A Place at the Table

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

So often when we read this parable of Jesus’ during a Bible Study or hear it preached during worship, the focus is on us planting seeds of faith in others or being good soil. The scripture passage becomes a command. I have preached that sermon. But as we worship today, as you continue to walk together through a time of transition, it may serve us well to remember Jesus’ audience for this particular parable.

The Parable of the Sower is the first in a series of parables that convey mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to Jesus’ disciples. By this point in Jesus’ life and ministry, there is a growing distinction between the disciples, those who have embraced Jesus and his ministry, and those who challenge or reject Jesus. You, here today, have embraced Jesus and his ministry. Despite conflict, hardship, disagreements, despite missteps made by me, and despite the changing landscape of the church in our society, when you walk by the baptismal font, you remember that you were claimed in the waters of baptism and that with these siblings in Jesus Christ, you are trying to follow that same Jesus.

Somewhere along the way, early in life, later in life, in the middle, or all of the above, you received a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven, God’s inbreaking reign. You heard Jesus’ proclamation of love and mercy and saw it enacted when he healed the sick, liberated the oppressed, and ministered to the rejected. And you cannot give up that vision of God’s reign. 

Although Jesus’ proclamation of the coming reign of God’s mercy and justice is good news, it does not take root with everyone who hears it in every time. This is reflected in the parable by the various types of inhospitable ground upon which some of the “seeds” of Jesus’s ministry fall. It may be telling that most of the parable describes the circumstances in which the seeds are lost rather than the one in which they flourish.

And I want to propose that we as individuals are not one type of soil our entire lives of faith. Nor is every congregation always the same soil. So, as we think about the different soils, take it as an invitation to celebrate the seeds planted in your own life of faith and in the long history of Trinity Lutheran, Nampa. Consider the times of good fertile soil.

First in the parable, the evil one steals the seeds that fall on the path. Then we learn that seeds that fall on rocky ground represent those who hear the word of the kingdom but quickly fall away from it when faced with opposition. Next, we hear of the “thorns” of worldly concerns strangling the word so that it has no yield, no trust in Jesus. Jesus draws us into a bleak picture that reflects the reality of much of his own ministry experience.

Against the backdrop, the conclusion of the parable comes as a welcome surprise. Although threats to seeds of the kingdom abound, some of the seeds do land in good soil and produce abundant fruit. God is faithful. 

And here I want to interject some modern science into an ancient parable. My colleagues in the Mountain and Pacific Northwest have become rightly enamored by the notion of refugia. Refugia is a biological term for many tiny pockets of living organisms in places of seeming desolation: climate catastrophes, toxic dumps, extreme burns. 

Consider Mount St. Helens in the aftermath of the explosion in the spring of 1980. A refugium (singular) on Mt. St. Helens might be an unexpected cluster of fungi and bacteria that survived the blast. It began the slow process of bringing life back to a place utterly devastated by the force of the explosion. Folks wondered how many decades it would take for life to recover on the blown-apart mountain. But under the thick layer of ash, the fungi were already laughing. Already plotting and partnering up. Already becoming the new life that was not yet seen.

Author of the book Refugia Faith, Debra Rienstra asks how can we find and nurture these refugia, not only in the biomes of the earth, but in our human cultural systems and in our spiritual lives? In our congregations? How can we apply all our love and creativity to this task as never before? And I would add, how do wait on and make room for the Holy Spirit?

I know there are refugium all over this community. Who were the people, what were the experiences, who were the communities who were part of your good soil? Parents, grandparents, or others who taught you to pray? Sunday School teachers and pastors who emphasized the gift of God’s grace? Other church members who, by their example, showed you what it meant to follow Jesus’ command to love your neighbor? Friends at church who explained that faith and following Jesus were not simply swallowing a set of doctrine or promises about the afterlife but meant something for your life today? This community of faith holds saints who the Holy Spirit used to nurture faith. Some of those saints have died or moved, but their refugium remains, even as we grieve their absence. 

Returning to the gospel text, while we cannot be sure just how impressive a yield of a hundred, sixty, or thirtyfold was to Jesus’ ancient audience, the fact that anything at all grows in these adverse conditions is amazing. Despite significant obstacles, God will bring about God’s kingdom. And it will be good.

God’s reign takes root and spreads through those who hear the word, understand it, and then spread the seeds of the kingdom. Jesus’ disciples, you all, are the ones who have received his word and have grasped it. God alone brings about the reign of God, so too, God alone can give the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. 

Jesus does not tell his disciples that they are able to understand his teachings because they are smarter or more competent than others. Instead, he tells them that they are blessed with this gift of understanding, a gift that must be stewarded today in intentional Christian community. But when a seed is planted in good soil, it grows and bears fruit. And even in the most barren of places, refugium is making a way. 

This community of faith has accompanied many people through tragedies that make them doubt that God is present. Instead of the prosperity gospel, you have reminded people that God is with them on the mountains and in the deepest valleys—what a gift! But not everyone wants to hear about a God who is there for everyone who is suffering. There is a real draw to worship and proclaim a God who makes insiders and outsiders. What a blessing then are you disciples who point to the Jesus who was always accompanying those who were suffering.

Freed by God’s grace and fully aware of God’s love and mercy through Jesus Christ, how can you not want to share that gift with others? In that sharing, lean on the power of the Holy Spirit, but be bold. The world needs the Gospel of Jesus’ abundant love and mercy more than ever. Beyond the news cycles, you and your neighbors continue to experience the regular but heart-breaking hardships of life. Thanks be to God, a God of refuge and refugia, who continues to show up in this space week after week, nourishing you with new life through Confession and Forgiveness, hymns of the faith, and through his body and blood—new life and forgiveness now and always.

Sunday, June 28 was a double-worship day. I started by visiting Immanuel Lutheran in Moses Lake, served by interim Pastor Mary Anthony from the Oregon Synod. This congregation has been through a lot in the last 20 years, as members reminded me. Thanks to good lay leadership and a steady recent pastorate (Thanks Pastor Walter) they are in a good place and certainly a wellspring of God’s love in their community.

Then I traveled on to Lake Chelan Lutheran for the ordination and installation of Pastor Lynette Rose, serving as half-time associate pastor of Lake Chelan Lutheran. Pastor Paul Palumbo preached and it was a wonderful service.

Matthew 10:40-42

Grace to you and peace members of Immanuel Moses Lake. It is so good to be with you this morning and to bring greetings from the Northwest Intermountain Synod staff and council and to worship with you.

We have a very brief gospel lesson today and I know that my first instinct is to hear Jesus’ words to his disciples as a command. This is the Jesus who preached the beatitudes, who loves to teach about what it means to follow him, what it means to be a disciple. 

Since Jesus himself says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me,” this must mean that I should welcome the stranger. After all, I am supposed to imitate Jesus. In welcoming the stranger, I am also welcoming Jesus and the one who sent Jesus.

Since Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward,” this means I am supposed to welcome a prophet, and I will receive a prophet’s reward.

Since Jesus says, “whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous,” this means that I ams supposed to welcome the righteous and then I will receive the reward of the righteous. 

Finally, Jesus says, “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple— [will not] lose their reward.” I must offer a cup of cold water to needy and oppressed in order that I might not lose the reward.

Given all that Jesus said and did throughout his ministry, given the mercy he showed, given his preferential treatment of the sick, the outcast, those marginalized by others, reading these few verses and assuming we are to show hospitality and kindness to everyone is not a far stretch. 

And yet, I think there is a different message for us in this text. Let us return to that first verse again. Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Jesus is placing his hearers, including you all, not in the place of the ones offering the welcome. Instead, they/you are in the place of the ones receiving welcome. 

He says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the [Creator] who sent me.” So rather than being a commandment, what you are hearing today is a promise. And note also that the “you” here is plural. As Jesus’ followers, “you all” will be welcomed by some. And when you are welcomed, you will be making known both Jesus’ presence and God the Creator’s presence.

And so, the real command in today’s text is not so much about showing hospitality and kindness, thought that command is clear elsewhere in the gospels. To be welcomed by someone else, anyone else, means that we must go out! To be welcomed somewhere else means that ministry, living as baptized children of God, being the body of Christ is not contained to what happens on Sunday morning.

If we zoom out from our three verses this becomes all the more clear. In Matthew’s gospel, chapter 10, Jesus sends out the Twelve Apostles in mission and offers words of guidance. The chapter is sometimes called “the missionary discourse.” Matthew 10:40-42 is part of this longer discourse. Jesus offers words of guidance, warning, and promise about the disciples’ mission. Various phrases in the chapter show that the whole discourse is tied together as a whole. 

 “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town” (10:14)

“See, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves” (10:16)

“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered (10:26)

“Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (10:34)

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me” (10:40)

Jesus’s words today are words of promise, under the broader commandment to follow Jesus out into the world in mission. In a sense, Jesus tells his disciples, “I am sending you into a dangerous world as part of my mission to love, save, bless, and be reconciled to that very world. It is dangerous out there. But you will find welcome. Those who welcome and receive you, also welcome and receive me—and they will be rewarded.”

Part of my role as the bishop of the 85 ministries in our synod, from Leavenworth in the west to Jackson, WY in the east is to explain how we collectively go out into the community and world with the message of Jesus’ love and mercy and sometimes we are welcomed. 

But the best part of visiting congregations is learning how you are showing Jesus’ love in Moses Lake and Grant County as the body of Christ and as individual members. How are you showing up in the larger community and in circles beyond this faith community? What are those relationships like?

The truth is, the command is not necessarily to go out to different places. Each of you already lives much of your life beyond these walls, in your homes, in your places of work, in places of volunteering, and in places of recreation. How do you bring your identity as a baptized child of God into those spaces and times? 

One scholar [Townes-Feasting] argued that “our will to achieve caring relationships is within our grasp, yet all too often, if left to our own devices, we fall short of creating and nurturing genuine relationships, in which we develop into the people God calls us to be.”

What gets in our way? Price, ego, self-doubt, and their kin keep us from connecting with each other except in self-interested ways. And so, we need God’s embrace in our lives to live in this paradox and fulfill our faith.

What does it mean to live out the baptismal promises in Moses Lake in 2026? Only you can tell me how farmers, government employees, healthcare workers, educators, entrepreneurs, business owners, neighbors, parents, grandparents, friends bear God’s message of unconditional love and forgiveness into your daily lives. Only you can tell me what happens when you offer yourself up as the guest of other people’s welcome in this particular context. 

My assumption is that not everyone is welcoming. The life-giving gospel of Jesus’ abundant love and forgiveness is not what everyone wants to hear; it is not welcomed by all and so you will not be welcomed by all. This is especially true in a day and time when so many other things parade as the gospel of Jesus. But some people will be and are welcoming to you. And, most importantly, when you offer yourself up as guest for people to welcome, you manifest for all of those people the blessings of both God in Heaven and also the beloved Son, Jesus Christ. 

That is the amazing thing about living out our baptismal identity. Simply by offering yourself up as the guest of another person’s welcome, you reveal for them the very reign of God. Today, we receive a glimpse of that reign at the table. Bread and wine become gifts of abundant life and mercy. And at this table, Jesus is the host and welcomes you graciously, beloved children of God.

Matt. 9:9-13, 18-26, Hosea 5:15-6:6

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. It is so good to be with you today, saints of Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran. We prayed already today that by the power of the Spirit, God will bring healing to this wounded world. Thank you for the many ways you bring healing to your neighborhood, your community, and the world. I bring greetings from across the Northwest Intermountain Synod and the larger ELCA. 

What I love about Matthew’s gospel and the Jesus we meet there is that Jesus is very clear about what it means to follow him. Before our passage for this morning, Jesus preaches the Beatitudes, making clear who is blessed—those who mourn, the meek, the peacemakers. 

Towards the end of this gospel, we will read Jesus’ parable about the separation of the sheep and goats, describing in clarity what it means to faithfully follow Jesus and show neighbor love—clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, visiting those in prison.

Jesus in Matthew is as clear as the prophet Hosea. In Hosea, the metaphor of God and God’s relationship with Israel (the people, not today’s current nation state) is not that of an unmoved mover, or a lawyer, or even a priest. The metaphor is as a husband in a deep and painful relationship with God’s spouse Israel or as the parent of children. 

These images shape our relationship with God. God is deeply hurt by the peoples’ actions and expectations. God desires more than a marriage of obligation in which the rules are followed or not. God desires a relationship of true hesed, or loving loyalty, with the people.

The problem with so much clarity about faithfulness is that it makes my own failures and strivings so much more apparent. I want to do things correctly, make lists, check things off, follow rules, do things how I am supposed to, and I want to call all that following Jesus. But like the God we meet in Hosea, Jesus seems most interested in mercy and compassion and relationship.

Jesus calls the tax collector Matthew, likely a despised person in his time, and asks him to follow him. Then Jesus accepts hospitality in Matthew’s house. There he shares a table with his typical crowd, tax collectors and other sinners. This is the heart of Jesus’ ministry—mercy, compassion, relationship, hesed, loving loyalty.

Jesus explains his actions with a proverb: “It is not the well who need a physician but the sick.” Jesus is not merely the friend of tax collectors and sinners but their physician. And yet Jesus’ companionship with sinners appears to be just that, companionship and not treatment. Jesus has many harsh words to say, but he directs none of them at sinners. He does not criticize them or even demand their repentance. He simply eats and drinks with them.

Likewise with the woman experiencing the hemorrhage and the little girl, Jesus comes alongside them and sees them. Jesus emphasizes love and mercy over purity, rules, or anything else. True discipleship has hesed, loving loyalty, at its center. It recalls God’s own steadfast love and mercy. It then calls for lives which respond to that love with loyal devotion to God and loving service to the neighbor. 

We are called to this discipleship together but also collectively as congregations and as the larger small c catholic or universal church. The Northwest Intermountain Synod’s newest ministry, Cultivating Justice in the Wenatchee, WA area, is rooted in reflection, contemplation, and advocacy. This past year the ministry stood in strong solidarity with their immigrant siblings. Cultivating Justice is a network of relationships doing that work, but so many of our ELCA churches across the synod have also been showing up and standing watch this past year. This solidarity with immigrants being separated from their families is hesed.

Beyond our synod, Mission Support given by Shepherd of the Valley makes ministry possible in some of the most remote places in the United States. Native Alaskan congregations on the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. In the village of Wales (population 108),12 people were baptized at a worship service on the first Sunday in Advent 2025. Without your generosity to the ELCA, these ministries to indigenous people who have loved their land for thousands of years would not be happening.

Pastor Liv, from the synod staff, helped with a ministry site review of Storydwelling in Bend, OR. Pastor Erika noticed a gap in childcare and stressed-out parents who needed spiritual community. It’s been going for eight years. They are a Word and Sacrament ministry. Now the childcare center is housed in a different Lutheran church.  

During the early 2000s, then ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson decided that in addition to each synod having one or two companion synods, every synod would be in relationship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. I was honored to represent you on a bishop and churchwide staff accompaniment trip this January. Because of the abundant agriculture across our synod, the most impactful encounter for me was our conversation with the Nassar family who own and manage the Tent of Nations farm. They have spent over $350,000 in legal fees over the last 40 years, fighting an unjust Israeli court system simply to continue farming land which has been legally owned and occupied by their family for generations. 

We also walked through the Aida refugee settlement, where snipers have killed children and civilians without cause and without consequences. And we visited Augusta Victoria Hospital, Lutheran World Relief’s largest project globally, established in 1950 in partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees as a major medical facility to care for Palestinian refugees following the 1948 conflict. Together the ELCA and Lutheran World Relief are trying to share God’s hesed.

I need these stories and the reminder that the Body of Christ is so much bigger than just me. Much as I try to faithfully follow Jesus, I am part of economic and political systems that dehumanize people, that treat people as commodities, that build more wealth for me and the wealthiest in the world. In those ways, I do not show mercy to all those Jesus would have us show mercy to. As the old Confession says, there is much I have both done and left undone. So, I give thanks that I am part of a congregation, a synod, and a denomination that are broken but seeking to show hesed not with empty words but with our very bodies and our resources.

At the same time, I assume that many of you, like me, show up each Sunday hungry for bread and wine—hungry for mercy. Because I am part of corrupt systems, because I feel inadequate more days than I’d like to admit, because I fail as a friend and daughter and citizen of this world. God’s mercy is for us; it is for you. The bread of life and the cup of salvation offer mercy and new life for you this day. When you pass by the baptismal font, you can remember you are now and always a beloved child of God, more than worthy of God’s mercy. God’s hesed, God’s loving loyalty, is yours forever beloved children of God. Amen.

Honored to spend Holy Trinity Sunday with the Saints of St. John’s Lutheran in American Falls, Idaho. After worship, I had a wonderful conversation with council members and the call committee. I’m grateful for their patience and discernment during this long time of transition. I hope to someday experience their kids church on Wednesday nights. It was wonderful to be there for quilt blessing Sunday.

St. John’s, American Falls, May 31, 2026

Genesis 1:1-2:4a, 2 Cor. 13:11-13, Matt. 28:16-20

I appreciate, perhaps even need, order. Friends who have known me for a long time tell me that I am mellower now than I was in high school and college. Still, I prefer order. I read books in sequence. Watch television shows in order. When I visit my mom, she will tell me about starting something mid-series and I just roll my eyes. It is a running joke in our family that reading books or watching movies in sequence is simply not important to my mom.

That’s not to say that she does not love the creation story in Genesis Chapter 1.  Whereas I used to cling to the order of the story, my guess is that my mom loves the poetry, the imagery, the fact that even though there is an order to the days there is still mystery. And so, because my family talks about how each of us encounters scripture a bit differently, now I also appreciate the poetry and wonder of Genesis also.

In his classic series the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis’ sixth book The Magician’s Nephew gets at the wonder of Genesis chapter 1 in a beautiful way. Here’s how Lewis describes the creation of Narnia. A small party of people find themselves in darkness. They feel doomed. Then, Lewis writes, “in the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away” and it was hard to decide from what direction it was coming. “It’s lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself.  There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise they had ever heard.”  

Two wonders happen at the same moment–the voice was joined by other voices and the blackness overhead was blazing with stars. Then the sky on the horizon grew steadily paler. All the time the voice was singing. “The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose…The Lion [Aslan] was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song…and as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool.” On and on, Aslan sang all living creatures into being. Finally, the lion was silent. Then either from the sky or from the Lion itself, the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: ‘Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters” (98-116). 

The Genesis creation story is a song too, not a laundry list, but a holy song. We are quite sure the firstreaders and hearers of this story would have brought to the story a long rich, tumultuous history. That history included their ancestors’ escape out of Egypt, the tribal league they formed for mutual defense in the Promised Land, the establishment of the kingdom, its rocky years of domestic injustice and foreign threat, and finally the destruction of Jerusalem and exile in Babylon.  

Read with the turbulent memories of bondage in mind, it becomes more than an account of creation, as magnificent as that is. The opening of Genesis is a testimony to God’s original intention for creation and human life. As a people devastated by the failures of their past, the dissolution of their society, and their degradation at the hands of captors, it would be easy for the Israelites to lose all sense of human worth and value.

Those priests who gathered in exile in Babylon in the midst of a defeated and demoralized people, were reflecting on God in such a way that brought life to their community. They were doing what we are always doing–something big–reflecting and listening to God who reveals God’s self to us in our lives and in our time.  And the God revealed at the beginning of time is the same God we praise today. 

The Creator was there in the beginning, and it was the Spirit, the wind that swept over the water, and it was the Word that spoke creation into being.  In Babylon, the priests’ view of God was, in their context of exile, a bold proclamation of who God is and who God’s people are. God creates order out of chaos: days and months, light and darkness, water and dry land. This is a treatise on hope.

The Apostle Paul attempts to give similar hope to the Christians in Corinth.  Theirs is a corrupt community, full of chaos.  Paul appeals to the people’s best understanding of who they are and how they are to act: Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith.  Test yourselves.  Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?  “Become ordered again, be encouraged, agree with one another, live in peace.”

Then there is a shift.  How better to move from this taxing confrontation than to call upon the language of worship that reminds both the Corinthians and Paul of the holy things that they share in common. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”  The appeal and the Trinitarian blessing functions in a similar way as the Priests’ theological reflections did in Genesis.  Both bring life to a community which was full of discord and death.

We hear the Great Commission in today’s Gospel text: “Go,” Jesus says.  Here is a final call to match God’s initial call to Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:1-3).  Now the disciples are to leave home and go to the nations. And the disciples are to do what to all the families of the earth?  

Baptize them “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  This is the big moment today—the naming of the Trinity and ultimate revelation of God’s character. And the name is revealed precisely in service to God’s ultimate mission of making disciples and mending the world. 

As is the case for each new generation of Christians, we are now the disciples instructed to make more disciples. God is revealed as Trinity to us so that we might share this revelation with others. The purpose is not that they might be better informed of the nature of God but that they be invited into discipleship and to teach. At the heart of the mission is the instruction not of a particular system or specific theological formulation, but instruction concerning all that Jesus has commanded: “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you” (5:44); “Do not worry about your life…(or) about tomorrow (6:25, 34); “Ask and it will be given to you” (7:7); “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (9:13); “Come to me, all you who weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (11:28); “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (16:24).  And so much more.  

We are to teach for the sake of obedience to the many things Jesus has commanded not for condemnation or shame, but so all might know the grace, love, and welcome of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as portrayed in Genesis 1.

And finally, we are left not with commandment or even commission.  We are left with promise, a promise of the constant presence of God.  This is always the way God takes leave from one who is called. With the promise and sign of God’s presence, we disciples of today are identified as called people who are sent.  God will be with us.  This is what we were promised at the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew at the birth of Jesus when he is named Emmanuel, “God is with us” (Matt. 1:23).

If you are a regular reader, some parts of this sermon may be familiar, because I preached on the end of John chapter 17 last year.

Central Lutheran, Yakima’s 100^th Anniversary Worship

May 17, 2026 – John 17:1-11

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 

It is so good to be with you Central Lutheran, Yakima for your 100^th anniversary—100 years of memories, of faithful Word and Sacrament ministry, of passing on the Lutheran Christian faith to the next generation, of sharing the love of Jesus Christ with your neighbors in Yakima and across the globe. A merger of ethnicities and languages over 100 years ago was just the beginning of decades of discernment and decision making and adaptations. Today we rejoice that through it all, ministry and this expression of the Body of Christ continues. On your 100^th anniversary, you are looking ahead to the next chapter, rededicating this congregation to the triune God who has accompanied you for so long, rededicating to sharing that same life-giving good news of Jesus Christ. 

When I hear Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in our reading from John’s gospel today, I hear his visions and hopes for authentic love and unity. I hear him speak poetically about his relationship with the Father, you might think Mother if that is easier for you. We hear of a loving and connected parent-child relationship. The relationality inherent in the God we worship is so present in this prayer. The love within healthy parent-child relations is abundant and real and inviting. It’s hard to carry out as human beings, sinful and broken as we are, which is one of many reasons Jesus prays for his disciples. If it were automatic human behavior, then there would be no need for prayer.

This struggle made me think of my first call in Soldier, Iowa, a town of 200 people near the Missouri River in what’s known as the Loess Hills. I served there from 2004-2010 and shortly before I arrived, the school district that Soldier, Iowa was part of was dissolved. A vote was put to the citizens and instead of merging with their long-time partner district, a pin was dropped in the middle of the current district. Like many ELCA Lutheran congregations, my new church was full of schoolteachers. They were grieving, in disbelief that other residents had not seen things the way they did. I clearly remember teachers telling me how difficult it was to stand around the Holy Communion rail with people who had voted in such a way that they had lost their jobs. But they kept coming to worship. They kept coming together and sharing the bread and wine, shoulder to shoulder receiving the gifts of new life and forgiveness. And very slowly relationships healed.

During Holy Communion we are literally invited into the unity portrayed in Jesus’ prayer. In the town church we had a straight communion rail but Memorial Day weekend through the month of June, we went out to the old massive country church for worship. And there stood a beautiful half-circle communion rail, one where you not only stood shoulder to shoulder with people, but those on the ends could look across and make eye contact. One big reason I am still in the church, with all of its faults and growing edges, is because of our audacious belief that when we cannot forgive, when we cannot reconcile, when we have no energy to be curious about one another, the means of grace can still be received through Word and Sacrament. My hunger for bread and wine draws me to the table where I feast shoulder to shoulder with my siblings in Christ. Today I think about Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans receiving communion together 100 years ago.

I have written to our synod that I think we forget how radical and rare it is for the good news of God’s love and grace to be preached and heard, and for the sacraments to be celebrated faithfully. It is radical and rare in part, at least within the geography of the Northwest Intermountain Synod, because there are so many other things parading as the gospel. 

On a 100^th anniversary of a congregation, it’s interesting to consider what things have paraded as good news over the decades. And in the midst of all those false gospels, Central Lutheran in Yakima found ways to follow the Jesus we encounter in the gospel texts. You kept witnessing to Jesus Christ and God’s abundant love for creation. And you, gathered here today, continue to be a community for whom Jesus prays. 

What difference does that make, that you are a community for whom Jesus prays? Knowing God’s love for you and you all, Central Lutheran in Yakima, how will you share that love? And what stops you from sharing the love of God in word and deed? A church with 100 years of history must include highs and lows, disagreements, reconciliation, times when you erred on the side of focusing too much internally, times when you were so focused externally that you did not tend to the body, times when a scarcity mindset overwhelmed, times when fear of the unknown had you turning away from God. And yet we are here today. God is faithful and this church has been faithful, if imperfect. 

Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.” Hear the mutuality and oneness. “And this is eternal life, that they may now you, the only true God, and Jeus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life is the primary description of the gift that Jesus brings to those who follow him. Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension reveal the extent and nature of the love that shapes his relationship with God and his “own.” They reveal the very character and identity of God, a God of abundant love. 

It is a love not for one set of people, but for the whole world, the cosmos, the same world sung about at the beginning of this same gospel: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him.” This is the world God made, the world God loves, and the world into which God sent the Son. Into this same world, Jesus will send his disciples. They are already in the world but now they are commissioned to bear witness in and to the world of God’s love.

Jesus’ prayer for the community models who the community is to understand and receive its identity in the world. This prayer is timeless, prayed before Jesus’ death, prayed during the Middle Ages and the Reformation, prayed in 1926 when three churches came together, prayed today. Overhearing this prayer has the power to remind you that the church’s life rests in and depends on God’s care. Jesus does not supply pragmatic directives on how to arrive at church unity or how to recognize the face of the “evil one” in the world. Jesus places the church’s future in the hands of God and invites you to listen in on that conversation. Today, we can hear and experience the love that Jesus and God have for you.

God’s love is constant and ongoing. Empires and ideologies come and go. God’s love will be with you forever. Disagreements within congregations, synods, and entire denominations are important and can keep us up at night, but the balm that gets you through the night is God’s love. For 100 years, the church of Central Yakima has pointed to God and God’s love as its rock, foundation, and source. As you remember, rejoice, and rededicate, celebrate all the saints, the people of this church, and point to God’s faithfulness as the source of your unity, love, and abundant life.