Sermon for Sunday, July 7, 2013: You are not Alone

Sermon Sunday July 7^th, 2013

Gospel: You are not alone.

Pr. Paul Cannon

Good Morning Bethany Lutheran!

As many of you know, I grew up out in the wild west known as Utah.  And if Utah is famous for any one thing, it’s famous for being the central hub of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – known as the LDS church aka, the Mormon church.

And I have to tell ya, that being a Lutheran in Utah gets kind of lonely.  There was like 3 or 4 kids in my confirmation class and two of them were me and my brother. So my parents, being the wise, and gentle people that they are (and I’m not just saying that because they are here this morning…wink wink) sent me off to college in MN to learn my Lutheran roots, or as my mother secretly wished, to marry a Lutheran girl!  Mission accomplished.

It was a good move on my parent’s part, not just because I married a Pastor’s daughter, but because up in Minnesota Lutherans are like ants – they were everywhere.  You couldn’t look under a rock without finding a Lutheran eating a hot-dish (dontcha know).

The opposite is true in Utah.  The state is well over 50% Mormon, so though I’m not an expert on Mormonism, I have learned a lot about them just by living there. About half the kids in my school were Mormon, we had Mormon neighbors and Mormon teachers.  Most of our politicians and even the newscasters were all Mormon. 

A lot people in this part of the world don’t know much about the LDS church.  Maybe you have a neighbor who is Mormon, or maybe your doorbell has been rung once or twice by a couple of goofy-looking teenagers on bikes.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  They wear white button-downs, black ties, black pants and they have those name tags that have the ironic title “elder” printed on them.

Well, one thing I can say from my experience is that the LDS community in Utah is that on the one hand they really take care and look after one another.  But on the other hand, they can also be very closed off.  Often the Mormon kids would only hang out with each other, so living there sometimes felt very isolated and lonely as a Christian.  Our family wasn’t ever invited to a Mormon neighbor’s house and I never really hung out with LDS kids because they were only supposed to hang out with each other.

I bring all this up because today we are talking about community & mission.  And those are two things that the LDS church simultaneously really good at, and really bad at.

And it starts today with our Gospel. Mormons take the Bible passage we read today about as seriously – and if I’m being blantantly honest, more seriously – than most Christians take it.

The story comes from the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus had been traveling across the countryside, visiting towns and acquiring more and more disciples. In our story today, he gathers a group of seventy of his followers and then sends them out in pairs ahead of him to proclaim the good news to all the villages they come across.

And this is the model the Mormon church has picked up on. They send their young 19-20 year old male missionaries out in pairs.  And that’s why whenever you see LDS Missionaries there are two of them – because Jesus sent out the seventy in pairs.

There’s a lot of good reasons to go out in pairs and perhaps most significantly, going out in pairs sends the message, “You’re not alone.” You’re not alone. Those missionaries always know that they don’t have to go knocking on doors by themselves.  They have a partner – somebody who has their back. 

Time and time again, our scripture tells us the same thing: that we were never meant to do it all by ourselves.  In the Garden of Eden, God looked at Adam and said, “It is not good that man should be alone.”  Then what did he do? God made Adam a partner. 

In the first chapter of Matthew, an Angel appears to Joseph and tells him “’Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ And what does Emmanuel mean? … ‘God with us.’”

It’s interesting because on the one hand, the LDS church models this really well. They send all their missionaries in pairs so they aren’t alone. Their tight-knit communities look after one another.  And those are great traits to have in a church.  But our family’s experience (and I know the experience of many Utah Christians is similar) was that they often did it to the exclusion of outsiders – to the exclusion of their neighbors.

That’s not a reflection of God’s Kingdom.  God reaches out to the lonely.  He speaks through the outcasts.  Jesus didn’t exclude people he deemed unworthy.  He built his church on them.

It’s not just the LDS church that does this.  Lutherans can be guilty of it as well.  Too often we reflect the world we live in, rather than God’s Kingdom. Our world is one that asks “Why should I care?” “It’s not my problem if my neighbor can’t afford health insurance.” “It’s not my problem if people are dying of Malaria in Africa.” “It’s not my problem if the new kid at school doesn’t have somebody to talk to.”  It’s just not my problem.

As a church, we need to be counter-cultural to this.  We are called to go out in pairs supporting one another in God’s mission.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, breathe easy, I have no plans to send you out door to door with cheesy pamphlets explaining how to be Lutheran. I’m not even sure what would be on a pamphlet like that. How to be a Lutheran: Step one: Receive God’s grace.  Step Two: Receive God’s grace.  Step three (optional): Eat hotdish.  No.  Not all of us are called to be evangelical missionaries.

(Hotdish is the Midwest term for a casserole that contains basically everything you can find in your pantry/freezer.  mmmm...hotdish).

However everybody has a calling.  Let me say that again.  Everybody has a calling.  Sometimes we have this faulty assumption that it’s only the Pastors who are quote “called” to things.  But that’s not how Martin Luther saw it.  He believed that all people are called into their stations in life. So whether your calling is as an accountant, a teacher, a stay-at-home parent, a student, a retired grandparent or a customer service rep, God has called you to be where you are.

And all of us are called in whatever we do to stand with others against injustice.  We are all called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. We are all called to be God’s hands and feet in the world. And that can be a daunting task!  There are a lot of hungry people!  There is a lot of injustice in the world!

But the grace in all of this is that God doesn’t leave you alone to do these things by yourself. Isn’t that what we heard Paul write to the community in Galatia this morning?  He begs them to “bear one another’s burdens.”  Bear one another’s burdens. It’s both a calling and a blessing.  

We are called to bear our neighbor’s struggles.  So it is our problem if our neighbor’s can’t afford to send their sick kid to the doctor.  It is our problem every time a person dies of a preventable disease in Africa.  It is our problem when the new kid in school doesn’t have anybody to talk to.

The blessing is that you are not alone. You have a community here at Bethany that wants to support you. You have a God that has promised in Baptism to be Emmanuel – God with you. So when your burdens get heavy – when you lose your job or are fighting depression or trying to kick an addiction – you have a community that will help you bear those heavy loads.

This community exists to support one another and God’s entire creation. It’s what God calls us to do.  God’s mission for this church is not only that we can support you in your struggles, but that we look outside of ourselves as well. 

So, people of God, I say to you,

“Go in peace, and know that you do not go alone.”

Amen