Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., celebrated its Mission Festival and its Thankoffering for the Women of the ELCA on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 13–14, 2010, the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost. I prepared this homily for the Saturday evening service. The readings are selected from the options for the Thankoffering liturgy.

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Readings

1 Kings 17:1–16
Psalm 145
1 Corinthians 3:1–11
John 6:25–35

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Prayer

Heavenly Father, with open arms we receive the gifts you have given to us through your Church. We thank you for the work of all who have labored before us. Strengthen us, by your Holy Spirit, to build upon that work, to the glory of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

This past May, on a day trip from Parma in Italy,
my family and I had the chance to see how a winery
makes balsamic vinegar from wine.

The chosen wine starts out in a big cask
with a little hole cut in the top.
A square of cheesecloth is draped over the hole
to keep out the bugs, but to let the wine evaporate slowly.

After some months, the wine, now a little more concentrated,
is placed into a slightly smaller cask, and the process repeats.
This goes on for years, up to twenty-five for the finest vinegars.

As we heard the story of how the vintner makes the vinegar,
it struck me that eventually the vintners reach an age
when they know the vinegar they have begun to make
will be ready only after they have retired or died.

But they begin a batch anyway as a kind of act of faith,
knowing full well they must trust the care of the vinegar
to another person yet to come.

That’s a good picture of our work to serve God through his Church.
We have received the Tradition of the Church
as a gift from the labors of Christians who have gone before us.
Then we tend and care, nurture and cultivate the life of the Church.
And like the vintner, we begin what we will not finish.
Instead, we hand it on as our Tradition,
entrusting it to the hands and hearts of others who come after us.

It’s not different at all from what St. Paul shares with the Church at Corinth.
He writes to the Christians there, saying,
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth…” (1 Corinthians 3:6, NRSV)
He also says, “According to the grace of God given to me,
like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation,
and someone else is building on it” (1 Corinthians 3:10, NRSV)

Our Church today is like balsamic vinegar.
It began with the apostles, with Paul and Apollos and the people of Corinth.
They planted and others watered,
they laid the foundations, and others built, and so on and so on,
until today, until you and I now have received the responsibility
to care for the Church and to pass it on in faith.

That’s what lies at the root of the work
of the Women of the ELCA, of the missionaries from Southwood Church,
and all of the groups and ministries throughout the whole Church,
including what we do here in God’s name at Holy Cross.

We have learned the Church’s teachings,
we have been raised in the faith by our elders,
and now we teach our children and guide them to become disciples.
They in turn will teach and guide their children.
We have heard the Word preached by pastors
whose faith was nurtured by the Word they heard.
We give to the food pantry and we serve at Warren’s Table.
We support ministries begun by people
who gave their time and talents and treasures before us.
We trust that the Lord’s work will continue when we are gone.

In all of these projects and tasks,
we work together, guided by the Holy Spirit,
to carry out the mission of our Father in heaven
to make the good news of his Son known to the world.
It’s like what we sang with the rest of God’s people in today’s Psalm:
“One generation shall laud your works to another,
and shall declare your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4, NRSV).

God calls us to be his servants in this ministry
and to be a blessing to all who will come after us. Amen.