October 7, 2007
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The Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church Pr. Per Inge
Vik The first words we are met with at church every Sunday, is a quotation from the Bible. Paul starts most of his epistles with the lovely greeting, Grace be with you and peace from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ. The exception is the letters to Timothy. There the theme is extended by another core word, in addition to grace and peace. The title and theme of the choir piece we just heard, are taken from the introduction to the 2nd letter to Timothy, the second reading for this Sunday, ”Grace, Mercy and Peace”. Paul surely knew that the young Timothy needed not only grace and peace, as the others he wrote his letters to, but also mercy. In Norwegian we have two synonymous words used to render the Greek lying behind here. “Kyrie eleison, Lord, have mercy on us”, we sing in church. That we ask God to have mercy (in Norwegian “miskunn”), what does that mean? That God “mis knows” us means that he for the sake of Jesus does not know us as sinners any more! That he knows us in another way. That he forgives all who seek protection by his Son. That is the content of the word “mis-kunn”. The other word barmhjertighet is about having the heart at the right place. God has his heart in his chest. He has indulgence with our weakness. He has sympathy. He sees our need for help, forgiveness. Perhaps someone in this congregation has the same need at this point, the need for mercy. So accept this greeting from God’s word. Today it has been performed both through words and music. Grace, Mercy and Peace. That is the headline in God’s kingdom. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. If we accept this gift from God, it will have an impact on us, and next it will be “contagious”. Those you have around you, yes the whole world longs for grace, mercy and peace. As a Christian church, we have a mission in the world, to be in the service of grace, mercy and peace. When the disciples at the start of the Gospel reading today ask Jesus to increase their faith, he answers that that is not what they need. Their request is a derailment. He says that it is not all about the size of faith. The only thing that counts, is whether faith is alive. He compares it tothe mustard seed, which is very tiny, but it has an unbelievable power of life in it. Faith has the same indwelling power as a seed in the soil. Faith can create things that we didn’t believe were possible. This makes us humble. In June my family and I visited the childhood home of Thomas Alva Edison, just south of Lake Erie, in Ohio. We were impressed to hear about what the great inventor had accomplished. The most famous is the light bulb and the gramophone. But hear a humble statement from this wise man: “We don’t know the millionth part of 1 percent about anything. We don’t know what water is. We don’t know what light is. We don’t know what gravity is. We don’t know what enables us to keep on our feet when we stand up. We don’t know what electricity is. We don’t know what heat is. We don’t know anything about magnetism. We have a lot of hypotheses about these things, but that’s all. But we do not let our ignorance about all these things deprive us of their use. Faith is not less of a mystery than the wonders Edison mentioned. Faith is the strongest power that exists in the world. So let us be confident, and set free our faith in God’s grace, mercy and peace in our lives. We do not need to understand how it all works. Faith is not reason, but confidence. Whether faith is great or small is not the point. But everything depends on its direction. That it is directed towards The Almighty. God uses our faith as an instrument for his unlimited power. As we let ourselves be used in his ministry, we are part of spreading his grace, mercy and peace. Faith in the almighty God is an inspiration and a drive that “put us into gear”, to act, to do good deeds, to minister among our neighbors. That is what this text is all about, our call to serve the almighty God. To bring out the gifts that God gave us through his Son. Forgiveness for sins, that is grace. Mercy, that we show compassion and indulgence with each other, just as God has shown his generosity towards us. Peace with God, because Jesus on the cross has reconciled us with our Creator. The world needs this! People around us need to see Christianity in practical life. That God’s word is being incarnated in the life of the believers. At the Leiv Eriksson Festival we commemorate the first European putting his feet on the American continent, as early as 1000 years ago. So the first pioneer came 500 years before Columbus, and he was a Norwegian coming from Iceland! What I now am going to tell, didn’t happen that long time ago, but exactly a 100 years back in time, this fall. It took place on the coast of Nordfjord in Norway. A young woman had left her home village Stårheim, some miles further east, to raise a family together with a fisherman on the coast. The most common on the Norwegian West coast at that time (for those who didn’t emigrate to America), was to run a small farm in addition to fishing. And this young fisherman started to toil with the soil and build a road to his farm. While working on the road, a dynamite accident happened, that injured him for life, and bound him to bed. The small farm was forced under auction. The young wife with a wounded husband and a group of children, recognized a person coming in his boat to the auction. That was the old man Mons Orheim from her home town. So what did he want? Did he need a farm? Was he curious? She hadn’t expected that from him! Mons Orheim, who at that time was about 70 years old, bought the farm, and asked if he could move in as a grandfather with the young family. He had heard about the fate of the young woman whom he knew from the time she grew up. For some reason or another, he had decided that he wanted to help her. He borrowed money for the purchase. For 10 years he tilled the soil, finished the road, erected a stone fence and built a barn, a replica of the one he had built for himself back in Stårheim 50 years earlier. After some years, the oldest son in the family grew old enough to inherit the farm. So Mons handed the farm back over to this young man, and said to the parents that now he wanted to go and visit his son in Ålesund a last time, before he went home to Stårheim. It was in the fall in 1907 that he ended this project of mercy. Only a few months later, just in the beginning of 1908 there came a message to the family at the coast that Mons Orheim had died quietly in bed at his home farm. This Mons was the grandfather of the hymn writer Mathias Orheim. His grandfather being a good role model was the inspiration to write the hymn we are going to sing now, and it fits perfectly with our theme today, “I have a great service for God day by day in quietness.” Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who was, is and will always be one true God from eternity to eternity. |
The Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church · 924 E. 21st St, Minneapolis, MN 55404-2952 · (612)874-0716 |