Saint Luke's Lutheran Church

As some of you know, a few weeks ago someone came into our church and stole two electronic keyboards and some of sound equipment. What some of you don't know is that last month, these two young people came to our Council meeting to apologize for what they did. In a prepared statement, one of them said this: "I have not yet found God in my life, but when I think about what I have done, I know that I must find him."

That is a very common perspective. Most people in our world, and even many people within the church, believe that for them to be saved, whatever that might mean, it is necessary for them to find God, to figure out what it is God wants from them, and then to do it. This is conventional religious wisdom, but it is wrong - all wrong.

Lutheran pastor Kelly Fryer was one of the keynote speakers at our Synod assembly three weeks ago. In one of her addresses she repeated a story that she tells in her book, Reclaiming the "L" Word: Renewing the Church from Its Lutheran Core. It happened during her first year of seminary, while she was sitting in class listening to a visiting professor go on and on about some long-dead theologian. She was bored. As she looked out the window at the beautiful day outside, she couldn't help but wish she were outside rather than in. Kelly was not the only one.

Sensing that he did not have his students' attention, the professor suddenly slammed his notebook shut and stopped talking. He went to the chalkboard and drew a gigantic arrow, pointing straight down ò. He stepped back and said, "If you understand that, you understand everything you need to know about what it means to be a Christian." Then he left the room. The students sat there staring at that enormous arrow - pointing straight down ò. Kelly thought that the professor meant that they were all going straight to hell.

When that professor walked into their next class, he began by drawing that same arrow on the board. This time he had their attention. "Here's what this means," he began. "God always comes down. God always comes down. There is never anything that we can do to turn that arrow around and make our way UP to God. God came down in Jesus, and God still comes down - in the bread and in the wine, in the water and in the fellowship of believers. God ALWAYS comes down."

That's it. That is the heart of the Gospel. In Jesus, God came down from heaven and entered into our world. This is what we have been celebrating during this first semester of the church year. We began in December at Christmas time - celebrating the fact that God came down to be born of the Virgin Mary and became a human being. Then in April, we celebrated the fact that God came down to suffer and to die on a cross, only to be raised up again on the third day. And last Sunday, we celebrated the fact that in this Jesus, the God who came down from heaven, ascended up to heaven again and is now seated at the right hand of the Father.

Let me tell you a story that I remembered last week as I put a bottle of wine into my car to do some home communions. Once upon a time there was a priest who had problem with drinking. One day he was pulled over by the police because he was weaving back and forth on the road. As the priest rolled down his window, the officer asked, "Father, have you been drinking?" "No, sir," replied the priest. Noticing a flask on the passenger's seat, the officer asked what was in the bottle. When the priest said that it was water, the officer asked to take a look at it. He opened the bottle, took a sniff, and said, "This isn't water. It's wine." And the priest replied, "Good Lord, he did it again!"

Today is Pentecost. On Pentecost, God did it again - not by turning water into wine, but by coming down. This time God came down, not as God the Son but as God the Holy Spirit. This time God came down not to suffer and die but to give life and to empower the people of God.

Today begins the second semester of the church year. The first half of the year focuses on the life of Jesus - from his birth, to his death on the cross, to his resurrection, and to his ascension. In the second semester we focus on the life of the Church - from Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, all the way to the last day when all the people of God will be gathered into the heavenly kingdom.

Last week in our reading from Acts 1 we heard Jesus tell his disciples to wait in Jerusalem and they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them. Ten days after Jesus made this promise, it was fulfilled when the Holy Spirit came down and filled those first disciples. Now the Spirit of God is the power of God. So Pentecost is marked by signs and sounds and symbols of power. There was the sound of a great, violent wind. There were the tongues of fire sitting on the heads of the disciples. There were these unschooled fishermen speaking in every language. It was a dramatic display of power - the power of God poured out onto human beings. God did it again, and God still does it today. In the waters of baptism God comes down and fills us with the Holy Spirit. Do you understand what this means? Through baptism, you were given the power of God - the very same power that God gave the Apostles.

Now God does not give us power for nothing. When God gives us power, God expects us to use that power for some good. That purpose was clearly laid out in Jesus' promise. He said that they would be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit so that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria and to the ends of the earth. If we were going to use arrows to depict this purpose they might look something like this: ï =>. God came down so that we could reach out to others.

This is the purpose of the church - then and now. This mission is reflected in the commitment our confirmands will make in a few minutes. In the Rite of Confirmation, I will ask them to promise "to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, to serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth."

In my final session with these confirmands, we looked at this commitment and I asked each one of them what they thought about it. I got two different responses. Some of them thought that it was a pretty big commitment - probably more than any one person could actually do. Some of them thought that this was "no problem" - they could handle it. Two quite different responses, but both of them are appropriate - especially when you put them together.

On the one hand, this is a huge commitment and an incredible mission. To proclaim the good news, to serve all people, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth - this is not something that any of us could accomplish on our own. But that's the point. We are not on our own. First of all, we have been given the power of the Holy Spirit. God never gives us a task without equipping us for that task. God never asks us to do more than we are able to do, with God's help. Secondly, we are not alone because we are a part of a worldwide community of faith. There are millions and millions of other Christians who share this mission and this commitment.

This does not mean that our commitment is any less or that it is not so important for us to do what God asks us to do. What it does mean is that this is not "mission impossible." When every disciple of Jesus Christ puts the power of the Holy Spirit to work in accomplishing this mission, then great things can and will happen.

Now let's go back to that arrow. It always points this way ò, because God always comes down. It never points this way ñ, because we cannot reach up to God. God came down to us because we could not go up to God. But now that God has done it again, now that the Holy Spirit has also come down and filled us with God's power, we are able to reach out to others. So while this is a symbol of God's grace: ò. This is a symbol of our mission: ï =>. While this is a symbol of what God has done for us: ò, this is a symbol of what God wants us to do for the kingdom: ï =>.

Out of all of the things that we tried to teach you in our Confirmation ministry, I hope that you will always trust in this ò, and that you will always be committed to this ï =>. Amen.