Sermon for Joint Fall Ministerium 2024
Woodlake Lutheran Church, Richfield
Joshua 4:1-7
Grace and peace to you in the name of the Living God. AMEN.
Who formed you in faith? In this crowd I know that everyone has a story. None of us would be here at this gathering of the Joint Ministerium if others had not formed us in the Christian faith.
Collectively, what are we talking about? For some, the story begins with the prayers of parents and grandparents. For others, the process of Christian faith formation came later in life through an invitation of a high school friend to join them for a youth group activity at their church. Or maybe it was a week at camp in the summer, a coach, a choir director, a campus minister, a boss somewhere along the line, who paid attention to the deeper longings of our lives.
We do not come to be the disciples we are today without the deliberate actions and interventions of multiple people, often over many years of time. Some of them are known to us and some we never even noticed along the way. We say it “takes a village” to raise a child. Friends, it takes a whole community of faith to open our lives to the presence of the Holy Spirit, as it takes a whole community to make sense of the gift of faith the Spirit gives.
The worship planners for today’s service were surprised when I chose a text from Joshua 4. I’ve waited 22 years to use this as a preaching text. On January 11, 2002, I asked Walter Brueggemann to sign a copy of his book, The Creative Word. He was happy to do so during a visit to Luther Seminary and wrote inside the cover: “Patricia – so glad we could share Eucharist. – Walter Brueggemann.” His essay on Joshua 4, “What Do These Stones Mean?” serves as the first chapter.[1]
Friends, that’s an example of faith formation. As a young pastor I had read this book. Some years later I met the author in person and heard him preach in the seminary chapel. When I – the admiring reader – asked him – the esteemed scholar – to sign a copy of his book, he noted his gladness that in the Eucharist we had shared in an ancient practice of the church.
But Walter Brueggemann isn’t the only person who has formed – and also reformed – my faith over the years. Faith formation is not a one-and-done; it is lifelong.
Another person was a young girl named Lisa. She was a sassy kid, who lived near the church I served, and I got to know her when she would stop by on her bike when I was out in the yard gardening, as much as I knew her from her attendance at church.
When she was ten, Lisa was diagnosed with a cancer so rare there was only one other known case and that was in Saudi Arabia. One evening her mother called and asked if I could come over. Come right over, in fact. And so that night I walked the four blocks over to Lisa’s house.
When I entered her bedroom, Lisa said, “Come in and close the door.” Once seated, she continued, “This morning I asked my mother if I was going to die, and she said yes. That was a first for her.” All this spoken from the bed in Lisa’s matter-of-fact tone of voice that was so characteristic of this child with an old soul. Then, staring straight at me – a very young pastor in my first call – Lisa said, “Pastor, there’s something else I need to know. That’s why I had to talk to you today. I want you to tell me about heaven – and you had better be telling me the truth.”[2]
I suspect all of you have a story of such poignancy that rests right here in your heart. There are times when we are called to be a witness to the faith by which we live and by which we will someday die. It’s not a plea for a book to read or a dissertation in which we can parse and nuance the existential questions of the age. It’s a very ill child asking her pastor to tell her about the God whose love surrounds her even in the midst of a hellish disease and to do so with images and stories that resonate with the life she has lived in her eleven years.
And so, as we both cried, we talked about heaven. I reminded her of the crystal bowl she had once shown me in her family’s dining room, which had held the water when she had been baptized as a tiny baby. We talked about the promises God made right then to hold on to her forever and how in heaven there is no more pain or IVs; how our bodies are made whole and well again, as happened to Jesus at Easter. We talked about banquet tables and there being room enough for everyone. And Lisa named all the people she would be happy to see again, including a beloved cat named Theodore.
The stories we shared drew on what she had learned in the church and her questions that night added to the store of memories and hope planted deeply in me. They were like the stones carried from the Jordan River so that in a new day – in a new land – the young nation of Israel could rehearse all over again who they were and whose they were. When the children asked, they would be told the truth about the mercy and justice and amazing power of God, who had led their families to safety. This would be the identity-shaping story for generations yet unborn.
Next week, there is a big election. This week we are full of expectation and apprehension. I am neither a pollster nor a pundit so I am not going to comment on who will win, but I am a preacher and this I know. No matter who is elected president of this country, we all have much reparative work to do.
We have work to do to rebuild the fabric of trust between communities that are fractured and disillusioned, angry and fearful. That is work that falls to all of us as public leaders in the church.
But there is something even harder we need to face. The culture around us – progressive or conservative in its leanings – presents an enticing story that overshadows by far the story by which we disciples live. Amid the siren song of commerce and convenience and digital distractions, those who sing “Give me Jesus” are few and far between. My siblings, we know there are no shortcuts when it comes to faith formation and trust in the Living God, who raised Christ Jesus from the dead.
Here’s how Walter Brueggemann ends his essay: “What do these stones mean? They mean we proceed in an odd history with alternative roots and with alternative hopes. And the odd, awkward ritual of these stones announces to the rulers of this age that we will keep practicing the awkward memories and our abrasive hopes in every season and in the face of every alternative.”[3] Let me say that again. We will keep practicing our awkward memories and our abrasive hopes in season and out. May it be so. Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Bishop Patricia Lull
[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Creative Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1982; pp 14-39.
[2] For a fuller account of this story, see Patricia Lull, “Telling the Truth: Introducing Death and Resurrection to the Young,” Word & World, Vol XI, No 1, Winter 1991. Pages 36-43.
[3] Brueggemann, page 39.
