Bishop Craig Schweitzer

2 Corinthians 8:1-7 • November 4, 2018

Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Savior and Lord, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

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This is the second week in our worship series “Abundant Joy. Overflowing Generosity.” Our theme this week is “Giving God our Worship.”

As many of you may, or may not know, my vocation in the church began in 2002 when I was hired to serve on Good Shepherd’s lay staff as Music & Worship Minister. Many years later…and a little blood, sweat, and tears through the candidacy process… I am now blessed to be ordained and serve as one of your called pastors. My roles may have changed over the years, but at the heart of everything I do as a child of God, worship remains central. In fact, I believe more strongly now than ever, that a Christian cannot exist without worship as an active and regular part of their faith journey.

I worry a bit that we have departed from that truth in recent years as followers of Jesus. Worship is important if we can fit it into the hundreds of other things clogging up our schedule. Worship is important as long as I like the music or liturgy being used and the preaching is not too long. Worship is important if it doesn’t take too much of my energy and time.

Thirty years ago, the average church member attended worship 1 out of every 2 weeks. Today, that average is once out of every 6 weeks.

I also worry that our lack of commitment to worship in communities of faith is having a negative impact on how we live out our faith. Don’t get me wrong, we still worship.
Unfortunately, the things we worship often don’t resemble much of the God we receive in Christ Jesus.

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I was visiting recently with a local politician who is on the ballot this coming Tuesday. They were out knocking on neighborhood doors early one Sunday afternoon, meeting constituents. As the candidate was walking away from the doorstep of one house, the owner of the home drove into the driveway.

A friendly hello was shared and the homeowner made a joke that they had already given in the church offering. The candidate said that was good to hear since they had done the same. And even though this homeowner had yard signs of the candidate’s opponent, this particular candidate still wanted to meet some of their would be constituents.

The tone of the conversation quickly turned from friendly hellos. The homeowner said that he wishes he could line up a bunch of these candidates in his backyard – meaning candidates in the other political party – and just get rid of them. To actually cause physical harm to political candidates in the opposite party of the one he supports.

As shocking as that story is, not only because it happened just a few weeks ago. It happened in our own community too. Remember – both the political candidate and the homeowner claimed to have been in worship at their local church just a few hours earlier in the day. A few hours before that threatening statement was offered to another child of God.

How quickly we forget whom we worship. How quickly you and I can move into worshiping something or someone else that has no resemblance of the God we know through Jesus Christ. As a called and ordained pastor in the church of Jesus Christ, if you ever hear me say that it is ok to harm another child of God or destroy part of God’s good creation, please pull me aside and rebuke me of that sin.

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The Apostle Paul is encouraging the church in Corinth and the church of Good Shepherd today to give God our worship. To give God our worship in ways that look much different than the shocking story I just shared.

Paul proclaims, “Now as you excel in everything – in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you – so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.”

Paul doesn’t say that we should excel whenever we have time to make it to church; or when we think we have a few spare minutes to say a prayer for someone we love; or when we are around people who think and look the same as we do ideologically or politically or theologically; or when we feel like giving God the few extra dollars left over in our pocket.

Paul says that because of all that God has done and is doing for us through the savior of the world Jesus Christ, we are to excel in everything. Everything. Faith, speech, knowledge, eagerness, love. It’s a generous undertaking.

Since God has called us into this work, why wouldn’t we want to excel in it? I believe that is something followers of Jesus have wrestled with since Paul first offered this challenge to the church nearly 2,000 years ago.

Paul, in all truth, seems to be saying that since you and I excel in so many things, why not be generous? Be generous in everything and excel in them. By doing that, we are able to live in this world fully as the people who God is calling us to be – servants of Jesus and stewards of God’s creation.

Gathered together in worship at all times and in all places, focused entirely on the living God, we are reminded why God created us in the first place – to be in relationship with God and to be in relationship with each other. To be intentional as we live together in Christian community giving God our worship and praise – not just when we attend a church service, but in every second of every day.

Brothers and sisters, we are constantly being sent into a world in need of God’s healing touch and unconditional love. Sent as a people with a generous undertaking. A generous undertaking that is in opposition to much of what the world expects life to be. Sent because all of our life, as people who claim to be followers of Jesus, is an act of giving God our worship.

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This weekend, we also celebrate All Saint’s Day. We remember and give thanks to the saints in our own congregation who have died in the faith. We also remember and give thanks for how God is calling us to be saints as we live in this world right now, giving God our worship.

Pastor, author and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor wrote a reflection called “A Great Cloud of Witnesses” several years ago. I believe it speaks beautifully to giving God our worship as we excel in everything on this festival day of all saints.

“What makes a saint?” Taylor writes,
“Extravagance.
Excessive love, flagrant mercy, radical affection,
exorbitant charity, immoderate faith, intemperate hope,
inordinate love.

None of which is an achievement, a badge to be earned or a trophy to be sought;
all are secondary by products of the one thing that truly makes a saint,
which is the love of God,
which is membership in the body of Christ,
which is what all of us, living and dead, remembered and forgotten, great souls and small,
have in common.
Some of us may do more with that love than others
and may find ourselves able to reflect it in a way
that causes others to call us saints,
but the title is one that has been given to us all by virtue of our baptisms.
The moment we rose dripping from the holy water
we joined the communion of saints,
and we cannot go back
any more than we can give back our names or the blood in our veins.
(The great cloud of witnesses includes us all)
Clan made kin by Christ’s blood.
There are heroes and scoundrels at the party, beloved aunts and estranged cousins,
relatives we adore and those who plainly baffle us.
They are all ours, and we are all included.
…we worship amidst a great fluttering of wings,
with the whole host of heaven crowding the air above our heads.
Call their names and hear them answer “present.”
…they belong to us and we to them,
And as their ranks swell so do the possibilities that open up in our own lives.
Because of them
and because of one another
and because of the God who binds us all together
we can do more than any of us had dreamed to do alone.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us never forget to give God our worship always. God is the only one we worship. That’s what the children of God are called to do and to do it with abundant joy and overflowing generosity. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[In addition to the sermon, each week of this series will feature a video Bible Study. You can find this week’s Bible study by clicking here.]

2 Corinthians 8:1-7 • October 28, 2018

Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Savior and Lord, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

It is Reformation weekend – a time when we celebrate the fact that the Lutheran Christian church is called to always be a reforming church.

It’s also Confirmation weekend – a time when 46 of our brothers and sisters in Christ affirm their baptism and make promises to each other and to God that they intend to continue to live out their life as followers of Jesus in all they say and do.

It’s also the first week of one of my favorite worship series of the year. Every year, in the fall, Good Shepherd sets aside several weeks of time to explore what it means to be a steward of God and how being a steward shapes the entirety of our life of faith.

I hope and pray that you are blessed by this year’s series. It’s called “Abundant Joy. Overflowing Generosity.” This series will include special worship services over the next month, stewardship moments shared with some of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, an opportunity each week during worship to reflect upon our own stewardship and generosity, short weekly video bible studies that will be posted on our YouTube and Facebook pages, and an opportunity for all of us who call Good Shepherd our faith home to make a financial commitment to the mission and ministry God is blessing us with.

The scripture reading that will guide us throughout this worship series is the one we just heard from the Apostle Paul’s second letter – or possibly his third letter as some biblical scholars believe – to the church in Corinth.

Is this text about money? Yes.

Is that all it’s about? No. Because stewardship is not only about money. Generosity is far more than just money. Stewardship, or living our faith generously, is about far more than money or the church’s quest to get into our bank accounts. Thanks be to God for that truth.

The Macedonians are a generous people – generous to an extreme. Even though they have experienced great poverty and persecution, they are committed to the work of the church and generously and joyfully support what God is doing. Paul uses them as a way to encourage the Corinthians to be equally generous. After all, the Corinthians are far more affluent than the Macedonians ever hope to be.

Here’s the rub though. Paul is not trying to guilt the congregation in Corinth into giving like the Macedonians. He’s trying to help the congregation in Corinth see first-hand the gift of God’s grace that has empowered the Macedonians to give in the first place.
And to give abundantly, joyfully, generously – far beyond what anyone could have imagined. God’s grace – and God’s grace alone – invites them into a life of overflowing generosity.

Bishop NT Wright offers this thought in one of his many volumes on the Apostle Paul. “Grace is one of Paul’s ‘big’ words – so big, in fact, that we often fail to realize all the tasks he gets it to perform. Often when people talk about ‘grace’ in church circles they are referring simply to the undeserved love and power which God showers on people in bringing them to faith in the first place and enabling them to live and grow as Christians. That remains central and vital.” Bishop Wright states. He then goes on to say, “But Paul also uses the word in what seems to us (though probably not to him) a different way, as in this passage: to refer to what God wants to do not just in and for Christians but through them.

What counts is not whipping up human sympathy for a project, nor making people feel guilty that they have money which others need, nor yet encouraging them to gain social prestige by letting it be known that they have given generously. What counts,” Bishop Wright concludes, “is a work of grace in the hearts and lives of ordinary people. Paul has seen this spectacularly in Macedonia; now he declares that he wants to see it in Corinth as well.” [Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians, pg. 86-87]

Brothers and sisters in Christ, what might grace like that look like in the hearts and lives of people who call Good Shepherd Lutheran Church their faith home?

Over the course of a year, tens of thousands of people gather at Good Shepherd for times of worship and praise. On average, more than 800 people gather for worship in this sanctuary every single week.

But our worship life is not only contained within this space. Our worship life also gathers us together with brothers and sisters in 170 congregations of the Western North Dakota Synod and 9,000 congregations across the United States that are part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Our worship life also gathers us with our brothers and sisters of Cristo Rey Lutheran Church in Santa Ana, El Salvador and in Lutheran congregations across Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Madagascar.

As God’s grace works through the hearts and lives of ordinary people like you and me at Good Shepherd in the next year, how might we grow generously in order to bring forth new mission opportunities and joy to worshiping communities we don’t even know exist today?

During the program year of September through May, seeds of faith are planted in about 700 young people through Church School, Little Angels, Confirmation, and Senior High School ministries. Ministries led not only by pastors and paid church staff, but by dozens of additional leaders who volunteer their time to walk alongside these young people in their faith journey.

As God’s grace works through the hearts and lives of ordinary people like you and me at Good Shepherd in the next year, how might we grow generously in order to bring even greater joy to additional opportunities for us to form faith together – from our very youngest to our very oldest members?

Earlier this year, we began participating in a ministry called Little Free Pantry. In just a few short months, the little, non-descript, wooden box on the north side of our property has offered thousands of items and hundreds of pounds of food to brothers and sisters in our community who are among the working poor living with food insecurity as a daily part of their reality.

As God’s grace works through the hearts and lives of ordinary people like you and me at Good Shepherd in the next year, how might we grow even more generously in order to bring even greater joy to brothers and sisters in our own community who are hungry, poor, feeling forgotten? Brothers and sisters who just need to know that someone cares about them, someone who can remind them with words and actions that God does love them unconditionally.

I’m filled with joy that we are together today. I’m filled with joy that God has called us to be a faith community together just like those in Corinth and Macedonia. Our worship series begins with today’s theme…giving God our day. We begin here because one of the central beliefs of our faith is that every day is a gift from God. Every day in our life of faith begins with God because it’s all God’s in the first place.

This week, let us give God each day that we are given. And let us do that with overflowing generosity toward our brothers and sisters. I pray God’s blessings to be upon you as we journey together over the next four weeks seeking to live with abundant joy and overflowing generosity. Amen.