Go and Do

 Sermon preached on Matthew 21:23-32 at First Lutheran Church in DeKalb, IL

Grace, peace, and mercy be to you from God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen. 

When I moved to Nebraska for college, one of the first things I focused on was finding a church home. I went to a Lutheran school and was active in campus ministry, but I wanted something deeper, I wanted something that got me out of bed on Sunday mornings and allowed me to get off campus and involved in the wider community. 

The church I landed at, gave me a home, supported me through college and seminary, and even gave me my first experience of working in the church as their Director of Christian Education. It is where I preached my first sermon and assisted in my first funeral, it was a place that is still dear to my heart even after all these years. 

One of the things about the physical building, which is like many of the Lutheran Churches out there, that I remember the most is something I didn’t see right away. When you first walk into the church from the parking lot, the way I did 99% of the time, you either walk up the stairs to the main part of the building and sanctuary or you head downstairs to the Christian education wing. 

The nice part of that layout is that your ushers can be stood at the top of the stairs on Sunday mornings, welcoming people in. That space right at the top of the stairs was often the place folks said goodbye, you know the extended Midwest goodbye. And then down the steps they would go, out into the parking lot, and into the world. 

I walked out of those doors numerous time, I stood atop of those stairs, welcoming folks in and saying goodbye, but what I didn’t notice was that there was a saying painted on the top of the doors. It was in that semi-cursive writing that was popular on wall decals back in the day and it simply said, “You are now entering the mission field.” 

I have no idea how long it had been on the wall before I got there, or if it is even still there but ever since the first time I saw it, I couldn’t walk out those doors without reading it. 

At first, I wondered why that was there, why was our small-town community a mission field? But the more walked past it, the more I sat with it, the more I realized that that simple saying was summing up not only the purpose of the church but also our calling in the gospel. 

Church is a place, it is a place where we come, we are fed with music, and scripture, we are guest as Christ table, filled with grace, mercy, hope and love. We are witnesses to young people being excited about being here, of promises of baptism lived out. It is a place we come to find answers, to be in community with one another and to share in our grief and joy. Church is our classroom, where we are reminded of who God is and what God is doing and then just as our sending says, we go in peace, doing God’s will wherever we find ourselves. 

I think that is what I love the most about church, about being a Lutheran, a person of faith, our faith life, doesn’t stop when we leave this place, it shifts, it becomes not something we just talk about but it is something we do. It is something that has come alive, its like church is where we recharge so that when we are out in community, we remember the promises of baptism, we remember the feeling we get from tasing Jesus’ body and blood. 

Our Gospel today is one that is a bit uncomfortable, Jesus is being challenged, he is doing things and saying things that go against what others know, go against what the King has taught and expects. 

But that’s the thing, Jesus hasn’t come to keep the status quo, he has come to make us uncomfortable, to disrupt our daily lives by living out the promises of God in ways that are shown in our actions not only our words. 

There is a lot about our faith that we do not know, nor will we ever know, it’s part of the mystery of who God is. As humans we are limited in our knowledge, we are called to trust in the Holy Spirit interceding for us, trust in the knowledge that God is always with us, always supporting us, always loving us despite ourselves. Trusting in that means we trust in the call of the Gospel to go and do. 

The parable that Jesus offers is one that reminds us that the words we speak only matter if we follow it up with our actions. The two sons are normal people, they both understand what they are saying and what they are doing. The first son says no, goes on about his day. There is no mention of what the father did or said after, maybe the father looked disappointed and simply walked away. The second son, said yes, I will go. Again, there is no reaction from the father but I could imagine that the father was pleased that the work would get done. 

But the point of it all isn’t that one said yes, and one said no is that their actions spoke louder than the words they said. The first son while he said no, ended up working in the field, his actions carried more weight than his words did. The second said while he said yes, didn’t go. The trust that was there was broken and his not going makes it hard to take anything he says seriously. 

It is a stark reminder that while the words we say matter and that the words we say are listened to, the actions that we follow them up with matter more. 

I can’t help but think about this parable in light of the way this place looks today, the yellow shirts sprinkled throughout. Almost every space covered with a quilt or kit that was made with love. We are not a place that just talks the talk, but we are a place that walks the walk. The words we say, the calling of our dismissal of go in peace, God is at work in you, is not just what we say. It is what we live out each and every day, it is the reason the group that gathers for LWR days grows time and time again, it is the reason that we show up for one another and gather around the table each week. 

God is at work here in this place and out in the community. We are being called to go from this place, into the mission field, into our classrooms and our workspaces. To go and realize that our words matter but our actions speak louder. So go and do. Amen.