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

God is good! [Response - "All the time."] All the time [Response - "God is good!"]

Thank you for your willingness to do that old and traditional call and response. I have heard it even at synod assemblies, although it is unusual for Lutherans to engage in give and take during sermons.

I begin this way today because this old bit of holy conversation speaks an exceedingly important truth about God. It reminds us quite simply that our God is a good God, and this is true at all times. It was true from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

This is one of those truths that is not so widely embraced at the levels of the heart and gut. While most of us would list "goodness" as an attribute of God, it is probably one of the issues I find myself discussing most with members. "What about the Old Testament?" is one of the lead-in questions I get a lot. Or there may be concern about why, as folks tend to phrase it, "God lets such horrible things happen."

Let's try it again—"God is good-All the time; All the time—God is good." When Christians repeat that old line, we rehearse what we know in our minds to be true; we have been taught this in many ways from the days of our youth. But at our core and our viscera-at the fundamental ways that we feel about and react to events-we may not really believe it.

I'm here this morning with the simple hope of reminding you of God's goodness—indeed of more than that, of God's manifold generosity.

Throughout all my years of ministry, in all my study of theology and scripture, I have never come to a conviction of faith that is more firmly etched into my being than that God is good beyond any sort of measure whatsoever.

I'm sure that I don't need to recount the multitude of God's blessings to us. The bounty of the abundant good earth; the plenty of rain (perhaps a bit much of late); the love of brothers and sisters-both kin and in the congregation; the diversities of people, talents, interests, and care; a strong and stable form of government; the beauties of creation, art, craft, and person; the strength and health to live faithfully and compassionately. The list is endless, and it all comes as blessing and bestowal from our most generous God.

For these gifts, we are profoundly thankful. The parable about sharing gifts in Mark's gospel this morning is often taken simply as a judgment upon the rich. I believe it to be more than that. Most of us, along with this rich man who seeks a fuller life, stand in places of privilege in our society and our world. Jesus, in his compassion, shows the man and us that in order to experience his fullness of life we may need sacrifice our privilege for the good of the marginalized. The great number of our blessings can become obstacles to a clear path in following our Lord faithfully. It may be that our own comforts and luxuries may be impediments to our living into the reign of God.

I become more poignantly aware of this fact with every page I read about the struggles of our sisters and brothers in Chichipate as I prepare for the upcoming Sister Parish Solidarity Delegation. I was not fully aware of the actions of the United States through the Central Intelligence Agency related to deposing Jacobo Arbenz Gusman, the democratically-elected president of the nation. Forty years of civil war ensued, and even after the peace accords of 1996, violence continues to crop up in the country. More than 200,000, mostly native Mayan people were killed or "disappeared" in the early 1980s. And our friends in Chichipate have lived for a very long time with the grief of murdered loved-ones and an impoverished and threatened tenure on ancient lands. I was saddened to learn yesterday that due to the recent violence in the El Estor region, the delegation will no longer be travelling to Chichipate. I grieve that we will not be able to make personal contact with these friends of ours since 1998. If our travel arrangements weren't already complete, I would withdraw from the delegation.

Even so, I now find myself making preparations to visit this county of our brothers and sisters in Christ, where race divides and where poverty affects the Mayans far more often than Ladinos. And while I prepare gifts for the community, which I trust our Sister Parish staff will now be able to deliver to Chichipate on a later trip there, I also find myself worrying about things that put me squarely in the same court as the rich man in today's story. I have spent quite a bit of time, energy, and money focused on what kinds of clothing I should take, and how I will protect myself from disease-carrying mosquitoes, and how I might lighten my load of personal items for the trip into remote regions of a tropical place.

Yes, I know these are considered normal among us. How can we not take appropriate measures to protect ourselves from disease and heat? But there is a wide inequity between our abilities to take precautions and those of our brothers and sisters—who have little choice but to be daily exposed to the threats of their place on God's good earth.

Despite the fact that I see this parable as largely a call to share the generous gifts of God, I am also judged by the words of our Lord here. There is a complexity to our privilege, enhanced by our commitments in the context of Sister Parish NOT to be paternalistic, that is inscrutable and troubling.

And still, we plow on, nurturing our connectedness with those especially in Guatemala and Chile and Argentina and Indonesia. We rejoice in the unity that the body of Christ creates in a world so variously divided. We stand at the very least in the brotherhood of Sister Parish and our community in Christ, compassionate, open, sharing, and learning one with the other. And thankful for the good and generous God we praise in common.

In the end, I hope on this altered trip to learn to be less taken with material abundance, to trust less in such things, and to become more aware of the generosity of God that takes the forms of hospitality, human caring, and transforming relationships.

I hope that each of us will learn from today's parable in the way that each conscience moves

This is a passage that fits beautifully (and coincidentally) also into our stewardship theme, "Celebrate Generosity." Our God has provided great riches. How will we celebrate, honor, and multiply that divine generosity?

I hope one of the ways you will celebrate God's generosity is to take one of the two challenges set before us in this stewardship program:

1) to grow from your current level of giving, adding one dollar each week on the way to or beyond giving a tithe-10 percent of your income, or

2) to grow in your giving by one percent of your income in the coming year.

As you consider these options and pray for God's guidance, I'd like you also to be aware of how much your celebration of generosity affects the mission and ministry of this Church.

Your generosity, born of God's, becomes opportunity for a great many further generosities.

All of what you give expresses our call to serve others, through the many ministries of St. Thomas; I don't need to remind you of the extensive and varied ministries that extend from this congregation. I have already mentioned our engagement in international mission, including Guatemala.

Our joint giving supports all of this, and much more, because a significant percentage of what you give is sent beyond St. Thomas in the form of designated giving to our favored missions and in the form of benevolence sent to the Indiana-Kentucky Synod. Like each member, the congregation too is called to grow in its stewardship of resources—to celebrate God's generosity by being generous. So too with the Synod, which sends more than half of its benevolence receipts on to our national church; and that then extends God's work more thoroughly into the world.

This chain of celebrating generosity funds incredible ministries; here are a few examples:

204 congregations now under development

49 new congregation starts

support for 159 congregations focused on renewal

240 missionaries in 46 countries, including Kate Lawler and David Wunsch in South America

suppport of ministry and projects in over 90 countries

8 seminaries

28 colleges and universities

187 campus ministries, including I.U.

1,530 Lutheran early childhood education centers

267 Lutheran elementary schools

147 outdoor ministries, and

partnerships with Lutheran World Federation, World Council of Churches and National Council of Churches in Christ

and 120 Companion synod relationships, like ours with Indonesia and Chile.

We give because of God's generosity-because we need to give expression to the unfathomable gratitude we owe our God. That is the primary source of our giving—not to support mission and ministry. I mention how much is done by your generosity mostly, then, to point out how the celebration of generosity creates a continuous flow.

So, celebrate generosity. And remember, God is good! [Response - "All the time."] All the time [Response - "God is good!"]

Amen.

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