June 2, 2024

Duane Fister’s Installation

Acts 12:24-13:5a

You have had quite a journey First Lutheran. First, with everyone else, you experienced a global pandemic. You said goodbye to a pastor and welcomed interims. You continue to steward your relationship with Luther Park. Outside the walls of the church building the world continues to change at an accelerated rate. And, in the middle of it all, you continued to faithfully gather around Word and Sacrament.

It is wonderful to be here today and celebrate this beginning of pastoral and mutual ministry with you all and with members of the ecumenical community and the North Idaho Cluster of the Northwest Intermountain Synod. On an installation day, our deepest hope is for a pastor to faithfully shepherd, equip disciples, preach, and preside over the sacraments. They do all this so that a community is shaped by God’s love and also sent forth to share with the world the love made known in Jesus Christ.

Pastor Fister chose this passage from Acts today, and it’s a great one for an installation. Above all, it reminds us that though today we celebrate this congregation and this pastor, the main actor is the Holy Spirit. The same is true in this passage from the Book of Acts. The Spirit is speaking clearly through and to the disciples. The voices of the Spirit and the voices of the disciples are together but not confused. 

Barnabus and Saul and John Mark are in fact driven by the Spirit. And to follow, or be driven by, the Spirit is to follow Jesus, in his way, in his ministry, and in his body. Part of mutual ministry, part of why a congregation and a pastor do ministry together, is so the collective whole can better listen to the Spirit.

A favorite theologian (Willie James Jennings) writes, “wherever women and men give themselves to the disciplines that attune the body to its hunger for the Spirit they will find themselves receptive to the voices of God, and they will hear the Spirit speaking and offering guidance.” There is no silent Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts, and I don’t think the Spirit has been or will be silent among this community of faith either. Then as now, I see a “communion-bearing, community-forming God who speaks in the midst of the multitude and makes known where we must go to follow the Spirit’s movement.”

At the heart of this passage, we hear what the community was doing when the Spirit showed up: “while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting.” The coincidence of my sermon preparation for this afternoon is that this scripture passage was set alongside a few ELCA candidacy approval essays. Friday and Saturday our synod candidacy committee met in Spokane and entranced two new candidates and approved two candidates—two people who can now receive calls to Word and Sacrament ministry. One of the approval essay questions was about the significance of the sacraments of baptism and holy communion. I have always loved the sacraments and believed that even though I did not complete understand how they work, that they are the place where God meets us and transforms us. There are many places God meets us, but in these two means of grace we can always count on Jesus Christ meeting us and giving us forgiveness and life. 

A dance a pastor and congregation have today is how much emphasis and time to put on the worship that happens for the gathered community and how much emphasis and time to place on what happens after the words, “Go in peace. Serve the Lord.” As Christians, we confess that we cannot have one without the other. Even the busy men in our scripture passage from Acts, traveling all over the ancient Mediterranean, stopped for worship and fasting. But they did not stay there indefinitely. Worship, like faith itself, is a gift from God to nourish us and free us so that we can love our neighbor across the street and across the globe. That ministry of neighbor love can make us heart broken and weary and sometimes angry, so we remember our baptisms again and feast once more on bread and wine and promises of life and mercy. 

This is the mutual ministry you have already entered into as pastor and congregation; thanks be to God. But there is even more. The Holy Spirit in her wisdom made the church large and diverse. Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton reminds us that we are “church together.” In Sandpoint, Idaho you have partners from various denominations and also various nonprofit organizations. You also walk alongside the other ELCA congregations in the North Idaho Cluster and the entire Northwest Intermountain Synod. And we are accompanied by the Holy Spirit. Know that the Spirit is always with you, in the bread and wine, in our shared worship, and in your daily lives. Thanks be to God.