Worship with Us June 21!

This coming Sunday, June 21, is not only Father's Day, but it is an eventful day in the life of our church. We are doing a couple of special things, & we don't want anyone to miss it!

1. Food Donations
We're collecting food for those in need, to be donated to & distributed by the New LIFE Center in Uniondale, the food pantry we support year-round. Donations tend to go down in the summer, but the need remains the same, so we're asking everyone to bring in some non-perishable food to help get them through the summer. We'll have it brought forward during the offering. Last year we collected about 430 pounds - let's top that this year!!

2. Sunday School - Moving Up Day!
The Sunday School kids & their teachers have worked hard this past academic year, so today we'll celebrate their accomplishments & rejoice in their growth! Two of our children will also get a medal for memorizing The Lord's Prayer, the Apostle's Creed, and the 10 Commandments by heart. Way to go kids!

3. Volunteer Recognition Day & Coffee Hour
We have so many people who work in so many different ways to further the mission & ministries of this church. Time rushes by, and we don't remember to say thank you nearly often enough. On this day during worship, we will recognize & give thanks for the many people who give of themselves and the many different ways that they serve God and St. John's. We'll continue the celebration after worship with a coffee hour.

It's going to be a great day of worship - you don't want to miss it! So come on out! Worship starts at 9:30!

June 14, 2009 - The 2nd Sunday after Pentecost

God Promises a Harvest
Mark 4:26-34
Pentecost + 2 – June 14, 2009

So, I told you a few months ago that Andy & I were planning to plant a garden. I started some seeds awhile ago inside, so they'd be ready to plant when it was planting season. We dug up part of our backyard so we'd have a place to plant. Recently, we finally got some stuff in the ground. We have scattered our seeds and now we are sleeping and rising, night and day, waiting for them to sprout and grow.

But I'll let you in on something. I'm not feeling very patient. Pretty much every time I'm outside, usually waiting on the dog, I'm wandering around the backyard, looking in our new garden plot, checking out the herbs we planted in pots, checking to see if anything has happened yet! Have our plants that were plants when we put them in the ground grown at all? Are they taller? Are there any new leaves? And the places where we planted see, well, those I'm checking to see if there are any new signs of life. Is anything poking up through the ground? I know that it's too early for anything to have happened. Plants don't just spring up out of the ground overnight, after all. But I can't help myself. I remind myself of an old grocery store commercial when I lived in Pennsylvania. They talked about how good their produce was & how they could hardly keep up with the demand & then they cut to a shot of a farmer out in his field, encouraging his plants to “Grow faster!” As if that would do any good – but it's kind of how I feel. I want to see progress, and I want to see it now! I want to know that what we're doing now will be worth the effort in the end.

Have you ever felt that way? I'm not just talking about the kinds of seeds we plant in gardens of course. I'm talking about the seeds that we plant in our lives, the time and effort and sweat that goes into all of the things that we do, hoping they'll produce a harvest down the line. I'm talking about the seeds of faith you may be planting or have planted in your children or grandchildren that you are still waiting to poke up through the ground, let alone be ready to harvest. I'm talking about the seeds of hope & hard work that you have planted in your family and your career, hoping for a better life someday. I'm talking the seeds of kindness you have planted in the lives of neighbors, for friends, or complete strangers, when you volunteer your time to raise money for cancer research, or to build or restore housing for those in need, or when you donate food for the hungry or supplies for an animal shelter.

We plant these seeds of faith and hope and compassion, seeds of the kingdom of God, hoping that we will see signs of growth, that the earth will indeed produce of itself – first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head, just as Jesus talks about in the 1st parable we heard today.
Jesus says the kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and sleep & rise, night & day, & the seed would sprout & grow, he doesn't know how. The process of growth is a mystery. Planters do everything they can – they hoe and plant and water and fertilize and weed and mulch and watch for bugs & disease, trying to help the seed along, to help it grow into a strong plant that will produce a great harvest and seed for the next season – but they can't force growth to happen. They can't speed up the process. They can't say, “Grow faster!” They have to wait for nature to take its course.

And as Tom Petty once sang, “The waiting is the hardest part.” We trust and believe that God is in charge, that God gives the growth to all of these seeds, but so often we just want God to hurry up already! Especially in the church, even in our own church. Over its nearly 100 years of ministry, the people of St. John's have planted countless seeds. And there was a time when we were reaping a bountiful harvest – our Sunday school was bursting at the seams, volunteers were plentiful, giving was ample for the ministry needs, & attendance and membership grew so much that we had to add on this part of the building that we are sitting in now. Growth was quick and obvious.

But for a while now, those signs of new life and growth have not been so obvious. In some ways we are still reaping the harvest of seeds sown long ago, but the harvest has slowed down. Right now, St. John's is in a replanting period. We are still sowing seeds, but seeds take time to grow. There are days when we grow impatient, when we wonder what we should do, worrying over our seeds, wondering when & if they are going to grow, when we bring in the harvest, if there will be seed enough for the future.

Well, there are a few things I want to say about that. One is that the soil we are planting in has changed. The world around us has changed dramatically; & it keeps on changing at a rate faster than many of us can keep up. It doesn't mean we stop sowing seeds. But it does mean that we need to think long and hard about what we are planting and the methods we are using. We may need to try some new crops. We may need to try some new-fangled methods. And we are doing that here. New seeds are being sown in the life of this church, things that haven't been done before, or not done for a while, or not in quite this same way. A group is forming for our young adults, our post-high-schoolers and 20-somethings. This summer we'll offer worship on Wednesday nights – a different night, a different style. New seeds of service and witness, of hospitality and compassion are being planted as we reach out to our community in new ways, through something as simple as handing out free bottles of water to exploring how we might partner with other churches to combat hunger and poverty and homelessness, how we might work together as a Lutheran body to grow & strengthen all of our ministries so we can reach more people with the good news of God's love. We're working on a new website and other ways to get the word out about St. John's. And yes, we continue to plant seeds of faith through the tried and true – we still have Sunday school & youth group & weekly Bible study. The truth is, we don't know which of these seeds will grow. We don't know which ones will produce the harvest we are hoping for, but we scatter the seeds God has given us, and we sleep & we rise, night & day, because while the soil around us may have changed, God, who is the giver of all growth, has not changed.

God has not forgotten about this little garden plot that is St. John's. God is not blind to all of us who are planting seeds of the kingdom in this place. God has not abandoned us. God still sends us rain and sun; God still provides us with ample seeds to plant. God still guides us as we sow those seeds. God has the greenest of thumbs, and while not all seeds will grow up, God promises that some always will. And even though we are impatiently waiting for a harvest, pleading “Grow faster!”, God promises that there will always be a harvest, for God is right alongside of us, planting with us. It's right there in the words from the book of Ezekiel, our Old Testament lesson for today.

“Thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will take a sprig...; I will set it out, I myself will plant it – in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit. I the LORD have spoken; I will accomplish it.”

God promises that there will be a harvest. Like the planter in the parable, we don't know how it happens, but we know that it will come; in its own time, and in its own way, but it is coming. And it will be an abundant one, enough to feed many, stretching out its branches so that all may find shelter. So let's keep scattering seed – a new harvest is on the way! Thanks be to God!

Amen.

May 31, 2009 - Pentecost Sunday

The Holy Spirit Empowers Us to Speak so Others Can Understand
Acts 2:1-21
Day of Pentecost/Confirmation – May 31, 2009

A few years ago, some cell phone company had a commercial that always made me laugh. An obviously frustrated mother, cell phone bill in hand, calls her tween-aged daughter into the room. “Who have you been texting 50 times a day?” Beth Ann says, “IDK, my BFF Jill?” The whole conversation goes back & forth like that, with Mom speaking in plain English & Beth Ann using the same abbreviations she would use if she was sending a text message over her phone. So, “IDK. My BFF Jill” means, “I don't know, my best friend forever Jill.”

Now Mom clearly understands what Beth Ann is saying, even though she kind of stutters and fumbles around when she tries to talk that way. And for the rest of us watching, they put up subtitles on the screen whenever Beth Ann is talking, to translate all of these abbreviations. If you don't use your phone to send text messages, it's like she's speaking a different language!

It's a classic example of how often we speak past each other. We have a tendency to use code language with each other. Different groups have different codes that they use to make communication quicker & easier. We see it in the phone commercial with texting. In my house, I experience it whenever I watch sports with Andy. I get a lot of the lingo – I know what ERA and RBI stand for, but the terms don't mean a lot to me. Sports fans have their own language.

The church has its own language too, a kind of Christian-ese. Over the years, a kind of code has developed, filled with short-hand words and phrases. We use special names for things. We call the entryway a narthex. Some churches call the basement the undercroft. We toss around words like synod or Rally Day and sing songs with titles like Kyrie or Sanctus or Agnus Dei. We talk about the centrality of Word and Sacrament and of Justification by Grace through Faith for the sake of Jesus Christ.

If you've been around the church a long time, you might know what all of those things mean. Then again, you might not. And if people who are a part of the church aren't always sure, imagine what it would be like as an outsider, someone just exploring this whole Christianity thing. It'd be nice if we'd hand out a glossary of Christian terms, or put subtitles underneath our words, because when we talk in Christian-ese, we might as well be speaking in a different language!

The first believers faced a similar situation on that Pentecost, except in their case, they literally spoke a different language! Before he ascended into heaven, Jesus told them that they were to be witnesses to all they had seen in him. In the story from Acts today, we see their first opportunity to do just that. Great crowds of Jewish people from all over the world had come to Jerusalem to observe Pentecost, which was a Jewish festival before it was a Christian one. Pentecost means “fifty”, and Pentecost happened 50 days after the Passover. It was a celebration of God's giving of the law on Mt. Sinai as well as of the wheat harvest. And so here are all of these foreign Jews, in town from places like what we now call Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia. They came from Libya & Egypt & Crete. They were all there in Jerusalem for Pentecost, and they haven't heard yet about what God had done in Jesus. It's a great opportunity to share the good news, to spread it way beyond the walls of Jerusalem.

But there was just one little problem. They didn't speak each others languages. Not only was there a language barrier, but they also came from different cultures, with different customs. So the disciples have this great audience, a wonderful chance to get the word out, but how can they? They didn't have the Rosetta Stone computer program that's supposed to make it so easy & quick to learn a new language. There were no translators standing by to interpret what they said.

But “...suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting... All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability” (vs 2, 4). Before they even knew what was happening, the Holy Spirit came and filled the entire house, and filled the believers too! What a commotion! The rush of a violent wind, like a hurricane or a tornado is how I imagine it, and tongues as of fire resting on each of them, filling them up, overflowing from them in words and languages they had never known before. That Holy Spirit's pretty clever – because not only do they start speaking in tongues, but the whole thing causes such a stir that all of those other Jews visiting Jerusalem came a-runnin' to see what was going on. The Holy Spirit gave them the languages and words to speak and gave them an audience to hear it too! No matter what barriers of language and culture stood between them, the Holy Spirit was working that day to bring them down. She opened up new channels of communication, empowering the disciples to speak in words that everyone could understand. The people who gathered heard the disciples speaking their language, telling of God's deeds of power in a way that made sense to them. Like the makers of that cell phone commercial, the Holy Spirit provided the subtitles so that everyone could follow along, so that everyone was included.

Everyone was included because the good news of Jesus is that God's love is for everyone. No exceptions. Everyone is included. And God wants everyone to know it! That is our mission, to tell everyone what God has done. Everyone. To do that, we need to move beyond the boundaries that we humans set up between groups of people. It's not just about literally learning another language, although as our communities change, we may be called to reach out beyond English to those who speak another tongue. It's about learning to speak new cultural languages, so that we can reach beyond those who look and think and act just like us. It may mean learning to speak teenager or immigrant or single mom or addict in recovery or homeless family, because Christ's call to be a witness is a call to step outside of our comfort zones, to go beyond the places where we feel knowledgeable and secure, to use new tools and resources to share the old, old story of Jesus & his love in new ways that will connect with the people God wants us to reach.

That cell phone company followed up that 1st ad with another one. It's a great example of learning a new culture, a new language. Mom's still upset with how much her kids are texting, but this time, she turns to her own mother and says, “You're old enough to know better. Who are you texting all day?” Grandma looks up from her cell phone long enough to say, “IDK, my BFF, Rose?” Grandma has taken on this new technology and made it her own. She's learned a new language, and because of that, she's connecting with people in ways she never thought possible.

That's what the Holy Spirit enables us to do. That's the witness of this Pentecost story. God's mission to the world is too important to leave it just up to us and the way we've always done things. And so God sends the Holy Spirit to us, moving us beyond our boundaries, teaching us to communicate in new ways, leading us to speak in ways that help us to make connections we never thought possible, and all so that all may hear of God's love in their own languages and turn to God for salvation.

Amen.