Sermon for the 2026 Synod Assembly
Ephesians 1: 15-23; Luke 24:44-53
St. Andrew’s, Mahtomedi 5.15.26
Grace and peace to you in the name of the Living God. AMEN.
The words of the Second Lesson this morning come as a letter, a correspondence from St. Paul – or a student of St. Paul, written to church-people a long time ago. Though the sentences are longer than any English teacher here would allow, and the vocabulary more formal than our exchanges this morning, it could be a message dropped into our inbox overnight. Greetings from afar. Compliments on the reputation of our faithfulness and service. Blessings that call us forward into God’s hope for the future. (Thumbs up) Like? What’s not to like here?
And what’s not to like about being church together in a sanctuary as full as this morning at St. Andrew’s? Friends, every year I look forward to this time of worship with all of you – gathered from the 106 congregations and mission starts of this synod. The worship planners have gone all-out. The music never disappoints. Readers and liturgists speak with eloquence. And our singing together stays with me – and I hope with you – long after we drive home. It is a great privilege for me to preach and preside, here, and I will miss this when my term comes to a close.
We are in the beautiful season of Easter, and now in the days of Ascensiontide, and many of you have reported how full – how joyous – your sanctuary was as you gathered during Holy Week and Easter this year. We know that the Spirit is stirring up new interest in the church, drawing back people we have missed, and bringing together people new to the experience of worship and the Christian life. Maybe not everywhere, but across this country and within many denominations, something fresh is astir.
Some of you have also told me how tired you are; how much you need to rest a bit longer after all those services and all the other responsibilities that come with leading a congregation today. Meetings and planning sessions, budget concerns and special appeals, pastoral visits and funerals for the saints. I hear you. I see you.
A week ago, I was at the Board meeting at Augsburg University. One of the faculty leaders spoke about how tired and weary they were at the end of this semester. Not just any semester, but one in which their campus and the lives of students and faculty and staff were interrupted and strained during Metro Surge. But, as the Provost said at the end of her report, “We are still standing.”
As a synod, we also know the toll such aggressive immigrant enforcement efforts have had on many of our neighbors and on our lives, too, as we have rallied to respond. Thank you for all you have done, Church, to show up for one another. Sometimes, weariness comes because we have done things that were urgent and important for the literal well-being and safety of others. So much about immigration reform in this country has yet to even be addressed, but we are grateful that things are no longer at a fevered pitch.
That faculty leader at Augsburg ended her reflections on the semester by noting that burnout thrives on cynicism, and so she reiterated a list of what she cherishes about Augsburg — her WHY for investing so deeply in what she does.
The author of the Letter to the Ephesians — which is also a letter to this synod — employs a similar strategy. Before setting down their pen, they write: “And (God) has put all things under (Christ’s) feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22-23). Did you know that about us? Church, we are the body of the Risen Christ with the peculiar fullness of Christ’s living presence here in this world.
In Greek, the word for fulness might also be translated as complete or plenitude. Full –like this sanctuary with 500 plus people. Full — like the richness of God’s enduring and steadfast, unending love. Full — like the abundance of hope, planted in projects and initiatives through our common work. But I will tell you this, friends, it is a peculiar fullness with which Christ chooses to fill the church.
It is peculiar because Christ’s fullness is embodied in us and we know how broken and weary, how fickle and tentative, we are when it comes to physical stamina, or facing up to worldly power, or even living out our faith in public. Many days we are a church of leaky roofs and failing boilers, aging membership and uncharted futures. And – AND – we are the Body of Christ, crucified and risen. We are the community – along with siblings like those in Tanzania and Guatemala, the faith communities in the Council of Churches and the Pentecostal congregations renting space in so many of our buildings – we are the Church through which Christ’s blessings and mercy and power are made manifest in this world.
I keep a list and some of your names are on it. It is a hand-written list on a post-it note that hangs on the inside of the cupboard door in my kitchen where I keep the coffee filters at my house. Each morning, as the coffee is brewing, I pray for the names on that list. Your name is there if I promised to pray for you. At dawn, I really can’t remember all the promises I have made, so I keep a list.
It’s a list where your cancer and fatigue, surgeries and griefs, disappointment and depression are remembered by me and lifted up to God. Because in Christ Jesus we have been assured that what matters to us – what catches our breath with emotion when we try to speak – these things also matter to God.
The disciples walked with Jesus a final time when he led them out to Bethany. They all knew it was a time of transition – a time of change and new beginning. Their pockets were stuffed with the promissory notes Jesus had written, ensuring he would be with them always and everywhere. But still – it would not be the same.
They could not begin to imagine all that would happen after that day. The great missionary efforts they would lead in the apostolic era. The time when a fledgling religious movement would find favor with the Empire. The spread of the Gospel to lands, yet unknown to them. The times of persecution and schism and reform, and an era of ecumenical reconciliation beyond all that. The time when the likes of us would be the inheritors of that Ascension Day promise.
There beneath the open sky, there was no way they could yet imagine the implications of what Paul would mean when he wrote to the Ephesians a few decades later and declared: “God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.” (Eph 1:22-23)
Perhaps it was one of the women, who said as they stared at the skies, “Let’s go home and have something to eat.” And they returned to Jerusalem with joy and continued in the life in Christ to which God had called them.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Bishop Patricia Lull
