|
|
Today is Rally Day, and for those of you who don’t know, Rally Day is kind of a pseudo-holiday here in the church. It’s the first official day of Sunday school and it’s a time where a lot of fall programming really gets going. It’s a time to look to the future with excitement and hopefulness and new beginnings. And boy, is there a lot to be excited about. If you look at our bulletin, look how many pages it has in it…full of cool and exciting ministry opportunities. God has been really been working in our congregation to plant and grow some incredible stuff. Here’s just a smattering of what God is up to in our little congregation. Our children’s Sunday school begins today. We have a nursery class all the way up through high school. Today, our kids are meeting their teachers, they’re getting to know each other, and this year they are going to be learning some great Bible stories and the things that they learn this year will give them a foundation of faith that they can rely on for the rest of their life. God has raised up some incredible Sunday school teachers and through their teaching ministry, the lives of our children will be enriched and changed forever. God has given us Sandy Wedewer as the leader of our Sunday school program and she has worked tirelessly the last several weeks making phone calls and organizing everything so that the year will run smoothly. God has given her the gift of administration and we are so fortunate that she is willing to share that gift with all of us. Without a doubt, this is going to be a great year for our Sunday school program as God continues to bless it with his presence. But, you know, Sunday school isn’t just for children. A lot of people think that after they are confirmed in 8th grade that they have learned everything they need to know about Jesus and the Bible and that what they hear in the sermons on Sundays is enough to get them by. Raise your hand if you kept going to school after 8th grade. Almost every single one of you. Our secular education didn’t stop in junior high and neither should our religious education. Part of the problem with the church is that most of us are walking around with just an 8th grade education. Sunday school isn’t just for children – its for adults too. And we have at least 4 adult Sunday school classes that I know about that are getting starting within the next week or two. One is on Christian care-giving, one on what Lutherans believe, one on Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth”, and one is studying the scriptures that we use every Sunday as our lessons. And that’s just on Sundays…we have all kinds of other education opportunities offered throughout the week. God has plenty he wants to teach us, and I promise you, you don’t know it all, especially if you haven’t picked up your Bible in more than a couple days. Okay, so there’s some other important stuff that’s kicking off today. Today marks the beginning of Kids Against Hunger. Through many of you, God has provided the resources to do our first packaging. What is Kids Against Hunger? Well, its something you just kind of have to see and experience. We are taking four basic ingredients – rice, soy, vegetables and vitamin-packed chicken powder – and packaging them into 6 serving size bags. We seal the bags up and then we ship them to starving people in Haiti. Its like an assembly line, and before the day is done today, we will likely have packaged several thousand meals. Who can help? All of you, of course. Our Sunday school kids are packaging between the services – so feel free to go in there and watch them - but after the second service, you can go back there and package your little heart out. If you haven’t heard, Haiti could really use this right now. As if they didn’t have enough to worry about with the worldwide food crisis, they have been hit directly by 3 hurricanes in the last month and a half and are bracing for at least one more. I encourage you to check out this new thing that God is doing within our midst. And there’s some other things that God has been stirring up that is crystallizing in the days and weeks ahead. Our 8am worship service is changing into something slightly different. The worship is going to be more contemplative, more thoughtful, more prayerful, and is going to encourage you to wonder about God more. It is being shaped to invite everyone to experience the mystery of God. There are new Christcare Small Groups that are forming around things like a men’s group and a small group for young families. This is in addition to small groups that already emphasize things like mission in foreign countries, a mother-daughter group, a sports & outdoor themed group, a women’s group, and a discipleship group. All of these small groups are open and welcoming and now is a great time to join one because they are just now getting going for the fall. On Friday, we’ll be welcoming the Ugandan Orphan’s Choir into our midst. There will be a banquet for them and then immediately afterwards, they will be performing a concert of their traditional Ugandan songs and dances. It should be a marvelous evening, and just one more way that God is connecting us to the rest of the world and to his mission. And I guess that brings us to the main message for today. In that passage from Ezekiel, God calls Ezekiel to be a sentinel, or a watchman. Ezekiel is supposed to be on the lookout for God’s actions in the world. He’s supposed to call to the people and tell them to watch out for God’s coming into their midst. Well, if you’ve been watching at all and paying attention at all, you’ll see that God has come at us like a freight train! He’s been moving us for awhile, he’s been shaking us up for awhile, and the alarm has been sounded! God is on the loose at Hope Lutheran Church, and we can’t stop him, and we can’t even hope to contain him. God is on the loose at Hope Lutheran Church and he is calling us out into the world. He is calling us to look beyond ourselves, beyond our own individual needs and wants. He’s calling us to look to the needs of the people seated next to us in the pews, he calling us to look to the needs of the people of St. Charles, he’s calling us to look to the needs of the people in the rest of the world. God is on that freight train and he’s headed out there into the world to love it, to bless it, and to save it. And he wants each of us along for the ride. You see, our God is a God that is constantly looking toward the future. He’s doesn’t care much about the past, about the way things used to be, about the sins you’ve committed, or the wrongs that have been done years ago. What God cares about is you, right here, right now, and the future that he has in store for you, for us, and for the world. That’s why he sent us Jesus – to wipe away the past, to die on the cross so that we could be free from all the bad stuff that binds up and weighs us down. When Jesus rose from the dead, he opened the doorway to a new future, a future in God’s hands, a future where God is working to love, bless, and save the world. God is daring us to jump on that train and hang on for a wild ride. Today is Rally Day! It’s a beginning of sorts and, as I mentioned, there are lots of good things going on – but I didn’t even begin to cover everything that God is up to. So I need your help. In your bulletin, you have an insert that says, “My Fave 5.” Go ahead and take that out, and number down the side, 1 through 5. On that paper, I want you to write down the top 5 things you are excited about that God is doing. Could be here at church, could be in your life, could be in someone else’s life. What are the 5 things you are most excited about that God is up to in your life. I’ll give you couple minutes to think about that and write down your answers. Now that you have your answer, turn to the person seated next to you in the pew or the person behind you, and share your list with at least one other person. See what exciting things they are up to and what God is doing for them. In the coming weeks, Pastor John & I are going to be preaching about Reclaiming the “C” Word, we’ll be talking about what it means to be church together. We’ll be using this little book that you can get a copy of if you’d like. Because God has been up to such exciting things, there is a dare that comes along with that – a dare to risk, a dare to dream, a dare to pray, a dare to be surprised. One of the things that sometimes happens when God comes so powerfully into our midst, is this tendency to be scared of what might happen next, to curl up and long for the past and for the safety of what is known and what is comfortable. But, today on Rally Day, God issues us a challenge…dare to hopeful about the future he has for us. Amen.
|
