Third Sunday of Easter – 10 April 2005

St. Paul Lutheran Church, ABQ NM – The Rev. Patricia L. Holman

Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-3,10-17; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35

And we have hope!
 

Have you ever taken a trip that did not go as planned?  Perhaps there were unexpected detours or surprises when you reached the destination, disappointments or blessings.  At worship last night one teen shared of learning to drive in the mountains in the midst of a terrible storm, and her father shared that on the way home he was pulled over by the NM state patrol…  What a life filled with journeys Pope John Paul II lived – as we read the accounts and remember the ministry of this world leader, we can only imagine the challenges and blessings his travels embraced.

The way Luke tells it, the disciples on the Emmaus road weren’t expecting what happened to them.  They were perplexed, trying to sort out the events of the past week – the arrest and crucifixion of their Rabbi, Messiah, the tales some of the women told about an empty tomb and word that Jesus was alive.  And then this stranger, literally in the Greek an alien, approaches, and he seems clueless.  So they tell their tale … “But we had hoped” …  Then in the welcome and the rest, at the table with their guest, this guest becomes the host and HOPE is restored: “Did not our hearts burn within us?!” and they dash back to Jerusalem to share their story: We have hope – Christ is risen indeed.

Sometimes our journeys are more emotional than physical.  We open our hearts and homes to welcome children and what unfolds is so often joy and pain greater than we could ever imagine.  We pull away from folks who hurt us; we harden our hearts against the very ones who long to help us.  Life is bound to have rocky roads and troubled paths, things don’t go as we had planned.  But that’s precisely where Christ meets us – in our sadness and frustration, in our disappointment and hurt.  Meets us and walks with us.  Following a path God in Christ knows all too well, Christ meets us and walks with us and breaks into our hurt with the embrace of forgiveness, and love, and hope.  No shame, no blindness to the world’s pain, no fear or doubt or self-loathing – nothing can separate us from that in-breaking grace of God in Jesus.  Nothing. 

Christ comes to give us our lives back – in the breaking of bread we know forgiveness, Christ with us.  We come to the table for feast or blessing, and here Christ becomes our host and new life, in some amazing and mysterious way, new life becomes real for us.  We come to know in a way only God in Christ can teach us that dying to the old and broken and rising to newness is the God-given way to life.

The early church was on an amazing journey of faith and challenge, of trust building, of trying to figure out what to do with this good news burning within them.   According to accounts in the book of Acts, the fires of Pentecost had poured out on them the gift of the Holy Spirit, not to consume them but to fuel their passion for witnessing to the world.  And the people who witnessed this phenomenon of the Spirit, who heard so clearly the pain inflicted by the powers that be, how do they respond?  “Oh no! What are we going to do now?”  Like a call to Onstar, Peter and the other leaders are there with guidance for the journey: Repent, turn back to God, be baptized, then join us on the journey!  And they do, about three thousand persons in one day.  “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (v.42).  Amazing.

St. Paul congregation is on an amazing journey in these days.  We have hired consultants, formed a team to lead the two year transformation effort, and adopted a plan for the Stewardship Team to help us dream new dreams for the ministry here and focus our sharing of time and money to support them.  We also have a team charged with the near term goal of developing a way to picture our vision and develop plans to support it as we move forward together.  When the Mission Planning Team met a few weeks ago, we had in hand the Council-developed vision of 2004, a vision for growth focused on numbers and finances as well as people and programs.  We had the Mission Statement embraced by the congregation in 1999, and we had a directive to begin our work with prayer and the study of some passages from the book of the Acts of the Apostles.  We expected to do some revising of the existing documents and develop a couple of new things, like an identity statement and a slogan.  What we didn’t expect was that we would imagine a whole new way of picturing our work together and God’s call for the future.  What emerged from our time is a picture of this congregation that includes five paths of access to the ministry here, and from here out into our community and our world.  These paths are built not by stone or asphalt, not by doctrine nor theological premise, but in relationship to God, the Word and the people of God’s good creation.  We began to see our journey as one focused on faith, trust, community partnerships, joy-filled stewardship, and the expectation that this is a place to share – we are people called to share – all life’s joys and sorrows.  

So here is where we begin:  “St. Paul Lutheran Church is a community of God’s people that builds trust, engenders faith, encourages joy-filled stewardship, strengthens community partnerships and shares joys and sorrows”… all to the glory of God!  Even though it’s “hot off the presses” we decided together yesterday that we would begin now to share this image with leadership and ministry teams, in articles and conversations throughout the congregation.  We your leadership will use it to guide our meetings and decision-making.  We will encourage you to use it as a lens to help refine what we do in various ministry teams.  For example, how does the way we care for the property here model joy-filled care of God’s good creation?  How does our education program for teens help them develop their faith lives and build trust with members of this community?  We will use it as a way to invite others onto the journey with us, interpreting things like our newly adopted Welcome Statement in the light of these paths and using the vision as a guide to develop strategic plans to “embody” the ideas we’ve articulated. 

I am sure this “first pass” at a vision will be edited and fine-tuned.  But it is a place to start.  The leaders who met in retreat this weekend are hopeful that it will give us a common focus for our work, and help us better communicate with you and all who are partners in this mission the enthusiasm we share for the purpose God has in mind for us. 

The beauty of this vision is that it isn’t just for the congregation.  It is a vision of the call each of us has by virtue of our baptism – to live in such a way that we grow in faith and trust sharing the care and resources God has given each of us to make a difference in this world.  It is a way we can begin anew wherever we live, whenever we spend our days, to follow Jesus’ lead, to focus our energies on becoming the Easter people we’re called to be. 

In reflecting on the incarnation of God – God in flesh made manifest -- Barbara Brown Taylor observes that on his last night on earth Jesus did not give his followers lofty ideas or conceptual truths to ponder – nor, I would add, membership numbers and financial contribution goals.  Jesus gave them two very specific ways of being in their bodies together: wash weary servant feet, and break bread together.  After all, once Jesus was gone God’s word would need new flesh.  It would be his followers who would now incarnate that word.  In word and meal, in the caring and sharing, as followers before us so we now become as little Christs to one another, and to those in need. 

Maybe this is not what we imagined when we started this faith journey, nor when we look in the mirror what we imagined a glimpse of the Word made flesh to be, but it is of God.  And WE have hope!