The Guarded House: Ancestral Ash and Living Flame

You know, as your new pastor—and as someone still trying to figure out which light switch controls which hallway in this building—I have to tell you: there’s something wonderfully, maddeningly quirky about church people. We are a unique group. We have our "assigned" pews that we’ve claimed through some ancient unwritten rule, and Heaven help the visitor who accidentally sits in the spot where the pew squeaks. We have our long, passionate debates over the exact brand of decaf coffee served in the fellowship hall—because apparently, the wrong coffee bean is the first step toward heresy.

I may be new to the Vista community, but I am already falling in love with this church family.

And if we’re being honest, most of us didn’t show up here today because we have life all figured out. I certainly don't. The writer and theologian Frederick Buechner is famous for his quotes. He’s the one who so beautifully wrote that “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” But he also wrote that when a person looks in the mirror in the morning, what they see is "at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob." It’s an honest, funny reminder of our human weaknesses.

We come here to Vista with our messy parts and our timid hearts. We often carry a faith that feels less like a shiny trophy and more like an old hand-me-down sweater—inherited, a bit itchy, and maybe a few sizes too big, but somehow exactly what we need to stay warm.

We represent a faith passed down from person to person, often through the very people who knew our flaws best. When we turn to Scripture today, we find that even the Apostle Paul didn't start his letter with heavy theological arguments. Instead, he started with family history, reminding his friend Timothy that his faith didn't just drop out of the sky—it had a home, a mother, and a grandmother.

We read from 2nd Timothy...

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus,

To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands, for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, in the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace, and this grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day the deposit I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. --2 Timothy 1:1–14 (NRSVue)

I grew up in a more conservative Lutheran tradition, and it taught me a lot about routine and respect. The liturgy was as solid as the oak pews, and "reverence" was measured by how still you could sit without your shoes making noise on the floor. There was beauty in that structure, even if it felt a little stiff at times.

But the reason that tradition stayed alive for me was because of the real faith I saw in my family, particularly, my mother and my grandmother and grandfather. They had what Paul calls anupokritos—a "genuine faith." Literally, it means a faith without a mask, without faking it. My mother didn't just memorize what she was supposed to believe; she lived it. When life got hard, her faith wasn't a list of rules to follow—it was the ground she stood on.

She lived out a spirit of power, love, and a clear mind. She showed me that real faith isn't about doing every religious ritual perfectly. It’s about having a heart that trusts the God who defeated death.

That upbringing gave me my foundation. And just like Timothy, and just like me, our community here at Vista has its own history and soil.

Paul tells us that God hasn't given us a spirit of fear. When we feel like our faith is fading, he offers us three distinct gifts to lean on. First is the Spirit of Power. This isn't about human strength or winning arguments in a church meeting; it is God's strength that helps us keep going when things get tough. Second is the Spirit of Love, which pushes us to care for others and keeps our focus on helping a hurting world, even when it costs us something. Finally, he gives us a Clear Mind, or Sophronismos. In the original Greek, this means clear thinking and self-control. For us at Vista, it lets us look back at the two and a half years without a pastor not as the end of the church, but as just one chapter in a much longer story of God's faithfulness. It’s seeing that pause as a comma, not a period.

Here is the best part: Paul is confident that God guards what is placed in God’s hands. Paul tells Timothy to guard the faith, but he also reminds him that God is the one ultimately holding onto it.

Vista, I know you’ve felt the weight of keeping this church going on your own shoulders for a long time. But our faith is safe because God never lets go of it. The Lord has been watching over you, even while you were working hard to keep things going.

As your new pastor, I want to talk honestly about where we are. Vista has been through a lot. You made it through a long time without a pastor, and you brought different church traditions together. Each of those traditions had its own "Lois and Eunice" figures—faithful people who planted seeds years ago. Some people might look at the past and think the fire has gone out.

They are wrong.

Ash isn't useless trash; it’s proof that a fire was actually burning. As I step into this role with you, we will take time to grieve what we've lost over the years. But remember: we don't honor the people who came before us by turning the church into a museum. We honor them by taking the spark they left us and fanning it into a real flame today.

The faith of our ancestors isn't a heavy load we have to drag around. It’s fuel for our future.

So, Vista, here is our goal: rekindle the gift.

Don’t look at the future with fear. We aren’t doing this alone, and I’m not doing it without you. We are doing it together, with the help of the Holy Spirit inside us. We are taking that old, inherited faith and realizing it’s exactly what we need for the work God has ahead of us.

Let’s be a people who admit our weaknesses, but rely completely on the power of God. And, with God’s help, let’s take the ashes of the past and turn them into a living flame today.

Amen.

Preached Sunday, July 26, 2026, at Vista Lutheran Church, St. Louis Park, MN.

Filling the Empty Jars: Finding Abundance in a Wounded World

 I want to begin this morning not with some grand theological statement, but with a simple story about a story. We’re going to look at a familiar passage today - a wedding feast, a worried mother, and a miracle of abundance. I pray that we might hear it in a new way, because I believe that this ancient story of a party that almost failed speaks directly into the heart of the wounds and divisions we have felt so sharply in our broader community this past week. 

For nearly two decades, this pottery jar has been sitting on the bookshelf in my home. It has traveled with me from place to place and has served one purpose. It holds used wine corks. Every time a bottle has been opened to celebrate a birth, an anniversary, a new job, or just the simple gift of a family dinner, the cork has gone into this jar. Over twenty years, it has - as you can imagine - become wonderfully, ridiculously full. It’s a reminder for me of laughter, and community, and moments when life felt generous and the wine overflowed. It is, for me, a jar of abundance.

It feels this week, though, like the jars of our city, our state, our nation are empty. That we, as a community, have run out. That the peace is gone. That the sense of safety in neighborhoods is gone. Our hope - God’s hope - for a shared, common life feels like it’s run dry. 

This was a hard week in Minneapolis. We learned of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and poet in our city. We are feeling the anxiety of federal ICE agents present, not just in Minneapolis, but in Buffalo and St. Cloud, and in my hometown of Monticello, disrupting the delicate stability of families and communities. We are exhausted by a political climate that seems to demand that we choose a side, when all we want - I believe - is to mend the tearing fabric of our communities. Our jars of patience, of trust, of civic grace feel empty. 

How do we move toward healing? We are reminded that the only path to a blessing is through the wound itself. Our call this week is not to look away, but to find the courage to touch the wound of our community’s grief. This is where the Word meets us, where Christ meets us. Not in a place of strength, but in a moment of scarcity.  

So, the question this story from Cana forces us to ask is this: In a world where things are constantly running dry, where do we find a hope that is truly abundant?

To understand where we are in John’s Gospel, we must remember where we have just been. We are just past the Prologue, that great cosmic poem that declares that the same Word, the same Voice that spoke light into darkness in Genesis, has now “become flesh and moved into the neighborhood,” as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message. The God who created the world has not abandoned it, but has come back to begin the work of re-creating it, of mending what was broken. This wedding at Cana is not just a miracle; it is the first sign of that new creation breaking into our scratchy, wounded world. 

A reading from John, chapter 2.

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the person in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. --John 2:1-11 (NRSVue)

Did you hear it? That moment of tension, of human friction in the story? “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” This isn’t the response of a callous son, but of the Word-made-Flesh counting the cost. 

Jesus understands that the moment he steps out of the quiet life of a carpenter’s son and into the public work of mending the world, the clock starts ticking. The path to revealing his glory is the path to the cross. His “hour” is the hour of his death, resurrection, and ascension. 

In this slight moment of hesitation, Jesus gives us a hint of the immense personal cost of re-creation. He knows that to fill the world’s empty jars, he will need to be emptied himself.

His reluctance is a gift to us, because it validates our own. In a week like this one, faced with the pain of our city, don’t we all feel that same hesitation? Don’t we want to say, “What concern is that to me? I am tired. This is too complicated.” Jesus understands that feeling. He knows deeply the weariness that comes with confronting the world’s brokenness.

But then there is Mary. 

In John’s Gospel, she is the first to touch the wound - the advocate who sees the coming social shame, the scarcity of wine that threatens the community’s joy. She refuses to look away. 

She doesn’t offer a solution or a 5-point plan. She simply stands in the gap and speaks the honest and authentic truth to the One with the power to act: “They have no wine.” She compels a response, not with a command to her son, but with a simple statement of need. 

It is in this moment that Mary models for us our primary assignment: to stand in proximity to the pain, to see the emptiness others might ignore, and to raise the needs of the marginalized. It is her courage, her persistent faith, that will be met, not with some heavenly spectacle, but with the most ordinary of objects.

The power of this first sign in John lies not just in its amazing outcome, but in its humble materials. The miracle happens in six stone water jars - jars intended for the Jewish rites of purification. These jars represent for us the systems, the laws, the religious and civic structures of our world. They are the very containers we build to hold our society together. They are the containers meant to serve the rituals that keep a community ordered and clean.

Notice what Jesus doesn’t do. He doesn’t smash them. He doesn’t discard the law or the tradition they represent. He respects them as vessels. But he shows us a profound truth - that any law, any system, any structure is ultimately empty if it does not produce the “wine” of human flourishing, of mercy, of justice, of abundant life for everyone. Everyone. 

Let’s bring this home to our present circumstance. We can see our community as a great wedding feast, a place where families are trying to build lives of joy and stability. This week, that feast has been disrupted. 

Our deepest traditions - shared across every political divide - hold the integrity of the family and the stability of the household as sacred, as gifts from God. When any force - federal or otherwise - tears at that fabric and creates chaos where there should be order, we must ask if it is truly serving its God-given purpose. Martin Luther taught that civil authorities are meant to be a “mask of God,” a means through which God protects and provides for the world. But when the actions of any authority result in a mother being torn from her children, that authority ceases to wear the mask of God’s protection. And instead wears a mask of chaos.

Our call today, then, is not to pick a political side, but to ask a theological question. To look at our societal “jars” - our systems of justice, our structures for community safety, our governmental policies - and to ask whether these systems are functioning as vessels of life-giving water. Or whether they are merely cold empty stones that testify to a failing celebration.

After she points out the problem, Mary turns to the servants and gives them what becomes the central command for us this morning. It is a wonderfully Christ-centered, non-partisan call to action: “Do whatever he tells you.”

I know that many of us feel helpless in the face of such large, systemic problems. We feel exhausted and wonder what we could possibly do. But, notice that Mary’s command isn’t to solve the whole world’s wine shortage. And Jesus’ command isn’t to invent a new beverage out of thin air. It’s a call to a simple, next step. “Fill the jars with water.” It’s a call to radical obedience in the small, next right thing. The servants weren’t asked to understand the miracle, only to carry the water.

So what might “doing whatever he tells you” look like for us this week, whether it is in Minneapolis or here in Clearwater? It might not be a grand gesture. It might be taking the time to listen with compassion to a neighbor who is grieving, without feeling the need to offer a solution. Or it might mean stepping out of our silos to seek truth beyond the headlines and political talking points, and committing to understanding our society’s pain, which is so much more complex than 60-second TikTok videos or Facebook posts. Or perhaps it means becoming the “legal observers” of our own hearts, confessing the moments where we have valued our own comfort over our neighbor’s pain. “Doing whatever he tells you” for us means mending the small tears in our own corner of society’s fabric, one relationship at a time.

It is in these small acts of obedience that we, like the servants, position ourselves to witness the miracle. We don’t make the wine. But we are called to fill the jars. 

The core message of this first sign and the foundational promise of the Gospel is this: that even when our personal wine runs out, even when our community’s jars are empty, even when we are exhausted and hesitant, our God is a God of surprising, overwhelming abundance. 

The chief steward, tasting the water that had become wine, says to the bridegroom, “But you have kept the good wine until now.” This is the promise of re-creation. It says to us that even in a week of grief, even in a nation of deep division, God is not finished. God is still in the business of transformation. And God is saving the best for last. 

So, go, now, as the people of the Word. Remember that the Voice that knit the stars together is the same Voice that was cradled in the manger. He is the Word who stepped into the scratchy mess of our world, who moved toward the jars even when He was hesitant, and who mends the torn fabric of our communities with the wine of his grace. 

May you have the courage to hear your neighbor’s cry, the strength to touch the wounds of our communities, and the hope to know that the New Creation has already begun. Amen.

Preached Sunday, January 11, 2026, at Rejoice Lutheran Church, Clearwater, MN.

First Sunday after Epiphany