Tubing Trip – Sunday, August 28
There will be a tubing trip from Chattahoochie Park to Pr. Amy’s, August 28, 2:00-4:00 pm. Meet at Chattahoochie Park at 2:00 pm. There will be ice cream after leaving the river. The trip will be finished by 4:00 pm. RSVP by Friday, August 26 by emailing Pastor Amy to make sure there are enough tubes.
This Week at Good Shepherd, August 22-28
THIS WEEK AT GOOD SHEPHERD
Tuesday, August 23
7:00 p.m. – CLA Circle, Sharon Drew hosts
Wednesday, August 24
7:00 p.m. – Art Committee
Thursday, August 25
12:00 p.m. – Education Committee
Sunday, August 28 – 15th Sunday After Pentecost
8:45 a.m. – Come and Try Handbells
9:30 a.m. – Worship with Holy Communion – BROADCAST
10:30 a.m. – Fellowship Hour – Coffee Sale
2:00 p.m. – Tubing Party, Meet at Chattahoochie Park
Sermon for August 21, 2016 – “Set Free to See”
Sermon For Sunday, August 21, 2016 – “Set Free to See”
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 21, 2016
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson
Luke 13:10-17; Isaiah, 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29
“Set Free to See”
Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.
Imagine what it was like to be the woman in our Gospel reading. For the first time in 18 years she could stand up straight, move freely, raise her head to the sun. Imagine how her perspective changed as well. For 18 years her eyes had been cast down at the ground. Once she was raised up her gaze was lifted up as well. She could take in the whole horizon; she could look a loved one in the eye. The whole world was now in her line of sight.
She could see so many reasons to give thanks and praise to God.
Yet just as she was being lifted up and her vision expanded, a synagogue leader’s eyes were narrowing in anger and judgment. When the leader saw this woman being healed on the Sabbath he become indignant.
We’re told “he kept saying to the crowd that she was wrong to seek healing on the Sabbath.” Rather than rejoicing that she was lifted up, he criticized her and told her she should have waited to seek healing. Just as she stood tall for the first time in 18 years, he sought to take her back down a notch. This angered Jesus; Jesus rebuked the leader and those he’d stirred up. He turned their argument about the Sabbath on its head and “all his opponents were put to shame.” Jesus lifted the woman up and tore his opponents down.
This has all the makings of a made-for-TV drama – the moving story of someone lifted up by a powerful hero, the bad guys who interfere, the happy ending when the good guys win. It has the makings of an inspiring story from the Olympics – a humble person lifted up by a heroic coach and opponents put to shame. It sounds like a story of winners and losers with clear good guys and bad guys. Or, at least that is often how this sounds in a culture steeped in election coverage, poll results, Olympics results and reality TV shows in which some people advance to fame and some are put to shame.
We’re often tempted to use stories like this to judge ourselves the winners and our opponents the losers, to think that we are on the side of helping people and our opponents are angry hypocrites who should be convicted by Jesus, who should be ashamed of themselves. Yet this story is not about winners and losers, good and bad. It is about how Jesus lifts up and tears down in order to set us all free. Jesus’ ministry is all about lifting up the lowly and tearing down the proud. Even before Jesus was born. his mother Mary sang in her Magnificat that this is what Jesus would do. Yet the lifting up and tearing down is not to make winners and losers, to reward the good and punish the bad. Jesus lifts up and tears down to free us all from everything that binds us, everything that prevents us from seeing clearly.
The leader of the synagogue needed freeing and healing as much as the bent-over woman. The problem was not that he was trying to keep the law. Christians have often used this story to say Jews are too legalistic, they got it wrong and now we’ve got it right. That isn’t what is going on here. The problem isn’t that he wanted to protect the Sabbath. Sabbath allows all of creation to rest, to experience freedom from the demands of work.
Rather, the problem is that he was unable to see that this woman desperately needed the rest and freedom that Sabbath offers. He was bound by judgment and righteous indignation which prevented him from rejoicing when Jesus set the woman free. Like her, his vision was narrowed by his condition. He was unable to see the woman in front of him as a ‘daughter of Abraham’, a sister in faith. He needed to be taken down a notch so that his gaze could be turned to his neighbors around him. He needed the obstacles that got in his way torn down. For him, that day, healing required a tearing down.
At times each of us needs to be lifted up; at times each of us needs to be humbled. In a world that trains us to judge good and bad and to look for winners and losers, we all need healing. We all need our perspective changed so that we will see one another not as good or bad but as beloved children of God. We need the obstacles to our sight named and identified so that we all can be set free. In our time, an obstacle that is blinding and binding most of us is our white privilege. White privilege is the invisible system conferring dominance on whites. I encourage you to look up White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack for a list of 46 simple examples of white privilege. (White Privilege:Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack) Those of us who are white are not bad people because we have white privilege. But we harm others when we refuse to see and acknowledge the privilege we carry and the ways it gives us power over people of color. We harm others when we do not use the power we have in order to help lift them up.
We need to be healed. We need to be set free. We need our perspective broadened for the sake of all God’s children. This is what God does for us in worship. In worship we are convicted and forgiven. We are humbled and lifted up. Then God sends us out into the world into difficult conversations, into situations that will make us uncomfortable, into opportunities to develop mutual relationships with people of all colors.
God is at work in all of this to humble us, to lift us up, to heal us and set us free.
Let’s take a moment to pray.
Sermon for August 14, 2016 – “More By Faith …”
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 14, 2016
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson
click here to read scripture passages for the day
“More By Faith …”
Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus. Amen.
This Sunday our second reading from the book of Hebrews again has a lot to say about faith. Last Sunday the reading from Hebrews provided a good definition of faith: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.”
- Faith is both assurance and conviction.
- Faith provides assurance and comfort in the storms of life.
- Faith is the conviction that, even when things look bleak, God is at work and calls us to join that work, to get out and respond to the storms.
Last Sunday we heard about how Abraham and Sarah lived by faith. They were promised a future with hope and yet they needed to be assured of God’s promises again and again. They learned to trust these promises by living with conviction, acting as if they were true. We heard Sarah and Abraham’s story told with the repeated refrain, by faith … By faith they obeyed, by faith they lived in tents, by faith they received a son …
This week in the Hebrews reading we hear more about faith and those who lived by faith. Hebrews tells of a great cloud of witnesses, faithful people who provide encouragement for us to run our own races with perseverance. What is striking about these people’s stories is that they include a mix of triumph and suffering.
Some who lived by faith experienced victories: they conquered enemies, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, won strength out of weakness. But others who lived by faith experienced great suffering: public mocking, imprisonment, beating, stoning, homelessness, violence, and death. With this mix we see that our lot in life is not a measure of our faithfulness. Faithful people suffer; faithful people experience triumphs.
A life of faith is just like any life – full of sorrow and joy, pain and healing. What makes a life of faith different is not our circumstances. What makes it different are the promises of God. The promises of God assure us that we are held in God now and forever, that God is always with us, that we have a future with hope no matter our current circumstances. With these promises we can live and act with faith in the present moment.
Hebrews offers us this message through extreme examples of people living by faith through triumph and suffering. What Hebrews doesn’t include are examples of ordinary people living by faith through more normal ups and downs. We need those stories too.
Last week I shared some general examples from the history and life of this congregation and asked you to share about particular people you know who live by faith. Just about every example I heard was about a Good Shepherd person – something I thought was so fitting because you all are examples of faith to me. I can’t name you all, but I want to lift up some of the names and stories I’ve heard this week and noticed in this past year. As members and guests of Good Shepherd, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and we need to hear these stories to help us hold on to and act on the promises of God. These folks have given permission to use their names.
By faith, Kathryn Thompson and Sara Hanssen left family and moved to Decorah. Almost a year ago they took a chance and came to Good Shepherd one Sunday morning. Now they are an integral part of this congregation and the Kids Lunch Club initiative that has fed hungry kids this summer. They, and every one of you who has been a guest at some point, took a risk by stepping outside their comfort zone to come to worship here.
Thank you; you have so richly blessed this congregation. By faith, you have all made it here today. Whether you trusted that something would feed you or that someone else needed you here, you acted on faith. I trust God will feed you in some way.
By faith, Tanya and Faust Gertz discerned God’s call for their family and are following it even though it means leaving their beloved Decorah and their friends and church community. By faith, so many of you have made similar moves to follow God’s calls for your lives.
By faith, you also live out the daily grind that comes with all of our calls from God. You choose to respond to a difficult person with kindness, you take time to help your child even though you’re tired, you make a nice meal even when your spouse or family could get by with sandwiches again. At times the daily tasks can feel oppressive and overwhelming, but we can approach them with hope and even joy because God is present in them.
By faith, Richard and Millie Dinger, charter members of Good Shepherd who now live at Aase Haugen, have been married for 75 years. By faith, you tend to your own marriages and relationships. By faith, you seek healing and you care for one another when marriages and relationships are broken.
By faith, Jutta Anderson raised her adopted sons Lars and Niels after her first husband died when the children were just 7 and 4, when she was just 38 and had no relatives on this continent. She followed God’s calls for her and her family. By faith, so many of you live with hope and trust after the death of a loved one, even as you grieve so deeply.
By faith, Elizabeth and Jimmy are bringing Henry to the waters of baptism today, trusting that God’s promises are for him. By faith, you as parents and grandparents have entrusted your children to God and you cling to the promise that they are held in God as they live and when they die, whether they succeed or fail, are close or far away.
By faith, last fall David Lester and Amalia Vagts shared how they are living differently with money. They are seeking to be intentional about what they spend and how much they give away. They figured out the percentage of their income that they give away and set a goal of reaching 10%. By faith so many of you live simply and give freely, trusting in God’s abundance and acting on God’s call to care for all of God’s creation.
By faith, Marion Hanson founded Mary’s circle and the Prayer Shawl Ministry which has deepened the prayer life of this congregation.
By faith, Judy MIkkelsen is facing cancer with a sense of peace and trust in God’s care for her. By faith, so many of you approach health challenges and other struggles with faith – faith that wrestles, questions, prays, accepts and endures.
By faith, Marilyn Anderson taught English as a second language to the southeast Asian refugees this congregation helped resettle. By faith, this congregation continues to care for immigrants and refugees through the Path to Citizenship program, by supplying housewares for recent refugees in Postville, by learning about our Muslim neighbors.
I could go on and on. All of these people, all of you, have experienced sorrow and joy as you live by faith.
Faith is not dependent on the circumstances of life but on the promises of God. God’s promise is that we all have a future with hope. That is both reassuring and a call to help others have hope. How is God calling each of us to live by faith in the week ahead? Where is God calling us now as a congregation?
- To join the sacred conversation about race that will be happening in Decorah?
- To get to know Muslim neighbors and neighbors of color so that we can help shape a future with
hope for our community and our nation?
- To draw on our history of resettling refugees in order to help refugees in Postville, now?
- To expand the Kids’ Lunch Club?
- To deepen our capacity for prayer?
- To invite others to be part of this community?
We can start with the August challenge in the bulletin. Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race set before us. Let’s take a moment to give thanks for these witnesses and to pray for our future.
Amen.
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