Okay . . . it's been forever and I know that. Updates on our wedding and honeymoon, the youth mission trip to San Diego, and the move to Durham are in the works (I promise). In the meantime, below is my belated sermon from our Youth Sunday service on August 6. It was a wild and holy day, featuring communion, the reception of new church members, and an order of commissioning for theological education in addition to the regular unpredictability of youth services. A glimpse of the kingdom, you might say.

He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heart it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He answered, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." Then the Lord said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him." --1 Kings 11:11-18

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. --Romans 8:31-39

The Reverend Dr. Tex Sample is an ordained United Methodist minister and the professor emeritus of homiletics and church life at the Saint Paul School of Theology in Saint Louis, Missouri. He's also a remarkably gifted preacher and speaker, so he gets invited to lead worship for lots of churches and conferences. I've had the privilege of meeting him a couple times, and one of the refrains Tex always comes back to, in sharing his faith journey with other pilgrims on the way, is that “sometimes a faith in the Gospel requires that we say and do things that make absolutely no sense, aside from a personal relationship with the living Christ.”

This weekend the fellowship and worship life of our faith community is something of an exploration of this idea. Our time together is centered around the idea of Christian vocation, of the unique callings we receive as women and men of faith, whose very beings are grounded and nourished and sometimes violently uprooted by our relationship with Christ. Last night, many of you joined us for our Youth Missions Celebration Dinner, where we had the joy of remembering and lifting up the pictures and stories and reflections from our recent journey to San Diego. Inevitably on mission trips like this, we find that we somehow have everything we need to succeed, that the gifts and graces of our team members complement one another perfectly, almost as though we didn't put the whole thing together at all. When some of us begin to lose faith in the project or in our teammates or in ourselves, others are there to pick us up—to love us and to carry us to a better place. Hopefully that's also what we were doing for the community in San Diego—by painting and redesigning and redecorating their emergency food and clothing shelter, hopefully we helped our sisters and brothers in the Chollas View neighborhood recognize the new and abundant life that was already there.

And while the 14 youth and 4 adults who were a part of this team may have thought they were coming because the weather's a whole better this time of year in southern California than it is here in Virginia, or because they'd surely have more fun hanging out with this whole group than staying at home alone for the week, or because they needed a break from the routine and pressure of everyday life, or because if they didn't go no one else would sign up to spend an entire week with this large a group of teenagers, the truth of the matter is that we all found ourselves there in response to a call. A call that we heard while worshiping and studying together here in this place. A call that we heard through our families and friends who invited us to consider the possibilities that first youth ministry in general and later youth mission trips in particular might hold for us. A call that we heard through the familiarity and grace of our regular youth group meetings and dinners.

The Celebration Dinner is something that makes absolutely no sense unless God is doing something extraordinary in our midst. Because you see, last night was the culmination of a nine-month fundraising campaign that netted nearly ten thousand dollars to pay for this trip. With your help and with the support of countless others, this team of young people raised all the money necessary to get themselves to California, to arrange their transportation on the ground there, to cover the food they would need, the field trips they would take, and the supplies that would make their work possible. The sacrifices they made and the energy they invested in yard sales and bake sales and car washes and in selling tickets to this dinner made no sense outside of a conviction that God's work of creation and redemption of humankind is not yet complete, and that we are called to be a part of that work. Furthermore, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for people to show up to hear our stories and share our excitement if we were not called together to this work of mission and ministry.

In just a few moments we will welcome Andrew Marshall into the membership of this congregation. If you don't know Andrew, you should and I trust that you will. He and I have been the best of friends for a long time—we went to high school together, we were both part of the Wesley Foundation at UVA. We've lived together for several years now, we've been on mission trips together, served on the same administrative boards and task forces. And I'm excited and honored to be a part of that service laster this morning.

But this isn't the beginning of Andrew's relationship with this church by any means. Already he is a vital part of our ministry. He's been present and active at Project Transformation since it began, he's a great chaperone and driver and cook and friend to the youth group, and he's been a faithful participant in our worship for a long time. And I'm convinced both that his decision to unite in membership with this congregation is a response to the call of God on his life and that the words of welcome and hospitality we will say as part of that service reflect our mutual calling to be God's people in this place. These words will call us to remember our baptismal covenant, to recall that we have been initiated into Christ's holy church, incorporated into God's mighty acts of salvation, given new birth through water and the Spirit. They will ask us to join our voices in an ancient affirmation of our common faith and to participate together in the ministries of the church by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service. Friends, this is a commitment that can only be made by a group of people who are persuaded that their faith can and should transform the world around them.

And then at the end of our service this morning we'll take part in a brief order of commissioning for folks who will be leaving soon to pursue theological education in preparation for lives of full-time ministry in the United Methodist Church. I think I speak for both Haden and myself in saying that your support and encouragement, the ways you have challenged us and taught us and held us accountable, have served as invaluable tools of discernment along the way. And when our energy or patience or, yes, even our knowledge proves insufficient over the next three years, the calling that we have discovered and explored here will not fail.

If the words of our Prayer of Illumination a few minutes ago seemed a little strange to you or a bit out of the ordinary, it's because they're lifted straight from Saint Augustine, the fifth century Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of the church whose teachings continue to shape the lives of Christians throughout the world. Although Augustine was a prolific writer (penning thousands of letters, commentaries and books) and one could spend a lifetime delving into the complexities and brilliance of his thought, perhaps his best known and most enduring work, at least for we American Protestants today, are his Confessions, a series of 13 books chronicling his turbulent, disobedient youth and his fierce struggle to overcome his failings and adequately respond to his experience of God's grace.

It's at the very beginning of Book One of the Confessions that Augustine exclaims, in a slightly more modern translation than the one you heard earlier, “Can any praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty? How magnificent is his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom! Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

For Augustine the momentum of the entire universe is leading us to realize and delight in God's love for each of us and for all of us. Restlessness is an inherent part of that spiritual journey. All that is in us rebels at the complacency of our own will because we can never truly know who we are until we see ourselves as children of God. Outside of God our lives are uncertainty and chaos, destruction and death. In God alone can we rest secure. “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces . . . but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” And in the silence alone did Elijah witness the Lord pass by.

Let us not misread the text: restlessness is not the problem. Restlessness is the symptom, and perhaps the antidote, for what ails our spiritual lives. In a world where Christians and Muslims and Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and people of countless other faiths are persecuted because of their experience of the sacred, in a culture that defines people by their wealth and beauty at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable among us, in a day when the kingdom of God too often seems out of reach and out of mind, there is much cause for restlessness. Resting in God, putting our full trust in the One who gave his life so that we might know true life, calls us to action in Jesus' name.

Resting in God calls some of us to travel to San Diego—not only to paint a building and share God's love with underprivileged people, but to experience more of God's world and to see the movement of the Holy Spirit in the values and cultures of that community—to come to love people there as Christ loves all people. Resting in God calls us to work together as a community of faith to make the good news real through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service. And sometimes resting in God calls us to leave home for new communities of education and discovery.

We are by nature—by design—restless people. Trust the restlessness. Find in it a call to ministry that is all your own. Allow it to take you to unexpected places. Dare to make decisions that can only be explained by the real, abiding presence of God in your life. And know that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Hallelujah and Amen.