Messiah Lutheran, Spokane

Nov. 10, 2024

John 15:1-8

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

I am grateful that the sermon is not the only thing to carry the weight of today. Music, prayers, the Lord’s Supper, rituals, blessings, and more music, will all help us move through emotions. We need it all to celebrate the many years of Messiah Lutheran’s ministry and to grieve the completion of that ministry. 

Likewise, I love that you selected John chapter 15 as the gospel text for today. Although, I started to prepare this sermon on election day, and I was not crazy about how it convicted me. How easy it is, I was reminded, to turn to anything and everything else than the true vine? I could actually feel myself veering to certain candidates, specific issues, movements in my home state of Idaho and across the country. If we can win, I thought to myself, then I will have all the sustenance I need, all the belonging I need. How foolish but how easy it is to veer off in any direction but Jesus, the true vine.

Thanks be to God for all the ministries and congregations across the Northwest Intermountain Synod, the ELCA, and the whole Christian Church that have been places to tell a different narrative, a life-giving narrative, a story that is always true: Jesus is the vine, and you are the branches. Today we celebrate that Messiah Lutheran has been such a place to proclaim and hear this good news in North Spokane since 1951. 

Notice, if you will, that Jesus’ statement is declarative: I am the vine, and you are the branches. There are no qualifiers, no conditions, no if, then. There is nothing we do to earn being a branch, whether as a person or community. Washed in the font and showered with promises, you are connected to the vine forever, even if I try to escape it and find nourishment and love and belonging elsewhere. Instead of if/then, what we have is a because/therefore. Because you are the branches connected to the vine, therefore you will bear fruit.

I asked our synod executive admin Cathy Steiner to send me a history of Messiah Lutheran. What I read there was years of not just being part of the vine but bearing fruit in so many ways—loving children and adults in the neighborhood and making sure they knew the abundance of God’s love and mercy, lifting up future pastors who went on to share the gospel elsewhere, calling associate pastors who came here and who were loved into being servant leaders, and utilizing the gift of music to praise God, cry out to God, and bring unity to the followers of Jesus gathered in these walls.

As much as we celebrate today, it would be disingenuous to not name the grief as well. I was surprised how I mourned when Emmanuel, Cheney closed. They were my internship congregation for one mere year, and it hit me hard. And so, I cannot fathom what those of you who have called this place home for so many years are feeling. Please do not diminish your grief; make room for it, acknowledge it when it arises, tell stories, journal, use all the stories to move through that grief when it comes. And give thanks to God, because we worship a God who can hold all our sorrow and grief.

In grief, it might be natural to develop a case of what one of my closest friends calls a case of the should haves. We should have done this. Our Pastor should have done this. That member should have. The bishop or synod should have. I should have.  In my experience, the should haves usually only leads to a cycle of blaming and shaming, neither of which leads to transformation, growth, or bearing fruit. In fact, blame and shame are things I presume we are better off pruning. As with a funeral in which we acknowledge that the person at the center had imperfections, go ahead and name that this congregation’s journey had bumps and difficulties. The Holy Spirit bore fruit despite them and is bearing fruit still.

I hope you take some comfort, though it might be small today, that even in completion, you are bearing fruit. Instead of a multi-plex business office or luxury condos being built here, this building will be inhabited by another church, which means more gospel proclamation, more singing praises to God, more people finding a welcome, more children knowing the love of Jesus Christ, more branches connected to the true vine.

Those of you who feel like you will have no church home, you are still connected to the vine. Jesus the vine is tenacious. The seal made on your brow at baptism can never be rubbed off. A strange part of being bishop is being somewhat of a wanderer. I have a new home congregation, but they tease me about my attendance. It can be unmooring to step into a new sanctuary Sunday after Sunday, but after a year I know what to look for.

In our Lutheran tradition I can depend on certain places and symbols to ground me. They are the same ones we will give thanks for today: table, font, place for the scripture and proclamation. These are the places where we are sure to meet the Word, God incarnate, Jesus, the vine who gives life. And though their size changes, the color of wood varies, the decorative etchings telling a local history, they are in all our Lutheran sanctuaries. 

And seeing them reminds me that every congregation, every single one, is temporal. Every congregation has a lifespan, just like every living creature. What goes on and on and on is the body of Christ gathered around the means of grace and sent forth into the world. Much as I love big beautiful historic sanctuaries, they are not necessary for people to partake of the bread of life or the cup of salvation. And so, I know that you will find new communities with whom to worship, impossible as that might sound today. You will continue to hear the story of God’s forgiveness and love for you. Jesus is the vine, and you are the branches—even still. 

Thanks be to God for the ministry and ministries of Messiah Lutheran, thanks be to God for a new church which will take over stewardship of this place and this building, thanks be to God for the ministry that will happen through the legacy gifts of Messiah, and thanks be to God that our hope and trust are in Jesus the vine, no one and nothing else.