February 2, 2014. Pastors Penny and Keith talk about their recent trip to Papua New Guinea. [In this sermon, Pastor Penny and Pastor Keith refer to photos that were being displayed by projectors in the church at the time.] *** Transcript *** [Pastor Keith] Well we've heard about Simeon in our reading this morning as one who held this Christ child and said he is the light of the nations. And this gospel that comes through Jesus then is the light to all nations, and we're going to focus this morning on it being the light to a place in the world called Papua New Guinea. It's just north of Australia. And the part that you see in orange there is the part that's Papua New Guinea. The island is divided in half. It's the second largest island in the world. But the part that's in orange, and then New Britain and some of the other islands around it, make this country that's in partnership with our Central States Synod, ELCA. We've been in partnership for many years now. Different people in our synod, including a former bishop, have lived in Papua New Guinea during part of their lives. So we have a partnership with Papua New Guinea, as well as with Eastern Russia, the Urals, and Siberia. People from there were with us this summer, and we hosted a dinner for them back in June. But today's focus is on Papua New Guinea. This is a picture of our delegation. See Penny there, and the mission developer in our synod office, and pastor Gary Teske, who most recently was pastor at Lawrence, Kansas. Now he's retired, but still working with our companion synod committee. The two other men you see there are Walter and Phillip, two men who were the ones who took us around and took care of us on this trip. I want to talk about the last Sunday morning we were there. We went to this church at a place called Sattelburg. It's kind of in a German style; you can see it looks like a cathedral. The mission was started by Germans about 1886, late 1800s, when Germans had come to put in plantations and to take trees for wood. There was a pastor who came first to be minister to the workers, but then noticed all the people who were doing the low-level work, the natives, and began to change his idea from being a chaplain to the German workers, to being a missionary to the workers who were doing the hard work. And so he started that in this area. It took a long time, maybe 25 years or so, to get conversions to happen. But this church is on a very high mountain, one of the highest places in that area. And as you probably recall, important things happen in the spiritual world on mountains. In the Old Testament we have several things that happen on mountains. And the normal lesson for today, if we weren't doing the Presentation of Our Lord, would include the words of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus was on a mountain to speak. So, high places like mountains, in both more native religions as well as Christianity, can be important parts. And so it was a symbol to have a Christian church on this mountain that had been the premier spot for the native religion of Papua New Guinea. For the people it was their high, holy place. And so their religion went away, and Christianity came to take that place. And so this is at this place called Sattelburg. Well for once on the trip, we were early for something. We were early for church. And so we'd ridden in this pickup up there. And so we were talking, waiting for the worship to happen. And the man you see on the right had been in our conferences all week. Even though he was an older man, he was always concerned that the stewardship plans that we were talking about were not modern enough, that they would not appeal to the young people. And so we heard from him in other ways, both in the pigeon, that normal language, and he could speak English also. But here we begin with a new theme, and he talked to us with a big thank you. He said, "I want to thank you for being here." First I thought he meant like other people we've run into, people on the reservation or people in El Salvador, or others who say, "Thank you for being here because it just helps us keep up hope." But that was just his start. He did thank us for coming, but he said, "I mean 'you,' as all of your people who have brought the gospel to us. We would not be the same. We would be back in slavery to death," like we heard in our Hebrews lesson today, "If it weren't for the gospel having come here. It's completely changed us as a people, both in ways that make for good institutions, but especially in our faith. It changes how we think." And so he was one who thanked us as representing all those who have come before, as ones who brought the gospel to him and to those people. We talked to Pastor Gary Teske, who was with us on this trip. He had been a missionary in the western highlands for about nine years. In our conversations we asked Gary, how did you come into villages that have never heard a word about Jesus or the gospel, and make any change with them? He said well, we'd arrange a meeting with either the tribal elders, and other people would come, and we'd say you live under this "slavery to death." That is you live under, in your former religion, the fear always of what the spirits of the ancestors are going to do to you today. Are you going to make the right move? Are you going to do the right thing? Or will your ancestor haunt you in some way? You never have a moment of joy because you're always worried about what the spirit of the ancestors are going to do. I have news to you, Gary would say, of a different god, a god who cares about you, a god who doesn't want you to live in fear, a god who wants you to live knowing care and love. And it wasn't always at the first meeting that they would convert, but hearing a word of a god who loves them rather than gods who are always after them converted the people. And that's, I think, what he really was trying to say to us that day. About 15 miles away is another church, and it's the scene where another conversion happened for the people in about 1909 (we'll see on a chart in a minute) when a pastor got all the tribes together on this spot and said: this is the day I ask you to choose. I ask you to choose to live for the Lord Jesus and to lay down your weapons. And he had the persuasive power -- we'll call it the power of the Holy Spirit, would be better explanation. They laid down their weapons and they all that day said yes, said -- as many tribes -- that they would now become Christian. And so, we begin to get a hint of what a difference this has made in the last hundred, hundred twenty-five years in this country and change of life. Someone said, we used to fight all the time, we would eat each other, you know. There were cannibals. It was awful. But everything is different now with the news of Jesus. Pastor Teske used the example when he was in the highlands that, as for Paul and others, congregations don't always get along very well. One of the congregations under his charge had split. He was disappointed and had a meeting with them, and said we've been talking about love and loving one another in the Lord. Isn't there a way to work this out? And they said no, there's no way to work it out. And a man came to him afterwards and said Pastor Gary, just remember that in former times we would have killed each other. Now we're just splitting into two different churches. So it's a depth of change that the gospel has made in this place, and we came to appreciate it. Part of our guide's thanks was for the institutions that came with the church. They didn't have organized schools. They didn't have organized hospitals. But because of God's care now, through the faith, they have. This is the sign for a hospital begun by Lutherans from Germany -- the Brown Hospital, still operating. They have hospital care, ways to heal one another, ways to heal a person. And now they have things like a school system and regular daily primary public schools. They also have a government. He was proud that Lutherans are in high places in the government, that they are a part of things. People from their district are high up in the government. And so this wouldn't have happened in the days before PNG became independent in 1975. So he went on and on to talk to us about big changes. The gospel has made this light of Christ to the nations, has changed them just thoroughly, as individuals and as a people, because it's come to them. Now Pastor Penny will pick it up. [Pastor Penny] As Pastor Keith mentioned, it's probably been a hundred twenty-five years since the light of the gospel came to people in Papua New Guinea. As an aside, the children were looking at a picture of a child fascinated by wheels. It's been said that in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, in the isolated valleys, the first time they ever saw wheels was in the second world war, because they were that isolated. So this was a country that was very isolated and certainly didn't know the gospel until a hundred twenty-five years ago. And like Anna and Simeon, they live now the gospel. You can see it in big ways, where they've come to be peaceable and they've organized a government. But we saw it in three ways that I think are very distinctive in Papua New Guinea. In the first way, we saw how the gospel changed them, that they love to get together. And it's nothing for them to travel by foot, on hot and humid days, carrying things on their heads and on their backs for a half hour or more to get to a meeting or to get to church. They routinely walk, and they're just so eager to be together. They had a farewell dinner at one place for us, and it was a potluck. And I sat next to a lady and I said what did you bring? And she pointed to a big tray of things. Turns out she'd walked for a half hour or more carrying that tray. And by the time that potluck was over it was pitch dark, and she was going to just turn right around and walk -- no electricity or anything, no flashlights -- home again, carrying her tray. She was happy to do that. They love being together. They love community. Another thing that I noticed was (and this is not new for anybody who's ever been to a third world country) they have a different sense of time. And of course it's a challenge to people from the Western world, but I came to really get a better sense of why they have a different sense of time. They took time to greet people. We went to a nature preserve, and the men that were guiding us went up and they were talking with the the guards and shaking hands and laughing. I thought they must know these men. No, that's just the way you are in Papua New Guinea: you take time for one another. They didn't mind just watching each other. We saw three men who were volunteering to repaint the student union at a seminary in Lae. And there were four or more watching them, just spending time with them. They took the time to be together, to encourage each other, to be friendly. When we were staying in the rural area, we stayed in a guest house, which is the house on the left. And it was right next to the district office, right across the lawn from us. And I was amazed that late into the night there would be guys in there laughing and talking. It was a place of socialization, not just business. They did get business done, but they did it on their own time, which allowed for a lot of talk and care of one another. We took a number of different hikes. And I was hiking with this man who's a minister named Robert. And before he became a minister, for 18 or 19 years he was a commercial fisherman, or sailor I should say. And he told me one time they sailed to Florida and they docked in Miami and spent a month there. And I said, what did you think of United States? And he said, I've told my friends if you want to live in the United States, it's all about time, time, time. We have a different sense of time. We have our own agendas. Therefore our meetings start on time. Their's don't. Their worship may not start on time and may not end on time. But the reason, I came to realize, is because they set aside their personal agendas for other people, and they're just very willing to let interruptions become their business. So it was frustrating and refreshing at the same time. The third way that the light of the gospel really shows through in their way of life is their hospitality. We were fed three times a day by a woman who insisted on bringing these lavish meals for us. We told her we still have some left over, we can eat this for two meals. No, she would take what was left over and give us something brand-new out of her garden, which was quite a distance away. She had to hike to it. Or she would go to the local market and use the fruits and vegetables from the area. But she would also have canned meat and ramen noodles. They have their own brand of ramen noodles, many flavors -- and she used it so creatively. Every meal was different, very tasty and beautiful. This is how she liked to serve the fruit. So we really knew the hospitality of food and being well cared for. Often when we'd go places there would be a ceremony to greet us. They call them "sing sings," where they'd have native garb and they'd sing native songs. The second time we encountered it was when we came from traveling by ferry to this rural area. And of course being PNG, they didn't have the battery for the ferries. The ferry was three or four hours late. So what they had intended to be a ceremony in the afternoon leading up to dinner, was now in the evening and it's pitch-dark there. But they waited for us. And then they met us and they had erected kind of a gate out of foliage and it would fall down -- they would push it down -- to show that we were welcomed, and then we would walk over that gate. They had prepared the passage to the meeting house where we were going to have the meeting, decorated it with petals. And they led us by this procession wearing their native garb and singing their native songs all the way up to the house where we would be having the meeting. There were often gifts. You can see we all got PNG hats. I mean they have so little. Beautiful bags, you saw the men wearing them around their heads. Everyone used them as a way to transport papers, books, groceries, babies, whatever you had. You put that around your head to transport your baby. You can see we're trying out our caps. Necklaces too. They liked to give gifts, and it was a beautiful thing they did. But I think the person who embodied hospitality the most for us was Walter. He's an official with their district -- or their synod, it would be like our synod. But he was our guide. And he was always hovering, so to each other we called him our mother hen. He was a beautiful man. And the last time he showed it, we were about to leave to return to Lae for a four-hour ride in a motorboat. I'm going to move ahead so you can see what they are like. They're not that big, and they pack them full of people and things, and they sit really low on the water and go very fast and they're way out in the sea. And nobody, nobody has life jackets. Well Walter couldn't stand that. Here he was in charge of the four of us, and he wanted to make sure we got there without drowning. So Walter borrowed life jackets, four of them -- and there were fifteen of us in there, so I'm not sure what would happen. And here he is, like a good flight attendant showing us how to put on the lifejacket to make sure we were protected. He was a beautiful person and his hospitality was amazing. At one service, which is so typical of them, they just turned to the four of us and said, you sing a song. And we looked at each other thinking okay, what do we know the words to that kind of fits in? And someone said how about "They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love." We thought okay, we probably all know that one, so we started singing it. And of course they knew it and they joined right in -- and they knew all the words. And it was really a kind of a theme song, I think for me anyway, because as we flew out it was a very sad time. I figured, being logical, I would never see these people again. And they were so gracious and so passionate about their faith. But they reminded me of all the ways that we who have the light of Christ live that light out -- in the way we treat other people, in the way we treat time, in the little things as well as the big things. They were a good reminder to me of the wonderful responsibility and gift that we have in knowing the light of Christ, and that whatever we do we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to let the world see that we are Christians by our love. So they taught us a lot. And we have a lot to be grateful for. And hopefully we will keep in contact with them and continue to support them. *** Keywords *** 2014, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Penny Holste, Pastor Keith Holste, Hebrews 2:14-18, Luke 2:22-40

May 19, 2013. There are big changes ahead for the church. Today, 20% of people in the United States say they have no affiliation with any religious group. They are the "unchurched." How can we reach them? Pastor Penny draws a parallel between this challenge and the day of Pentecost. She suggests that Pentecost was not a one-time event but that it goes on, and that we need it. *** Transcript *** When we had this lesson on the day of Pentecost in Bible class on Wednesday, one of the women said, "You know, we never hear what it was like from the disciples' point of view." We don't, really. So if you will imagine with me and permit me, I'd like to imagine what the day of Pentecost might have been like from the point of view of one of the disciples: Peter. When Jesus told us, the disciples, that we would receive this power, we had no idea what he meant. I thought the power would come gently, gradually. But when Pentecost day came, I discovered it was anything but gentle. I was almost in pain with the light and the sound and the sense that a spirit was filling me and moving me. We were literally drawn out of the door of that room and into the crowd waiting around the outside of the building. And I, walked up to a group of people I would never have approached before -- Peter, just a country bumpkin from Galilee -- and I walked right up to sophisticated Romans. And I began to speak to them. And I discovered that I can speak Greek, even though I was never taught that language. And they could understand me, and I could understand them. And so of course I began to say: I need to tell you what this is all about, what my friends and I have experienced, about how God is changing everything through this man called Jesus. But I had no longer begun to tell them, when I was compelled by the Spirit to climb up on a wall and begin to preach -- me, a fisherman, who just days earlier had been too afraid to tell a group of servants that I was Jesus' friend. I was preaching to hundreds of strangers. And here is the most amazing thing: they listened. And thousands of people joined our group that day because of what we said. And the marvels kept coming, because we did things entirely differently. We were used to worshiping in the synagogue, but we began to meet in homes. We were used to staying with our own, you know the poor and the rich. We were all together. We pooled our money. We ate a common meal. And I have to say, I didn't always like the people I was eating with. But I grew to love them because of one man: my friend, my savior, the one who took me -- a sinful fisherman -- and cleaned me up, forgave my sins, and gave me a reason to live. That's how that first Pentecost felt to me. I'd like to suggest this morning that Pentecost was not a one-time event -- that it goes on, and that we need it. Because there are big changes ahead for the church. The church has been changing over the last fifty years. Fifty years ago, half of the people in our country went to churches like this -- mainline Protestant: Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal. And now maybe 8% to 16% do. Fifty years ago Christians filled the Muny for an Easter sunrise service. They filled Kiel Auditorium for reformation services. Not anymore. Today, 70% of our youth fall away from the church, and only a third come back when they're older. Across the board, congregations -- and not just in Protestant churches, across the board -- are reporting that Sunday morning attendance is down, collections are down. And it trickles up to their church bodies, to their publishing houses, to their seminaries. The Seminary I graduated from just let 8 of their 44 professors go for financial reasons. While the Protestant, the Christian, the organized church like this is diminishing, something else is growing in our country -- and maybe you've seen the statistics. It is the "unchurched." Today, 20% of people in the United States say they have no affiliation with any religious group. Now here at Christ Lutheran, we are truly blessed. Our membership is stable and grows a little bit. We have a nice cross-section of ages. We have vital lay leadership. We meet our budget -- not always easily, but we do. But even here our Sunday morning attendance diminishes. We're okay right now. But we have to be prepared. And I don't mean to cast guilt; I think we're all doing the best we know how. But what I'm saying is across this nation, people are meeting in churches, they're baptizing, they're marrying, they're burying, they're communing, they're praying, they're talking about doctrine, they're singing songs, and they're shrinking. So clearly, we need to be open and thinking about how we can share the gospel in a new way. Now I think we get some guidance, and we definitely get some hope, from the story of Pentecost and from the gospel. The story of Pentecost shows us that if people, the unchurched, are not coming to us, it is very important that we go to them. And you do that because you work with unchurched people, you live next door to them, you go to school with them. They may be in your families. And the second thing we learned from the Pentecost story, besides the fact that we need to go out, is that communication is essential. Now, I don't suggest that you get on a wall and preach to your friends. That wouldn't be effective. That's not how we do it. But as you engage people that you know, or don't know so well, but are unchurched, you listen. You learn from them. You learn to care. You model in your life the hope that is within you. And you are ready and may be given the opportunity to answer the questions "So why do you go to church?" and "What is this all about to you?" The individual, the one-on-one, is going to be the new thing of the future. It's the old thing of the past, but it's certainly going to be part of our future. But beyond that, how the church will organize itself, how it will worship, how it will share the message and pass it on -- we bring this challenge to the Holy Spirit. We bring it to the Holy Spirit the way the disciples did: they waited and they prayed. Because we learn two things about the Holy Spirit that give us the confidence and the hope that that's the place to go. The first is we learn the Spirit is powerful. The spirit of Jesus -- and that's what we're really talking about when we say the Holy Spirit, that Jesus lives on in our lives -- the spirit of Jesus can do new things in the most unusual places and ways. Jesus turned death into life by rising from the dead on Easter and brought us back to God. So the Spirit is powerful. But this is maybe even more important: the Spirit is forever. Jesus said that: I send you an advocate who will be with you, not for a time, not for a generation, not for a millennium. But forever. This Spirit as believers lives within us. We make that a formal event here at the baptismal font, but the spirit of Christ lives within us and uses us as it used the first disciples, to move out and to wait for change. So we have a challenge before us. But we don't bury our heads in the sand like the ostrich, and we don't look at it fearfully. What we do is what we heard the disciples doing in the story today. They prayed and waited for the Spirit. So we pray, and we wait to see how the Spirit will bless us and use us to bless the world. We pray and we wait to see what new thing the Spirit will do among us. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2013, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Penny Holste, Acts 2

*** Transcript *** We begin this morning in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Even if you're not a basketball enthusiast, you know probably that tomorrow is the final game in the NCAA tournament. And I'm sure that after the event is over, there will be a lot of analysis of it. And there will be talk about what it means, putting it in perspective, and where to go from here, so that the winning team will probably talk about how this is the high point of their lives and they've been working toward this goal for years. The winning coaches will feel validated in their strategies. And when they talk about where to go from there, they'll probably make some guesses as to which players will be drafted to the NBA, and what the teams will look like next year, and what coaches will get moved around. After any event, we always want to try to analyze it, put it in perspective, understand what does it mean and where do we go from here. Well, we're one week away from the most important event in the Christian church, and that is the celebration of Easter. And Jesus, in today's gospel, was one week away from that event. And he gathered his disciples together to understand that event, to ask really what did it mean, and where do we go from here? Those are good questions for us a week out of Easter to ask: so what really did Easter mean, and where do we go from here? I think before we tackle those questions though, we probably need to remind ourselves of why we needed Easter to begin with. And to do that, I'd like to tell you a story that I first heard in the seminary. It's a story written by a woman named Anne Herbert. It's her rendition of the Garden of Eden, not meant of course to displace the one in the Bible, but maybe to shed some light on it. She tells it in the first person, as one who was there. And her story is called "The Snake." "In the beginning, God created more than two people. God created a whole bunch of us, because God wanted us to have fun. And God said, 'You can't have fun if you don't have a whole gang of people.' And then God put us in this playground, this park called Eden, and said, 'Enjoy!' "And at first we had the kind of fun that God expected us to: we rolled down the hills, and we waded through the streams, and we swung on the vines, and we frolicked in the forest. And there was a lot of laughing. "But one day the snake said to us, 'You're not having real fun, because you're not keeping score.' We didn't know what keeping score meant, so he told us. That didn't sound fun, until he said, 'I think you should give an apple to the person who plays the best. And the only way you're going to know who plays the best is to keep score.' Well now that sounded like more fun, because we all knew that we were the best. "But things began to be different after that. There was a lot of yelling. And we spent hours creating rules that we could score for our games. We had to give up on some games like frolicking, because we couldn't think of any rules for the game. "And by the time that God noticed that we were playing differently, we were spending about 45 minutes a day playing and the rest of the time working on our scores. And God became angry. And God said, 'You have to leave my garden because you're not having fun.' We said, 'We are too having fun' — and we were having fun. And God shouldn't get angry with us just because we weren't having fun his way. "But God didn't listen. "God kicked us out of the garden. God said, 'You can't come back until you stop keeping score.' And then, just to get our attention, God said, 'You know, someday you're all going to die and these points aren't going to mean anything anyway.' "But God was wrong. Right now my all-game cumulative is 15,548, and I feel very good about that. It means a lot to me. And if I work really hard before I die, I think I can get my score up to 20,000. And that will be quite an accomplishment. But even if I don't do that, my life has value because I have taught my children to be high scorers. And they certainly will get to 20,000 or maybe even 30,000. "When you think of it, life in Eden wasn't very meaningful. I mean, fun is good in its place. But it doesn't mean anything if you can't keep score. God has a very superficial attitude toward life. I'm glad that my children aren't being influenced by God anymore — that we've left. And we're all very grateful to the snake." Well, that's kind of a sad story. And it has unfortunately the ring of truth: that we so often take our accomplishments, which are important and necessary and good, and we make them into what is most valuable in our lives and what gives our lives meaning. Because we are naturally competitive and selfish, we tend to quantify everything we do. And I remember when I taught remedial reading, and already in first grade every child knew whether they were in the best reading group or not. We quantify, we measure, we compare grade points, how many friends we have on Facebook, how we look, how much money we make. And that's what gets our energy going, trying to get better in those areas. And we are so hard on ourselves, and we can become so depressed when we don't do well. And it's too bad, because God was trying to tell us that what we accomplish is not where we get our true value. But back to Easter and what does Easter mean then, now that we see that we have a need for something here? I'd like to tell another story. It's a sequel to the first one. It was written by another person, a pastor named Daniel Erlander. And this story is called "The Birth of the Pointless People." "When God looked at the old gang that used to have so much fun rolling down the hills and frolicking in the forest, and saw them tragically working hard to add up scores and condemning people who didn't have high scores, God became angry — so angry that God said, 'I am going to destroy them.' "But then God wept and said, 'I can't destroy them.' And God repented. "And so God tried different ways to move them back into a life without points. And finally God smiled and said, 'I have an idea. I will enter their world of point keepers, but I will do it very gently.' "And so God entered the world of point keepers as Emmanuel, God with us. And this is how Emmanuel did it: he would tiptoe up to someone who had very few points, or no points at all, and whisper to them, 'You don't need points.' And they would smile and think maybe that's true. And then he would gather all these people together, and they would have a party and they would eat and drink and dance. And one of them would say this is a pointless party, and they would all laugh. And people who weren't at the party would stand around on the sidelines, waiting to see what would happen. And Emmanuel would turn to them and say, 'Come to me, all you who are burdened by keeping score, and I will give you rest.' "But the people who were in charge of the points were threatened by Emmanuel. So they put him in jail, and then they killed him. And Emmanuel's friends wept. And then they said, 'We knew it was too good to be true. The only thing left for us is to go back to keeping score.' And they buried him in a borrowed tomb, and they went back to Jerusalem to work. "But God said, 'Aha! So the point keepers think it's back to normal, do they?' And God called out, 'Get up, Emmanuel. Get up.' And Emmanuel did. He got up, and he called his friends together. And he said, 'Let's continue with the party. Let's continue our work.' And at first they were hesitant. And then they joined hands and made a big circle, and started the party all over. And then Emmanuel breathed on them and said, 'Now I give you the power of my yoke, the power to care for each other, and to care for the world.' And then before Emmanuel left he said, 'And remember: the snake was wrong.' " Well, the people in charge of keeping points in Jesus' day were probably the Pharisees. They had all kinds of rules for how you could become a child of God by what you did. And they too were threatened by Jesus. And of course, as we know, they had him tried and killed. But Jesus didn't stay down. I'm sure that the disciples felt just the way the people in the story did. And they thought after Jesus died, "Well we thought it was too good to be true." And that's why when he came out of the grave, as we heard in today's gospel, it was so hard for them to believe that he was really alive. When he came out of the grave Jesus showed that his way, not the way of the point keepers but his way, was the true way — that our value is already here, that he gives it to us, all the value we could ever want, that our points mean nothing compared to that, that we are children of God through Christ. The writer of John tried to tell us that at the end, where he says, "I put these words down so that you would believe in Jesus, and so that in believing in him you would have life." The meaning of Easter is that we have this new life, this freedom from judging ourselves and others. But where do we go from here with this? Well, when Jesus got the people together he, like in the story, breathed on them and he said, "As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you." And that's really where we go from here. We are sent out with this freedom, this new joy, this sense of confidence to live out our lives wherever we are — on the playground, or on Facebook, or in the boardroom, in the kitchen, behind the wheel, in front of our friends. We are just simply called to live out this freedom and not to judge others. And as they see that, and as they see that we are working to make the world a place where people are not condemned for not having points, things will change. The meaning of Easter is simply that we have a new freedom, and we've been sent to share it. The meaning of Easter is that we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt what Jesus always knew, and that is that the snake was wrong. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2013, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Penny Holste, John 20:19-31, The Snake, Anne Herbert, Tales of the Pointless People, Daniel Erlander

February 3, 2013. Does God love poor people more than others? We build up walls around ourselves, to separate our in-group from outsiders. But what if our mission were hospitality to those outside our walls? Pastor Penny's sermon today is on outgrowing the groups that divide us and tearing down the walls. *** Transcript *** I know some of you are in high school, and many of us have been to high school. When I think back about my high school years -- they might be different from yours -- but my high school years were years of cliques and groups. There were in-groups. There were outsiders. There were lots of groups. There were athletes. There were popular kids. There were students. There were probably the geeks. There were ones who were quiet. There were the ones who always got in trouble. And of course it was nice to be in a group. That way you knew you had someone to sit with at basketball games, and you knew that you always had a chair there saved for you at the cafeteria. But there was a downside to some of these groups too. Our group felt like we were put down by another group, and we felt superior to another group as well. You didn't move around between groups very easily; it was very hard to do it. And there were people I never talked to in my class. I never thought though, at the time, that my group had held me captive, that there were these walls. I never really thought of it at the time. But that's exactly what Jesus was thinking about in today's gospel. He was talking about the in-groups and the outsiders, and it really got him into trouble. As you remember from last week, Jesus was the "hometown boy made good" and he came back to his hometown of Nazareth, and he was invited to read the scripture. And he read the words of the prophet Isaiah, who said that he had come to bring good news to the poor and to bring release to the captive. He said that he had come to give sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free. And after he read those words that the prophet Isaiah spoke, Jesus said in so many words: and that's what I'm going to do, too. And at first his hometown friends or probably relatives and people thought, wow that's beautiful. That's wonderful. And then they began to think, what is he saying? Who does he think he is to say that this is what he's going to do, and he can speak for God? He's not a religious ruler. He's just Joseph's son. He wasn't born into the family of the high priest. He's not a Pharisee or a scribe. He's an outsider. And they began to get angry. And then, just to prove that Jesus was more of an outsider, he brought up something they did not want to hear. He said: do you remember how in the Old Testament there are two prophets of Israel, prophets sent by God to Israel who didn't help the Israelites? Instead they went outside of the country. They went to Sidon and helped a widow who was starving. They went to Syria and help Naaman, who had this skin disease that we heard about in the children's sermon. He said there were plenty of people they could have helped in their own country, but they didn't. And suddenly they realized that what he was doing was challenging their idea that they were in the in-group, that they were God's chosen people. Therefore that God loved them more than anyone, and that God would bless them. And he was challenging that, and they became furious and tried to kill him. Well, why did God pass over all those people that needed help in Israel and send prophets to help people in other countries who are heathen? Does it really mean that God loves poor people more than others? You know, it's interesting because Jesus himself said, "I came for the poor, I came for the oppressed." And his mother, in a few chapters before this, has that beautiful Magnificat where she praises God for lifting up the poor and putting down the rich. And when Jesus preaches he will preach, in the Beatitudes, woe to the rich and blessed are the poor. Now, "poor" can mean a lot of things. You can be poor financially. You can be poor in the way people look at you and your prestige or your honor. You can be poor because you don't have good health. But is Jesus really trying to say that God loves the poor more than anyone else? I can think of two reasons why God comes to the aid of the poor. They have no one else; they're powerless. But also because their voice needs to be heard. Because they have a unique perspective that we need to hear. Because you know, one characteristic of being in the in-group is a sense of entitlement. Yep, I've got power and that's the way it should be. A friend from the Midwest told me that the first time that he was out in California and heard everyone speaking Spanish, his heart kind of sank and he thought oh, they're taking my country away from me. So it's our country because we speak English? Or should it maybe be the Native Americans' because they were here first? We so easily feel that if we're in a position of power, that's the way it should be. And you know, what we see is that people who are on the margins, people who have less power, have an insight to share with us. Ask someone who's poor what the gaps are in our public transportation system. They will know. Someone who does not have a car will know what the gaps are, what the problems are in our society. Ask someone who is poor and doesn't have health insurance, or the money to pay doctors' fees, what the gaps are in our healthcare system, and they will know. Whereas those of us who may be blessed enough to have health insurance or be able to pay for those fees feel like the plan's working fine. But we don't see it from their point of view. Children often are the ones who can speak the truth when we don't see it, because in a sense they also are powerless. Or often they're standing on the fringe, watching us. A woman told me how she spent all morning getting her house ready for a Bible class that was going to meet there that afternoon. She was scrubbing and cramming things into closets, and her little boy was watching her. And when she was all done he said Mom, isn't this kind of like lying, because aren't you being dishonest to let your friends think this is the way our house always looks? He was onto something, you know, that we do tend to put up a false front. We need to hear the voices of those on the fringe, of those who could stand back and see what we're really doing. I wonder what it would be like if our congregation would have the same mission that Jesus did: to listen to those voices of the people not within our walls, the people outside of us. You know, we are kind of at a plateau here as a congregation. Through the generosity of individuals and the congregation as a whole, we bought the Mead Center and it's paid for. We've addressed the concerns of our youth. We do things in house. And then we also have hired a joint youth worker to provide additional activities. We feel like we've kind of taken care of two things, and so we're kind of looking for a mission. What if our mission were hospitality to those outside our walls? What if (and okay, I'm dreaming now) we would hire someone who would be the face of this congregation for the community, who would go out and look for more groups than the ones that are currently using the Mead Center? Because we have nonprofits using the Mead Center and we give them a fair and good rate so that they can use it. What if there was someone out there looking for more people and bringing them in, and managing that facility? And then (and this is the key) what if we as congregation members volunteered to be the face of this congregation for the groups that meet there? What if we were the ones who would open up the building and say hi to them, and then just listen, stick around a little bit, find out what's going on and what their needs are and what they see happening, people on the outside? What kind of connections could we make? What could the Holy Spirit do with those connections to help us see new and better ways to bring release to the captives and good news to the poor, and raise up those who are oppressed? I think that God does not love poor people more than anyone else. I think Jesus came for all of us, really to release all of us -- surely to release those who are suffering from health problems or financial problems. But also to release those who feel a sense of entitlement, from their fear and from their blindness. Jesus came so that there would be no walls. And you know, when I went back for my 10th year reunion of my high school class, that's what I found. We had all outgrown those cliques and those groups and those walls. I talked to people at length that I had never talked to for more than a few minutes when I was sitting next to them in class, and I came to value people that sadly I had not valued when we were students together. That's really why Jesus came. He lived, he died, and rose again so that we would be free to be all part of the in-group, all part of a group with no walls: the family of God. We have been released and freed from fear, from sin. We've been freed and now we are sent out to fling wide the doors of other people's prisons, so that with the power of the Holy Spirit we might tear down the walls that divide us. *** Keywords *** 2013, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Penny Holste, Luke 4:16-20, Luke 4:21-30, Isaiah 61:1-2

September 16, 2012. Pastor Keith preaches on the story of Abraham and Sarah from Genesis. When Abraham lamented that he had no child, God told him to change his perspective. "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be." God kept his promise to Abraham, and he keeps his promises to us. *** Transcript *** We continue to reflect upon these verses from the Old Testament today. We begin in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy spirit. Amen. Abraham, whom we are hearing about today, had quite a life. He was first mentioned in scripture when he was 75 years old. That's when the story picks him up. He was living in Ur at the time with his family. His father was still alive. His father was like 205, and his father decided they were going to move. Ur is probably in southern Iraq, and they moved to what would be Eastern Turkey today. Haran is the name of that area. And Abraham was there in Haran for a while with his wife, and then God spoke to him and said, "Abraham, I have something in mind for you. I'll lead the way, but you're going to leave from here and go to someplace that I will show you." He just tells him to pick up and go. So Abraham, with his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot, take all their cattle, all their possessions and start traveling. He starts going to where he doesn't know he's going to go. And we don't know how God led him; there's no word there about a pillar of fire and anything like that. He just goes. He comes to Canaan, which was probably in what we would call Northern Israel today. And the Bible is clear that he comes to this land and it's already inhabited by the well-known Canaanites. And so there's a problem for him right away, and that problem persists down to our own day, of two peoples wanting to inhabit that same land with different religions. There were the Canaanites, and there was Abraham and the people that look to the one God from his family. So two peoples in the same territory. Abraham was pretty clever in dealing with his neighbors and did pretty well there, but it was always challenging keeping peace with the neighbors. And then there was a time when there was a famine and there was nothing to eat there. But there was food down in Egypt. So he picked up all that he had and went to Egypt, took his family and everybody with him. But that was tricky too. He did get food, but he had to get food without being killed, because he knew the way of the Egyptians and that they would want to kill him so that they could claim his wife to be their wife as well. So he had to get out of that. When he got back to Canaan and reestablished himself after the famine, it became apparent that both he and his nephew Lot were doing quite well, and their herds were growing, but they were growing so much they were competing for the same land. And their shepherds were not getting along so well, so Lot came to Abraham and said what are we gonna do about this? And Abraham said I guess we're gonna have to part, just going to have to go to separate areas. You go where you want to go, you pick. And so Lot chose the Jordan Valley, which has the town of Sodom at the end of it. Well that put him in Sodom and that became part of an alliance. There was an alliance of cities that were politically gathered, militarily gathered, and there was another group. And then those groups had a little war, and Lot's side lost. And so Uncle Abraham, though, can't just let his nephew lose. They were carting him off, him and his family, to Damascus, to Syria to where the victors were. And Abraham couldn't let that happen to his nephew. So he fashions an army of his own and goes and attacks, so that he can get Lot freed again and bring Lot back to Canaan safely. All this time, as Abraham is looking out for his nephew, he and Sarah have no children of their own. He does a lot for Lot, but they really would have preferred to have their own child. They struggle with the problem of infertility. They're pushing being a hundred years old, and no child. There was no one to love, no one to liven up their home. And there was no one to carry on the name. Why would God lead them to this land with all these foreigners, make them deal with the problems of living with these easily-offended, often warlike neighbors? Why would they have to continue to look out for their wayward nephew and suffer famines and natural disasters? Why should God lead them to this place where they have all these problems and have no children? What was God up to? Why did God do this to them? Why couldn't they have stayed back with the rest of the family, they must have thought, where life was more comfortable? Why all this moving? But most of all, why no children? Sort of seemed, I think to them, like it was more like being led out to a slow death in the wilderness rather than being a place of promise as it was supposed to be. Abraham did have plenty of wealth, especially after defeating the king who had taken Lot off into captivity. But when Abraham overtook him, he got all that king's wealth, he had plenty, and then the prophet Melchizedek blessed him. He had lots going for him. But even as he's blessed Abraham is interested in more. He needs a meaning for life. The riches and the spoils of the war that he had captured really don't mean much to him. He says I don't care about them. Somebody else can take them if they want them. He's troubled in his soul. At this point is where our text is today: chapter 15 of Genesis. He receives a vision from God, and the voice of God says to him, "Don't be afraid Abraham. I will shield you from danger and give you a great reward." But Abraham has the courage to argue with God. He says, "God, I don't really need more reward. What are all the blessings good for if I have no one to pass them on to? I need someone to share them with, to pass them to. I need a child." As it stood, everything he had would go to his servant Eliezer, because that's the way the court worked in those days. And so he was okay with that. He would do that, but there's not much meaning in that. He'd much rather have his things go to his own child, especially in a religious culture where one's meaning after death came from your family and how your name continued on with your family. His life was without meaning. He was a man wandering around, following God, growing older all the time, but with no apparent purpose. What was God up to? Well God isn't finished with the conversation here yet. There is more to this vision God has with him. The Lord says a slave will not inherit your property. Your son will. So this means that God is promising him a son. There's another step here. And he says step outside the tent, I have something to show you. And so he steps outside and God says look up. He wasn't saying look up to watch the comet crash into Jupiter, don't look up to see if the man in the moon is smiling at you, or something like that. He says look up and look at the stars. Count the stars. As impossible as it is to count the stars, that's how many descendants will come from you. You don't have a son now, but you will have a son. And the descendants will be more than the stars. That was the promise of God, and Abraham trusted the promise. Abraham trusted the promise, and God said, "Because you've trusted me in this way it will indeed happen." God accepted Abraham, even knowing all of his faults, his sin, his lies, his doubt, his hopelessness. Because Abraham trusted and followed God, God accepted him. And what God promised came true. When Abraham had trouble a little later seeing this as God's plan, God took him to a new place. That is, God had taken him to a place to get a new perspective. When Abraham is in all that trouble God said, "Come out of the tent, look up, and when you look up you'll see the important things." And Abraham was able to hear and to believe the promise. Before this point of this vision, life had been pretty worldly for Abraham. He'd had faith to follow, but he was caught up with battles, trying to get Lot out of trouble. He was always doing things with Lot and his predicaments. He was trying to keep peace with the neighbors, trying to keep food on the table. He was caught up in this day-to-day situation and the promise of God was hard to see, and all these things just making daily life work. But when God took him outside, instead of looking around him and kind of down like where everything is, he had him look up and changed his perspective completely. He was able to get out of himself and look to a new direction, to look up to the heavens. To know that the promise of the descendants as numerous as the stars gave him a new lease on life. He believed it and good things happened, though we know they didn't happen very easily. Well I remember times when our family would go camping, we'd go into the Rockies of Colorado -- high up, seven or eight thousand feet, and camp. And we'd be looking at the sky at night, and the numbers of stars were just unbelievable. It was like there was a haze almost, the stars were so, so many. But you don't really have to go that far to be impressed by the number of stars. Just leaving the bright lights of the city, you can go not that far from here and see many more stars than you do in town. I'm sure many of you have been on a vacation of some kind this summer, and you've gotten away. And maybe you've been able to see some natural things and wonder, maybe been able to see some nice stars on your trips. But more important than maybe the perspective you got from looking at all these stars was what happened when you looked back home from where you got to. When you were away you were able to get away from your daily things. You were able to look back and think about what life was like back when you were at home. Psychologists say that getting only an hour or two away from where you normally are changes your perspective. A person is able to be more objective about what's going on with life at home, life it work, and other things, when you get some distance from it. Just being away from it you can look back and say, these are the things that are going on. Maybe some changes need to be made. Maybe everything is really good. But just getting away gives a new perspective on what you're doing. God had given Abraham a new perspective. We get new perspectives in different ways. And the same things that bothered Abraham often bother us. We have issues with people around us. Whether we're at home or at work, we get in each other's space. Or we wonder where God is leading us as the days of our lives tick by. We need to be concerned about the provisions we have for ourselves and for the people we might be responsible for. We need food, and yet we like he know that material things really have no value in the end. There's more meaning to life than in the stuff that we have. And we have family issues. Whether immediate or extended family, there's always some anxiety there that comes with the families we're involved with. And any number of us have had to deal with the issue of infertility. It's a very difficult issue, and leaves us with strong disappointment, sometimes disappointment with God, when the sign of new life that we so desperately want doesn't come. For all these things, changing the point of view can help. A new perspective can help us be more objective. Sometimes the objective distance can be achieved just by talking with someone about it. If you can't get away from it and look at it, maybe that doesn't necessarily fix it anyway. Talking with someone helps us say, this is the stuff I'm dealing with. What are some solutions? What are some ways I can move forward with it? Particularly if we do that with someone who's trained to do it, as a counselor, or maybe a trusted friend or trusted relative. Sometimes just talking about what we're doing, what's bothering us perhaps, gives a new perspective and leads us to look at it in a new way. And if we can't see it ourselves, sometimes it takes another person, whoever it might be, to remind us that there are promises out there. There are stars out there and they represent the plan and promise of God. When we hear the promise of God that is indeed a plan out there, and God leads us in that way, it's like looking at the stars and remembering that the promise of God is far more than we can count or know about. It's greater than we can know. But having the promise doesn't make all the difficulty go away. We know the rest of the story with Abraham. Later on, he and Sarah doubted God's promise. And they came up with a plan of their own to have a child, when it seemed like they were getting too old for God's promise to come true for them. But their plan just complicated things further, and in the end they did have a child named Isaac, who was theirs. It was a hard way to go and they were severely tested by God's promise, that even they were flawed and sinful people who doubted the promise of God. But God came through on the plan and kept the promise. Well, thankfully we have something even more reliable than the stars for our promise. We have a very accessible way to take on life and a new perspective. That word comes to us often through different people. Sometimes through scripture. Someone says, "God loves you." That's a promise from God. That word comes to us. And if we're feeling forgotten or feeling left out, or if we're feeling abused, that word comes to us and says, "I have a new perspective. God loves me, even if I feel all alone right now." Someone says to us the promise of God, "You are forgiven." Our life has changed. It has a new perspective. We don't take our guilt around with us anymore. We are free from it. Someone says to us, "God's promise is true. God is leading you. Follow God no matter how unlikely the path seems." Bigger than the sky. Bigger than the stars. We have the king of heaven making promises to us and looking for us to trust those promises. The king of the heavens leads us as we are on earth and never lets us go. The word that Abraham uses to respond to God's promise is the same as the root for the word when we end prayer and say "amen." That, in effect, is what Abraham said to God when God gave him these promises: amen. That is, "Yes, I believe. I believe it." As we trust God's promises, God regards us well, as he did Abraham. And God keeps the promises to us. Amen. Now may the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2012, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Keith Holste, Genesis 11:27-30, Genesis 12, Genesis 13, Genesis 14, Genesis 15, Genesis 16, Genesis 17