EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 3 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on June 24, 2020. This was the 14th digital service we performed after our church was shuttered because of the COVID pandemic.
Tonight Faith Family, I have one more scripture reading that I'd like to do for you. It is a short one, and we'll call it a bonus read tonight.
It comes from Hebrews 10:23: "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful."
So that verse will make a lot more sense, here, in a short bit. ... But I have a full confession to admit you, Faith Family. ... Up until about noon today, I had prepared for you one of the most uninspiring messages you may have ever heard from a pulpit. I had labored with this week's texts, and we are stuck in this pattern in Matthew in which Jesus is talking to his disciples and sending them out. And it felt to me that we had heard this message week upon week upon week. And quite frankly as I played with the text readings this week, and tried to make sense of them, and asked the Spirit what it was that I was supposed to preach on this week. I went through the motions, of course, and I had something prepared. And it was academic in nature and theologically correct, and it would have put even the five people in this room asleep. And I knew it, and I knew it in my own heart. And I was lamenting that fact.
And then as will so often happen with us, when we stop trying to correct things ourselves, and we turn it over, and we give up that wheel ... it's amazing the signs we see, isn't it? ... Because at 12:08 today, about eight minutes after I realized how boring of a sermon that I had prepared, I received a text message from Deb Smith, whose children are in our Sunday school program. It was a text containing Allison Smith's homework for the past month for Vacation Bible School. And she had sent me a photo, and you may see it on Facebook now, it is posted there.
This has been their assignment this week. In addition to sending out their greeting cards to many of our congregation members, the kids were supposed to be looking for God around them. And Allison sent this photo. If you look at this photo: It's kind of an overcast day. There's lake water in the foreground; in the back there are some really gray-blueish clouds; and it looks like it either has rained or may rain.
And Allison sent me this message through her mom: "This picture to me shows that God is always going to be there, whether it's raining and pouring or sunny and warm. He will be there through good times and bad times. You can count on God."
And it was at that moment that it really hit me as to the message that had been there, very apparent to me for the past day. So I just want to share with you Faith Family, that yesterday the reason that I was not here and we rescheduled service was that I had taken my mom with me to go visit my brother who you've heard over the past couple of years has been dealing with cancer.
So I took her to visit. Dan's been feeling very ill as of late, and we -- both myself and Dan's wife Teri -- just felt it was time to get his mom there so that she could visit with him while we could still have a day together. And so we went down -- about a three-hour trip for us -- and we went down, and we spent the day together with my brother, and his wife, and my niece and her son. And as you can imagine, it was a very tough day in so many ways. There were ups, and there were downs. We had about six hours there, and it was a blessing to be able to sit with my brother and talk with him as a brother to brother. And it was a chance for me to see my brother talk with my mom and enjoy some moments. And I had a chance to talk for several hours with my sister-in-law, and I can't remember the last time that happened.
I got a chance to hang out with my niece whom I adore, and as we have both grown and had children -- we're nearer in age than you would think of most niece and uncles; we're kind of more compatible to siblings probably. So we've both been in our child-rearing years, and we had a chance to talk, and spend some time together that we just haven't had in recent years.
And then my little fourth-grade great-nephew took me out onto their property, and showed me their vegetable gardens, and their orchard, and their herb gardens. And we walked out to the back prairie, and he was naming plants, and we had a chance to spend about 30 or 45 minutes together ... one on one, just the two of us out in nature. And I got to listen to all of his grandmother's naturalist lessons coming out. And he sounded like he could be a park ranger himself, that fourth grader.
Of course there were the downs as well. As I stated, my brother is very ill, and it's very hard to watch someone you love in pain. And it's very hard to watch his family as they care for him, and to watch them alternate between being caregivers ... and one who is grieving.
And then, of course, to watch your mom sit and watch her son in pain. ... As Mike and I were talking before service tonight ... no parent should have to go through that.
It was all heartbreaking and beautiful and soul-crushing ... all at once.
And then we had the drive home. And my mom and I got in my vehicle, and we headed back north again. And, as you can imagine, it was a very somber conversation for much of the drive. Out of the corner of my eye, as I watched my mom processing the whole day.
As we drove farther and farther north and got closer to Crookston, we could see the weather front moving in -- the one that I'm sure you all experienced last night too. There were parts that ultimately were down pour, and then there were parts that were sprinkling. But it was a very ominous-looking sky in the west.
I that settling upon me: Rain on top of the emotions of the day. And I searched my memory again for those passages that I turn to in those moments. And it dawned on me in that ride back last night that I often go back to Hebrews 10:23: "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful."
I dwelled in that moment for quite some time. And ultimately again, we drove on; we drove into this weather pattern that at one point dropped a down pour, that sounded thunderous on the roof of the car.
It was quite in the care, and we were both spending time with our thoughts. But eventually we pulled through the other side of that front. And something very remarkable happened: We got to the point where the rain stopped falling, and a calm took over the prairie. The wind stopped moving the trees, and the fields stopped waving. And I looked out to my left, in the west, where the clouds were clearing. And the sky opened into this blazing orange sun that had been hidden behind the clouds. Such a beautiful sight that I can't even describe the colors. ... I don't know how many of you might have seen that or captured that sunset last night. But it was a moment that just gripped me because it lit up the entire western sky.
And I looked to my right, and my mother says, "Well, would you look at that sky!"
I said, "Yes, Mom, I'm looking at it! ... It's beautiful. And I don't even know how to describe it!"
And she's like, "No, the one over here!" ... And she points out her window. And I looked to my right, and I knew -- we're driving due north -- and of course, my mom would have been looking due east, exactly the path that the storm would have followed ... from west to east. And out my mom's window were these ominous, dark clouds that almost looked like night. The same ones that had passed over us but had continued to go east. And there was just this stark difference between looking out my mom's window and looking out my window and seeing this glorious sunset that almost looked like the white, fluffy clouds were on fire.
In that moment, this message from Hebrews came back. This message that tells us and reminds us that even though here over on the right there's always going to be those storm clouds, there's always going to be those thunderous rains ... but over here on the left there's also sunsets that are indescribable. Sunsets that if you picked out a palette of colors, you could never match because you don't have God's creativity.
I realized in that moment in the car last night, that that is so often the tension that we live in in our faith, isn't it? ... On the one hand, you have a beautiful visit with your brother, and you get to talk about just being brothers and the future, and what it's like to watch little Evan (my great-nephew) grow up. And you get to see your mom hold your brother's hand.
And then there's those other moments where you see the pain your mom's eyes, and the pain in your sister-in-law's eyes, and in your niece's eyes. And that is the tension that we live in as faithful people.
But tonight, Faith Family, the Good News is: I go back to Hebrews, and I read again: "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful.
Even though each of us is going to drive through those storms, and each of us is going to see a windshield that is split down the middle of a torrential downpour on one side a glorious, enflamed sunset on the other. ... It is the cross that is the center of that windshield, and we drive to that cross because we know what the promises are. ... And that is our hope. Because we are a people born of hope. And we are a people born of a God who makes promises that will never go unfulfilled.
And that is the Good News for this evening, Faith Family. ... And I promise you that was a much better sermon than the one you were determined to hear earlier today before Allison went her lovely picture. And so out of the mouths of babes: I think Allison, and I think the Holy Spirit rescued all of us on this Wednesday evening.
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