Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Luke 12: 32-40

Just after my freshman year of college, I hitched a ride from an older sibling of my childhood friend from my hometown in ND to Minneapolis. That’s about an 8 hour drive. They left me at the Minneapolis bus depot with all my gear for the summer. Have you been to the Minneapolis bus depot? I have. With way too many bags. Eventually, I got on the bus that would drop me off on the main street of Amery, Wisconsin. In front of the drug store. Just me and all my bags. Someone from Camp Wapogasset was supposed to pick me up but there was a mix up. This is back in the 1900’s, where I’m from, before cell phones.

So I dragged my pile of stuff into the drugstore and then all the way to the back of the stop where they had a phone they let me use to call the camp. Wapo sent one of the maintenance guys in the old beater truck to come and pick me up. And that was the beginning.

I had no idea I would spend three summers there and fall in love with outdoor ministry which would lead to working at two other camps, a decade in youth ministry, seminary, church planting and well, me in this pulpit this morning.

If you are unfamiliar Camp Wapo, it is one of the many ELCA outdoor ministry camps throughout this country. Camp Wapo gave me an imagination for a new world where we are welcomed (aggressively so). A world where whole groups of people travel at the pace of the most vulnerable. A new world where the weirdest humans become the heroes. I was smitten with all of it.

This week, I made my way back to Camp Wapo because 35 Gloria Dei kids spent the week there. Others have gone other weeks, too. I wanted to witness what they were experiencing. I understand that a week at bible camp is not for everyone. I did not enjoy being a camper when I was young. However, I loved being a young adult leader. Both can be true. (pause)

Have no fear little flock, it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

I’m wondering what our lives would be like if we took Jesus at his word here. It is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Maybe that’s hard for you to wrap your head around because you think of it like having to convince this grumpy and frugal God to give us stuff. Or that God is standing in judgment, like Santa, making a list and checking it twice. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with people over the years who come expecting and anticipating judgement when we gather. Often they are in church for a friends funeral or they’ve been asked to be at a family member’s baptism. Worship isn’t their regular place but there they are because it matters to someone they love. But then after the service, they are so surprised that it wasn’t awful. Because they came expecting judgment, gnashing of teeth, grumpy Santa and what they experience is God’s good pleasure. God’s delight.

God delights in our flourishing.

This Gospel begins strong right out of the gate today.

1. Do not be afraid.
2. Sell everything and give away your money
3. Where you put your treasure, your heart will follow. Another way to say this is teach us to love what is worth loving.

 

Do not be afraid. Easy said than done when you begin thinking of all the things that fill you terror. In this chapter of the Gospel of Luke, fear refers to the anxiety and misgivings associated with the uncertainties in life, modeled brilliantly by last week’s wealthy landowner. Remember him? He has accumulated so much wealth in the form of grain that he had to tear down his barns and build newer, bigger ones. As he was delighting in his situation, he had no idea that his life would come to an end that very night.

He was the richest guy in town but lived in poverty of spirit. The tragedy isn’t that he was wealthy, it is that he didn’t recognize that God had already given him the kingdom. All the goodness that leads to human flourishing was available to him and he couldn’t see it. Opportunities for generosity and community were absent from his life.

And. If the goal is accumulation of grain then he is trying to hit a moving target because how much is enough? Of course that leads to anxiety and fear because likely the answer is more than we have right now.

So Jesus gives us the antidote to living in fear. Easy. Sell all you have and give it to people who need it. Selling all you have feels like a lot of ask on a Sunday morning, mid August in Minnesota. If that invitation sounds like freedom and a gift, go ahead. Bless you. I know the world will blessed by your radical downsizing.

How much is enough to accumulate? How much is enough to give away generously? I don’t know. These are questions between you and the Holy Spirit. But I do know that  when I am overwhelmed by the question of how much is enough in my own life and it leads to hand wringing and feeling clutchy with what I have and fear that it isn’t enough, when I am in that spirit space, then I know it’s time to be generous. It’s time to bless a friend who is struggling or to gift an nonprofit doing good work that leads to life’s flourishing. It’s time to commit my own hours to helping someone else. This has been true at every economic level that I have lived.

I am no mathematician and rarely deal in concrete facts, but Kingdom of God math seems to be the more you give, the less fear you have around what is enough.

Have no fear, little flock. Jesus refers to us as a little flock, which is cute and diminutive. I don’t hate it. Actually, I love thinking of us as sweet wooly sheep with a gentle Shepherd guiding us. Even so, this little flock is the recipient of God’s dominion.

This flock is the recipient of God’s dominion. Meaning, God is here, we have what we need and not only is a new world that I first experienced at Camp Wapo possible, it is being born.

It is being born despite of all those things that we are terrified might happen. Despite all the fear and anxiety that we carry around. Despite all of that, this world is at hand.

Here is how I know.

This week, Gloria Dei folks joined other volunteers and built a house with Habitat for Humanity.

A group of quilters met and worked on community art pieces we call quilts, which make the world cozier and warmer.

Many of you prayed for people. Others vulnerably asked for prayer.

People showed up and without fanfare, tended the gardens here, picked veggies to be shared with neighbors at Neighborhood House, watered flowers.

An Eagle Scout worked with his troop and contributed 100 new plants to our rain garden area.

Others resisted isolation and came together for coffee, for connection, to study God’s word, to exercise together.

I know most of you likely picked up a postcard on from our Beacon Housing folks to mail to our representatives reminding them that we want affordable housing.

We all set aside other plans to gather up this morning to hear ancient stories like the one from Genesis where a man who had one foot in the grave—was all but dead—but God made good on the promise that he and his wife would have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky, as many as grains of sand on the beach. Can you imagine? And new life sprung from within their lives and just kept springing.

And. 30 campers joined a camp full of kids to joyfully scream-sing a new world into being. This is the Kingdom of God. This is the flourishing.

Have no fear, Gloria Dei. It is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.