A Promise Made, A Promise Kept

Sunday, October 25, 2020
Pastor Mark Aune

2 Samuel 7:1-17 NSRV

Reformation Sunday

As I was looking up some material about Martin Luther this week in preparation for Reformation Sunday, a book advertisement appeared from Amazon in one of those popup windows.

The title of the book caught my attention – Welcome to the United States of Anxiety: Observations from a Reforming Neurotic. The book is written by Jen Lancaster.

I’m guessing the search engine noticed reformation in my search criteria and decided I needed to check this book out. USA – United States of Anxiety. I will admit to a small chuckle as this pretty much sums up what a lot of are feeling regarding the current situation.

Are you feeling anxious? Go ahead, give yourself an honest response as you contemplate the question. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot.

The national election is 8 days away.

The rate of Covid 19 infections are increasing and our public health experts are very concerned as we move into the winter months. If you are experiencing pandemic fatigue you are not alone.

I’ve been listening to parents of school aged children as well as educators and I’m hearing about the challenges of navigating school with online learning, hybrid learning and a desire for our children to just be back in school. It is very stressful for parents and educators and my heart goes out to them as well as our young people.

Our food shelves are working overtime. Health care workers are being stretched to the limit.

We continue to engage in matters of race and equality in our communities, important conversations that we need to have. Financial insecurities are real for businesses and for families.

What are you anxious about? Go ahead. Say it. It is ok to name it. We live in the USA – the United States of Anxiety.

Part of me takes a strange comfort in knowing we are all in this together. It does kind of help in a weird way. Sure, we all have different things we are anxious about, yet this is our reality right now so let us be honest about it.

Now contrast your answer to my question with the first part of our reading for today from 2 Samuel. King David doesn’t appear to be anxious about anything. When things are going well, and life is without any major bumps in the road the anxiety level is much lower.

King David had nothing to be anxious about. In fact, things were going so well for him, all he had to worry about was what to do about getting a nice house for God.

The Ark of the Covenant, the very presence of God was housed in a tent and David didn’t think that was good enough for God.

Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, ²the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.”

The problem with what Nathan says to David lies in his word, “do all that you have in mind.”

David wants to build God a house, a temple. This is what he had in mind.

As if often the case when we think we have a better idea of what needs to be done than God does, the plan changes.

As is often the case when we want to be in control and we think we know better than God, the plan changes.

The plan changes because our sight is so limited. We only see what is right in front of us. We only see what we want to see. We only see what fits our values, our ideas of what needs to be done and we are unable to widen our vision to something far greater and far bigger than what we can see.

David is only thinking of the immediate need, a house for God. God is thinking more long term. God has a bigger idea, a better idea.

Thus says the Lord, are you the one to build me a house to live in? ⁶I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.

God is not concerned about a house to live in. God’s plans are much bigger. They are longer, stretching forth into a future David can’t even begin to imagine. This is where God flips the script, and this is what God says to David.

Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. ¹²When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.

God makes this promise to David. His throne would be established forever. His line would never end. God keeps this promise even though David’s line of descendants ends in 587/586 BC. God keeps this promise through the exile. God keeps this promise as the people of Israel are allowed to return to their land from their captivity in Babylon.

And then, in the first century, the angel Gabriel visits a young woman by the name of Mary and tells her she will conceive a son by the power of the Holy Spirit and name him Jesus. The angel says this about him.

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Luke 1:32-33

A promise made. Centuries later, a promise kept. God keeps promises.

And the central promise of the church, the very heart and center of who we are as a community of believers, the core message of the church, is that God so loved the world that he sent his only son so that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life

The fact that we cannot safety be together in God’s house that we built on the corner of Robert and Emerson, does not mean the promise is no longer with us?

The fact of our struggles, what we are going through this very moment in our lives, community and country, struggles that create fear and anxiety, does not mean the promise is no longer with us.

The fact that we have a Reformation Sunday is a testament not only to the witness of Martin Luther 503 years ago but more importantly to the message he pointed the church back to after the church had lost its way – our salvation comes through the promise of Jesus the Christ, descended from David, sent to save sinners, who brings sight to the blind, comfort to the afflicted and hope to those who are lost.

God keeps promises. Your today, tomorrow and everyday depends on Him.

Descended of David.

Born of Mary.

Died on the cross.

Raised to new life.

You belong to him. Be not afraid. His name is Emmanuel. Which means God is with us.

That is a promise and a promise always kept.

It is real. It is for you

Thanks be to God. Amen

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Promise Made, A Promise Kept

Sunday, October 25, 2020
Pastor Mark Aune

2 Samuel 7:1-17 NSRV

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Crying Out

Waiting

A World Shaped by God’s Power

About Augustana

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A Promise Made, A Promise Kept

Sunday, October 25, 2020 Pastor Mark Aune

2 Samuel 7:1-17 NSRV

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, October 25, 2020
Pastor Mark Aune

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson