So That . . .

Sunday, August 16, 2020
Pastor Mark Aune

Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

What you and I do regarding our relationship with God matters. It matters to God and just as importantly it matters to you and me.

As Lutheran Christians we talk a lot about what God does; God’s action and direction in our lives. When it comes to matters of faith and life, we say that God is the primary actor, and this is important.

God sent Jesus to save us. God sends the Holy Spirit to comfort us and to teach us. God sends people and experiences into our lives that change us and challenge us and form us.

But we are part of the equation too. We get to share and participate in this grand relationship that God is always initiating with you and me so that you and I can be the kind of people God desires us to be.

Today’s reading from Deuteronomy is one of the foundational building blocks of this grand relationship we have been given with God. Like a lot of foundational parts of scripture this reading takes place in a time of transition and change. Which means it is timely for us.

God’s people are about to cross over into the land God promised them. They have been set free from slavery in Egypt. They had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. They had received God’s law, the commandments on Mt. Sinai. Moses faithfully led them, and his time was coming to an end.

Like words of wisdom from a departing loved one Moses reminds the people of God of what is most important, most critical so that they will keep on being God’s people.

Now this is the commandment—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, ²so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, so that your days may be long. ³, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly.

Like a good teacher Moses explains the reasons for obedience to this commandment. Four times in two verses he uses the phrase so that.

So that you will fear the Lord.

So that your days will be long.

So that it may go well with you.

So that you may multiply greatly.

Our response to God matters.

Our obedience to God’s commandment makes a difference.

What is the commandment Moses is referring to here?

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

This is called the Shema. Shema is the Hebrew word for hear.

We might say listen up. Pay attention. This is very important.

Jesus, as a good and faithful Jewish man quotes the Shema.

We are told to keep it in our hearts, tell it to our children and talk about it when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸Bind it as a sign on your hand, as an emblem on your forehead, ⁹and write it on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Obedience to this commandment should be as natural and consistent as breathing in and breathing out.

It shapes our life,
it directs our path,
it is literally dwelling in God’s grace.
So that it may go well with you.

So that it may go well with you doesn’t mean a life free from trouble or challenges, but it does mean it will go well with you as you experience troubles and challenges.

This commandment to love God with heart, soul and might is to stand on a foundation of faith that doesn’t shift, crumble or change and it is what enables life to go well no matter what.

I’ve witnessed what this means. Many times, and in many places. When I sit beside a dying saint who doesn’t seem to be aware of anyone or anything and I pray the Lord’s Prayer and the lips of the dying saint move in synchrony to my words as I pray out loud, I am literally witnessing what it means to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. It becomes so deeply imbedded in us that we always trust it is there, even if we aren’t aware of it.

We know people are struggling right now. There is a weariness that is beyond words that weighs on us all. As a staff we are aware and as we keep working to encourage you and keep you connected to your church and to God we know and trust our foundation is firm.

If you feel like your legs cannot carry you and the fear and loneliness are getting heavier and heavier then hear the Word once again. Hear the commandment. Listen!

Remember that you have bound it to your heart. You carry it in your hands and on your head.

You have placed it on the door post of your homes. It is with you when you rise up in the morning and when you close your eyes in the evening.

This Word, this command to hear, to listen, to love the Lord your God so that it will go well with you;

so that you will have the strength to stand
so that you will be ale to do what God wants you to do
so that you will withstand the attacks of the evil one
so that you will not fear the arrow that flies by day and the pestilence that stalks in the darkness
so that your heart will know the peace of God which passes human understanding
so that you will not fear death, sin or the power of the devil
so that you will trust God, know the love of Jesus and experience the power of the Holy Spirit at work in your life – and not be afraid.

Now more than ever, as we all try and move forward into a future that is unclear, uncertain and with no end in sight, now more than ever must we hear this commandment, listen to this commandment, live in this commandment.

To love God with heart, soul and strength.

To trust that we are in relationship with God because God has sought us out.

And to know God’s strength, God’s power and God’s peace.

So that it will go well. No matter what.

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.

So That . . .

Sunday, August 16, 2020
Pastor Mark Aune

Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

So That . . .

Sunday, August 16, 2020 Pastor Mark Aune

Deuteronomy 6:1-9

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, August 16, 2020
Pastor Mark Aune

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson