Pastor Will Rose's homily on Rally Day emphasizes the profound notion that everyone is welcomed and loved on God's team, as encapsulated in the teachings of Jesus. He challenges the congregation to reflect on their loyalties and the dynamics of competition that often infiltrate both secular and spiritual realms. Through the lens of St. Paul's letter to Philemon, he invites listeners to reconsider relationships that transcend societal hierarchies, advocating for a vision of kinship and equality grounded in Christ's radical love. This message serves as a reminder of the transformative nature of faith formation, urging the community to embrace inclusivity and to recognize their shared journey as followers of Christ. Ultimately, Will encourages us to rally together, fostering a spirit of unity and unconditional love that binds us as one body in the pursuit of spiritual growth.

Pastor Will Rose's homily on Rally Day at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church delves into the significance of community, faith, and the embodiment of Christ's teachings in everyday life. Rally Day functions as a catalyst for the congregation, marking the beginning of a new season of learning and spiritual growth. As Will reflects on the excitement surrounding sports rallies, he draws a parallel to the enthusiasm that should characterize the Christian journey, inviting congregants to rally around the principles of love and acceptance that Jesus exemplified. The pastor skillfully intertwines personal anecdotes with scriptural references, particularly highlighting the challenging yet transformative messages found in the Gospel of Luke and the letter to Philemon. He urges the community to recognize their collective identity in Christ, emphasizing that true discipleship involves embracing all individuals, particularly those marginalized by society.

The narrative of Onesimus is presented not merely as a historical account but as a living testament to the power of grace and reconciliation. Will invites the congregation to consider how their interactions reflect the love of God, challenging them to extend grace and understanding to others, regardless of differences.

Ultimately, Pastor Will Rose’s homily serves as a clarion call for ongoing faith formation, encouraging individuals to actively engage with their faith and to embody the love of Christ in their daily lives. He emphasizes that this journey is not a solitary endeavor but a communal one, reinforcing the notion that as a body of believers, they are called to support one another in their spiritual growth. The message culminates in an affirmation of the radical inclusivity of God’s love, a theme that resonates deeply with the congregation as they embark on a new chapter of learning and discipleship together.

Takeaways:

1. Pastor Will Rose emphasizes the significance of Rally Day in initiating faith formation opportunities and enhancing community engagement.
2. The homily encourages listeners to reflect on their loyalties and commitments in relation to Jesus and his teachings.
3. Through the story of Onesimus and Philemon, the message highlights the transformative power of God's love and grace in relationships.
4. Discipleship involves the challenge of moving beyond complacency to embrace the radical inclusivity that Jesus exemplifies in his ministry.

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Foreign.

Thank you for engaging with the homily by Pastor Chill Will from Chapel Hill.

I hope this message encourages you, challenges you, and moves you to go deeper in your faith and enrich how you love God and love your neighbor in your day to day life.

Just a reminder.

Like the scriptures and gospels themselves, this homily was written for a particular community in a particular, particular context, time in history.

And yet, like our sacred texts, I hope that these words hold timeless truths about God's unconditional love and grace.

We hope these words speak to you in a meaningful way.

I'm so excited.

So at rallies, you know, as someone who grew up at the beach, someone who loves waves, I think for rally day we need to make a wave in church.

Don't you think you're gonna start over here?

You don't have to stand up.

You just kind of go like, woo.

All right.

Oh, that's a little baby wave.

Look, that's the precursor.

You ready?

Here we go.

Ha.

Now you guys participate too.

Go like this.

You ready?

We'll start down here.

We'll see if the wave gets going from this way.

All right, you ready?

Everybody say, like, rally day as your wave goes.

You ready?

Man, we're getting these Lutherans awoken up this morning.

All right, so I think of rally day.

I think of cheers and waves.

I'm thinking of what would be a good rally or a cheer that Jesus would create.

Are you guys ready for this?

I think I got one in my head.

You ready?

Here we go.

Ha ha, ha ha ha.

I'm better than you.

Sick burn.

No.

Does that match up with Jesus?

How about this one?

Na na na na na.

I am better than you.

You think Jesus would have any kind of nana Nana cheers.

What would his cheer more be like?

What do you think his cheer would be like?

If we know Jesus and learn about Jesus and go to Sunday school and hear those stories and think about how Jesus lived in the world, what would be a cheer that he has?

What do you think?

All right.

Treating everyone equally.

I love that one.

There you go.

Someone who's been listening to the Jesus story.

So be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're equal in God's sight.

Would that be it?

Kind of, sort of a little.

We're getting there.

We're getting there.

All right.

What do you.

About including people?

All right, I'm getting stuff everywhere, and that's okay.

We'll clean that up later.

All right, here we go.

How about like, yay, yay, yay.

Everyone's included in God's grace and love.

Now I'm going to teach a parable about that.

You think that would work?

Yeah, we're getting there.

What's another one?

All right.

Okay.

What do you think?

What do you say?

Oh.

Oh.

Everybody's loved and everyone is in my heart.

That is beautiful.

So we're just gonna do this.

When I go, like, everyone is loved.

Everyone's in my heart.

You ready?

You gotta say it with me.

All right.

Everyone is love.

Everyone's in my heart.

Everyone's in my heart.

Everyone is loved.

I think that.

I think that works.

I think we'll land there.

How about that?

Okay.

Today is rally day, and it's a day that we kick off Sunday school and faith formation opportunities where we learn about Jesus and these stories, how everyone is loved and welcomed on God's team.

So I want you to really listen and pay attention, not just in church, but also in Sunday school and other areas of your life where Jesus and God is teaching us to be his followers and disciples.

We call it faith formation because we're being shaped to being like Jesus in the world.

Thank you for helping me out and learning about Jesus, just as we teach Jesus to you.

You helped teach me about Jesus too.

The Holy Gospel according to Luke.

Now, large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and said to them, whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost to see whether he has enough to complete it.

Otherwise, he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish.

All who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, this fellow began to build and was not able to finish.

Or what king going out to wage war against another king will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with 10,000, to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000.

If he cannot, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

Oh.

Therefore none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Gospel of the Lord.

Thanks to you, O Christ, you may be seated.

In the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Happy rally day.

Oh, I'm sweating a little bit running around, I gotta say.

Yeah.

But I'm feeling.

I'm excited about today.

It is indeed one of my favorite days of the church year around here.

At Holy Trinity.

Now granted, this day isn't a high feast day on the church wide liturgical calendar like Christmas and Easter and Pentecost or even Reformation Day.

But we do this every year here at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and Lutheran Campus Ministry at the start of the fall semester to kick off Sunday School and to rally around faith formation opportunities within our community of faith.

This past week I did some reflecting on Rally Day and rallies in general, especially when it comes to sports.

There's no escaping the hype and attention given to the kickoff of college and pro football, especially this season in our neighborhood.

There is a gravitational pull for pulling for certain teams that we are invested in or loyal to.

We often get our team spirit and loyalties from our family and our hometowns and where we spend our money for education.

Of course, there are healthy and not so healthy rivalries and it's hard not to get pulled into the game and competition of who is best or which team is better than the other my team or your team.

It wasn't that long ago when I was getting to know someone a little better and they felt safe enough to reveal to me that they were a NC State fan and my unconscious response was kind of like, oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, it's not healthy.

My dad was a UNC grad and he brainwashed us.

Carolina blue.

We never ever pulled for the other shade of blue that's just down the street.

Even when they were playing other non conference teams in the NCAA tournament, we just like to watch them lose.

I was brainwashed so deep that when Coach K became the coach for the USA Olympic team, it was actually hard for me to pull for the USA during the Olympics.

Maybe a bronze medal isn't that bad.

I know, I know.

It's really bad.

It's really unhealthy.

It's more of a reflection on me and toxic fandom than anything else.

So Coach K, if you're watching online, I've grown since then.

I promise.

I promise.

In our daily lives we must acknowledge the human pursuit of of the game, of winning and losing, choosing and deciding winners and losers and who we're going to pull for and root for.

Now, I agree.

Competition in and of itself is not necessarily bad.

I love sports.

I love thrilling competition.

I have three fantasy football teams that I'm following today on my phone.

And yet, as your pastor, I want to help you and encourage you to not allow toxic fandom or the game of choosing winners and losers to slip into your spirituality and discipleship.

Our scripture lessons this morning hold up A mirror that challenge us to reflect on our loyalties and our commitments, to wrestle with the question of who we are truly pulling for or loyal to.

When I read the Scriptures on my own and in community, I constantly ask and I'm challenged with who does Jesus pull for?

Who does Jesus rally around?

Does God Jesus play the game of winners and losers, of who's in and who's out?

How do we relate to one another even with those who are different than us or see the world differently than me or pull for a different team than me?

Now, it's not every Sunday that we read an entire book of the Bible during worship.

That's exactly what we did.

This morning.

Sylvia read St. Paul's short letter to Philemon.

You should feel a sense of accomplishment.

This morning we read an entire book of the Bible.

We even added the last three verses.

That isn't in the lectionary just so we could say we read the whole letter in church today, a large part of the New Testament is reading someone else's mail.

It's largely consisted of St. Paul's correspondence to different churches and communities who are trying their best to understand what it means to follow and believe in Jesus and how this young church claim who claims Jesus to be the Christ follows this Christ who lived and died and rose again from the dead.

St. Paul writes this short letter to Philemon from prison, and the whole point of this letter is to appeal on behalf of a runaway slave named Onesimus.

Unlike other letters from St. Paul, this simple, straightforward letter contains no major christological images or themes or Nor does Paul spend a lot of time trying to wrap his head and heart around the mystery of the Trinity and what the resurrection of the dead could look like.

Rather, his straightforward purpose is to ask Philemon and the members of his household church to welcome back Onesimus not as a slave, but rather as a brother in Christ.

Now, we don't know all the details of why Onesimus is no longer with Philemon or how Paul ended up meeting and partnering with Onesimus.

But from the letter we can infer that these three Paul, Philemon and Onesimus became providentially connected in their faith in Jesus and in claiming Jesus to be the crucified and risen Christ.

Because of that, they are bonded and connected in a new way, in a new, liberating way.

Not wasting any time, Paul gets to the heart of the matter.

I am appealing to you for my child, Onesinus.

Formerly.

Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to both you and me.

And there's A play in words here, because Onesimus's name in Greek means useful.

I am sending him that is my own heart back to you.

No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me now, but much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Now, this short correspondence letter doesn't solve the problem of slavery being a reality in the Bible.

Nor does it relieve the tension that the Bible has historically been used to both justify slavery and the rejection of slavery.

But there is a reason that the early church put this short letter in the canon of Scripture.

Within the tension of messy relationships and power systems that pit classes and status and so called winners and losers against each other.

Paul is not afraid to go there, to lean into the tension, to set a vision of kinship and equality within the Christ who challenged and flipped over norms and relationships and systems that pushed people to the margins.

I confess that if I were to pick the scripture lessons for Rally Day, the ones we read this morning were probably not at the top of the list.

But they do hold up a mirror.

They do challenge us to move out of complacency and where we are comfortable in our faith and push us into areas where we're called to move and grow.

How is our faith in Christ and following Christ pushing us to see the world differently?

We see others differently.

I wish I knew the rest of the story and how things went down with Onesimus and Philemon.

I wish I knew if they reconciled or not.

Perhaps there was a hackley ever after ending in their relationship and then that house church.

But I don't know.

We don't know.

Maybe that's the point.

That's why this letter was put in the Bible for the first place.

Challenge us to put ourselves in their shoes and situation and to be challenged by the kinship of God, the equal footing that we all have in Christ, the radical nature of grace and hospitality of God that welcomes us to a table where we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.

Even if community and relationships can often get messy.

You see, we are entrusted with a sacred story, a story that we are a part of, a story that we play a part in.

So how would this story play out?

Well, the plot continues to thicken.

It thickens with God's grace and love in our faith formation.

We too shouldn't be afraid to go there, to lean into the tension, to see how God's story matches up with our story, with Jesus's high demands of discipleship and challenging systems and norms that distract or get in the way.

Of God's nearness.

We are called to be lifelong learners and to continue to grow in our faith in discipleship.

You see, faith formation isn't about winning or losing or trying to get God's attention or approval.

Rather, it's growing deeper into the reality that is already present with us.

An unconditional love of God that will never let us go.

The unconditional love of God that is for all.

Even for those who pull for different teams then and here's the grace and good news in all this.

When Jesus talks about losing one's life and following him, it's in that following and growing that we actually find and discover where we truly belong in the unconditional grace filled love of the Triune God.

Let's keep going.

We are all on the same team.

Let's keep this rally going, rallying around Jesus who we call the Christ.

Let's see how this divine love story plays out.

Amen.

Foreign.

Thank you for listening.

If there is anything that stood out for you, or if you have a question or you just want to have a conversation, you are always free to reach out and contact us.

And remember you are not alone and.

That you are loved with a love stronger than death.

Sam.