SERMON

It is September! It is Labor Day weekend! And it is amazing how this year 2020 has unfolded in such an unpredictable way.

So many events, services and gatherings has been canceled. So many celebrations and ceremonies have been postponed og minimized to fit within the COVID19 reality, caution and restrictions. So much of our ordinary normal life has been changed and challenged.

It is September!

It is Labor Day Weekend! And usually we would be at the Orange International Street Fair mixing, baking, and selling Ableskiver to the crowds of happy people in the busy streets of Orange. Normally we would be there right now – baking in the September heat and making an effort to make OISF 2020 yet another important fundraiser for our church – and many other organizations we too rely on the funds raised at this iconic fundraiser.

We have been sweating and serving, mixing, and baking, selling, and supporting. And boy it would have been yet another hot OISF this year, if 2020 had been a normal year.

The OISF is usually our busy Labor Day weekend, where hundreds of dedicated hardworking volunteers support our beloved church and Rebild Society. This year we are part of a Virtual Fundraiser – and we hope that you will support this Virtual Fundraiser and think about the ableskiver you would have baked, served, or enjoyed!

When some good people from Rebild and Church were gathering material for this Virtual Fundraiser, it was wonderful to look at old pictures. To look at pictures from the first OISF in 1973 and look at so many happy faces through the 47 years of service and dedication.

Thank you to all who served and supported through the years! Let us use this off-year to celebrate all the on-years of continued support, fun, joy and good danish ableskiver. Let us celebrate all the hard work, all the dedicated Labor – as we celebrate this Labor Weekend.

Our gatherings has been and will continue to be different – more distant, wearing mask and showing caution, caring for our vulnerable and for a while not the usually crowded celebrations or gatherings. Which will give us time to reflect on our common good, our joint efforts and our labor of love and joy.

Jesus said: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Sometimes this saying is taken out of its context and used to assuage disappointment when only a few people who up to worship or for a church event. However, notice that Jesus words come in the context of a call to forgiveness. To be gathered in my name is to be gathered in the spirit of forgiveness. Two or three people can get together in many locations and circumstances, - that does not necessarily make them united in Christ. Instead, we are united in Christ when we gather in the spirit of forgiveness, reconciliation, and love.

This humbler and less crowded Labor Weekend and definitely less Ableskiver scented Sunday gives us time to consider how we are together, when we are together. A few of us or many of us.

And how we do believe that whenever we are together in the name of Christ, Christ is among us – if and when we actually are together in the name of Christ, listening to his words, believing his forgiveness, observing his peace and loving each other.

Then we are back to yet another powerful reading from Romans 13:” Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul writes.

The 10 Commandments and the whole of the covenant from Old Testament are fulfilled in this single commandment to love. As Jesus said, “Love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love your neighbor as yourself, and you will have manifested and embodied the will of God.

On the Labor Day Weekend, let us consider what this means, - as we get closer to November. The election of November.

“Because as we get closer the harder this simple commandment seems. Loving our neighbors sounds plausible in a world, where everyone sees eye to eye and agrees on what is right and wrong and respects the same measures of fairness and equity. Loving our neighbor sound possible, when we share common values and rules of play, when we trust the neighbor’s good intentions, when we respect the same measures of justice. “as Christine Chakoain, writes in Christian Century.

It gets more difficult and dicyer when circumstances are different. When we seem so far apart and so divided. When our neighbor priorities the freedom to bear arms as an inalienable right, and another neighbor cherish the freedom to peacefully protest systemic racism, - and neither understands the other.

When one neighbor promotes individual responsibility and freedom to earn a living, and another neighbor advocates minimum wages and health care for all – and neither talk to each other nor trust each other.

It is hard still when public leaders stoke the fires of distrust, fear, and division – we should all try to do better and ignite the fires of trust, hope, and unity.

It seems extremely hard to love our neighbor in times like these…. just look at the news of disruption and demonstration, of injustice and racial discrimination, on police and protesters. Just spend a few minutes on Social media and you will know: how hard it is to love and respect your neighbor, how hard it seems to have a respectful conversation, how impossible the division and hatred seems these days. How divided we are – and how divided we seem to fall.

I am there among them and I am here among you.

This was the promise of Jesus. On this promise we should gather not only as a Church Community, not only with our friends and political foes, - we should gather despite division and difference and build on a common future and not a divided past.

I am there among them and I am here among you when you gather in my name. And we gather in the name of Jesus Christ, when and if we gather in forgiveness, reconciliation, and love. If we do not gather with these intentions within our hearts, we can not claim to be gathered in the name of Christ.

You might know the reality shows and competition called Big Brother or Survivor,

which are simply awful, unchristian, inhumane, and very entertaining! A group of strangers are put together in a certain location for a certain time and expected to figure out how to live and be together. Then they vote each other off one by one until only one person remains and wins. Sometimes reality feels like that. Sometimes our work life feels like that. Sometimes society feels like that. Sometimes church feels like that.

The reading from Matthew 18 is often used as a guidance to guide church discipline. It is part of our ELCA Constitution. Although some behaviors are inappropriate, discriminating, hurtful, and illegal in the life of a church, - the way we are called to treat each other is with forgiveness and love – not with votes “off the island”.

We do not vote somebody off the island, the church, or the society. We are called to a higher standard. The standard of Christ.

Our faith and our life of faith is more than just a set of rules and regulations that we can follow to the letter – and be sure not to be voted out or left behind.

Our faith is not just about what we do, although what we do is indeed important. Our life of faith is more than just a set of beliefs or creeds to be recited. It is not just about what we believe, although what we believe is important too.

Our life of faith is ultimately rooted in the love of God. Our life of faith is rooted in loving our neighbor and thereby loving God.

It sounds simple, but we know it is not.

In fact, living by a rule of love involved a lot more intentions and engagement of us. There is no script we can follow. Easy answers are harder to find. Former definitions of right and wrong might challenge our time. Each encounter and each situation ask us to consider through this lens of love.

That is a challenge, for it requires us to trust God during all these voices, choices, and circumstances.

It is much easier to follow a set of rules than it is to love. Love requires vulnerability, hospitality, forgiveness, risk, and trust.

Love is hard, and it asks us to do har things. It asks us to live in community with people, who are not like us, do not look like us, don’t talk like us, don’t worship like us and whom we might not even agree with or even like.

Love requires us to forgive. Love asks us to do hard things, but it also embraces us with the love of God that tells us that we are fully known, fully forgiven, and fully loved.

Each morning the God of Love awakens us and call us to live and love.

It is a time and a day that holds tensions and uncertainty, but it is also a time and a day that promise us a better future, if we build on love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope.

Let this Labor Day Weekend remind us of how, our deeds, our works, our encounters, and our forgiveness can be a work of love in the name of Christ.

Let this Labor Day Weekend, remind us how we through many many years have been standing side by side, shoulder by shoulder, united in mixing, baking and serving delicious ableskiver as a product of love – despite everything that could and might have divided us, separated us or infuriated us.

Let us bake ableskiver together again.

Let us owe no one anything except to love one another for the one who loves has fulfilled the law.

Amen.