Our passage from the gospel of Luke for this morning begins in a rather interesting fashion. Luke writes, “Now about eight days after these sayings…” I find this phrase interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, why eight days? Is eight a significant number? Seems kind of an odd choice of days. As I thought about this, I looked up what the number 8 signified in the Bible because I know that most numbers had some meaning in those days. It seems that the number 8 signifies a “new beginning” according to biblestudy.org. I find that interesting and we will come back to that. The other part of this opening phrase that stood out to me was Luke’s mention of “these sayings.” This immediately begs the question, “What sayings?” A quick look at the passage right before this has Jesus predicting his death and resurrection. And the sayings he shares along with that have to do with sacrifice and bold faith and love, the hallmarks of Jesus’ mission.

And what happens after this is a confirmation of the vision that God has set for Jesus to live into, a vision that brought Jesus to the cross. We, as the disciples of Jesus, have been given a vision for our future as well. We are called to share about Christ’s sacrifice and bold faith and love. Yet the way that vision manifests itself in our particular place and time can look quite different for each individual congregation. And this morning, I want to look at four key values that a group of Session members and committee chairs from First Presbyterian Church felt were a part of the vision God has for this place, in this time. And I want to look at them in the larger context of Jesus’ vision, both for himself and for his followers.

But before we dive into that, I wanted to share with you an experience my family had this weekend that taught me something about visions. On Thursday night, as I was in the final stages of getting ready for bed. April was already asleep. I heard a strange sound. It sounded like an animal, but at first I couldn’t place what sort of animal it was. Pretty soon, I became convinced that the sound I was hearing was mewing. And it sounded as though the sound was coming from the attic of our house. I tried to do some exploring, but with everyone else in the house asleep, I could only do so much. Eventually, I gave up and went to sleep. On Friday morning, I shared my experience with April and we quickly got to work trying to figure out where the sound had come from. Our attic is not one that a human can get up into, so we decided to put a security camera up into the attic to see what we might see. It didn’t take long before we were notified that the camera had detected up motion. When we pulled the image up on our phones, there on the screen was a cat. There was a cat in our attic.

Now, you may be wondering why I am telling this story in a sermon about vision. Well, let me finish the tale and then I promise to explain. So, long story short, we eventually set up a live trap in the garage where we assumed the cat was getting into the attic from, but by the end of the day Friday, we had not hardly seen the cat let alone captured it. But when we woke on Saturday morning, we found our attic cat inside the trap, cold and not happy to be there. And that’s when decisions had to be made. Prior to that point, it was simple. Cat in attic, cat must come out of attic. But now that the cat was out of the attic, we had to figure out what to do with him. This is where I see a connection to vision. April and I had to make a big decision about this cat and the way we did that was by turning to what our vision for life has become. Now, this is not an expressly written vision. We don’t have a family vision statement or anything. But we clearly have formed a vision for our life together that shapes how we do things. And a part of that vision that has formed pretty strongly over the past few years is our love for animals and our desire to help God’s creatures in need, whether human or not. And so we took the cat to the vet, got him checked out, and now we have a new pet…Atticus the attic cat. That is the power of following a vision for your life…whether a written vision or an unwritten one.

So, let’s look at the 4 values that the leaders of this church identified as important to our vision moving forward. The first word brought forward was the word “vibrant.” Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines “vibrant” as “pulsating with life, vigor, or activity.” Those of you who listened to Kristin’s message last Sunday heard about the vibrancy that already exists in this place and more specifically through all of you. And perhaps we could look at that and say, “Well, goal achieved.” But the fact that this group of church leaders saw vibrancy as something for us to strive toward, tells me that we should not just rest on our laurels with that. We should not just rejoice in where we are, but strive for even more. When Peter, James, and John saw Jesus in glory and talking with Moses and Elijah, they knew something really special was happening. And their first inclination, rather than taking that excitement out to the world, was to build tents to keep that energy right there…to protect it. When we have something good, our tendency is to want to hold it tightly. But I’ve found that if we share it instead, that good thing grows.

The second term that came out of that goal-setting session was “god-centered.” When Jesus was transfigured on the mountain top and Moses and Elijah appeared with him, the voice of God spoke from heaven and said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” These words would have had great authority for Peter, James, and John because they were God-centered people. The word of God was important to them. When God is the center of our lives, it keeps us connected and grounded. Have you ever swung an object tied to a string around in a circle? That object orbits your hand and the closer the object is to your hand, the easier it is to keep it in a perfect circle around your hand. But what happens if the string slips from your hand? It goes flying off course, right? When we keep God as the center of our lives as individuals and as a church, it keeps us on the right path and keeps us close to God.

That brings us to the third word of note from the goal-setting session, which is actually sort of two words. It was learn/grow. The folks at that meeting felt that our church needs to be focused on learning and growing. Ken Blanchard once said, “When you stop learning you stop growing.” When God spoke to Peter, James, and John on the mountain with Jesus, he told them to listen to Jesus. But the implication there is that they not only listen to what Jesus teaches, but that they also obey it. God wants the disciples to learn from Jesus in such a way that it changes their lives and actions. That is what we are called to as well. And when we do that we become more and more like Christ. And what better witness to the amazing God we love and serve than living like Jesus, who was God incarnate. William S. Burroughs is thought to have once said, “When you stop growing you start dying.” Let’s keep on a path of growth, learning from Jesus our rabbi. And let’s see where God takes us.

The final word from the goal-setting session that was lifted up was the word caring. This word was sort of connected with the word outreach as well. A ministry of caring is one that looks outside of one’s own needs to the needs of others. This is the epitome of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Jesus was always looking out for the needs of others. We don’t see this quite as strongly in this particular passage from Luke as we do throughout the gospel as a whole. But if we look at what happens as soon as Peter, James, John, and Jesus return down the mountain, we see Jesus’ heart for the needs of others. As soon as they are down the mountain, a crowd meets them and from the crowd comes the shouts of a man who wants Jesus to heal his son. He says that his son is possessed by a demon and the disciples couldn’t get the demon to leave the boy. Jesus seems a bit annoyed, either with his disciples or with the dad of the boy is unclear, but despite that annoyance, Jesus heals the boy. Jesus always puts the needs of others first. I believe that we do a great job of that as a church already, loving those in need and caring for them. Our care team reaches out to those who live alone or are in care facilities or have specific needs. And that ministry has been a huge blessing to so many people. And our deacons have helped with financial needs of a number of folks who have been in need. Our soup kitchen teams feed the needy. We take up collections regularly for various ministries that follow Christ’s heart for the poor and lonely and sick and grieving. The goal then is for us to expand those ministries already doing this care. And to foster a culture of love and caring.

All of this leads us to what someone at that goal-setting meeting suggested as a tag line for our church: A Vibrant, God-Centered Community of Caring. I would argue that in many ways we already are that, yet it is also the vision God has for us. God wants us to be vibrant and full of life. Christ gave his life so that we might have life abundantly. God wants us to be centered upon him. God should always be the focus of everything we do and we should seek God’s guidance every step of the way. God wants us to be a community, a place of growth and learning. We are blessed with great diversity, which offers all of us the opportunity to learn and grow from one another, and be unified as we do so. And God wants us to be caring. Let us take the love that God has given to us and pour it out into the lives of others. As we follow this vision, we are following the vision Christ gave to the church, to make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And may God’s love be shown through us in all that we do. Amen!