Give Glory to God! My New Testament professor ended all of his lectures with that statement. He was a Latvian refugee.... a professor of New Testament at the Riga University. When WWII broke out he fled with his wife and daughter in the closing days of the war. He said the only things they possessed were the clothes on their backs....they had lost everything. A woman on the crowded train that was taking refugees from Latvia before the Russians took control recognized him. He was standing in the aisle of the train car holding his bible...she asked, "Now professor, where is your God? There is no God." He responded, "perhaps the God you have lost is not the God who I still worship." Give Glory to God. Janis Rosenthals said it every day.

The Gospel today is a prayer that Jesus prayed at the end of the time he had spent at the Last Supper. It is meant to be overheard. He prays the prayer for his disciples, his followers who live in the world. He prays it for us. If you listened, you heard the word glorify or glory six times. Give Glory to God.

Jesus expects us to live in such a way that being his follower, being Christian, makes a difference. How we live is meant to point others to God. We are God's sign in the world that often lives without God. You are meant to give glory to God. What you think, how you live and love, how you treat other people has a stamp of Christ on it.

I was driving to my home in St. Paul a few weeks ago on a busy hiway 169. A car came through traffic, weaving between the other car; he was obviously in a hurry and he didn't mind driving a few inches from the next car at 65 mph. Actually 65 was much too slow for him. The pick-up ahead of me honked at the driver and the driver opened his window and saluted the pick-up truck driver with a single digit. You could see the road-rage building.

The driver of the speeding car had a company logo on several places on the car: Sentry Insurance. I wondered what his rates were. I thought, if you are going to drive so poorly don't you think you would want to be anonymous? I don't think he was aware that his bad behavior was reflecting poorly on his company...but it was...I just shared it with you. Give Glory......

You and I have Christ written on us. And how we live in the world makes a difference as our lives are meant to invite others into the richness of faith. This last week Dagny Trucano gave me a wallet sized card with a quote from St. Francis of Assisi, "Preach the Gospel at all times and use words if necessary." Give Glory to God.

We are a people who live in two worlds. There is a world of richness here....as members of a faith community called Lutheran Church of the Cross. I think that churches, faith communities are places where we need to have important conversations. We need to speak faith into each others' hearts. We need to read and study scripture together. I mean we need to immerse ourselves in God's Word for the promises it gives and for the way it forms how we think and how we treat other people. We pray together--for those on a prayer concerns list and on the prayer chain, for our sons and daughters in Afghanistan, and Iraq. Lutheran Church of the Cross is where we practice our faith as we reach out others. We need to disciple each other, grow each other more deeply into faith.

In late August when I drive by High School practice fields I see football players doing two-a-day work outs. They are practicing. If they don't practice they will not play well on game day. This is our practice field where we need to have bible study, small groups, Interfaith hospitality and quilting and prayer shawls. We leave from this place and we move into the world that God so loves, the world that Jesus prays for when he says they are in the world. We have conversations here that we cannot have in the market place but it is because we speak faith with each other here that we can be God's people in the world.

I live in two worlds. I live with you here when we pray together and speak deeply of Jesus, when we baptize and when we pray. I live here faithfully with you so that I can live faithfully in the world that doesn't always recognize Jesus and where day-to-day decisions even compromise faith. I need to live faithfully with you so that when I am driving home on Hiway 169 and a person full of anger and anxiety doesn't reshape me into something I don't want to be. What is clear to me is that Jesus expects that my faith in him and his promises will also be the dominant thing that shapes my live. That is how I live in the market place. I have Jesus written on me and I am to give glory to God.

I thought about that last week when I read an article in an old issue of Newsweek where the writer said that six members of the House of Representatives require their staff to read Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged, Fountain Head and number of non-fiction works on Objectivism was deeply anti-Christian. When I was a self-absorbed 17-year-old I thought she was great. Ayn Rand's characters are really into themselves. She espoused greed and self-interest. She also has had a deep impact on the thinking of a number of economists in our culture. Gary Moore, Sir John Templeton's biographer, claims that she has had a deep impact on our current economic conversation, that the Wall Street Debacle several years ago was not accidental but fairly reflected Ayn Rand's philosophy. When I read the article I asked myself...doesn't this give people in our congregation an upset stomach? Are we asking what has shaped our attitude about our relationship to our wealth? Does Jesus have anything to say about this? Does the conversation we have together within this space....in bible study and prayer....mean anything?

We spend an hour a week here, at most, and then go out to spend another 167 hours in workplace, home and community. But Jesus is saying, I know you in two worlds but the time you spend in faith formation is meant to make a world of Difference. Give Glory to God. We really need to immerse ourselves as deeply as possible in faith so we can live faithfully in the world that God so loves.

Amen