Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

All right. I know I'm accelerating the process that will take some time, but these first three sermons among you are meant to sketch out a future, albeit in general terms.

If we dive into the baptismal waters (my first sermon with you), we become very aware of our sinfulness and we confess (the sermon last Sunday), and God gives us new life with a vision and purpose (today's sermon). We will be doing this over time, and we will not dwell on the negative.

What I'm talking about here is a conversion. Martin Luther talked about it as a daily dying and rising. Through confession, we experience a conversion. For Paul too, the conversion took some time. He had to be led to Damascus before Ananias laid hands on him and the scales fell from his eyes. But the power unleashed was unparalleled.

Paul, we learn in Acts chapter 9, regains his sight, is baptized, eats, and then regains his strength. He recognizes the sin of his former life—one of persecuting Christians—and he is remade:

and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God."...Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah. (vv. 20,22)

It's not that we convert again and again, but it is a process. We, like Saul, find that our souls respond to Jesus in "increasingly more powerful" ways.

I've been dedicated to embracing this faith we call Christian for a very long time now, and I'm not yet where I'd like to be. People still perceive me in ways that don't reflect my heart. I still lapse into the critical mode of the world rather than the upbuilding mode of God's Word. I still sometimes permit a scarcity perspective to pollute the glorious abundance of God's grace, love, forgiveness, and mission.

God isn't finished with me yet. And God isn't finished with you yet. God is never finished with any of us.

And—to my point—God is not done with St. Thomas. Yes, God has brought this congregation a long way. To some, it may seem only a few steps. But God is leading as God led Paul. God is cajoling. God is tapping on our shoulders, or rather turning around and beckoning us to move forward along the path that God is treading in front of us. God is blazing a trail, yearning that we might learn not only to take steps; but, as Isaiah writes, to "renew (our) strength, (to)... mount up with wings like eagles, (to)... run and not be weary, (to)... walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

To get to the gospel before us, that final verse (Luke 21:19) brings the trials of St. Paul to mind. "By your endurance you will gain your souls."

As my eyes fell on that verse when I considered what to say to you today, this seemed an apt Word of God for us here at St. Thomas.

I became convinced that God, today, is calling us to a fuller conversion—to move from the endurance of long-suffering to gaining our souls through the confession and forgiveness that brings a new and vibrant life of the spirit. I believe that God is calling St. Thomas to a conversion. Embrace it. Hope it. Pray it into being. Don't give up on it, because God never gives up on you.

We need a conversion today. Here's a try at something like a conversion experience.

Hold your breath. As long as you can.

When you can't hold it any longer, let it go. Make some noise. Especially you children, in whom the spirit is strong and joyful. Turn red, but not blue. And then, when your brain tells you its time, blow out the air that you've been holding in.

Now, how did that feel? How did it feel to hold the air in your lungs?

And, how did it feel to let it go?

Then, what happened after you finally released what you had hung on to for so long?

Well, that's the experience that God is looking for among us. Why else would we begin our new ministry together with a baptism and then a confession and then a conversion?

God wants us to let go of what we have been hanging on to for far too long and take in a new and cleansing and refreshing breath! God wants us to plunge into the death of baptism, holding our breath so that we know that the old person that we were is dying. And then, God wants us to rise up, spewing forth the acrimony and negativity and nullification of that old life. And then, God wants us to breathe in the transforming, fresh air of the Holy Spirit. God is telling us in no uncertain terms that we are to die, confess, and convert.

Let go. Release your grasp. And fill up with the pure oxygen of the Holy Spirit.

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,..." (Phil. 2:5-7)

Life—the life of the Spirit—comes not from grasping but from releasing. Not from keeping things in, but from letting them out and letting them go. Not from withholding forgiveness, but from granting it.

When conversion and forgiveness took place, Jesus would say, "Go and sin no more." That word too comes to us on this Sunday of conversion.

Go out from here and return with a new attitude, with the sight that the Spirit gives, with eyes to see and ears to hear not the evils of the world but the in-breaking of God's kingdom, the multitude of ways that God's abundance and grace reveal their hidden treasures to you in the living of your life and in the life of St. Thomas Lutheran Church. Speak more of how you have been forgiven and how you forgive than of how you were wronged and wronged others. Release your grip and your spirit of scarcity, and all goodness and joy will flow in abundance. In your loving, in your living, in your giving.

Okay. That's pretty much what I wanted to say.

Still, let me pause here and say just a bit more.

The flow of abundant joy, as I just noted, gets expressed in loving, living, and giving. Yes, I said, "In your giving." Perhaps you don't want to hear about money; we can turn on any TV preacher at just about any moment and hear about that. But Jesus made it one of his favorite subjects. And it is a subject that needs to be aired among us.

St. Thomas has been hurting, and when one part of the body aches, all parts ache together. You've heard that before in the words of the converted St. Paul in one of his letters to the Corinthians. Our hearts have been aching, and our life-blood has not been pumping as God intends, or so I hear from the Finance Committee, whose meeting I was profoundly blessed to attend—on my very first day here!!!

Nice metaphor, though. The life-blood of our mission also gets to experience the joy of release that you just experienced with your breath. This too is a matter of conversion. This too is a victim of our grasping and our holding in.

So, from this Lutheran pulpit, I say what you may not have heard before from such a place. Let it go! Let the river of treasure that is held back behind the flood walls of your own making break though. Release of your abundance so that you may experience in a yet more profound way the cleansing wind of God's spirit on your cheeks. Or, maybe, I should have said checks!!??

Well, a little humor helps when dealing with such troubling topics. But you know it's real in our particular context-in our peculiar American way of living—when it hits, as my father used to say, your pocket book. The baptism, confession, and conversion—the dying, release, and new breath is not only a bodily phenomenon. It embraces every aspect of our living.

I wasn't certain I should say these things; but then at the Wednesday evening Men's Fellowship meeting, we took up exactly these matters in a discussion of the parable of the talents. I was challenged and enlightened by the group, including a rather compelling thought that we are born with an innate need to give.

Now, there's a matter that would spark a lot of debate among theologians! Still, it is an intriguing idea, whether it speaks to our physical birth or our birth through baptism. We need to give; it is resident within us. Giving, I came to think as I drove home mulling over the conversation, is a grace. It is itself a gift-the grace of giving.

I also heard a piece on National Public Radio that strengthened my resolve to speak about money. I apologize for failing to note the name of the author. It was a Rabbi who has written a book titled, "More Money Than God." Note the two ways of reading that title—"More money than God (has)" and "More (centered on) money, than God" (Money as a replacement for God).

It is what some time ago was being called "affluenza," the disease of the soul that arises from affluence and materialism. There are Madison Avenue slogans that express it, such as "Those who live within their means suffer from a lack of imagination." Cute. But amazingly wrong-headed!

What's important here is that we not confuse the outer with the inner life. The average credit debt in the United States is (imagine this!) $18,000. The Rabbi noted inviting folks to share their net worth with one another and the response of strong resistance and nervousness that he encountered. Let's get some perspective here: Our net worth in monetary terms is not the same as our self-worth or our worth in the eyes of God!

But enough. Bring your baptism and confession to its God-intended fruition; let go! In letting go, we will discover our future. Recognize that thoughts of withholding forgiveness or of scarcity reveal an unconverted heart. See with eyes that are no longer clouded by the scales of sin, and let the joy of God's abundance fill your cup to overflowing. Let the conversion of every aspect of your life and the growth of your need and ability to give become increasingly more powerful. And watch the sparks fly! Witness the abounding of joy!

Take to your hearts the promise we hear this day: "By your endurance you will gain your souls." Amen.

May the peace which passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal life. Amen.