Gloria Dei Lutheran Church 100th Anniversary
Saint Paul, Minnesota
April 6, 2008

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
John 15:12-17

Grace to you and peace in the name of our crucified and risen Christ. Amen.

Oh, how wonderful it is to be back at Gloria Dei. With all of our traveling, this feels like a homecoming. On behalf of the entire ELCA, thank you for your powerful, prophetic ministry. When I talk about Gloria Dei, I describe your marvelous worship centered in Word and Sacrament; your commitment to be a welcoming congregation affirming the gifts of all—especially gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) people; your support of the mission we share as the Saint Paul Area Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; and your gifted staff led by Susan Peterson.  “This Far By Grace” is a fitting theme for a 100th anniversary celebration. Grace.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound—especially since we Lutherans love to come to worship and hear that word, “grace.”  But what is grace? In fact, how would you answer if you were asked by a colleague at work, a classmate at high school, or a neighbor, “So, what is this grace you keeping talking about?” Turn to the person next to you and share your brief response.

When I was in the parish and confirmands were preparing to affirm their baptism, I would ask them to each write a statement of faith and then describe in their own words the meaning of the words we use frequently in church. They would usually do pretty well with words like forgiveness, faith, prayer, and confession. Most would leave one word blank: grace. I felt as if I had been a failure: Lutheran confirmands, after two years of instruction, could not define grace. One, occasionally would write, “It is what we say before we eat.” One wrote, “It is what my parents give me when they don’t bust me for coming in too late.”  

I should not have been surprised for grace is counter-cultural grace: life is not finally about what I accomplish or acquire or earn, but what God freely gives us out of love and mercy. But God does not just grant us the gift of life and then exit the stage, waiting in the wings to see how we do. Grace is God’s commitment to be faithful to God’s promise to keep intervening in our lives and the life of the whole creation—intervening out of love and mercy, judgment and justice for the sake of our liberation, reconciliation, and salvation.

My mother was a high school English and Latin teacher. I was a nerdy junior high student who loved to diagram sentences—finding the subject, predicate, direct object, and indirect object. In the grammar of grace, God is both subject and predicate—the doer and the deed, the actor and the action. Did you hear the grammar of grace in our readings? 

From Deuteronomy, “The Lord brought us out of Egypt.”1 In Second Corinthians, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.”2 Jesus said in John, “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit.”3 

Such is God’s amazing grace that has been proclaimed at Gloria Dei for one hundred years. That grace has been proclaimed from the font in these words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” and, “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”4  What if every morning upon rising you looked in a mirror, placed your hand on your head, recalling how water was poured over you in baptism, made the sign of the cross on your forehead, and said, “I am baptized. I am chosen. I am a child of God. I belong to Jesus Christ.” In so doing you would remember that you have come this far by God’s grace. Just think, at the font God already leaked the final verdict on your life. That verdict is innocent—not guilty—not because of anything you will or will not do in your life, but because of what God in Christ has done for you—by making you a new creation. For one hundred years pastors at Gloria Dei have said, “As a called and ordained minister of the church of Christ and by his authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”5   Such is God’s amazing grace. There is nothing in your past for which you need to atone to God and nothing in your future you need to fear from God. For one hundred years the risen Christ has been showing up at Gloria Dei just as he promised, “Take and eat; this is my body, given for you. This cup is the new covenant in
my blood, shed for you...”6 

Now that we are a new creation in Christ by God’s grace through faith and do not have to do anything to earn God’s favor or forgiveness, what are we going to do? What shall be the marks of a life of faith lived in God’s grace for Jesus’ sake?  We are sent by God’s grace in the power of the Holy Spirit to live as generous stewards, bold ambassadors, relentless questioners, and persistent pursuers.

How did God’s chosen people express gratitude for God’s gracious deliverance in the reading from Deuteronomy? By reciting their history and by giving the first fruits of their labor as an offering to God and sharing it with the Levites and aliens among them. Oh, my friends, do you realize what that means for us and for Gloria Dei’s next one hundred years? It means we need to know the story—the God story, which is our story. I am so excited about the Book of Faith initiative and how it is growing throughout the ELCA. We are committed as a church body to becoming more fluent in the first language of our faith, the language of Scripture. The Word will engage us, shape us, define us, and become our story. Friends, if we do not know the biblical story of what God graciously has done and promises to do, how will we be able to discern and be part of what God is doing today?

We are free in Christ to be generous stewards. Keeping memory alive is quite different from becoming nostalgic. Christopher Lasch says, “While memory embraces the past in order to understand and inform the present, nostalgia dwells in an idealized past— by definition unattainable—and disparages the present.”7 One hundred year anniversaries are for living memory, not nostalgic longing. Gratitude for God’s grace is expressed through lives of generosity with God’s money—not the pennies left over after the credit card bills are paid, retirement investments are portioned, and college tuition or day care bills are taken care of—first fruits: ten percent off the top. Oh, and not just an offering to God, through the church, but sharing with immigrants and sojourners among you as it says in Deuteronomy. 

Friends, what if the ELCA and Gloria Dei became known as the Book of Faith church—the church largely of descendants of European immigrants who shared with the new immigrants in our land, not asking first for papers of identification and legitimization, but inquiring what is needed to live fully human without fear or poverty. This is a deep commitment we share as the ELCA through our work for just immigration reform with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS), as congregations resettle refugees, as we mentor forty leaders of African descent communities, and as congregations in Metro New York Synod will worship this morning in twenty-seven different languages.

Generous stewards who live by grace through faith for Jesus’ sake will not look first to Wall Street or economic indicators to determine their wealth, but will look at the condition of those who live in poverty and join with them in acts of generosity and solidarity. By God’s grace in Christ you are a new creation set free to live as an bold ambassador: “So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”8

The ELCA is twenty years old. I think it is time we starting living our name. We are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. What do we tend to do with that word in our name? We say, “But we are not like those other evangelicals.” Instead, why not be evangelicals, which means we do what we say in the Affirmation of Baptism as we promise to “proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed.”9 I ride in many cabs in large cities. It rarely takes more than a ten-minute conversation with the cab driver before I know his religion. How long does it take people to find out that you are a Christian? What three things about yourself do you share when meeting someone for the first time? Name? Occupation? Where you live? Something about your family? Favorite sports team?

Bold ambassadors for Christ who live each day by God’s grace through faith are not afraid to say, “I am Mark Hanson, a baptized believer in Jesus Christ and a Lutheran Christian. I live each day by God’s grace through faith for Jesus’ sake.” Bold ambassadors invite others to come with them to worship and hear the story of God’s
grace. 

Living in God’s grace through faith frees us to be relentless questioners. Joseph Sittler has said, “The grace of God is not simply a holy hypodermic whereby my sins are forgiven. It is the whole giftedness of life, the wonder of life which causes me to ask questions that transcend the moment.”10 Martin Luther taught parents to teach their children to ask, “What does this mean?” when studying the Catechism. 

God’s grace frees us for lives of unquenchable curiosity. I have always appreciated that Gloria Dei takes seriously that you are a community that lets faith lack understanding, a community that constantly explores faith’s relationship to science, the city, and the arts.

The ELCA has twenty-eight colleges and universities, campus ministries, outdoor ministries, high schools, pre-schools, and eight seminaries to embody lives of unquenchable curiosity to those who come. Jesus was the relentless questioner from age twelve when he said, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”11 Later he asked, “But who do you say that I am?”12 While hanging on the cross Jesus questioned God, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”13 He continued his relentless questioning when he asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?”14

By God’s grace you are a new creation in Christ set free to be persistent pursuers, persistent messengers of reconciliation. God has entrusted the ministry of reconciliation to you. You have embodied that message as you have welcomed GLBT people fully into the life and ministry of this congregation. Persistently pursuing God’s calling to the ministry of reconciliation is a radically countercultural word in the fractious and contentious of both culture and church, which are polarized over race, sexual orientation, immigration, and abortion. We promise in the Affirmation of Baptism that living in God’s grace we will “serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”15 

I have asked thousands of ELCA members, “How many of your congregations have convened a conversation about the now five-year-old war in Iraq and what is a just way toward peace there or between Palestinians and Israelis?” It’s about two percent. Why not more? Because, people say, we don’t want that tension in our congregation. Tranquility, however, never has been the primary position of God’s people in proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ because Jesus calls us to lay down our lives and to suffer—not for suffering’s sake—but for the sake of justice, peace, reconciliation, and the sake of the Gospel. For such a purpose we need to make common cause with people of other faiths and of no faith. You have done that as Gloria Dei. We are doing that as the ELCA as we join with Muslims and Jews to seek a lasting and just peace in the Middle East.

For one hundred years people have been sent from Gloria Dei into the world with the words, “Go in peace. Serve the Lord. Share the good news. Remember the poor. Christ is with you.” The response has been, “Thanks be to God!” We are not sent on our own. We are sent with the promise of the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.

“Father in heaven, for Jesus’ sake, stir up in these women, men, and children the gift of your Holy Spirit; confirm their faith, guide their lives, empower them in their serving, given them patience in suffering, and bring them to everlasting life.”16 Amen.

1 - Deuteronomy 26:8, NRSV.
2 - 2 Corinthians 5:17, NRSV.
3 - John 15:16, NRSV.
4 - Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Holy Baptism, (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, Publishers, 2006) 230-231.  
5 - Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Holy Communion (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, Publishers, 2006) 96.
6 - Ibid., 109.
7 - Christopher Lasch, quoted in “Lost in the Fifties: The Changing Family And Nostalgic Church,” by Penny;
Long Marler part of a larger word edited by Nancy Tatum Ammerman and Wade Clark Roof, “Work, Family, and Religion in Contemporary Society” (New York: Routledge, 1995) 26. 
8 - 2 Corinthians 5:20, NRSV.
9 - Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Affirmation of Baptism (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, Publishers, 2006) 237.
10 - Joseph Sittler, Gravity and Grace: Reflections and Provocations, (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, Publishing, 1986) 14.
11 - Luke 2:49, NRSV.
12 - Luke 9:20, NRSV.
13 - Mark 15:34, NRSV.
14 - John 21:15-17, NRSV.
15 - Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Affirmation of Baptism (Minneapolis, MN: Au 56D gsburg Fortress, Publishers, 2006) 237.
16 - Ibid., 236. Paraphrase.

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