Welcome
All Saints Lutheran Church (ELCA)
Lilburn, GA
Sunday Mornings, 10 AM
Worship, Fellowship, Purpose
We are a welcoming community called by God to live out the message of Christ in love and service to all people.
"[The saints] devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." Acts 2:42
Service Times
Sunday Worship: 10:00 AM
We offer worship with Communion in-person with masks optional. The service is also cast on Facebook Live and over Zoom for those who prefer to remain remote. See Worship Resources below for bulletins, Lifeline newsletters, sermon texts, Zoom link, and FaceBook Live link for each Sunday.
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Recent Sermons
“Where you from?” A truly Southern question if ever there was one. This question is most often harmless, a simple inquiry about what makes you--you. It’s an attempt to see if there are any unknown connections between the inquirer and the inquiree. “Who are you?” “Who’s your daddy?” “Who are your people?” “Which team you pull for?” For some of you this is an easy question. You’re from here, and here you still are. For some of you it’s a little more complicated. You were a military kid, or you had to move after the divorce. Some major life event, a death, a new job, a scholarship to the university, a marriage, something brought you from where you’re from to where you’re from now. Some of you are from somewhere else and just happen to be here now. You’re from Ohio, or you’re from Florida, you’re from Kansas you’re from Wisconsin, you’re from Iowa, and even though you’ve been in Lilburn for several decades when you’re asked “Where you from?” that original place is your answer. When our family moved to South Carolina nearly 10 years ago we were made to feel quite welcome. People there were very kind and generous. and we made a home there. However, we learned quickly that there is one part of the state to which we would never truly belong: Charleston. We were told early on: “If you are not from Charleston, You’ll never be from Charleston.” You may vacation there often, You may have family who live there, You could even move there and live the rest of your life, but unless you’re from Charleston, You will never be frooom Charleston. In today’s gospel, Nicodemus approaches Jesus at night, and in a bold statement, proclaims that Jesus is different – different in the way he acts, different by the signs he performs, different from anyone he has ever known, so different in fact he must be from God. And Jesus affirms Nicodemus’ statement – that only someone ‘born from above’ can see the kingdom of God in such a way. But Nicodemus misses Jesus’ compliment, and instead offers Jesus his confusion – misunderstanding not who Jesus is, but who he is in himself. See, Nicodemus is Jewish – In fact, he’s a Pharisee, which is like having a degree in being Jewish— he’s born into his Jewish heritage, into the family of God. His name is Greek, meaning something like “victory to the people,” giving him the air of erudition and sophistication. He’s in an elite position, socially, religiously, culturally. Nicodemus is Jewish like Charlestonians are from Charleston. Yet, Nicodemus sees that there is something about the way that Jesus is Jewish that is not like the way he is Jewish. There is something different, something miraculous, something supernatural— Jesus is from God. Nicodemus’ understanding of who Jesus is— and quite frankly who God is— is limited by his education, by his pedigree, by his office, by his understanding of his national, ethnic, cultural, and religious identity, by his understanding of the world around him and his place in it. It seems as though Nicodemus can’t understand how he will ever be from God, the same way that Jesus is from God. I can’t help but wonder if one of the things we might need to examine and even confess this Lent is our own limited imagination of who God is and who is welcome in the kingdom of God. Perhaps within the church We have created little Charlestons – Places where outsiders are welcome to come to and not places where outsiders are welcome to be from. Maybe like Abram, you’ve felt the wind of the Spirit and followed it into unknown places only to feel out of place or like you don’t quite belong. Maybe, like Nicodemus, your questions haven’t produced any answers, only bigger and harder questions. Maybe you’re struggling to know if you can still feel this disoriented, this displaced, and this distressed and still call what you have left “faith.” Beloved, if the good news exists anywhere in the Bible, It is in this passage today. See, Jesus meets Nicodemus’ questions and confusion with what Nicodemus would understand – The story of Moses. Just as Moses led God’s people out of slavery, so Jesus would lead God’s people out of death to everlasting life— to the redemption of this life and to the fullness of the life to come. God is at work to redeem not just the Jewish people, but the whole world through Jesus – who does not condemn, but saves, and gives us the power to become children of God— the power to become from God— born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, but of God! And beloved, this is not our doing, we cannot re-enter our mother’s wombs, we cannot change the place we are born, we cannot muster up enough faith to please God. But this grace, this gospel, the very presence of Jesus, is God’s doing to accomplish in us a new birth, a new identity, a new life, not just for ourselves, or those who are like us, but for the whole world! We are FROM God! We are from the kingdom of Heaven! By the Spirit, we have a new origin, a new identity born not of our DNA, not of our nationality, not of our ethnicity or culture or religiosity, but of the will of God who so loved the world that God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn it, but to save it. Beloved, where you from? You are from the very heart of God. Amen.
Have you ever been tempted? Really tempted? Not “should I have a second dessert?” tempted, but really, really tempted? Like, more cheat-on-your-taxes tempted and less cheat-on-your-diet tempted? Please don’t raise your hands, this is being broadcast on the internet. IRS, if you’re watching, this is purely a hypothetical, rhetorical exercise and not an accusation, assumption, revelation, or confession. Temptation works, not because we don’t know right from wrong, not because we are so evil as to consciously and willfully choose evil, but because we are bound to choose the good and what seems good to us is, in these moments, the unethical, immoral, or temporally more pleasurable option. In fact, we will always choose what seems to us to be the better option. Even if we are choosing the evil option, we are, in that moment, in that choice, convinced that the evil option is the better option. We cannot choose evil without believing it to be good. Our first reading and our gospel reading are both about temptation. Adam and Eve are tempted to be like God, framed in this story as “knowing good and evil.” Jesus is tempted to meet his own needs by means of power rather than trust and obedience. And really, these are the same problem. Adam and Eve believed that if they could know good from evil they could choose the good and be like God. Jesus was tempted to be self-sufficient in the wilderness, making food, making God prove Godself, and taking the shortcut to the Reign of God— that is, Jesus was tempted to be like God as humanity had conceived of God rather than like God as God is. And this is our temptation too, that we could be like God, if we knew right from wrong and had the power to choose. We could be independent, sovereign, without any need or responsibility. So, we set out to keep the Law, to judge right from wrong, and to set about keeping God’s rules. And then, choosing good and abstaining from evil, we will be good and free, just like God. And when we are good and free like God, God will love us, want to be with us, will bless us, protect us. But the dark side of this belief is that when we have done all this good and have enjoyed all this freedom and bad things still happen, loss still comes, death still haunts us, we conclude that the whole story was a lie and we have been duped. Or, we spiral in to shame and despair as we begin to realize that all these rules cannot be kept perfectly and we aren’t measuring up. We begin to see all the good choices we did make like a loincloth of fig leaves, barely obscuring all we’d rather hide. God doesn’t give us the Law so we will know good from evil. God gives us the Law to show us who God is and how God acts, and therefore, who we are and how we ought to act. In this creation story from Genesis, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden. And God goes with them. God does not stay in the garden. Adam and Eve and God leave the garden. Adam and Eve and God enter the wilderness together. Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation to be “like God” because they failed to trust that they were already created in the “image and likeness” of God. Jesus does not succumb to the temptation to be like God because he trusts that the Law reveals who God is and how God acts. Jesus reveals that God is with us in the wilderness. We are already loved, not because of what we do or abstain from doing, but because of who God is and how God acts. We have the law to show us God’s mercy and grace and to teach us to act with mercy and grace. We are not the worst things we have done. But neither are we the sum total of all the good things we have done. We are what God says we are, and that is very good. We are chosen. We are loved. We are good. We are guided by the Law of love. And when we have erred, when we have sinned, when we have fallen short, when we have not lived up to who God says we are or acted as we ought to have acted, We are chosen, we are loved, we are good, and we are guided by the law of love because that is who God is and how God acts. And that seems pretty good to me. Amen.
We have come to the end of the season after Epiphany. This liturgical season begins, as the name might imply, with the Feast of the Epiphany. And as the term “epiphany” might suggest, this season is about revelation, the experience of God With Us, first in the person of Jesus, and then in our very lives as we hear the call to follow Jesus as disciples. We begin at the river Jordan, where Jesus is baptized by John, and a voice from heaven declares Jesus to be God’s beloved child, a declaration spoken over all those who are baptized into Christ. We heard Jesus call Peter, James, and John to give up fishing for fish and join Jesus in fishing for people, and we heard in this call that Jesus doesn’t call disciples away from their lives but to their lives, to engage with their lives, families, and work as disciples. Then we heard Jesus begin to teach his followers using the phrase, “you have heard it said,… but I say…” to show his disciples that they are living in a world upside down, and the reign of God has come to turn the world right-side up. In our worship here we have used a more casual form of the liturgy to help us see that what we do in here has bearing on what we do when we leave here. In today’s Gospel Jesus takes three of the disciples, Peter, James, and John, up a high mountain to pray. There he is transfigured before them, flanked by Moses and Elijah, and affirmed by a voice from heaven repeating the words from Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved son,” and adding “listen to him.” These three disciples are at first honored by this experience, and then quickly humbled by the voice from heaven. My hope is that our worship in this season has made you feel a similar sense of familiarity and awe, of intimacy and wonder before the presence of God in the Sacraments and in each other. But I also wonder about those other 9 disciples, still at the foot of the mountain, waiting and wondering what is taking so long. I wonder if they felt left out, like they had missed something. Did they wonder if they had done something wrong? Did they wonder if their faith wasn’t strong enough, deep enough? Did they admire the other three, or resent them? Did they resent Jesus for leaving them behind? I imagine it’s possible that you have come through this season after Epiphany feeling like you’ve been left at the bottom of the hill. Maybe you feel like all this talk of God With Us has not led to an epiphany for you, that finding God in your daily life feels more like the sort of thing that happens to other people. Maybe it is easier to believe that Jesus is God in the flesh than it is believe that God has any interest in your flesh. We tend use light as the primary metaphor for this season after Epiphany. We talk of Jesus as the light of the world, and we talk of light banishing darkness, as though light were a metaphor for the goodness of God and darkness were the metaphor for evil. But I think this is a misinterpretation of this metaphor. We need the dark. Without the dark, we could not sleep deeply enough to rest and recover from our day’s labor, and prolonged periods of sleep produce all manner of unhealth, including cardiac arrest and psychosis. Plants and animals need periods of dormancy to thrive and grow. The darkness is not our enemy. But the darkness can keep us from seeing our path. We also need the light. But when we walk into a dark room and turn on a lamp, we don’t stare at the bulb, praise the bulb, worship the bulb. When we walk into the dark room and turn on a lamp we can see the room for what it is. We can see our path through the room without stubbing our toes, tripping over furniture, walking into walls. We can find objects obscured by the dark, see the patterns on fabric and paper, the colors of dyes and paints. We can see to read, knit, sew, craft, cook, eat, work. The light of the lamp, the light of the room, becomes the light by which we see. This is what we mean when we call Jesus the light of the world. Jesus is the light by which we see. Jesus is the light by which we see the path through this life, with all its obstacles and challenges. Jesus is the light by which we see that God is even hidden in the darkness, in the patterns of this world, in all its beauty and tragedy. When Jesus tells Peter, James, and John not to tell the story of his transfiguration until after the resurrection, Jesus is not telling them to keep a secret, nor to hold onto a private revelation that is only for a chosen few. Jesus tells these three not to tell an incomplete story. Jesus knows that the glory and majesty of God is an incomplete story without the terror and tragedy of the cross. The experience of God in the flesh is personal but never private. In our Epistle reading we hear Peter telling the whole story, the complete story, the story that includes both his experience on the mountain and his betrayal at the cross, the glory of transfiguration and the tragedy of crucifixion. Peter had to go through the whole story before he could tell the whole story. The revelation of God in Jesus is the light by which we see that whether we ascend the mountains or find ourselves in the valleys, God is with us. The experience of the presence of God is not a private reserve, doled out to a select few. The promise of the presence of God is the confident announcement of the Gospel. And this confident announcement comes to us in the waters of our baptism, in the bread and wine on this table, in our hands, on our tongues, in our bellies. It comes to sinners made saints. It comes on the mountain and in the valley. It comes to the #blessed and the #stressed. It comes in the light of certainty and the shadows of doubt. In the season of Lent, we will hear that even Jesus wrestled with the temptation to doubt God was with him. We will hear from Nicodemus in the dark of night and the woman at the well in the bright light of day. We will hear from a man born blind and Mary and Martha by the tomb of Lazarus. And we will again ascend the mountain with Jesus and stand at the foot of the cross, before we again see him transfigured in the light of the resurrection. The season after the Epiphany invites us to experience God with us, and Lent invites us to find that even in the darkness we have not been abandoned. So Beloved, Get up and do not be afraid. Jesus is coming down the mountain to meet us. Amen.