June 9, 2013
Luke 7:11-17
In January 1988, three
Lutheran church bodies merged to form one united church body, the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America. In the past twenty five years, the ELCA has
become the largest of the Lutheran church bodies in the nation and as we, as a
church body, celebrate the 25th anniversary of the ELCA, we do so
under the banner “Always being made new.”
Things in the ELCA are not as they were 25 years ago. They couldn’t be or the ELCA would have died long
ago. Instead, as a church body, we have
allowed the Holy Spirit to work through the ELCA, which has left room for God’s
creative chaos to do its thing…and, to paraphrase the Rev. Stephen Bouman,
though the ELCA is a flawed church, it is an awesome church.
This weekend, we got to see a
part of the church in action as the central states synod assembly took
place. Representatives from the ELCA
congregations in Kansas and Missouri
gathered in Overland Park
to take part in the business end of being church. We spent time considering amendments to the
synod’s bylaws and talking about budgets and funding for Lutheran Campus
Ministry in the synod. We spent time in bible study led by the Rev. Dr. Barbara
Rossing, a Revelation scholar who spoke from a biblical perspective about
healing and salvation and creation care from the perspective of living in a
place where God’s abundance rules. And
we discerned where God was leading us in the election of a bishop. It took five ballots but yesterday afternoon,
a new bishop was elected to lead the synod, the Rev. Roger Gustafson, who is
currently serving as one of the pastors at Advent Lutheran church in Olathe, Kansas.
As the results of the fifth
ballot were read, it was a moment of pure emotion, excitement for Roger as
bishop elect, sadness that Bishop Mansholt will no longer serve as bishop of
the synod, knowledge that things in the synod are about to change as the
transition from Bishop Mansholt’s tenure to Bishop elect Gustafson’s tenure
occurs. And we were reminded that in God
we are always being made new. The church is always being made new.
As we officially enter into
the season of summer and move closer and closer towards August 1, we, my
friends, are also entering into a time of change. As we prepare to bid God’s blessings and
Godspeed to Pastor Gary and move into a transition time with an interim senior
pastor, we do so as a people who need to be open to where God and the Holy
Spirit are leading us. And as we move
into that time, we have some work to do….the work of examining ourselves and
asking the question “who are we as the people of God at Trinity Lutheran
church?” and to look at where God has brought us and where God is calling us to
now and in the future. If we do this
hard work intentionally, we may find some answers that we do not like…for
instance, if we are going to continue to meet the needs of our ministries in
this place, in the community and in the world, we need to reconsider what good
stewardship is all about and allow ourselves to be challenged by what God is
saying to us through our neighbors and through our study of scripture.
Change is hard, transition is
hard, the work of examining ourselves closely to discern who God has made us
and where God is leading us is not without pain and grief as we face the
reality that things are not going to be the way they used to be and things
might not turn out just the way that we would like them too. Times of transition may feel almost as if a
death is taking place as we say goodbye to one era in the life of a
congregation or a synod and enter into a new era.
And in our time of mourning,
we look to Jesus for the answer to the question of “what next?” “where do we go
from here?”
It’s in these moments that
Jesus meets us in the same spot that he met the widow of Nain. Now, to be sure, when we face situations of
change, they are not literal death situations…but they do involve grief and,
often times, some emotional pain. When
Stephen ministers are taught their lesson on grief, they are taught that even
happy changes, like marriage or graduations, can be times of grief because it
can feel like an old self has died. The
old ways of doing things can no longer continue. Life as we know it is over…it’s time for new
life.
For the widow that Jesus met
in Nain, life as she knew it was over.
As a widow, she had to rely on her son to provide for her both a means
of staying alive and status in the community.
In the death of her son, she didn’t just lose a child…the widow also lost
any social standing and any means of providing for her needs. And though a large crowd of folks from the
town accompanied her as she journeyed outside the walls of the city to bury her
son, I’m sure she was asking herself “what do I do now?” “what is going to
become of me?”
And it is at the point of
transition from inside the town to outside of town that she meets Jesus and the
large crowd following him. At the gate,
Jesus sees the widow and he has compassion on her, he joins her in her pain,
and in bringing her son back to life Jesus not only gives the widows child back
to her, she also gives her back her own life.
Jesus is funny like that,
bringing life in places where death is thought to linger…bringing light to
places where it is believed that darkness prevails. And it is because of Jesus’ compassion. As Jesus traveled and ministered, he did so
with a heart full of compassion. Compassion for the lost, compassion for the hungry,
the sick, and the dying. The word
compassion means to suffer with, and that’s what Jesus did in his life and his
ministry…he suffered with the poor, the outcast, those in mourning and whose
lives were in transition. And even on
the cross, Jesus had compassion for the criminal next to him when Jesus
promised that on that day, the criminal would be with him in paradise.
A man full of compassion,
living a life as a representative of a God full of compassion…a God who works
to make all things new but who understands that in order for things to be made
new, change has to happen and when change happens it is often accompanied by
grief and pain, and when the grief and mourning accompany the change, God heart
is there with us in the transition points to guide us out of grief and into a
new day and a new life.
Yesterday a new bishop was
elected for the synod…the same thing could happen at the church wide level in
August as Bishop Hanson may be up for re-election…as Bishop Mansholt said in
his speech before the 4th ballot of the bishops election, these are
times of change. And here at home, we
will bid farewell to Pastor Gary and send him off to the next chapter in his
life at the end of July and we ourselves will enter into a time of change. But we do not go into this time alone.
Instead we are accompanied by a God who meets us in those moments of
transition, full of compassion, who bids us not to weep and who shows us just
how much life there is to be found. Amen
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