After a session of Theology on Tap that went on more than two hours and easily could have continued for six more I was reminded of one of the very first lessons I was taught about faith. Saturday night's topic was wide open: bring any question you have about faith, God, church, or whatever. Spill it! Someone did. People spoke. Another question followed, then another, then another. It was intense, unscripted, and yet very Spirit-filled. We all marveled about these things that had been bubbling inside us and never found the forum to get out before. We wondered why our life of faith wasn't more like this all the time.
That made me think back to the first real, live pastor I had a conversation with...a Lutheran guy, in fact. As I sat in his office across from his desk he looked at me and said, "The questions you ask in your walk of faith are ten times as important as the answers you get." He was right! I've since found that a good answer only lasts for a day but a good question can keep you occupied for a lifetime. All of the greatest leaps and realizations I've had in my own faith life have come from other people asking questions like, "Why do these things happen?" or "Why did God do this?" or "Why did God say that?" or "What in the world does this mean?" Plenty of those leaps have come from people directly (but usually nicely) probing into church practices and doctrine, questioning why we say or believe certain things. Those questions are a blessing, as they open up avenues for learning among us all...the person asking the question, the person being asked, and everyone who hears or participates in the conversation. It's sad that we don't ask more!
I said something on Saturday night that bears repeating in public. In the course of our discussions quite a few people said they'd been told that Lutherans believe this or that. It was actually funny, because more than half the time they were wrong. (That wasn't their fault, mind you. People say Lutherans believe a lot of things!) Addressing these assertions I said that Lutheran doctrine, at its heart, proposes three things:
1. We don't know everything! In some ways we don't know anything. We are incapable of perfectly understanding God on our own. We aren't capable of believing in him on our own either. We are the lost folks.
2. The doctrine we teach is designed to point us towards God but also to start us asking questions about him and our faith...a necessary process given Point #1 just stated. At no point is Lutheran doctrine meant to shut down conversation or provide "the answer". Instead it stands as a road map delineating hazards and marking oases along our journey towards God. The minute you say, "This is the Final Word and I will hear no more about it" you have stopped taking that journey and thus robbed the doctrine of its reason.
3. God is the God of the lost, wandering people. From Adam and Eve to the Israelites to the apostles of Jesus he has always embraced those who didn't know it all but kept seeking anyway. The key to understanding his salvation isn't getting the right answer but understanding that we'll never have it (short of heaven) and that he's loving us and saving us anyway. If faith is all about being right we're lost. Half of us won't get things correct and we'll be lost. Meanwhile the other half will get it and think they're more special than everybody else because of that and will get trapped in their own pride and self-satisfaction. If, on the other hand, faith is about the God who calls you to question and discuss even when you're not sure you have the answer then both right and wrong work to his purpose, as they both spur us to seek him more. Sometimes we walk in an empty wilderness without good answers, sometimes in a lush garden full of them. Still we soldier on.
How long has it been since you've asked a question about faith in the presence of God's people and thus spurred them to conversation with all their glorious right and mistaken answers, all their interesting theories, and all of the questions of their own that follow? Might be worth a try sometime...
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Monday Morning Sermon: The Good Shepherd
This Sunday's gospel text was John 10: 11-18, as follows:
The good shepherd, on the other hand, cares about his sheep. He will not leave them, even to the point of giving his life for them. This is exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross. He gathers his flock, cares for them, makes them one, and won't let anything get in the way of that.
The sermon focused on two real-life applications of this lesson:
1. Whatever you do, do it with care for the people around you. We've all known "hired hands" in various professions and relationships...people just going through the motions to get what they feel is coming to them. You can tell when a nurse or a teacher, a parent or a spouse, is fulfilling their role without caring about the people they're with. Actions become hollow and empty, wrong even when they're right.
We've also known people from whom love flows genuinely in all circumstances. It doesn't matter what curriculum they're teaching, what medicine they're administering, what parental lesson they're trying to impart, what they're doing together with their spouse, it just works. The love and care make the experience, not vice-versa.
I've felt this plenty of time in social situations...parties and weddings and such. Sometimes you attend a party that's impeccably well-planned, but you know the guests are there for the sake of the party, not the reverse. Everybody is invited for a reason. Everything has to be just so. You feel almost like a piece in a grand game, or like you're an actor reading from a script. In these situations I get asked, "Pastor, will you pray?" because this is the part where the pastor says the prayer. In a second we'll be on to the next part. Everybody follow along! Everybody make the perfect evening! Isn't this grand?
Other times you arrive at a party and experience the opposite. The party is thrown for the sake of the guests, not the guests invited for the sake of the party. People feel welcome, comfortable, and free to interact with each other. There's laughter, food, conversation, warmth...all the things that make an evening great without the expectation that they'll be "just so". The guests get to define what's great instead of reading from the script. When I get asked to pray here, it's like praying with family. People gather around, share a moment together, bow heads and embrace the chance to be thankful. They genuinely care about the event and each other.
The first case feels a lot like the hired hand running the show. They've designed an impeccable evening, but the first hint of trouble and it's all ruined. When the wolves come, the place falls apart. The key to such an event is making sure that no wolves are invited, that everybody dresses a certain way, that all manners are in evidence, and that everybody stays on task lest the evening fall short.
In the second case the host becomes the good shepherd. If there's a hiccup, everybody adapts. Different kinds of people can come in different kinds of dress and do different things. Everybody makes it work. This is possible because people are enjoying each other instead of obsessing about an external "to do" list and judging how well everybody conforms to the standard.
Caring turns ordinary things extraordinary, making even flawed things seem perfect. In many ways caring is harder than just demanding everybody follow the curriculum/medical chart/party script. It takes more patience and sacrifice. But it also bears more dividends.
Each one of us should ask ourselves whether we're carrying out our daily tasks with caring first and foremost in our minds or whether we're just checking things off of our list so we can mark them as done and claim our reward. If it's the latter, we're probably missing out on a fair amount of life's joy plus a ton of holy opportunities that God's trying to show us.
2. We also need to examine how we operate as a church. Most non-church-familiar people carry the perception that the church is full of hired hands, not good shepherds. They suspect a church person always approaches wanting something for themselves: join our church, give offering, admit you're wrong, say you think like me. That perception is grounded in truth in many cases! How often do churches judge their work by how full the pews are or how fat the bank account looks? We divide the world into little pieces: believers vs. non-believers, members vs. non-members, good members vs. not-so-good members, people we like vs. people we dislike. Our goal is seemingly to convert as many people as possible into the categories we want: believer becomes member becomes good member becomes good member who's in our little circle. If you don't fall easily into the favored categories we don't value you as much. We push you to the side or we just badger you until you come around.
Who makes those categories and draws those distinctions? Generally, we do...the "good church folks". And why do we favor some of them over others? We favor the ones that make us feel good about ourselves, successful, proud. If we have the right number of people in the "believer/member/good member/inner circle" box we feel like we've done a good job, like our church is healthy. Never mind what those people are actually doing! Who cares what they're there for? Stop asking if this has anything to do with faith! And for heaven's sake stop worrying about the people we're chasing after...just get as many of them as possible into the correct designation! Go! Go! Go!
This is pretty much the opposite of caring. In the name of spreading/preserving/sustaining our "faith" (and I use the term loosely in this case) we treat other people like objects, viewing ministry as a series of tasks and church as the grand, stiff party mentioned above.
The great joke in all of this is that without caring church means nothing. Without caring we're just hired hands doing a poor job of watching over God's family. People outside the church are right to be suspicious of this kind of activity. The problem is, it's so widespread now that I'm not sure many people have seen anything but! People don't feel like some churches are like this, they think all churches are like this! They wouldn't know a good shepherd if he hooked them around the neck with his staff and planted a big, wet kiss on their cheek.
We've traded in "Jesus gave himself for you, so here's your love and joy" for "Give yourself to Jesus so we can be happy". In doing so we've not only ruined God's message, but put an enormous stumbling block in the way, tripping up anybody who tries to spread the good news of the Spirit.
Anybody remember the first cookie distribution day we had a couple years ago? It was Christmas...the season of giving. If there's any time people should be expecting a gift, that would be it. Yet what was the reaction at house after house as we distributed our homemade cookies for free and without expectation? The first response was suspicion and wariness. "What are those folks doing coming up my walk? What do they want to get from me?" When they realized that we really didn't want anything, that we were just giving away cookies so people could be happy, the expression turned to wonder and disbelief.
That same thing happens when we use the emergency fund to help people unexpectedly. The response I get is almost universal: "But I'm not a member of your church!" I wonder where they got the idea they had to be in order for God or anybody to favor them?
Stop and think about that for a minute. We have so conditioned people to believe that everybody approaching them wants to manipulate them into something--even and especially a church person--that they literally can not BELIEVE that anybody is simply sharing love with them without cost or expectation. Even when we're meeting their greatest need, they still have to get over a fair amount of suspicion in order to accept the gift.
All I can think of when I consider this is, "My gosh. How hired-hand-y have we been?"
That's why it's so important for each of us to go out and show the world the care and self-sacrifice that God first showed towards us. How else will they know who he is? How else will they un-learn that suspicion? If we're not good shepherds, following the one Good Shepherd, then who will be?
We're given a million potential avenues through which we are told we can control or gain possession of the world: money, politics, fame, and personal influence among them. Sadly church and faith have been co-opted into that list, seen as avenues of power and personal control. We need to get back to a simpler message and a simpler task. None of those approaches really change the world as much as caring does. That's how Jesus claimed us. He cared about us and thus earned the title of good shepherd. We are meant to affect the world likewise. If that isn't our first priority as individuals or a church, our priorities probably need realignment.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father —and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life —only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”In the sermon we focused on the distinction Jesus draws between the good shepherd and the hired hand. To the hired hand, tending sheep is simply a job for which he receives compensation. He's in it for his own gain. When something threatens him, he'll abandon his post. He doesn't care for the flock, just what the flock can provide for him (a means of making a living). To the outside eye he does the same work as the good shepherd, but when push comes to shove that work is a self-centered endeavor.
The good shepherd, on the other hand, cares about his sheep. He will not leave them, even to the point of giving his life for them. This is exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross. He gathers his flock, cares for them, makes them one, and won't let anything get in the way of that.
The sermon focused on two real-life applications of this lesson:
1. Whatever you do, do it with care for the people around you. We've all known "hired hands" in various professions and relationships...people just going through the motions to get what they feel is coming to them. You can tell when a nurse or a teacher, a parent or a spouse, is fulfilling their role without caring about the people they're with. Actions become hollow and empty, wrong even when they're right.
We've also known people from whom love flows genuinely in all circumstances. It doesn't matter what curriculum they're teaching, what medicine they're administering, what parental lesson they're trying to impart, what they're doing together with their spouse, it just works. The love and care make the experience, not vice-versa.
I've felt this plenty of time in social situations...parties and weddings and such. Sometimes you attend a party that's impeccably well-planned, but you know the guests are there for the sake of the party, not the reverse. Everybody is invited for a reason. Everything has to be just so. You feel almost like a piece in a grand game, or like you're an actor reading from a script. In these situations I get asked, "Pastor, will you pray?" because this is the part where the pastor says the prayer. In a second we'll be on to the next part. Everybody follow along! Everybody make the perfect evening! Isn't this grand?
Other times you arrive at a party and experience the opposite. The party is thrown for the sake of the guests, not the guests invited for the sake of the party. People feel welcome, comfortable, and free to interact with each other. There's laughter, food, conversation, warmth...all the things that make an evening great without the expectation that they'll be "just so". The guests get to define what's great instead of reading from the script. When I get asked to pray here, it's like praying with family. People gather around, share a moment together, bow heads and embrace the chance to be thankful. They genuinely care about the event and each other.
The first case feels a lot like the hired hand running the show. They've designed an impeccable evening, but the first hint of trouble and it's all ruined. When the wolves come, the place falls apart. The key to such an event is making sure that no wolves are invited, that everybody dresses a certain way, that all manners are in evidence, and that everybody stays on task lest the evening fall short.
In the second case the host becomes the good shepherd. If there's a hiccup, everybody adapts. Different kinds of people can come in different kinds of dress and do different things. Everybody makes it work. This is possible because people are enjoying each other instead of obsessing about an external "to do" list and judging how well everybody conforms to the standard.
Caring turns ordinary things extraordinary, making even flawed things seem perfect. In many ways caring is harder than just demanding everybody follow the curriculum/medical chart/party script. It takes more patience and sacrifice. But it also bears more dividends.
Each one of us should ask ourselves whether we're carrying out our daily tasks with caring first and foremost in our minds or whether we're just checking things off of our list so we can mark them as done and claim our reward. If it's the latter, we're probably missing out on a fair amount of life's joy plus a ton of holy opportunities that God's trying to show us.
2. We also need to examine how we operate as a church. Most non-church-familiar people carry the perception that the church is full of hired hands, not good shepherds. They suspect a church person always approaches wanting something for themselves: join our church, give offering, admit you're wrong, say you think like me. That perception is grounded in truth in many cases! How often do churches judge their work by how full the pews are or how fat the bank account looks? We divide the world into little pieces: believers vs. non-believers, members vs. non-members, good members vs. not-so-good members, people we like vs. people we dislike. Our goal is seemingly to convert as many people as possible into the categories we want: believer becomes member becomes good member becomes good member who's in our little circle. If you don't fall easily into the favored categories we don't value you as much. We push you to the side or we just badger you until you come around.
Who makes those categories and draws those distinctions? Generally, we do...the "good church folks". And why do we favor some of them over others? We favor the ones that make us feel good about ourselves, successful, proud. If we have the right number of people in the "believer/member/good member/inner circle" box we feel like we've done a good job, like our church is healthy. Never mind what those people are actually doing! Who cares what they're there for? Stop asking if this has anything to do with faith! And for heaven's sake stop worrying about the people we're chasing after...just get as many of them as possible into the correct designation! Go! Go! Go!
This is pretty much the opposite of caring. In the name of spreading/preserving/sustaining our "faith" (and I use the term loosely in this case) we treat other people like objects, viewing ministry as a series of tasks and church as the grand, stiff party mentioned above.
The great joke in all of this is that without caring church means nothing. Without caring we're just hired hands doing a poor job of watching over God's family. People outside the church are right to be suspicious of this kind of activity. The problem is, it's so widespread now that I'm not sure many people have seen anything but! People don't feel like some churches are like this, they think all churches are like this! They wouldn't know a good shepherd if he hooked them around the neck with his staff and planted a big, wet kiss on their cheek.
We've traded in "Jesus gave himself for you, so here's your love and joy" for "Give yourself to Jesus so we can be happy". In doing so we've not only ruined God's message, but put an enormous stumbling block in the way, tripping up anybody who tries to spread the good news of the Spirit.
Anybody remember the first cookie distribution day we had a couple years ago? It was Christmas...the season of giving. If there's any time people should be expecting a gift, that would be it. Yet what was the reaction at house after house as we distributed our homemade cookies for free and without expectation? The first response was suspicion and wariness. "What are those folks doing coming up my walk? What do they want to get from me?" When they realized that we really didn't want anything, that we were just giving away cookies so people could be happy, the expression turned to wonder and disbelief.
That same thing happens when we use the emergency fund to help people unexpectedly. The response I get is almost universal: "But I'm not a member of your church!" I wonder where they got the idea they had to be in order for God or anybody to favor them?
Stop and think about that for a minute. We have so conditioned people to believe that everybody approaching them wants to manipulate them into something--even and especially a church person--that they literally can not BELIEVE that anybody is simply sharing love with them without cost or expectation. Even when we're meeting their greatest need, they still have to get over a fair amount of suspicion in order to accept the gift.
All I can think of when I consider this is, "My gosh. How hired-hand-y have we been?"
That's why it's so important for each of us to go out and show the world the care and self-sacrifice that God first showed towards us. How else will they know who he is? How else will they un-learn that suspicion? If we're not good shepherds, following the one Good Shepherd, then who will be?
We're given a million potential avenues through which we are told we can control or gain possession of the world: money, politics, fame, and personal influence among them. Sadly church and faith have been co-opted into that list, seen as avenues of power and personal control. We need to get back to a simpler message and a simpler task. None of those approaches really change the world as much as caring does. That's how Jesus claimed us. He cared about us and thus earned the title of good shepherd. We are meant to affect the world likewise. If that isn't our first priority as individuals or a church, our priorities probably need realignment.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
Bulletin Announcements
Our copy machine still isn't fixed and some of the announcements in the bulletin were obscured, so here is the list in its entirety:
Our first Evangelism Workshops will be held in May and June. One workshop will be offered on Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. at St. John’s on May 3rd and 10th. Another will be offered after worship on June 3rd and 24th at the Valley. We will also offer sessions in the fall. We are looking for every member of our church to participate and to learn how to become an intentional evangelist!
We move to the Valley next Sunday, the 6th. Worship will remain at 10:00 a.m. through May.
Please sign up to help with worship through April and May!
Cindy S. has returned to her home and we have a request through Angels on Call to be part of the group providing dinners for her and her family. To be part of that e-mailing list providing dinners, contact her at: mamaz (at) turbonet (dot) com
Malaria is a leading cause of death in Africa, claiming the life of a child every 45 seconds. In Liberia, malaria accounts for 30 percent of all deaths in hospitals.
Since the launch of the ELCA Malaria Campaign last year, Lutheran churches in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe have distributed mosquito nets and medicine as well as educating communities on prevention. However, we don’t yet have the funds to begin this work in Liberia.
Our sisters and brothers in Liberia are ready. Active congregations are mobilized to help prevent malaria in their communities. Two well-respected Lutheran hospitals, community-based health care programs and development and education ministries serve tens of thousands of people.
Today is World Malaria Day. During this week we need to raise $200,000 to fun anti-malaria work in Liberia this year.
Let’s make this dream a reality. There are three ways to give.
1. Donate online by visiting http://www.elca.org/MalariaDay anytime before the 11:59 p.m. CST deadline on Tuesday, May 1.
2. Donate over the phone by calling 800-638-3522 during business hours now through Tuesday, May 1, at 5:00 p.m. CST. Operators are standing by.
3. Donate through the mail by sending a check to the ELCA Malaria Campaign, P.O. Box 71764, Chicago, Illinois, 60694-1764. Please mail your checks by May 4, 2012, and be sure to write "World Malaria Day" in the memo line of your check.
Our first Evangelism Workshops will be held in May and June. One workshop will be offered on Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. at St. John’s on May 3rd and 10th. Another will be offered after worship on June 3rd and 24th at the Valley. We will also offer sessions in the fall. We are looking for every member of our church to participate and to learn how to become an intentional evangelist!
We move to the Valley next Sunday, the 6th. Worship will remain at 10:00 a.m. through May.
Please sign up to help with worship through April and May!
Cindy S. has returned to her home and we have a request through Angels on Call to be part of the group providing dinners for her and her family. To be part of that e-mailing list providing dinners, contact her at: mamaz (at) turbonet (dot) com
Malaria is a leading cause of death in Africa, claiming the life of a child every 45 seconds. In Liberia, malaria accounts for 30 percent of all deaths in hospitals.
Since the launch of the ELCA Malaria Campaign last year, Lutheran churches in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe have distributed mosquito nets and medicine as well as educating communities on prevention. However, we don’t yet have the funds to begin this work in Liberia.
Our sisters and brothers in Liberia are ready. Active congregations are mobilized to help prevent malaria in their communities. Two well-respected Lutheran hospitals, community-based health care programs and development and education ministries serve tens of thousands of people.
Today is World Malaria Day. During this week we need to raise $200,000 to fun anti-malaria work in Liberia this year.
Let’s make this dream a reality. There are three ways to give.
1. Donate online by visiting http://www.elca.org/MalariaDay anytime before the 11:59 p.m. CST deadline on Tuesday, May 1.
2. Donate over the phone by calling 800-638-3522 during business hours now through Tuesday, May 1, at 5:00 p.m. CST. Operators are standing by.
3. Donate through the mail by sending a check to the ELCA Malaria Campaign, P.O. Box 71764, Chicago, Illinois, 60694-1764. Please mail your checks by May 4, 2012, and be sure to write "World Malaria Day" in the memo line of your check.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The Biggest Difference
A very nice person not associated with our church, familiar with us only through these posts, wrote in and asked me to summarize the biggest difference I see between the way we do church and "church as usual". He intimated that he's familiar with the church scene and it wasn't satisfying to him, but he was intrigued by some of the things we'd been talking about and doing. So here you go.
I'd say the biggest single difference between our ministry and the (stereo-)typical church experience is the direction of our focus. If we're not doing something that changes or informs your daily life, makes your everyday experience more Spirit-filled and closer to God, then we've failed in our mission. That's why we go to great length to keep church activities special, but not isolated. They represent the best of what we can give, naturally, but we also try to make them connect to ordinary life. We don't sit people down and make them go into another world, or even another mode of thinking, in order to experience our teaching of God. With the kids we teach through everyday activities like games and movies. Even with adults in more formalized studies we try and bring the words of scripture back around to our daily lives and tasks. We invite "ordinary" people to ask "ordinary" questions and state their "ordinary" opinions and by gum, we find God is plenty active in the ordinary! Our job isn't to bring God to you. We assume he's already there. Our job is to help you see him in all the moments of your life.
Many churches give lip service to this kind of thing, but in the end most spend the bulk of their time and energy trying to get you farther inside the church, more focused on the institution, investing in church for church's sake. You can see it in the hoops you have to jump in order to belong or participate. You can feel it in the emphasis on attendance and giving as litmus tests for the success of the church...or failing that having a grand building and breathtaking decorations. We talk about all of those things too, to be sure, but they're in service to the people and the community, not trying to get people and the community in service to us! We don't try to get the outside into church in order to make the church bigger. We try to get the inside out of church in order to spread God's goodness farther.
This change in direction makes all the difference. I believe it's the same distinction that separated Jesus from the religious leaders of his time. One wandered hither and yon, gracing people with healing and the news about God's goodness, bringing the Kingdom alive before them. The others stayed in their temple-castle, protecting what they had and encouraging everyone to come and bow, calling them great and securing their place in the community. The first is the ultimate self-giving, the second ultimately self-serving. We prefer the former to the latter.
Hope that answers the question!
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
I'd say the biggest single difference between our ministry and the (stereo-)typical church experience is the direction of our focus. If we're not doing something that changes or informs your daily life, makes your everyday experience more Spirit-filled and closer to God, then we've failed in our mission. That's why we go to great length to keep church activities special, but not isolated. They represent the best of what we can give, naturally, but we also try to make them connect to ordinary life. We don't sit people down and make them go into another world, or even another mode of thinking, in order to experience our teaching of God. With the kids we teach through everyday activities like games and movies. Even with adults in more formalized studies we try and bring the words of scripture back around to our daily lives and tasks. We invite "ordinary" people to ask "ordinary" questions and state their "ordinary" opinions and by gum, we find God is plenty active in the ordinary! Our job isn't to bring God to you. We assume he's already there. Our job is to help you see him in all the moments of your life.
Many churches give lip service to this kind of thing, but in the end most spend the bulk of their time and energy trying to get you farther inside the church, more focused on the institution, investing in church for church's sake. You can see it in the hoops you have to jump in order to belong or participate. You can feel it in the emphasis on attendance and giving as litmus tests for the success of the church...or failing that having a grand building and breathtaking decorations. We talk about all of those things too, to be sure, but they're in service to the people and the community, not trying to get people and the community in service to us! We don't try to get the outside into church in order to make the church bigger. We try to get the inside out of church in order to spread God's goodness farther.
This change in direction makes all the difference. I believe it's the same distinction that separated Jesus from the religious leaders of his time. One wandered hither and yon, gracing people with healing and the news about God's goodness, bringing the Kingdom alive before them. The others stayed in their temple-castle, protecting what they had and encouraging everyone to come and bow, calling them great and securing their place in the community. The first is the ultimate self-giving, the second ultimately self-serving. We prefer the former to the latter.
Hope that answers the question!
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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