Does God Offend You?

Coming Back Home

When I came home in 2016 to serve as a LCMS National Missionary, over 30 years had passed since I had last lived here. Some things had not changed, but the things that had changed were major. The population had dropped by half, Gary had gone from its first white mayor since Martin Katz lost the May 2, 1967 Democratic Primary to Richard G. Hatcher III, Scot King, to it’s first woman mayor, Karen Freeman-Wilson, and U.S. Steel was no longer the chief source of employment for Gary residents.

The biggest change for me was that my father was no longer a leading resident of the city. He was now a person whom people “remembered.” For the first time, I could not count on running into his garbage truck rumbling through the city. I couldn’t watch him engaging with business owners, workers, and people who were struggling to get by, treating each one as if they were valued clients, even if they weren’t. Gary was my home, but it wasn’t the home that I remembered. Nevertheless, for that first year, I was mostly known as “Herbert’s boy,” than I was “the pastor of St. John’s, and sometimes, I miss that moniker. I looked up to my father, and I hope that my kids will be able to look up to me in the same way.

Let’s pray:

Merciful Lord, Your Church expanded from Jerusalem to Antioch, and eventually to the entire Roman Empire, through the ministry of your servants. Give us courage to speak Your name even in the face of persecution and offence, so that all might hear your holy Word and come to know the knowledge of the truth, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Mark 6:1–3 ESV

1 He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Coming home can be a time of celebration, of sorrow, and of frustration. In Ezra 3:1-13, when the children of the Babylonian Captivity had laid the foundation for the 2nd Temple, we see both illustrated:

Ezra 3:11–13 ESV

11 And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.” And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. 12 But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, 13 so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.

There are things you can see about a place, or a person, when you have been separated for a while, that you might miss if you are always around. Life happens slowly most of the time, and we don’t notice when we have lost a step, when the waistband isn’t as loose as it was, when things aren’t the way they were.

Sometimes, when dramatic change happens, it can be both celebrated and lamented. Celebrated by those who see the current improvements, but lamented by those who remember past glories.

Some of you look at this church and think of Vacation Bible Schools of past summers with fondness, rooms bustling with neighborhood children, the parking lot filled with the sound of laughter. Others look at the vast space in the sanctuary, see the faded paint, stained walls, and dusty, disheveled rooms in the school, and wonder, can St. John’s be what it once was? Can we serve as we once did?