited kingdom of God was coming; he helped whom he could but then moved on, teaching his own disciples to do the same.  If we spend time trying to win over friends and family who simply will not listen, who find it more advantageous to be against you rather than to be for you, it is simply time and energy wasted.  Let us resolve instead to remember that old adage to never argue with a fool: they would only drag us down and then beat us with experience.

Finally, there is lesson to not let the people who refuse your help keep you from the people who need your help.   Again, Jesus didn’t see his hometown as a black hole for his time and energy.  Rather than be distracted and focus his ministry there, he left his hometown and commissioned his disciples to do the work of the Kingdom, too.  His focus was on the people ready to hear the gospel, and to that end he not only met their needs himself but specifically trained others to do the same.  He warns his disciples that like his hometown not every place will welcome them, but there are many places that will and gladly so.  He tells them to make the places that desire God’s presence among them a priority, and for the others to wipe the dust of their feet against them and be done.  Let us resolve then to never obsess over our difficulties but keep our eyes always on the opportunities that God is providing.

These lessons are not only important lessons generally.  They are important to learn for us as individuals, but they are especially important for us in this particular community of faith.   Eastside Community Lutheran has some incredible opportunities for ministry in the coming years.  Everyone talks about how bad the denominations are doing, but no one ever talks about how bad.  From a certain denomination’s own statistics, 55% of their own congregations do not bring in enough funds to keep their individual church doors open, and similar situations are being reported across the board.  Between Hwy 61 and White Bear Ave, Larpenteur and Minnehaha, Eastside Community Lutheran is one of only four high-style Protestant churches.  As the denominations continue to do poorly and unfortunately close up shop, our radius of influence is only going to get bigger and bigger.  I am not joking when I say that in the next ten years Eastside could be looking at not only multiple Sunday Services, a flourishing Sunday School, and its own successful side ministries, but on top of that when the financially stable churches can no longer hold up everyone else we will see other churches following our lead and going independent.  The opportunities for a fiscally responsible, denominationally independent church that still values tradition, that is not afraid of having multiple voices in its pulpit, and is so dedicated to Christ’s gospel of love and forgiveness that it bears its wounds and scars proudly - that church has legs.  That church has street cred.   That church has incredible ministry opportunities. 

But if we are going to do that, if we are going embrace the future that God wants for Eastside Community Lutheran we as a community need to learn these lessons and learn these lessons well.  As we grow and are successful, there will be those in our hometown that will say, “Hey isn’t that Eastside Community Church?  Don’t we know who they are?”  We cannot be distracted by them.  There will be those that smugly refuse the help we offer, we mustn’t waste time on them.  Like Jesus, we mustn’t try to form community bonds with people that don’t want them formed, and most especially we must never apologize for the good that we’ve done or the gospel we’ve followed.  To do so would be to sabotage the very kingdom Christ died to establish, let us have none of it.  Let us instead focus on the kingdom and train up others to go out and announce God’s grace to the multitudes willing to listen.  Rather than be distracted by earthly things let us, as our Lord Jesus said, seek first the Kingdom and let all other things follow from there.  Amen and Amen.