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The 11th of this month will mark 100 years since the armistice that effectively ended fighting one of the most significant multi-national conflicts in modern history--the conflict known originally as the Great War (only to be renamed World War I once humanity was self-destructive enough to engage in an even larger conflict that would result in the deaths of about five times as many people). At the eleventh hour (11:00am Paris time) on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, shots ceased to be fired in the battlefields on the Western Front of World War I. While that ended the active fighting, it did not officially end the war--most of the belligerent nations signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the United States conducted separate treaties with several nations in 1921, and the (then) new country of Turkey did not have its final treaty in place until 1923.
I am no professional historian, but I have a lot of interest in World War I. It is a painful case study exposing the astounding limitlessness to human brokenness, with the belligerent nations each seeing themselves as fighting for honor, allegiance, sovereignty, tradition, and other high human ideals. Groups and individual people were so dedicated to those ideals that they failed to see human beings on the opposing side, seeing instead only targets for destruction. They devoted the best of human ingenuity to developing ever more destructive weapons--some of which, such as chlorine gas shells, were even acknowledged as being excessive. They destroyed irreplaceable cultural artifacts. They created new nation states...but did so by drawing lines of their own convenience rather than listening to what the local people wanted or, worse yet, sometimes even killed thousands of people solely because of their ethnic identity. They discovered technologies, medicines, and formulas--many of which we are thankful for today--but were solving problems that should never have arisen in the first place. And, for icing on the human brokenness cake, victorious French leader Marshal Ferdinand Foch failed to institute a truce or ceasefire while the terms of the inevitable armistice were being finalized, which led to 10,944 casualties (2,738 deaths) on the final day of the 52-month war. I will readily admit that what I have just detailed in writing here is pretty dismal. Even simply putting it on paper made me feel worse about our human condition, and it caused me to take a break from writing this article to question my interest in such a subject. However, in reflecting on that question for a few minutes, an answer came to me. I realized that such painful reminders of human brokenness, while they foster powerful recognition of our sin, also drive us to praise the God who steadfastly refuses to give up on us even though that sin exists. The worst of us (be that “us” humanity as a whole, our families, or our individual lives) causes us to seek the only unfailing source of good that exists--God. Despite the sinfulness of World War I, God has yet chosen to redeem humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to work through our hands so that God’s kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven. Despite the sinfulness of a hate-driven man who murdered eleven worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue late last month, God has yet chosen to love humankind and remind us that we are children of the Heavenly Father. Despite the sinfulness of injustice, fear, and oppression that make life so difficult for people everywhere, God has yet chosen to suffer along with the brokenhearted and use broken people to bring hope through words and actions. God’s peace to you amid whatever brokenness is providing challenges for you and/or your loved ones at the moment. In those difficulties, remember the truth of the words of blessing you hear each week at the end of the worship service: The Lord blesses you and keeps you. The Lord makes his face to shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord looks upon you with favor, and gives you peace. Amen.
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I’ll begin this month with some words of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer: “In fact, God’s good and gracious will comes about without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and among us.”
In that little sentence, Luther points out the obvious: that our infinitely good and powerful God can do whatever our infinitely good and powerful God wants to do. However, he also points out something much more bold about the intent of our praying the Lord’s prayer: that what God wants to do may be accomplished through human hands. In other words, God doesn’t need or require us or our effort to effect what God wants for the world...yet, God nonetheless pulls us into the mix anyway, using our imperfect human hands for holy work. This surprising action of God--engaging human hands to effect God’s will in the world--is what we call God’s mission, and that is a frequent topic among us. As this month progresses, though, we will take September’s Mission Sundays a step further. Now that we have reflected on what the mission is to which God has called us, we can turn our attention to how God’s mission catches fire among us. The fire of God’s mission is ignited by God’s own self--by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who moved over the waters of creation of the world (Genesis 1:2) and the divine spark of inspiration through all the ages. This spark finds kindling in the life of Holy Baptism as we each receive the Holy Spirit and discover the unique child of God we have been created to become, filled with gifts of the Spirit--raw materials for God to use and refine every day of our lives. Individually, then, we are embers of God’s work, smoldering in our own little spheres of influence. Embers are indeed a good start, but there is one more ingredient needed for a full-fledged fire: fuel. Fuel helps God’s mission to catch fire among us and in the world, and it is the assortment of things we give to and employ in God’s work on earth--time, money, skills, goods, energy, possessions. All of these fuel sources make the fire of God’s mission shine brightly to the people around us through community service ministries, worship, Christian care ministry, education, and fellowship. While we are the ones putting the fuel onto the Welcome, Nurture, Serve fire of God’s mission that is burning Trinity Lutheran Church, though, that fuel doesn’t belong to us. It is all given to us by God, as Martin Luther reminds us in the Small Catechism (Creed, First Article): “God daily and abundantly provides shoes and clothing, food and drink, house and farm, spouse and children, fields, livestock, and all property—along with all the necessities and nourishment for this body and life...and all this is done out of pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine at all! For all of this I owe it to God to thank and praise, serve and obey him.” God gives us all that we have, and we give it back to God as fuel for God’s mission...and we do so with joy because we delight in the eternal life God has secured for us through the most selfless gift of all--Jesus Christ crucified and risen. We will share more about this throughout the fall season in our Mission Fuel-Up campaign that begins Oct. 21 with celebrating the Holy Baptism of Cara Elizabeth Timmons, granddaughter of Kent and Donna Charlesworth. We also will be introducing online giving through the new ELCA partner organization Tithe.ly this fall and offering a Thrivent Legacy & Estate Planning Workshop on Nov. 4 through our local Thrivent agent, Alex Lamprecht. I will also be throwing a new hymn into the mix this season that reflects on stewardship not as a fancy word for fundraising but rather as fueling the fire of God’s mission. If that sounds familiar, that’s great--writing this article for you helped me make sense of what I had been grasping at for the hymn! Peace to you all as we work together to fuel God’s Welcome, Nurture, Serve mission for Trinity! |
About PastorPastor Micah Garnett has been our Pastor since 2016. He grew up in York, PA and graduated from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 2011. He enjoys worship, working with social services in Fulton County, writing hymns, and spending time with his family. Archives
April 2020
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