Celebrate Sermon Series Recap

Celebrations are important. They bring people together, build energy and enthusiasm, motivate, acknowledge good work, and provide time for reflection. Celebrations are opportunities for appreciation and acceptance. 

Over the past four weeks, our community has been engaging through a series of sermons celebrating diversity, unity, promise, and new life.  Though there is power in their mutually exclusive content, their true potency comes when we examine them together through the lens of our SUM purpose statement - a “vital community...which nurtures your relationships with a people and a loving God.” As questioners, believers, doubters, beginners, and seekers, we have much to celebrate in our congregation: 

1.    Diversity: God’s kingdom and kin-dom welcomes all. How wonderful that as a community we are encouraged to come as we are and be accepted for that beauty? The only entrance “fee” is a willingness to be on the journey. “OTJ” as Pastor Gene reminds us.
2.    Unity: We celebrate a shared purpose - to build relationships with each other and with our loving God. Belief unites us. Faith unites us. Our humanity unites us. We are one people who come together as a community, each offering a rich thread that is distinctly ours to share and that builds our foundation as SUM.
3.    Promise: How amazing that we can celebrate the promises God offers us through His Son and Our Savior, Jesus Christ? Through His death and resurrection, we are promised a love and grace that surpasses our mortal understanding. That promise is one that has been and will be forever kept and nourished through our faith journey.
4.    New Life: As individuals and as a community, we fall short at times.  We make mistakes. We falter. We vacillate. We wander. We are reminded that we serve God who knows our pain and our shortcomings, yet loves and forgives us through it all. God gives us new life, fresh starts, and multiple chances. Sometimes that is minute by minute or day by day. How awesome is that?

SUM, we have much to celebrate! May these sermons and the words within resonate with us long after the summer days have come to a close and we begin anew. May it be so. Amen!

-        Sue Lemke

August 2, 2023