Christmas 1A

Welcome to the morning after Christmas. For most of us, the presents have been unwrapped, the food eaten, the joy shared, the songs sung. Though there may still be visits to make and gifts to share, we wake up this morning, realize there’s work tomorrow, and it is as if life hits the “reset” button: back to reality.

There are a lot of “mornings after” in life. The morning after moving into a new apartment. The second day of a new job or school year. The morning after the honeymoon. The morning after the guests leave. And there are many more examples. These are the times when real life kicks in. This is when daily routine overtakes festival service, though the stores may try to prolong the festivities with “day after” sales. For every big event, there will be the day after.

Our readings this morning portray the big moments in Jesus early life. But what we don’t get to see is the daily life. We know very little about Jesus’ early life, or life at all until the start of his ministry as an adult. We have these few important pieces, and that’s all. I wonder what the “mornings after” were like for the Holy family. The morning after the Magi left, the morning after the escape to Egypt, then again after the return from Egypt. Life with small children is hardly ever routine, and with the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the events that we have heard about this morning, I wonder if daily life ever seemed “normal.”

Because really, there would have been daily life to return to. The most amazing thing about Christmas is that Christ came to earth as a human person, the same as you and me. Chores had to be done, food prepared, clothes washed, school attended. But, we don’t know what the daily life of young Jesus would have been like, or how his parents would have felt after each extraordinary event, to return to daily life.

How do we return? What do we do with our mornings after? After vacation there is often a sense of let-down, a sense of settling back in to routine. Though this can be relief, the language we use doesn’t always emphasize that. After big events we say there is sometimes a sense of disappointment, wishing the excitement could have lasted longer. After Christmas, the world becomes visibly duller, less bright, as lights come down, trees are stripped and removed from the house, and all the dazzle and glitter fades away.

So how do we, as people of faith, react? I can’t help but notice there are not quite as many people here this morning as there were Christmas Eve. At seminary, the Sunday after Christmas is well known: it may the most popular day of the year for students to be asked to preach. It’s a safe Sunday for practicing, because everyone knows that not many people will be there.

What do we do with today, this Sunday that is “morning after?” Do we come to church merely as habit, as routine, or to see the seminarian preach? Do we take down the decorations and start looking forward to the next big event that will stimulate our hearts?

Perhaps we do those things. But this day is no less important to who we are than Christmas Eve, or the Sundays of Advent, or the weeks of Lent. This day we celebrate together Christ’s coming, as we do every Sunday. This day we celebrate together Christ’s work in the world, as we do every Sunday. This day we celebrate together the gift of the grace of God, poured out in the Word, in the waters of baptism, in the meal we are about to share with each other. Each Sunday is Sabbath, is time for gathering, learning, sharing, celebrating. Each Sunday we rejoice in Christ’s advent, in Christ’s birth into this world as “God with us,” in Christ’s death and resurrection. Each Sunday we gather around this table and share in the meal which is the culmination of our celebration. The church year as a whole may follow this pattern, but each Sunday is a reminder of the whole of our faith.

So what now? What do we do today? Do we just settle into the daily grind, remembering fondly the excitement of the past few days and weeks, but with an expectation that we are now doing “just” the normal things? Do we watch as the decorations come down and, though relaxing a bit, sigh a little at the end of the season?

Or, do we carry forward the enthusiasm of Christmas? We are actually still in the Christmas season, liturgically, but soon that will end, too. Jobs, or the job hunts, resume, children go back to school, the tree comes down, and retailers move on to the next big marketing day. And this is good. It would not work for Christmas to last forever, or for everyday to be so full of energy and excitement. We need Sabbath rest, not only in our weekly weeks, but in our months and years and cycles of celebration. The time after the Christmas season, before Lent begins, gives us rest. It gives us a chance to live the lives which are so transformed by the birth of the Christ child.

But that doesn’t mean that we cannot celebrate Christ every day. Indeed, living faithfully into the daily routines of our lives, watching children grow, learning new skills and information as adults, caring for the other and the ones less fortunate in all seasons… doing life things is celebrating Christ’s birth as human among us. We can look with joy at the coming “normal” weeks and see them as a time to live into the promise of Christ’s coming, to embrace our daily lives as ones infused with the grace of God, marked with the waters of baptism, made beautiful, even in routine, by the fact that God has called each of us by name, and has known us all the days of our lives. We can look at our lives, our daily worries and challenges, and remember and rejoice that Christ came down to live among us, to worry and work with us, and we can know that the Holy Spirit continues to worry and work with us.

This morning after is not a let down, it is the continuation of the festival celebration. It is the Sabbath which gives us energy to move through the week. In Philadelphia this morning, in a little church called St Michael’s, a baby girl named Zoe is being baptized. In Iowa, a trombonist named Laura is giving a children’s sermon about how Advent is a purple traffic light and Christmas—and Jesus—were worth the wait. In southern Minnesota, a busy youth director named Dani is taking the day to relax and just worship with her church family. This day is the chance to refill our cups and be sent out to share them with the world. This meal is not dull, it is a feast! There may not be sprinkles or fancy spices, but there is Christ. Christ in this food, because Christ promises to be in this food. This food feeds not only our bodies but our souls. This Sunday morning after Christmas is joy.

So as you return to life, to job hunting or job doing, to school, to routine, remember the hymn we are about to sing: Good Christian friends Rejoice! With heart, and soul, and voice. Now you hear of endless bless, you need not fear the grace! He calls you one and calls you all. Christ was born to save. Not just on Christmas, but this and every day. Amen.

sermon, C8

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21
Psalm 16
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

            Have you ever seen a wild herd of horses? While grazing, they may seem to be merely a group of horses who all happened to stop at the same diner for lunch. While on the move, running across country, they look the picture of freedom: manes and tails flowing in the wind, hooves gliding across the earth. And yet, these horses follow a leader, one whose experience and strengths can guide the herd to safety, food, and water.

            Or consider flocks of birds. You know, those giant migrating flocks in the spring or fall of hundreds of starlings, moving with respect to the rules of the flock, forming an intimidating whole. They are also free, but also following.

(pause)

            In our readings today, we hear both about following and about being free. Elisha seeks to follow Elijah, various people try to follow Jesus, and yet at the same time we hear Paul talk about freedom. So what is the connection between following and being free? Are not the two somewhat in disagreement with each other?

            John Denver has a song about following which has a line that says, “Follow me where I go, what I do and who I know. Make it part of you to be a part of me.” That sounds like a fairly solid definition of “to follow,” but where is the freedom?

            Most of our concepts about freedom are about individuality and the ability to make one’s own choices: school children are “free for the summer” and “freedom of speech” means you can say whatever you want. Following, which tends to indicate submission, is usually not in the freedom definition.

            So let us turn to these conflicting readings. In First Kings, Elijah throws his mantle over Elisha, calling him to follow. Elisha requests to say goodbye, which he does, and then he “sets out and follows Elijah, and becomes his servant.” In the Gospel reading, we have two folks who ask Jesus if they can follow him. This… is a little different than the way things usually go. Usually, we see Christ doing the asking.

            Where do these people think that Jesus is going that they want so badly to follow him? We have just heard that he has his face so set toward Jerusalem that the folks in a Samaritan village wouldn’t receive him. WHERE did they think he was going?

            For that matter, where do WE think he’s going? We often use the phrase “following Christ.” It’s something we strive for, something we work for.

            These folks were asking to follow him when his face was set toward Jerusalem, toward the cross. They probably did not realize that this was the destination they were trying to reach by joining Jesus. But then, this is often how God works: through revealing God’s self in the exact opposite way that we expect. It is what Martin Luther called the “revelation of God under the appearance of the opposite.” Jesus is headed to the cross where God will be most ultimately revealed in that way which is absolutely contrary to expectations.

            I do not think that pain, humiliation, and death, were what those people in our reading were intending to ask for. It’s certainly not what I usually have in mind when I think about following Christ. Social justice, beautiful liturgies, Christian community, a moral code to live by… these are the things that are associated with following Christ. In other times, in other places, following Christ really has been associated with humiliation, pain, torture, and death. This even happens today. This past November marked the twentieth anniversary of the brutal killings of eight Christian leaders at the University of Central America in San Salvador. But, to our ears those situations seem foreign, martyrs are heroes of the church, but more like legends than actual people. And in the Baltimore metro area, there is perhaps less of a chance of becoming martyrs, at least in the physical sense. Where is it that these people in our Gospel think Christ was headed?

            Yet, even so, even though we cannot comprehend the path Jesus was taking that day, nor the paths Christ leads us on today, we use following language and we do aim to follow Christ. And we use language of freedom, of Christ setting us free from the Law, free from the old, given new life in resurrection.

So we strive to simultaneously follow and be free, but… we are continuously held back from both by our captivity to the places where we lay our heads. To our own ideas of what the path should be: who should be consumed by fire, who SHOULDN’T receive heartbreak, illness, disease, and disaster. We make following into our own ideas, taking our freedom instead of living in the freedom that comes from Christ, from that very path to the cross, to death, that we shy away from. Without the cross, there can be no resurrection. Yet we are held back by our own foxholes, nests, and homes. These things which, Jesus points out to us, he doesn’t have. The Son of Man has nowhere to put his head. Well, neither do ten thousand people in Maryland, or 650 thousand in the United States total. What might Jesus have said if the man was not asking to bury his father, but instead had said, “well, just let me finish building my house so the poor can live in it while I’m gone?”

But that’s not the kind of question we ask when we go to follow Christ. Because we name the things we do as part of the following. We decide what must be done to be considered a follower. Yet Christ makes none of these demands. Even Paul’s list of works of the flesh doesn’t come partnered with a list of “things you must do.” The fruits of the Spirit are, like freedom, results of the following. They are fruits. Fruits come after the planting, and are not themselves the planting.

The planting is the Word of God, proclaimed in the Gospel, broken and shared in the Lord’s Supper, poured out in the waters of baptism, as will happen to Lucy today. This is the planting, the promise of the coming of the fruits, the promise of the one who is revealed in the most unexpected ways, the most opposite, contrary ways. The planting, which happens to each of us, regardless of what we do or say. Because it is what God does, it is what the Spirit does. And the fruit flows from that.

And so we follow and are made free. We are made free and follow. To quote Luther in his treatise “Concerning Christian Liberty,” “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.”

Remember the horses and the birds? Perhaps the most free creatures of all, one on land and one on air, and subject to none. Yet also subject each to each other, to the common flight, to the common path.

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” If we are made free in Christ, let us also be followers in Christ. These two are not opposites, but compliments. We are free to follow Christ, who gives us that freedom. Free from the “have to’s” to enter into the fruits of the planting. “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” Amen.

Triduum 2010, part III: Easter Vigil

Holy Saturday is a nebulous festival in the eyes of many people. It's that random little day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, where presumably God is doing stuff, but we don't really know what to do.

And isn't it actually the case that we are impatient people, especially when we are waiting for others do something?

Consider for a moment that God is indeed working, actually always at work, in your life, my life, and all the other lives. So take a day to reflect on that, to remember your baptism, where God poured out the Holy Spirit on your form. Reflect on God's work today, even though you may not be seeing it now, for the effects are long lasting.

Triduum 2010, part II: Good Friday

Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour,
Turn not from His griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

See Him at the judgment hall, beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs His soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.

Calvary’s mournful mountain climb; there, adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time, God’s own sacrifice complete.
“It is finished!” hear Him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die.

Early hasten to the tomb where they laid His breathless clay;
All is solitude and gloom. Who has taken Him away?
Christ is risen! He meets our eyes; Savior, teach us so to rise.

Triduum 2010, part I: Holy Thursday Sermon

In 1582, Charles IX changed the calendar. Previously, the new year was celebrated the last week of March, culminating in a celebration on the first of April. Charles IX adopted the Gregorian Calendar, which, among other changes, moved the start of the year from April first to January first. Because of the lack of continuity in communications at the time, the word of the change took years to reach some places, and even then, there were some who refused to change the date of the new year, and would continue to celebrate on the first of April. According to tradition, these confused folks were called April Fools, and would find themselves recipients of pranks, including invited to nonexistent “new year’s” parties. This April Fools Day tradition is believed to have evolved into the prank playing festival that delights children and adults even today.

[Pause]

As we enter into the end of this Holy Week, the culmination of our Lenten journey, does any of this start to sound like an elaborate April Fools joke? This person who had no hope of ever meeting us, at least not physically, died for us.  And, to make it even better, this person is GOD. This is Jesus, God’s own self made human, kneeling before us, washing our feet, feeding us the ultimate food. [looking around] April Fools?

I wonder how confused the disciples were that day. They may have been used to things like, "Go into town and follow the man with the water and ask the owner if we can stay there." But then, in the middle of the meal, after such an exciting entry into the city earlier in the week, while maybe expecting Jesus to start teaching as usual, things take a turn.  “This is my body given for you.” “This is the new covenant in my blood.”

Say what, Jesus?

Perhaps we are foolish ones. We eat bread and drink wine and call it the body and blood of God. We go through our mortal lives, living in the world, suffering the sufferings of the world, believing in a God who has done the same.

In First Corinthians, just a few chapters before our reading today, Paul writes, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” [pause] Now, Paul was writing specifically to a church whose default secular position was that Jesus was a wimp for serving others and being killed, and that any god who would become human and suffer was surely also wimpy. But Paul’s message holds true still today. The message of salvation in the cross has power for us who “are being saved.”

Consider that phrase. “We who are being saved.” [In the Greek, that verb is a present passive participle and translating would be a lot easier without it. But our lives would be nothing without this grammatical construction.] We are not people who were once saved, or people who will be saved, or who might be saved IF we do “our part.” We are people who are being saved. Right now. Being saved. [pause] That makes this meal we celebrate and share something quite different than a foolish celebration of things past and a God who once was with us. This is the meal of the God who is  being  with  us.

The foolishness is the world’s view, not ours. The world teaches us that we look out for ourselves. IF we do this, IF we do that, IF we just show up, push forward, reach the goal, get the work done, check off our list of things to do, THEN we will be successful,  justified,  righteous.

But, this is the world’s view. We are, at every moment, by God’s boundless grace, being saved. And we know this misalignment between these two views. We are aware of our situation from the world’s view and we see it, too. We question the foolishness, we continually ask “What does this mean?” as Martin Luther does in the Small Catechism. And we question for ourselves the rationale behind bread and wine, because that is our nature as worldly creatures.

[pause]

So what does this mean, this shared meal that the world finds incomprehensible? What does it mean living in the world and finding things a little odd from time to time ourselves? Do we see the foolishness, or do we ignore the world’s promptings? What does it mean to proclaim the “powerful message of the cross”?

[pause]

It means that we are sinners! We cannot simultaneously proclaim that Christ died for us, and take on the world’s view that we are not in need of salvation, or that we can get salvation done on our own. We fail. There is no such thing as “good enough” for God, except through God’s own marvelous gift of grace, through God’s incarnation, through God’s sharing of this meal with us.

We sin. We are April Fools. We fail to recognize the God in front of us. No, I take that back. We cannot stand the God in front of us. We plot to kill the God in front of us.

[PAUSE]

So here we are, Holy Thursday again, only a few more days until the Easter rush: baskets, candy, family, feasting. And we know what's coming next. Tomorrow’s Good Friday, then there’s Saturday and then Sunday, Easter, when we celebrate. We know the routine by now. Death, then resurrection. Death, then resurrection.

Do we still not see our own foolishness? To believe, year after year, that though we DIE to sin, we come BACK TO LIFE because of Christ's sacrifice? Is this not the most foolish of foolishnesses?

And Yet. This IS the God that we worship. This is what we celebrate, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, foolish though it may be to the world, because within its very foolishness, the cross brings all forgiveness and redemption. In a few moments we will share together the Lord's Supper, the most foolish meal of them all on this day that we remember especially the first Last Supper. We will receive, into our very physical beings, Christ, who died for us.

Right here, we heard it just a few minutes ago: He says "This is my body given for you." For you. YOU. And you can't tell in the English, but that's a plural YOU. In Greek class we translate it “y’all.” This is given for y’all. You ALL. Not just the people next to you, not just those who do “enough” or help out the most or sit in the front, not just the ones who pray the hardest, read the Bible the most, smile the best and most often. For each and every single one of us.

[pause] And we find ourselves asking, “What does this mean?” [pause]

It means we are forgiven!

We who continually turn away, who can never DO enough, who KILL the God in front of us, are forgiven, by that very God’s grace. Not because we do anything but because that is what God does through Christ. God. Loves. Us. God Forgives. Us.

This is not mere foolishness, it is the foolishness that comes with a grace that only God can give, a grace that surpasses all human understanding, a grace that we do nothing to deserve, a grace that we celebrate, a grace that we eat.

Because we are April Fools. The world tells us that we are stuck in foolishness, that the calendar has changed: Christmas is toys, Easter is rabbits laying rainbow eggs, salvation is success and the things we do. But the cross says NO! to the world and that method of redemption and so we embrace that which the world calls foolish: a God made human, dying for us on the cross. And we eat of bread and wine that is God’s Word, Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Post Christmas Sermon

December 27, 2009
Lessons and Carols Service

First Reading: Isaiah 60:1-6 (The Epiphany Prophecy)
Carol: The First Noel, vs. 1,3, and 5

Second Reading: Matthew 2:1-12 (The Visit of the Wise Men)
Carol: We Three Kings of Orient Are

Third Reading: Luke 2:22-40 (The Presentation in the Temple)
Carol: I Wonder as I Wander

Fourth Reading: Colossians 3:12-17 (The New Life in Christ)
Carol: Infant Holy, Infant Lowly

Fifth Reading: Luke 2:41-53 (The Boy Jesus At Jerusalem)

Carol: Hark the Herald Angels Sing

In the front of the sanctuary of the chapel at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia there is a commanding stained glass window depicting the scene from our last reading today. In the foreground is a young Jesus, conversing with several authoritative adults. In the background are Mary and Joseph, worried expressions on their faces, rushing through the door from their three day search for the boy. It is an interesting choice of scene for an educational environment, and many a professor has preached on the various layers of meaning that this window has for our community.

Stained glass windows have long been used as teaching devices in the Church. The educational tradition surrounding these windows is believed to have begun as a tool to educate a mostly illiterate population. While no longer serving this goal, church windows still depict everything from Biblical scenes to abstract moral concepts to historical moments, scenes important for the worshipping community to pass on to future generations.

The cathedral at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, which contains nearly sixty-five hundred square feet of stained class, portrays over a thousand figures from the Bible. The nearby Chartres Cathedral, with 21,000 square feet of glass, contains images from the lives of the saints, as well as large windows illustrating such scenes as Noah and the flood, the Life of Christ, and the passion. Just down the road at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, stained glass windows immortalize various and diverse events from the life of Mary the Mother of Jesus and the last judgment to Maryland state heritage, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the lives of two Civil War generals, Robert E Lee and James “Stonewall“ Jackson, to humanity’s landing on the moon complete with an actual piece of moon rock.

Here at St John’s we have our own scene-filled windows. Not only aesthetically pleasing, their images, from the Christmas story to Luther translating the Bible to the building of the first American Lutheran church in 1646, educate parishioners and visitors alike of the events that are important to this congregation. These are snapshots from scripture and history that tell of the journey that has led to this place.

And that is what we have here in our readings today. Snapshots of Jesus’ early life. And this is pretty much all we have, this conglomeration of events from different Gospels that is put together to form our story.

It begins before His birth with the prophecy found in Isaiah. Like a sonogram picture, this snapshot is the promise of things to come, and, like some sonograms, it’s a little blurry, indistinct, and can be difficult to comprehend.

In some ways, Isaiah’s prophecy sounds a lot like the modern view of the Christmas season: “your children shall come from far away… the abundance of the seas shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.” Is Christmas not often celebrated today with families coming together and gifts being brought from around the world? But if we look closer, the deeper Christmas message is shouting itself from these words as well. The message of the coming of the light and the glory of the Lord. The message of the promise of light shining through the darkness, the gifts of gold and frankincense, all proclaiming of the praises of the Lord.

And the searching, the Christmas searching for the Christ child. How many generations have been hearing these words of Isaiah, hearing the promise in this snapshot, and searching, and hoping? And how do we today, hearing these words and this promise, search and hope for His return?

[PAUSE]

But let us turn to our next picture. The wise men. Here we have the traditional snapshot of the visitors that come to see the new baby bringing gifts and praises.

These visitors, however, are not your typical group of friends and family that may gather around the latest familial addition. These are scholars-- strangers from far away, carrying the prophesied gifts of gold and frankincense, searching for the king. The king who has been foretold of as a shepherding ruler, from a little town called Bethlehem, much like King David, the celebrated shepherd monarch of Israel. So they looked for him, following his star, to honor him.

And does this not sound so similar to our own searching? Our own quest for the “overwhelming joy” of finding the Christ Child, our own faith journeys, our own inquiries of others on how to find the way? Our own efforts to please the king and to praise him?

[PAUSE]

Our third picture: Jesus being presented in the Temple. Here we hear not only of an important religious milestone in young Jesus’ life, but of two devoted believers, who had been waiting for the Messiah. First, Simeon, a man who had been promised to see the Christ before his death. Second, Anna, herself a prophet, who praises God and spreads the word about Jesus to fellow seekers. The pronouncements here are prophecies of a similar strain to those in our earlier Isaiah reading. Except that now these prophecies have a being, a person, this young child.

Anna and Simeon are both typically portrayed as being elderly, although in our text only Anna is given a specific age. These two waited lifetimes to see the Savior. Lifetimes. In today’s rushed society, with commercial breaks every fifteen minutes encouraging shorter and shorter attention spans, in these days how long do we wait? We have been given a promise no less sincere, no less inspired, no less revelatory than Simeon’s. How long will we search?

[PAUSE]

Which brings us to our final picture. An annual family trip to Jerusalem, and a literal, physical search for a boy gone missing. The snapshot we are given is brief, and does little to describe the fervor with which his parents must have been searching. For three days they searched. Three days. And when they found him with the temple teachers, listening with understanding, not just answering questions, but asking them as well, when they found him their astonishment was echoed by his own: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Church father and writer Origen of Alexandria reflects on this scene with the following:

“Not for nothing was it written: Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously. The search for Jesus must be nether careless nor indifferent, nor must it be only a transitory affair. Those who seek in this manner will never find him.

We must truly be able to say: We have been looking for you anxiously; if we can say this then he will reply to our wearing and anxious soul in the words: did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

So. Do we search anxiously, or do we allow each Christmas to pass, with celebration and joy, but no search, no quest for the Messiah, no anxiety. Christmas season comes each year, December the twenty-fifth will be there, right between the twenty-fourth and the twenty-sixth as it always is. So what do we search for, and how? And how does Jesus respond to our astonishment at discovery?

You may have noticed that our last two snapshots ended with similar phrases: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” These may be all we have, but they are short stories, brief scenes from Jesus’ early life, and they don’t tell the whole story. They try, by filling in the time with a few phrases about growing and becoming strong, finding favor with God and being obedient to his parents. Eventually the words stop, though. But the story goes on.

The story goes on as our searching goes on. The stories don’t end with the end of our reading; no snapshot captures the whole picture. Ever notice that on Easter morning we say “Christ is risen”? Not “Christ was risen,” or “Christ was raised,” but “Christ is risen.” The story, the search goes on because we search for what we already have, what we continue to have, yet we cannot see it. We struggle to “lift up our eyes and look around” as Isaiah encourages us to do. But though we feel we are in darkness, Isaiah promises that “the Lord will arise upon [us] and his glory will appear over [us].”

As Isaiah’s hearers have been searching for the Messiah, as the wise men journeyed to the king, as Anna and Simeon waited lifetimes to see the promised one, and as Mary and Joseph scoured the city for their lost child, so do we search and journey and wait for the Christ, who is indeed in his Father’s house, whose story cannot be confined to the edges of a stained glass window or a selection of words on a page.

The story, the search, doesn’t end here, it didn’t end this past Friday night, it doesn’t end on Good Friday, it doesn’t end on Easter morning or on Pentecost. The story continues. Through the conversion of Paul on the window here in the front, the conversion of Constantine one down, throughout the Reformation events portrayed in the windows on the other side. The story continues. Through the invention of the Gutenberg Bible by the side door, through the building of the first American Lutheran Church across the aisle, through the formation of St John’s Lutheran church in 1920, second window from the back, through you and through me, through Christmas year after year, through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and through, as Paul writes in our reading from Colossians today, through teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom… through all this, and through all else, the search goes on, the story continues. Amen.