Proper 12 (July 24-30)
Texts: Romans 8:26-39;
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/tRYZr3q-pZs?si=MDMbTGtoEv48Zg4P&t=924
PowerPoint for Sermon
This sermon text was written in advance as a guide and then the sermon itself was extemporized from the PowerPoint slides.
“SEEDS OF PEACE” GROW INTO HOPE
I have a confession to make. I hope you’ll still let me be your pastor after I tell you. I’m a Lions fan. I’ve lived here in Packers country for fifteen years now, but I was born and raised in the Detroit area. I come by my fanaticism honestly. I’ve worn this Lions T-shirt about ten years; it says, “Just once before I die.” The Lions last won an NFL championship when I was one year-old. I don’t remember it. They actually won the NFL Championship four times in the 1950’s; but that was a full decade before the first Super Bowl. The Lions are one of only four teams that have never been to the Super Bowl — the only one of the oldest ten NFL franchises to never do so.
But here’s the thing: they might actually be good this year. Most experts expect them to win our division for the first time since 1993. Thirty years without even winning a division! Thirty-two years since they last won a playoff game. Would it be too much to hope for the Lions to play in their first Super Bowl? Would that mean hell has frozen over? Or signal the end of the world? I’m willing to risk it.
That whole spiel is actually my lighter way to bring up the serious prospect of our survival. We are coming to the end of what will probably be the hottest month on earth ever recorded. (We’ve been lcuky here with a mild summer. Come visit Wisconsin!) We are confronted once again with the reality of climate change: namely, extreme weather which is making more places on earth uninhabitable, already causing the beginning of mass migration. And what has been part of our response to huge groups of fellow human beings needing to move to new, more livable homes? The rise of nationalism, racism, and authoritarianism. Mix this with militarism and weapons of mass destruction, and what to you get? Increasing anxiety over our survival as a species. Don’t our children’s and grandchildren’s generations already feel this anxiety? How much of their culture has turned apocalyptic, depicted the end of our world as we know it? The zombie apocalypse?
Here at church we also worry about survival. All our numbers have been dropping precipitously, especially since COVID, such that it leads to questions of sustainability. Can we go back how we have always done things, make some adjustments, and then begin to grow again? My answer has generally become, “No. We can’t just go back to the basics. We need more drastic changes, beginning with a substantial revitalization of our Gospel message and mission.” For centuries, the church has approached its mission as being about a conversion of religions. “Join us,” we say, “and we will tech you the religion that saves you for the afterlife . . . and helps you be a more loving person along the way.”
But my proposal to you, in my time here as your pastor, is that this has always been the wrong mission. That’s the main point in Paul’s Letter to the Romans that we’ve been reading. Following Jesus is not about converting to a new religion. It’s not about requiring Gentiles having to convert to Torah, the law. That would be pointless since the power of sin has corrupted all religions, even Torah. In fact, the most basic way in which sin has corrupted religion has been by making it a tool of division, persistently bringing us into conflict with one another and splitting the human family.
Jesus came not to give us a new religion, but to give us a new Way of being human. If we become human in the way God designed for us, following in God’s way of love, then we will be redeemed by coming to reconcile all our human divisions, including those spawned by religion. In today’s reading from Romans 8, Paul talks about God’s purpose not in terms of religious conversion but human conversion. He says that we need to “be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.” In other words, we need to become like Jesus so that we can start being the one large human family that God created us to be. Thus far, religion has mostly been at the heart of what divides us. Reconciling all those divisions calls for nothing less than a new way to be human.
So here’s what you might call my “survivalist gambit”: bring the two struggles for survival together. The way we need to change in church has to be in the direction of helping the human race to survive. If Christ came to offer us a new way of being human — based on reconciling our differences so that we can work together for the common good of humanity — then our message and mission is becoming human in new ways that help us to work for our survival instead of fighting over it. In short, the best way for the church to survive is to fulfill its original mission of helping humanity to survive, by learning together how to be human in ways of cooperation rather than conflict. We are to become “seeds for peace” that grow into peace movements. We are to be the yeast in our cultures to help them rise to the occasion of working together, instead of fighting each other.
St. Paul, at this point in his letter, begins to talk more about hope. I would like to take a turn to hope, too, by lifting up what was accomplished over the past five weeks in our Neighborhood Camp. The theme for the summer happened to be what I just mentioned, being “Seeds for Peace.” Our camp directors, Erica Adams and Alyssa Kromke, took that theme and did the kinds of things I would have chosen to do. They focused, for one thing, on heroes who are leading the way to peace, like Martin Luther King, Jr. Where do we look for hope? In those who are forging new ways to peace through nonviolence and unifying love, instead of violence and divisive hatred. We taught the kids about heroes who have already shown us God’s new way to peace in Jesus Christ. We taught them about what you need to have in order to take up this way of peace, things like courage and love. It also requires new practices, such as new ways to pray that promote inner peace. In the schools they call this “mindfulness” or “meditation.” As followers of Jesus, we can call it spiritual prayer, silent prayer that invites God’s spirit to live in us.
Which is another feature of this morning’s reading from Paul, who tells us that even when we don’t know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us according to God’s desire. Paul constantly talked about living in the Spirit, and that begins with prayer, with silent prayer as an opening to having God’s loving desire live in us and shape us — or, as he says, ‘conform us into the image of God’s Son,’ in order that we might truly live as God’s children, as one large family.
My hope comes from our young people learning to be seeds for peace, and I want to end this morning by recognizing and thanking our young people who led the neighborhood children these past five weeks. Here’s their names. Those who are here this morning, please stand that we might recognize and thank you!
And I think it’s also appropriate to close with our favorite song from camp, which is precisely about what we’ve just talked about, being conformed to Jesus. Inviting his Spirit to move and breath in us. In fact, the biblical word for “spirit” is also their word for “wind” and “breath.” The wind is God’s spirit as it breath life in us. So please stand to sing God moving and breathing in us, helping us to be human in the Way of God’s love.
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Lutheran Church of the Resurrection,
Racine, WI, July 30, 2023
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/tRYZr3q-pZs?si=MDMbTGtoEv48Zg4P&t=924
PowerPoint for Sermon
