[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Palm Sunday Gospel reading read at the very beginning of the service. You may be seated. This is from Psalm 122, verse 1. Listen to the word of the Lord: “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
After more than 25 years of visiting folks’ homes—in their homes, in hospitals, and in care centers—these are those whose physical disabilities keep them from sitting with us on any given Sunday morning. Of the thousands of these folks that I have visited over the 25 years, not one of them ever has said to me, “Boy, I am so glad that I don’t have to gather with those folks.” If anything, their heart burns to sit with you in the pew, to hear the singing of young and old. Their heart desires to feel the presence of other human beings who lift up their voices to praise God, who prays with them and for them, who sings with them. To every single one of them, the psalmist summarizes what they feel in their hearts: “My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord’s house. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.”
These folks share the sincere enthusiasm of the children who gather down the aisle, smiles across their faces because they’re with their friends and family. They’re hearing the songs. They’re singing the songs. Joy on their faces, not sorrow. Bliss, not pain. You and I are blessed. We are blessed beyond measure because we, none of us here this morning, are really limited by our physical abilities. We can come to church any given day, any given Sunday, can’t we? We don’t have to count the ceiling tiles in the nursing home, do we? We don’t have to feel the bed, the familiarity of it, because that’s where we spend most of our day, do we? We don’t have to hear the tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock of our clock on the wall because we can’t come. Not because we don’t want to, but because we aren’t allowed to by our physical abilities. But not you.
Your identity as one who has been given this gift is defined by the Lord who gathers you here. He gathers you as a parish family, a bunch of individuals that he knits together into one. Now let me make a point. Recently, I was asked by one of your parish family members, “Pastor, what is the greatest goal for your parish family here at St. Paul?” It’s a good question. My mind spun with all kinds of ideas and things I could say about it. But after much contemplation and prayer, it focused down to one thing: My greatest goal is to proclaim the Lord’s revelation to you that here, around this place and altar, you belong to a family. And this family belongs to you.
Now, this family unto which you belong is not a perfect family, just like the one you go home with and spend every evening and weekend with. It’s not a perfect family either, is it? But I will guarantee you that this parish family is a repentant family. Though it is not perfect, it is a repentant family who desires to be forgiven, who desires to find their definition, not in their size and not in their location, but in the head of the family who speaks to them, their Lord Jesus. Your identity as a parish family is in Christ. And my goal is to ensure that you know your identity is in Christ. But that’s just not me and Jesus. That’s me and Jesus and the family into which I have been knit.
We’re not a bunch of individual lone rangers. And yet sometimes, because we don’t reach out to other people, or we don’t think it’s our job or our responsibility, we don’t reach out to other people. We deny the family, don’t we? None of those people who I visited—shut-ins, in nursing homes, in hospitals, or in care centers—would ever want to deny you because they yearn to be with you. They yearn to be with you.
The question is, do you yearn to be with them? On this Palm Sunday, your Lord’s desire was then and is now: I want to gather my children. As a hen gathers her brood under her wings, one of the greatest joys that I could see in my mom or dad’s eyes was when they had all of their children gathered around like a hen or a cock for that matter, gathering all of the children together under her wings or his wings. I’ve seen that in my wife’s eyes when her children are gathered. I’ve seen that in my mother-in-law’s eyes and my father-in-law’s eyes. And I’ve seen that in your eyes when your children sit with you who are living far away and they come home.
That is the same joy that these folks who cannot be with you feel toward you, many of whom they don’t even know you because you’re new faces in the last 10 years or so. You know people in this church, even if it’s just a few people that you know. You know people in this church who… And you know the ones who haven’t been here for recent weeks or even months. These folks need to hear from you. They need to be encouraged to come back to the family and to come back to the family meal that’s been set for them by the head of the family, our Lord Jesus Christ himself.
And if you or I think it’s someone else’s job, well, I know if I said to my father or my mother, “The dishes aren’t my job, that’s a girl’s job,” I don’t think I would be sitting for a little while because of my rear being pounded. It is all of your jobs. If you really claim to be family with one another in this place… If you confess family at this altar with this bread and this wine, that very body of Jesus and that very blood of Jesus, then you and I have a relationship with other family members. And it’s our job to encourage them to come home again. It’s our job to reintroduce them to people that we may know, but they may not know because of new members and new faces.
Now, as you consider this, don’t look upon your own abilities. That’s Satan leading you down that path. And if you look at your own abilities, you will come up with a million lazy reasons as to why you can’t and another million reasons why you shouldn’t because you don’t have the ability. Don’t look upon the size or compare parish families. “Well, you know, this other church, they do it this way, and this church does it this way. How do you do it? How do you do it? How do you do it?” Not how another church does it. How do you do it as a member of this parish family? Is the question our Lord is asking us.
You see, when he came into Jerusalem, who had a heart attack of upsetness were the Pharisees. Because they weren’t concerned about the family, they were concerned about their place in the family. “The whole world’s going to go after him, and we’ll lose our influence on this family.” Why? They could care less about family. They could only think about themselves. I know we have an imperfect family. I don’t think we have Pharisees here. We have shy people. We have uncertain people. But we don’t have Pharisees, do we?
The Lord has come into our midst to make many into one. A loaf of bread is made up of hundreds and thousands of grains that are individual and unique, and our Lord comes in our midst to crush these grains together and make it something new: a new entity called a loaf. That’s what he does here. Our Lord takes all these individual grapes of which we are, crushes them, and ferments them in order to make one cup of wine. Amen. To unify the family. To create family and belonging and relationship with one another.
Here’s where we derive our strength. I will tell you, all of those folks that used to be able to come here but can’t because of their physical disabilities derive their strength from hearing the family songs, from saying the family’s words at the divine service, the liturgy. That’s where they derive their strength. Their identity flows from the family’s words. The scripture is who gives us that. Christ himself is who gives us that.
Here’s where we, different heights, different sizes, different looks, bow as one body, as one family, to be knit together into one fellowship. Here is where we get to sing every single Sunday: “Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest.” The same words sung so many thousand years ago on this day: “Blessed is he, blessed is he, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.”
The whole world, like the Pharisees said, has gone after Jesus, and it’s true. And do you know what? The whole world has gone after Jesus, and you are the one through whom he gathers them. Both your parish family members and the ones who need to be introduced to the head of the family, our Lord Jesus Christ, they’re gathered through you.
In the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
