We’re getting ready for the new school year. This morning all faculty and staff will meet for updates as we begin our 181st year. Next week new students go through orientation to Seminary life. August 23 is the Opening Service and August 26 classes begin. And I wonder, so what?
I once asked in a sermon, “If your congregation suddenly disappeared, would anyone notice?” Lutherans aren’t used to shouting “Amens” and “Alleluias” in church, but one older woman called out, “Yes.” I had to refine my question. “You would miss your church, but would anyone in the community notice that your church was gone?” Silence.
Eleven St. Louis children killed by guns this summer. El Paso. Dayton. If our seminaries suddenly disappeared, would anyone notice? That question haunts me, and it’s the question I’ll put to faculty and staff this morning. We’re not just beginning a new school year. More than that, we’re reenergizing our mission to reach people with the help and hope of Jesus Christ.
The theme this year is “Grace. Mercy. Peace. Lives of Significance.” A TV commentator said shooters take lives because they don’t believe life has value. Through Jesus Christ God gives grace, His totally underserved favor. That grace is seen in mercy, really mercies, the many acts of loving kindness that fill our lives day-in and day-out. God’s grace and mercy give you peace. Watching the news this morning, Diane said, “The whole country has gone berserk.” Yes, but living conscious of God’s grace and mercy makes you the kind of person others want to know, a person of peace amid the chaos. “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you” (Isaiah 26:3). That makes your life significant in the mission of God, and leads you to see every life as precious.
Martin Luther: “A Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor.”
So if your congregation or our Seminary suddenly disappeared, would anyone notice? The answer will be found less in the walls of the sanctuary or classroom and more in our communities, in the lives God touches through us with Jesus’ help and hope. Let’s get on with it!
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