Sermon - 9-18-22

<p>Grace to you and peace from God our parent, Jesus our Savior, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.</p> <p>Greetings to you from myself, from the North/West Lower Michigan Synod, and from the thousands of congregations and millions of Lutherans across the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the ELCA.</p> <p>This past August, from August 8 - 12, I served as a voting member to the churchwide assembly of the ELCA. During the sermon, we’ll be sharing pictures from the churchwide assembly on our monitors in the sanctuary and on the live stream. These are just a brief snapshot of the events that took place. Most of these photos come from the ELCA’s Facebook page, with some from the Synod’s community Facebook group. The primary focus of today’s message is a recap of my experiences at the churchwide assembly, but first, let’s take a look at today’s readings.</p> <p>In the new testament reading from 1 Timothy today, we have a quick reminder of who the Gospel, the good news, of Jesus, of God is for - quite simply - everyone, all humankind, all.  No exclusions, no exceptions, the good news is for all and to be shared and proclaimed to all. This passage also touches on the subject of church and government, or as we often refer to it as “church and state.” We are often under the impression that these two should be completely separate - the church not controlling the government and the government not controlling the church. There are certainly some aspects of that which we need to respect, so we can have freedom of religion, to worship as we please, but it doesn’t mean that church is completely disconnected from the government. It says in the reading that we should pray for our rulers and leaders, and not just prayers for guidance, but prayers of thanks. Luther has good thoughts on this, and the ELCA is working on a social statement on Government and Civic Engagement.</p> <p>Moving to today’s Gospel from Luke - and let’s face it - we have another parable from Jesus, and this one is very confusing. In order that I have time to do a