Grace and peace to you from God our Creator and Sustainer, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that abides in each of us.  Amen.

Well, tomorrow is a big day.  Are you as excited as I am?  I can’t wait!  Why are you all looking at me with such puzzled looks?  Don’t tell me that you don’t know what tomorrow is!  Tomorrow Gary Leezak, the weather guy from Channel 41, will give his long-range weather forecast for this winter!  I’m surprised you didn’t know about this.  I mean, aren’t you as curious as I am about what the future will be like?  Don’t we always want to know when and how things will happen in the future?  So often don’t we focus on the future so much that we fail to live in the here and now? 

This deep-seeded desire to know the future is not new to our generation, though.  This desire to look to the future is as ancient as time itself, and today we hear Jesus teaching his disciples about why we should not worry about the future.  Our story begins right where it ended last week.  Remember Jesus and his disciples were in the Temple and they had been watching the people bring their offerings to the treasury?  Jesus attempted to teach his disciples how to live; he challenged them to live lives where they placed their complete trust in God.  As the story begins today, they have just left the temple when we are told that one of the disciples makes what sounds like a strange comment, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”  This comment seems so out of place.  Jesus has been teaching them about how to live their lives, but instead of focusing on the how-to-live, they want to focus on the material side of their faith, their beautiful temple.  But Jesus wants them to know that their faith, their God, and all of their community did not, and will not, depend on those buildings.

You know, throughout this past week, I have used this text at various meetings for our devotion time, and at one of the meetings someone made the comment that this text made them a little uneasy being that we are in the middle of our building project.  Here we are, in the midst of focusing so much of our effort on our building and admiring what we have, just like the disciples were admiring their temple, and in response we hear those words of Jesus, “Do you see those great buildings?  Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”  No, it can’t be; not our temple!  That temple that the disciples were admiring was hundreds of years old; it was the place so many of them had been brought by their parents as children to be dedicated to God.  This was the place so many of them made pilgrimage to every year.  This was where God resided.  It was a Holy place.  What would they do if it went away?  Later in this Gospel, some will twist Jesus’ words around and use this against him at his trial.  Messing with our worship space makes us uncomfortable.  Even when Jesus himself tries, is not a good thing, and it never has been.  But Jesus knows that what made these people faithful and strong was not their building; what made them faithful and strong was their love for God and one another. 

After listening to Jesus share what will happen in the future, a few of the disciples want to know more, so they asked when this terrible, awful, nasty thing would happen.  As we, too, so often do, they asked the wrong question.  As I read this, Jesus answered the question they really should have asked.  Oh, he does answer their question to a point by implying that nobody knows when this will happen, but more importantly he tells them it is not the when we should be concerned about because when this will happen is not important.  What is important is how we live our lives between now and when that day comes.  Jesus tells them that before that day can come there will be wars, natural disasters, and even man-made disasters, but when all these things happen we should know that there is a better future coming.  Jesus said this over 2000 years ago, and here we are living in a time of war, natural disasters, and man-made disasters.  Did you see the flooding on the East Coast from tropical storm Ida this week?  Are these signs that the end is near?  Well, only the Father knows that, but what we do know is that the end, God’s preferred future, is now in the making.  We are in the birthing process of a new creation.  Now, not being a woman, I must admit, I cannot completely understand this example, but anyone who has been around a woman who is giving birth knows that there is much trauma and pain that happens before the miracle of birth.  But I have been told by my wife that in the end it is all worth it.  Look around you, each of us is a product of that miracle of birth.  Yes, we must live through this messed up world before we can fully experience God’s Kingdom, but do not doubt that it is coming.

Jesus provides us images and glimpses of the future, and if we could have our way we would jump right to the future, but God says, Not so fast, there is a life I want you to live and experience, and I want you to live that life boldly as you witness to me in this broken world.   As ordinary people, we want to cling to things such as this building and our traditional practices.  But God knows we are capable of so much more.  Our faith, our mission, our community should not and cannot worship this place or our ways.  Regardless of what happens to this building now or in the future or changes we make to our ways of being God’s church, the critical thing for us to remember is we are God’s and we, even though we might not realize it, have everything we need to continue God’s mission within ourselves. 

Over the past several months, as I was going through the call process and since I have been here, I have heard many stories about or deep-seeded attachment to this sanctuary, and I have heard about and witnessed our need for the new building.  I have also listened to so many you talk about the need for us to change our ways.  All of this is true, but not because what we have done has been wrong or bad, but because God is challenging us to stretch ourselves because He knows that we have the gifts, the resources, the love, and the faith to live our lives boldly in His service.  The mission we are on now is not about our building, it is not about a specific model of Sunday School or youth group.  Our mission is about living confidently and boldly in a broken world.  I pray you know that when we talk about changing how we do church it is not because what we have been doing is wrong or bad; it is because what we have been doing is incredible and God seeks to stretch us to do more.  Remember, as I mentioned last week, we are in the midst of a story here that began with Jesus reminding everyone that the greatest of all commandments was to love God and love neighbor.  Salem Lutheran Church lives this commandment, and when I hear people say, “Pastor, we need to change, what I hear is people saying, “Pastor, we are capable of doing even more.”

Someday all of this will be gone, stone upon stone will come down, but I know even if this building were to come down tomorrow God’s Church here at Salem, in the heart of Old Lenexa, would still exist because of each of you.  You see, what most excited me about coming to Salem was the fact that this faith community has been in existence for 125 years.  I am not talking about this building; I am talking about you, the people.  For 125 years, God’s people have been actively sharing God’s good news with the world right here in Old Lenexa. 

So as we look forward to the next 125 years, may we remember that we already know the incredible future that God has promised us, His Kingdom.  As we await that Kingdom, we are reminded today in our text from Hebrews to live lives where we “provoke” each other to love and to do good deeds.  As we live in the here and now, let’s not forget that we will face many difficult times, but may we always remember these words of our text from Hebrews.  May we live boldly and confidently knowing that, with God, we will and can continue to accomplish great things.  Amen.