Our Family of Faith

Sunday, Spetmeber 6, 2020
Intern Michael Poeschl

2 Timothy 1:1-7

My grandmother taught me a lot about love. She was also a fantastic cook, feeding me both physically and spiritually. Today’s reading from Second Timothy 1: 1-7, reminds me about the importance of faith and family. Her faith was strong and she shared the love of Jesus with me and with everyone she met. Preparing and sharing a meal was one of my grandmother’s spiritual gifts. She grew up in Braham, Minnesota, as a second generation immigrant from Sweden. Life on a farm in rural Minnesota with her two sisters and four brothers was never without challenges, yet I never heard my grandmother complain. She believed in God and took comfort that their needs would be met. Her parents taught her to trust her faith and not sit idle when farming became unsustainable. Trusting in God and guided by the Spirit her family moved to South Saint Paul, to work in the meat-packing industry. The stories my grandparents shared with me and our Sunday family gatherings on 3rd Avenue come alive in their retelling. Her Swedish Meatballs with white dill gravy was one of my favorites and I was always full, even if that meant I got one more while she got one less, sharing was more important than shortage.

Remembering those stories connects me to the community of Augustana that I am so honored to become a part of. My roots are nearby, close to my grandparents’ former home in South St. Paul, their congregation at Luther Memorial and their final resting place at the General Lutheran Cemetery. Their abundant gift of faith was always shared, taught to them by their ancestors and passed along in our family. Sharing the stories of our past helps us to retain our history. If we don’t tell the stories of our families who will? Knowledge of our past guides us to make connections we can use today. Learning the importance of faith with our family creates the connections that reveal the promise of life that is in Jesus Christ for all of us.

Paul’s second letter to Timothy is a timely reading for today, when our faith might need some spark, as we are dealing with many distractions from the goodness of God’s promise. Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy is both personal and public. It is about the faith of Paul that he shares with Timothy and all of the faithful. Alone in prison Paul writes as a loving parent to a child, with encouragement and trust. This is not Paul’s first time in prison, but this is probably his last. Timothy has been hard at work proclaiming the Good News of Jesus in Ephesus, while facing many distractions by false prophets, and enemies of the church. Paul’s authority comes through Christ. We share his job description to teach and to proclaim the Good News.

Paul was writing as the experienced missionary to his protege and heir, calling him, ”my beloved child.” Paul writes as a father to a child to give support and guidance. Knowing that his end is near Paul is strong in faith and full of encouragement for Timothy. Paul does not mask or hide the risk of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. While others may abandon us, he encourages Timothy that God will never abandon us. Just like our own family of faith, who will not abandon us. Together we will continue to teach, to guide and protect each other. Our gift of faith is given by God and lovingly nurtured in our own family. Paul is passing on this pattern of faithfulness with the belief that God has assured us of this in the promise of eternal life in Jesus.

Paul met Timothy on his second missionary trip to Lystra, in Asia Minor. More than likely perhaps, even meeting Timothy’s grandmother and mother on his first missionary trip. Timothy’s grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice taught him about faith in Jesus Christ. It is through our loving family relationships where we learn how God loves us through Jesus Christ. Paul faithfully continues the teaching and guidance of Timothy. Paul recognized the importance of his ancestors for his own faith and saw that faith in Timothy. Paul and Timothy share an ancestry of faith. Paul has witnessed and believes that Timothy is well suited to continue to teach, guide and protect the love of God. Paul is calm and wise, like my grandparents were, guided by his own clear conscience. This passing of the torch, from Paul to Timothy, is by the will of God. Paul acknowledges a sincere faith that fully trusts in the promise of eternal life with God, that is given by Jesus dying on the cross for all of us.

Faith is the gift of God created in us by the Holy Spirit. Faith is expressed through the love of our ancestors who practiced this faith daily and passed it on to us. I experience this daily practice of faith as a loving father to three children. When I sit down and ask my youngest daughter, who will be a senior in High School, about her faith she tells me that she is the only one in a large friend group that still goes to church. While going to church is a sign of faith I try to steer the discussion into how faith is important to her when it appears that her friends don’t seem to care. How I pass on my faith is just as important to me as it is for her, and the challenges parents face are enormous. Paul’s letter gives us encouragement to continue to proclaim the Good News in our families. Faithful living in Jesus Christ is often difficult. Proclaiming Christian love can be uncomfortable to some. Even with Timothy’s strong Christian background there isn’t a guarantee of resilient faith- Paul prays and writes to Timothy to rekindle that faith into a bright blaze.

As a trained volunteer firefighter, I take quick notice of the word rekindle. When a fire call comes out as a rekindle it means that we didn’t completely do our job. The fire we thought we put out has started again. For the Apostle Paul this is just the opposite, he is looking for a rekindle. The spirit breathes life into our faith, just like oxygen breathes life into a fire. Paul is asking Timothy to get the fire of the Holy Spirit rekindled within him.

We are given this Spirit and accept this gift through faith. Boldly, without cowardice, our faith proclaims the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As a child I learned the importance of my family of faith and my home in the Church. Instead of asking my parents when we were going to church I would ask, “When are we going to God’s House”, a home where we are welcomed with love. God loves us so much that he gave us Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our salvation. Paul, who knew his time on earth was coming to an end, chooses to focus on his relationship with Timothy. Paul writes to Timothy to teach and model how to continue to use our gift of faith. He writes with the unconditional love of a parent for a child. I have experienced this same love by my adoptive parents who loved me as their child. We have the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit that is nurtured in our family of faith.

And so we remember with love those who came before us in faith.

We remember all of those who are here now to teach and practice faith in our midst.

We remember who we are and why we are here: called to love, to guide, and to protect and share this gift of faith.

Don’t be afraid to use your faith to love God and one another.

For the glory of God. AMEN

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.

Thanks be to God. Amen