Grace to you and peace from God, who calls us to share that Good News, that grace and peace this day. AMEN.
I wonder sometimes if we lose track of the vision.
I know I can. With all the activities, good and bad, swirling around in our own lives and in the lives of our congregations, how we can loose track of what we’re called to do.
Today’s readings call us back to that vision: the Gospel is meant to be shared. We’re being called back to the vision -- back “to the ends of the earth” -- this Easter season.
To whom will you witness this week? To whom will you bring this Good Word of God this coming week, sisters and brothers in Christ? We have a word of faith, hope and love to share with the world. We’ve received it over and over again in this place...or in whatever place you’ve heard, touched, smelled, tasted, and held the Gospel. That Good News is not meant to be kept to ourselves. It’s meant to be shared. I wonder sometimes if we lose track of this vision.
We have two texts today. One from Acts and one from Thessalonians. I want to talk mostly about Thessalonians, because it’s the older writing. Might even be the oldest in the early church -- older even than the Gospel accounts! This might be the very first writing we have concerning Jesus! Imagine that! In our canon -- that is, our order of books of the bible -- it kind of gets lost in there. But scholars date this letter back as early as 43 AD. (Even the oldest gospel narrative, which is Mark, wasn’t written for another 20 years!) So these are the first words we have from the Early Church...and they deserve our attention and our re-examination here today.
Paul writes: “To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace. We always give thanks to God for you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” These are the oldest written words of the early church! “For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the Gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” Scholar and translator Eugene Peterson puts that part like this: “When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.”
I would say that the Thessalonians, to whom Paul is writing and encouraging, have not lost track of the vision, in fact they have/are actually inspiring and encouraging even the great Paul and Silas to continue in their work of sharing and spreading the Gospel, even in the face of danger and protest and resistance. (We see that in the accounts of Acts.)
We too are chosen to bear witness...
I mentioned this in council this week: My grandpa -- who was pastor for ~15 years of a large church in Kansas City, Missouri -- every 5 or 7 years, as they continued to grow, would sit down and talk about some of their best leaders leaving Holy Cross Lutheran Church, in order to go plant a new church in the outskirts of Kansas City, where there was no church. “The Message of the Gospel wasn’t just words. Something happened. The Holy Spirit put steel in their convictions!” It wasn’t easy, Grandpa once told me. In fact it was often a fight. No one wanted to be the one to go. But they did. And they planted some 5 churches in his 15-20 years as pastor!
Do we need to split up and start planting new churches right now? I’m not sure about that...yet. But we definitely need to keep the vision of going outward with this Good News of faith, hope and love, through Christ, on our hearts and minds, and in our planning and envisioning. AMEN?
It’s a scary thought -- witnessing, moving outward in a sometimes hostile world, with this counter-cultural message of love -- but that’s where we’re called to go, friends in Christ. That is a dominant Easter theme. Time and again in the Easter season, Jesus appears to the disciples, sometimes locked in fear and doubt and even anger, and calls them to move out! [Text last week in Houston -- “I’m goin’ fishing.”]
Move outward...And to do so in peace. “My peace I leave you,” Jesus says. “My peace will never leave you. My grace is sufficient.” Grace and peace, these were some of the very first words of greeting in early Christian writing. Grace and peace is yours, even as you move outward, into strange, uncharted territory. So how will you witness this week, in the heart of this Easter season?
I don’t think this means you have to recite Bible verses in secular places, in people’s faces. Maybe there are some situations where that could be powerful, but oftentimes, that can feel like you’re beating the bible over people’s heads. The Good News of God comes to us not just through verses in the Bible alone, but through the Holy Spirit.
How will you be an agent of and bear witness to the Spirit’s work in this world this week? How will you move outward? The Easter season is all about going outward with boldness and joy, from the empty tomb.
I think of the stories I’ve heard about sisters and brothers from our community here at SVLC, who have been told in their work place, when someone actually found out you were a Christian or even a Lutheran, people would say something like:
“You never said you were a Christian, you never talked about God, but I always thought there was something about you…” A deep foundational faith, hope, and love. Paul could write a letter to many of you too: “I always thank God for you. For your ‘work of faith and your labor of love and your steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’”
Sisters and brothers in Christ, we worship a different God. We don’t worship the empire. The people in Paul’s day, worshipped the empire very overtly -- coins called Caesar the ‘Son of God’, people referred to him regularly, without batting an eye, “our Lord and Savior”. Literal idols were all over the cities. It’s not quite as overt today. But there are plenty of other gods to worship. Just look at credit card statements, national budgets, where parking lots are filled… There are plenty of false gods and idols today.
But sisters and brothers in Christ, we worship a different God -- a God whose name is Love, a God who build us and this world up, rather than incites fear and terror, which only breaks us down and tears us apart. We worship a God who breathes grace and peace upon us, who choses even you and me, and gives us a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear (i.e. the awe) of the Lord, joy in Christ’s presence! We worship a God who overflows with compassion, beauty and mercy. And we continue to follow that God outward into the world, we continue to try to be imitators (as Paul put it) of that one Jesus Christ. We continue to share the Good News. We continue -- despite our temptation and tendency to let the vision go blurry -- we continue to cling to the clear call of God, to faith, hope and love, to the promise of our Risen Lord. AMEN.
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