God of Transitions: Faithful Uncertainty

Sunday, June 6, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Numbers 14:1-10

Grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Back to normal.

That is what the people wanted. More than anything as they struggled with being in the wilderness, they wanted things to go back to normal.

Back to Egypt.

Back into slavery.

Back to the plagues and thirst and the harshness of their captivity.

Then all the community raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had perished in this wilderness! ³Why has the Lord brought us into this land? Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?”

Why is it, when we are faced with uncertainty, when we are faced with transitions and when we do not know what tomorrow will bring, why is it that we always long to go back to the way things were? Or the way we imagined things were?

They had sent spies to search out the promised land. They reported giants in the land, “and we seemed like grasshoppers both to ourselves and to them.” Even though Joshua and Caleb brought back a positive report, the people chose to believe the negative report.

Back to Egypt they said. Better to die there than go into a new land and maybe die by the sword. Let us choose a new leader and go back to Egypt.

It is safer there.
We are at home there.
Everything is familiar there.

The people of Israel are stuck. They refused to move forward as they stood on the doorstep of the land God had promised them long ago.

Rather than live into faithful uncertainty they were choosing fearful certainty.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

That longing to go back to the way things were, the way we imagined them to be, the good old days.

How many times have you said ‘I wish things would just go back to normal’ over the last 15 months?

But we cannot go back. In the words of the early 20^th century author Thomas Wolfe, ‘you can’t go home again.” Why we may ask.

Well, the world has changed, again. The change is happening so fast we are unable to absorb it and as we work harder and harder to understand the implications of all this change, our lives, our families, our spirituality, and our churches are all deeply impacted.

We feel the trauma of this kind of change more deeply in times of transition.

We feel the uncertainty of this kind of change more deeply in times of transition.

As you listen to this story in Numbers 14, you can feel the anguish as the people cry out, we want to go back to Egypt. We want to go home again. We are afraid of the giants in the new land. We are afraid of what might happen there. We are afraid of all the uncertainty you are asking us to move into as we go forward.

One of the reasons I chose this text for today as I preach the first of my last four sermons at Augustana is because it highlights the struggle that we all have in moving forward in life. This story highlights the struggle the church has in facing change, in leaving behind that which we hold on to as dear and important and moving forward into the promised land.

The God I know, the God I love, the God that has shaped and formed me over the course of my 65 years on this earth is a God that is always pushing us forward.

The full scope of the biblical narrative is one of movement.

Of going forward.
Of trusting in what God says.
And what God wants us to do.
And then trusting God enough to do it.
To keep moving forward.
To not look back.

If I were to sum up the whole biblical story into one phrase it would be a story of the journey from death to life.

To go back to Egypt was death. To cross into the promised land was life.
To go back to slavery was death. To trust God’s leading hand was life.
To go back is to live in fear. To move forward is to live in faithful uncertainty.

Each day we make a choice about this, as individuals and as a church.

Augustana has had 48 years of leadership from two senior pastors and now we stand at the edge of the promised land.

We are moving into new territory, uncharted waters. And we are making this change on the back end of what may well be the most challenging 15 months most of us will ever face over the course of our lifetimes.

Are we ready to keep moving forward?

Do we recognize the need for change, the need for new ideas, new ways to be the church in the 21^st century?

Moses and Aaron tried to convince the rebellious Israelites to move forward. They could not go home again. At this critical moment in time, when the fate of the people hung in the balance, while they were in the wilderness unsure of how they could keep moving forward, the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting before all the children of Israel.

The glory of the Lord was a reminder of who is in charge.

The glory of the Lord was a visible sign that God was present, and they need not fear the giants in the land or the changes that would come. All because God was leading them.

Do not be afraid. Your future is ahead of you, not behind you.
God says, I know the plans I have for you, a future, with hope.

A recent devotional I read said this and it really struck a chord with me.

“Our natural inclination is to be so precise– trying always to forecast accurately what will happen next– that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We think that we must reach some predetermined goal, but that is not the nature of the spiritual life. The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty.

Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life– gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises.” [1]

This is the God I know and trust.

This is the God who is revealed in glory.

This is the God we follow.

Into transition.

Into uncertainty.

Into the promised land.

This is the God I know, a God of transitions, always taking us from death to life.

Thanks be to God. Amen

[1] My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers, April 29

Past 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.

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Sermon

Living a New Life with Christ

Sermon

The Power of God’s Love

Sermon

The Right Time

Sunday, May 26, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

Romans 3:28-30, 5:1-11

Romans is the Apostle Paul’s longest, weightiest and most important letter in the New Testament. He lays out in this letter the full richness of his experience with Jesus. We heard the main theme of Romans last week in chapter 1:16-17 where Paul says – For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.

The theological term for what Paul is speaking about here is called justification. It means we are saved, justified before God, made righteous in God’s eyes not by what we do or don’t do in this world but on the basis of faith in Jesus. Faith alone.

In chapters 1, 2, and 3 the Apostle Paul makes the argument that God deals with all people on the same basis – all are sinners – all are under the power of sin. Paul is simply telling the truth here. He is saying out loud what all of us know about ourselves and the brokenness that is present in our lives. We are sinners and that is the truth, plain and simple.

In chapter 5, where we land today, we hear the pay off, the ‘so what’ of justification. The answer to the question of why does this matter and what difference does it make in my life and your life.

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.

That is such a great verse!

Therefore we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore we have peace with ourselves, in our hearts and in the depths of our soul.

Therefore we have the peace which passes all human understanding.

This is what it means when Paul says we are justified by faith.

To be justified by faith means we don’t have to justify ourselves. We no longer have to make excuses. We’ve all done it. We try and justify our actions, our words, our choices and our behavior. We do it because we want to be right. We do it because we think it will make us feel better. But deep down we know better.

It means we can stop trying to make ourselves worthy of God’s love.

It means we can stop feeling guilty that we don’t measure up to some standard that we or someone else has created for our lives.

I was listening to a podcast this week on a site called Working Preacher. It comes out of Luther Seminary. Professor Craig Koester, who teaches New Testament at Luther spoke about the term, justifying the margins, as it relates to word processing. Do you know that term?

As someone who didn’t take keyboarding in high school, don’t ask me why, and who is basically self-taught on the key board, I had to look this up to better understand why Professor Koester would use this term as it relates to the reading today from Romans.

“Justifying in margins has to do with where the text is aligned. Justification refers to whether the rows of text on a page appear straight up and down in line with the margin or show a ragged edge. Margin justification works in Microsoft Office programs the same way it does with other printed and on-screen text, but it’s much easier to justify margins in an Office program than it is using a typewriter for example.”[1]

I kind of like that example Dr. Koester uses. The margins of my life are aligned, straightened out and it is God who aligns my margins.

There is no longer a ragged edge. We could use that as a definition for sin couldn’t we.

My margins are justified. Your life is in alignment with God. Our edges are no longer ragged.

This is God’s work in Jesus. This is the God who is always seeking me out in order to straighten the relationship and make it right. This is good news. This is the gospel.

Paul keeps pushing the point in chapter 5. He reminds us what it means to be standing in grace and how much God does for us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

God justifies the margins at the right time. Think about that. What does that look like for you?

We think of salvation as a onetime event and that is true. Jesus died on the cross and God raised him from the dead and it happened once. It only needed to happen once and this is what Paul is referring to when he says at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

But what do your margins look like today?

Are they ragged? And if they are ragged what is the cause of them being ragged? What is it today that you are struggling with in your life that is causing you to be out of alignment with God’s purposes in your life, with God’s plan in your life, with God’s direction in your life?

Can you name what this might be for you, today? Take a look at what it is that keeps you from experiencing God’s peace and what do you need to do about it?

Confess it? Make amends with someone? Do the thing you have been putting off doing? Make the change in your life that will give you wholeness instead of ragged margins. You are the only person who can answer these questions.

And let me remind you of where you stand – what Paul tells us – Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand

For while we are still weak, at the right time, God has the power to align our margins and straighten things out. The right time is today. Or tomorrow. Or next week.

Because God justifies our margins we have access to this grace in which we stand and we can boast in our hope of sharing in the glory of God.

This is truly where faith meets life.

At the right time God will empower us to do what we need to do.

At the right time God will give us what we need the most.

At the right time God will eliminate the ragged edges of our lives and bring us into alignment with His purpose and plan.

This is hope. This is peace. This is God’s justification.