The Right Time

Sunday, May 26, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17, 3:1-8

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

Did you know we have a garden at Augustana? We call it our healing garden. It surrounds the labyrinth. It is part of the columbarium.

It is beautiful down there. My office overlooks the garden and the columbarium and one of the things I’ve noticed this summer is an uptick in the number of people I see in the garden. They come to sit, to pray, and reflect. It is a perfect place to do what Psalm 46 says – to be still and know that I am God. I am grateful for our healing garden and the hands that keep it beautiful.

It is strange to sit in the Augustana garden and feel the power and the presence of our creator God knowing that Robert street is only about a football field away.

Between the garden and the labyrinth and the columbarium we basically have the whole biblical story right in our own back yard. Think about that and you will understand what I mean.

This morning, as we begin another program year in these highly unusual times, we hear a story at the beginning of the biblical narrative. Like stones thrown into a pond, the events of Genesis 2 and 3 create ripples that we continue to live into today.

The very first ripple from God is life as God breathes life into the man in Genesis two and the ripple expands as God places the man in a garden. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it. ¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, ¹⁷but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

God’s breath creates life. God’s breath sustains life. Our lives are dependent on that breath. We have become much more aware of our breathing due to Covid. We know words like aerosol and water droplets and how far they travel when we talk, sneeze or sing.

Did you know that the normal respiration rate for an adult at rest is 12 to 20 breaths per minute? If we take 15 as an average, that means an adult takes 21,600 breaths every day.

With every breath you take it is an acknowledgement that you are created by God.

Every breath is a ripple and a sign that you are claimed by God.

Our reading today describes the effects of two kinds of ripples. Ripples of love, identity, provision. In chapter 3 we witness the ripple effects of disobedience and sin.

The conversation between the serpent and the woman is an example of what happens when we forget who we are and who created us.

The serpent sows’ seeds of doubt and the stone that hits the waters begins the ripple of sin we still know to this day.

Now the serpent said to the woman, “Has God said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”

²And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the garden; ³but from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You will not eat of it, nor will you touch it, or else you will die.’ ”

⁴Then the serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! ⁵For God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So, they take the fruit and together they eat it.

Claiming authority for themselves.
Claiming power for themselves.
No longer acknowledging or even seeing God’s original claim on their lives.

Let me ask you, does your understanding of being claimed by God;

change your behavior,
influence your decisions,
have an impact on how you live your life and your understanding of who you are and what you are as a human person?

If it does, if you strive each day to be obedient to your identity as one of God’s children, then your behavior and your decisions will reflect the ripples of love, abundance and all the beauty of a garden will be reflected in your life.

The man and the woman in chapter 3 forget whose they are and go it alone. Their eyes were opened, they saw their nakedness and they were ashamed, exposed and they realized what their disobedience had done, and they hid from God.

And maybe that is the worst ripple effect of sin. We want to hide from the one who created us and claimed us.

To hide from God when we see our nakedness and realize what we have done.
To hide from God because of the shame we feel.
To hide from God because of how unworthy we feel and the growing doubt in our lives that God would still want to claim us anymore as beloved children.

Yet even as the woman and man listened to the serpent’s voice they were claimed by God.

Even as they looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the fruit it bore, they were claimed by God.

Even as they ate of the fruit, they weren’t supposed to eat they were claimed by God.

Even as their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked and they realized what they had done, they were claimed by God.

Even as they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord as the Lord walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, they were claimed by God.

Each day we write our own script about the garden and what we have done. We all know what it means to try and hide from the presence of God because of the shame we have created and caused in our lives and in the lives of others and even then, yes even then, we are claimed by God.

Disobedience doesn’t nullify the promise of God’s breath, God’s life, coming into our lungs 21,000 times each day.

Disobedience brings death.

And death is the great consequence of the choices made in the garden.

It is death that we see with our own eyes.

It is death that changes our lives. In small ways and in large ways.

It is death that fractures relationships with others as well as our relationship with God.

But even in death and finally because of one man’s death, we are still claimed by God. This is the good news we long to hear, that we need to hear, especially right now.

The biggest ripple of all is God’s unwavering claim on our lives.

God’s stubborn character to never, ever give up on us.

God’s dying love for you and for me.

Breathe that promise into your lungs and into your life.
When you want to hide, breathe it in.
When you want to quit, breathe it in.
When you are not sure, when you are afraid, breathe it in.
It is the very breath of life, given to you and me.
A promise that we are created and claimed by God.

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.

The Right Time

Sunday, May 26, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17, 3:1-8

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

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

The Right Time

Sunday, May 26, 2019 Pastor Mark Aune

Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17, 3:1-8

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, May 26, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson