LWML RMD Convention 2024 Opening service message

[00:00:00] Good evening. That's loud. [00:00:05] Good evening, dear ladies and some gentlemen. For those of you who I have not yet had the privilege of meeting, I am Pastor James Maxwell and I serve two roles. The first is that I am a part time pastor in Colorado Springs where my family and I have lived for the last eleven years. And for the last two years, I also have the great privilege and honor of serving as the district president for the Rocky Mountain district of our lutheran church Missouri Senate. And while it is not the largest geographical district, the Northwest district cheats. They have Alaska. [00:00:50] It is the largest contiguous geographical district spanning the states of Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, El Paso, Texas. Two churches in Nebraska and one in Arizona. It's a big territory. My wife Karen and I have four children. Our oldest daughter is almost 14. Please pray for us. Our son and our son is nine. And we have two daughters in between as well. So our house is a busy one. And that is why I am only able to be with you for this evening. I am increasingly aware, or let me put it another way, my wife lets me know increasingly that I travel a lot. And even though I love what I do, even though I love visiting our churches and our pastors and workers and helping them to navigate all of the challenges that we continue to face in our world, and reminding them that God is still in charge. And guess what? They are in his hands. That he's got them and he's never, ever letting go. [00:02:09] I still need to be a good dad, too. And I have to monitor how much I am away. [00:02:17] That said, I'm excited to be here. I don't have too many occasions to wear this tropical hawaiian stole. [00:02:29] For those of you who do not know, this is an LWML stall. [00:02:37] Okay. Says it right here. Anybody who. No, right there. [00:02:41] Old lwml logo. But it's still legit. All right. That is one of the reasons why lWml is so amazing, because you ladies have fun. [00:02:53] When I was up in Montana, at my first parish, I got to be one of those pastoral counselors for the district. [00:03:02] And that was a fantastic experience because I found out that the ladies who are involved in this do so much more than just make quilts. [00:03:11] The massive amounts of kingdom work that you do with mites is just incredible. [00:03:22] How many of you have been to an LWML convention before? [00:03:27] How many of you have never been to an LWML convention? Thank you for being here. Where are our younger women representatives? All in the back. [00:03:42] They are good lutherans. [00:03:45] Let's see if I can do it from here. Megan, Allie, Becky, the Briannas, and Zoe. Did I get it right? Okay, good. Thank you, ladies, for being with us tonight. [00:04:05] I want to begin my time with you tonight, meditating upon our scriptures with kind of a silly story. [00:04:12] When I was growing up, my mother was our church secretary, and she would get me all kinds of custodial jobs at the church. During my teenage years, I got to clean up after weddings. I got to move pianos around for music recitals. I would set up chairs for AA or any other outside events that came in, and the church would charge a voluntary cleanup fee and then pay me with that. And it was pretty good money, too. But the best thing about this particular gig is that I had a lot of keys. [00:04:55] I had lots of keys. I had keys to every single room and cupboard in the entire building except for one, the ladies aid closet. [00:05:09] And no one else did, either. [00:05:13] My mother didn't even know who had a key. The pastors were not even given a key. It was quite possibly one of the deepest, darkest secrets of Zion Lutheran church in Oakland, California. [00:05:27] Who had a key? I began to suspect that God himself did not know who had a key. [00:05:34] Did a key even exist? [00:05:37] And just what was behind that door? [00:05:42] What secret, pampered chef relic lay behind that door? [00:05:48] My mother told me to forget about it, right? So I proceed to search high and low for that key. There had to be a hidden key somewhere. Everyone in ladies aid was like 90. What if one of them died? Then it would be locked for eternity. [00:06:10] I figured the usher's room was the best place to start, because old women are crafty. [00:06:18] If you don't want your husbands prying into your business, you put something right under their nose. [00:06:27] Now, the usher's room was like a time machine. [00:06:32] You opened up the top desk of the drawer, and you find the usher schedule from 1947. [00:06:39] And you start going through the list and looking at all the dearly departed saints who once used to serve, only to realize half of them still do. [00:06:49] And on exactly the same Sundays. [00:06:53] Oh, Lutherans. But anyway, top drawer is empty. On to the next whole bunch. More records, pencils, paper clips, bulletins, and a key. [00:07:05] Could it be? It couldn't have been that easy. Well, better go try it. I approached the closet with great trembling and great fear that one of the ladies would walk in just as I opened the door. And the last thing I'd see was a flash of purple. [00:07:28] I pressed the key into the lock. [00:07:30] The key turned, the door opened, and so did heaven. A bright beaming light came shining down, and I beheld quilts now, they were very nice quilts, but the teenage boy here is hoping for dead bodies or skeletons or something else that's just better. [00:07:55] But I did stay in there for at least a couple minutes just to look, because I was quite possibly one of the only people under the age of 80 who had ever seen it. So I had to stay in there for a little bit. All right. But reflecting upon this made me wonder, how much stuff do we have locked behind? Closed doors, dear sisters. [00:08:27] Doors which tell about who we are. [00:08:32] Doors which lead to particular corners of our hearts, our minds, our being. [00:08:45] What's in there? [00:08:48] Why is it in there? [00:08:50] Why is it so secret? [00:08:53] Who are we hiding it from? [00:08:57] And what's more, where have we hidden the key? [00:09:03] And where have we hidden it so well that perhaps even God is not intended by us to find it? [00:09:14] And don't try to say that you don't do this. [00:09:18] We all do this because each and every one of us has guilt. Each and every one of us has those secret things. [00:09:30] I want to illustrate with the confession of sin used on Thursdays in my daily devotions from what's called the minister's prayer book. [00:09:43] Goes like, forgive my sins, O Lord. Forgive me the sins of my present and the sins of my past, the sins of my soul and the sins of my body, the sins which I have done to please myself and the sins which I have done to please others. [00:10:04] Forgive me my wanton and idle sins. Forgive me my serious and deliberate sins. Forgive me those sins which I know and those sins which I know not, the sins which I have labored so to hide from others, that I have hid them also from my own memory. [00:10:28] Forgive them all, O Lord. Forgive them all. And of thy great mercy, let me be absolved, and of thy bountiful goodness, let me be delivered from the bonds of all that by my frailty I have committed. Grant this, o heavenly Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and savior. Amen. [00:10:54] And the line that always hits me is, forgive me those sins which I know, those sins which I know not, and the sins which I have labored so to hide from others, that I have hid them from my own memory. [00:11:13] Being the good Lutherans that we are, we certainly understand that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. [00:11:23] But when we put it like this, when we really examine all, just the depths of who we really are and what we are capable of, it's a scary thing, or at least it could be. [00:11:40] Could make us anxious, worried, desiring to be cleansed and seek relief from all these burdens, all this stress, all this that so weighs us down. [00:11:55] And yet, o you of little faith, whose hands are we in? Who has redeemed us and called us by name, and who has marked us as one redeemed by Christ the crucified? [00:12:10] For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. [00:12:20] From job, chapter twelve ask the beasts, they will teach you the birds of heaven, and they will tell you, or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare to you, who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? [00:12:40] In his hand is the life of every living thing. [00:12:47] God's got you, and he's never ever letting go. [00:12:53] In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile himself to all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. [00:13:10] Dear sisters and brothers, it didn't take long for us to remember all of the crud that we have locked away in the dark recesses of our hearts and minds that causes us to awake in the middle of the night, sometimes in utter shame, sometimes in torment, sometimes in grief. [00:13:36] Fill in the blank. [00:13:38] But our God is bigger, and because of Jesus, your sins are forgiven. [00:13:47] So don't worry. [00:13:49] Don't be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Are you not in his hands? [00:14:06] Look at the birds of the air. [00:14:09] They neither sow nor reap, nor gather in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. [00:14:15] Are you not of more value than they? [00:14:18] Are you not in his hands? [00:14:22] And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his or her span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? [00:14:34] Are you not in his hands? [00:14:37] Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. [00:14:48] But if God so clothed the grass of the field, which is today alive, and tomorrow thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? [00:14:57] Are you not in his hands? O you of little faith, you are in his hands. [00:15:06] Do not be anxious. [00:15:09] What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them all but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added to you. Why? [00:15:32] Because you're in his hands. And that's the very best place for you to be. [00:15:37] Ask the beast. [00:15:39] They will teach you the birds of the heavens. They will tell you the bushes of the earth. They'll teach you the fish of the sea. They will declare it to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? [00:16:01] In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind, which includes you. In his name. Amen.