Transcript
Please be seated.
I know you all are really hoping for me to give a stewardship sermon on that gospel and I’m not going to. Instead, I would love to invite our children and teenagers to come forward and help me give a a sermon. this holy place. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning.
It’s really early, isn’t it? It doesn’t help that it’s a gray rainy day. Isn’t that early? You’re up and ready to go. If we could all have that energy.
So, who can tell me our five senses? Go ahead. Just shout them out. Very good. She got that. So now we’re going to go through all of those senses and we’re going to talk about church.
So first we’ll start with seeing. What do you see at church today or everyday people? Yeah. What else? The Oregon. Would you say wine? Yeah. You see the wine? Where is it? Oh, it is. It’s back there. You’re right. I was pointing the wrong direction. What else do you all see? Lights. You see lights and candles and stained glass. Very good.
Now, what do you smell? You smell the candles? Do you smell the smoke? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I smell me. I smell like chocolate. You smell like chocolate? M.
Which makes me ask next. What do you taste when you’re at church? You do. Do you need your your someone to take you to the bathroom? You okay right now? Okay, we’re going to stay right here. We’ll deal with that later. So, what do we taste when we’re in church? The little bread piece pieces, the wafers. Yeah. Do you get to taste the wine? Yeah, sometimes. Okay. When you’re in Sunday school, do you get to taste anything? Cookies. Did you have cookies today? I’m jealous. Today in our class, we had Skittles. Skittles and Tootsie Rolls. Oh, awesome.
And what do you hear when we’re in church? Music. People singing in the organ. What else? Talking. I heard a noise. Let’s see if you know what this noise is. I heard someone’s clearing their throat. Yeah.
And finally, last sense. Can I pet one? Very sweet. Oh, kisses. Doggy kisses. What do we touch when we’re in church? What do we feel? The chairs, the books, the toys, the doggy, the wafers. Yeah, the coloring books. Oh, see, not all the adults get to have coloring books. I have a doggy friend here. He’s okay. He’s just helping. Yeah, doggy’s just helping.
So, of all those things that you see and you touch and you hear and you smell and you taste, what are some of your favorite parts of church? The toys. Yeah. Sunday school. Very good. The music. Anything else? What’s your favorite part of church? The doggy. Yeah, he’s my favorite right now, too. He is. Is he giving me a hug? So cute.
Oh, so right now this month we are talking about stewardship which is a really big church word talking about money and gifts and what we can give to the church. Yeah, we got money over here. And the theme this year is invest in what’s next. There is a doggy. And the theme this year is invest in what’s next. And guess what? I got news for you all. That’s you. You’re what’s next. Because all those people out there, they were once you. They were once this size, this size, and now they’re all adults. And when you all get to become adults and sit out there and not have coloring books, how boring. You’ll be what’s next. Kind of awesome.
So, when we talk to our parents and our grandparents and our friends and all of our family at church and tell them about our favorite parts, we’re telling them about the things that they’re going to be investing in for the next years to come. How about that? Yeah. Let me see the doggy one more time. All right. Do you all have any other things to share with me? A doggy certainly has lots of kisses. Very good. Thank you all. Thank you.
You want to go back to your spots now? No. You like it up here? You want to take over? I’ll go sit back there with the books and the toys. You got it. You got your doggy. Thanks for coming.
The song the organ was just playing. It’s called Look, Look Around. And it’s a beautiful song for our children, especially as you look around the church and you see all the things that make church church. And it talks about the candles and the altar. And it talks about the stained glass windows. And it talks about all of you. All of you who are here and make St. John’s Church a church home. A place where young people can know that they have a future to grow into. a place where we can invest in what comes next for St. John’s Church.
I’m going to tie it real quick into some scripture or do my best to try. The Old Testament reading was from Jeremiah. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Jeremiah’s book, but he starts writing and he’s telling everyone to be aware, repent, turn around, behave yourselves, things aren’t going to go well. Then the passage we got is an exact transition into okay so that didn’t work. Here’s the new normal. And they actually dated it all back to the exilic period which is the Babylonian exile in 6th century BC. So Babylonia invaded, Judah lost, Judah got sent out. So our Judeans are in exile and Jeremiah is telling them that this is now where your future is.
So build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. This is here and now. Start planning for what’s next.
And just as the little kids talked about all their favorites and I told them they’re what’s next, we get to start planning for what we want to support them in that next. Because over the past 400 years, people kept asking themselves that for St. John’s Church, what is next for St. John’s? What does the next generation want or like or need? And we get to keep building that for what’s next. So, as I said, if the theme of this year is invest in what’s next, we get to make those choices. We get to invest in what St. John’s Church gets to become for the next 400 years. It’s not just for the little ones we see here today, but it’s for little ones to come and those little ones and those little ones forever.
So, when you get your investment card, think about your own favorite parts of St. John’s Church. I will tell you my favorite. You probably can guess there’s two, but one of them is at the very beginning of church when we walk in and we’re singing the hymn and I’m standing up here and I get to look around and I get to see all of you here joining me in praising God. What a wonderful experience. So when you are praying and discerning on your own commitment, your own promise to what’s next at St. John’s, I hope you think about your favorite parts and know that together we can continue to grow those and many more things for what’s next.
Amen.