Our Mission

2026-12
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 1, 2026

Micah 6:1-8 ; Psalm 15 ; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 ; Matthew 5:1-12

The prophets of ancient Israel used a lot of different literary devices to get their message across. They framed their words in dramatic monologues, oracles, poems, love songs, and even … lawsuits.

Today we hear from Micah that God is bringing a lawsuit against the people, not to punish them, but to sternly remind them of their purpose. God’s lawsuit is replete with exasperation and sarcasm. The core accusation is that the people’s temple sacrifices have become hypocritical.

I talked a couple weeks ago about the purpose of sacrifices in Ancient Israel. Pardon me while I quote myself:

The Lamb is the sacrificial substitute for a human being. It demonstrates our devotion and trust to the powers that hold sway over our fortunes. Understood benevolently, it’s part of a covenant of trust: I give away to God a resource I need, trusting that God will provide enough for me even after I sacrifice it. It’s a prayer and a promise. We don’t sacrifice people to calm the mysterious forces, to make the community safe from divine harm again. We don’t go in for scapegoats.

I thought later about that last sentence and realized, well, we kinda do go in for scapegoats, if you go by the original definition. Or … well, not really, because I don’t want any of you to urge me to sacrifice literal goats on this altar! The point is that if we feel the need to sacrifice something to God, it should be done out of love, not out of fear, and it should never victimize others. This is because our purpose is not to pacify an angry deity.

God makes that perfectly clear in this lawsuit against the people. “I was so good to you—and the point was that you would learn from that! Why can’t you be good to one another? Why do you abuse one another and then show up to worship as if you had done nothing wrong? Knock it off! I’ve already told you what I really want. So make a sacrifice not of one another, but of praise and thanksgiving. Do justice in your society. Love kindness for its own sake. Walk humbly through this life I have given you, with me right at your side.”

Micah 6:8 isn’t quite as popular a Bible verse as John 3:16, but it’s right up there. Many people have told me it’s their favorite verse, because it’s so darn clear. In the Hebrew Bible, it’s probably the closest thing you’ll find to a mission statement: “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”

Last week at the annual meeting, we approved a new mission statement for Good Shepherd. Honestly, we could have done worse than to just use Micah 6:8! But we didn’t do that. Many of you participated in a survey last year, talking about your experiences at Good Shepherd and how this congregation helps you practice your faith. A number of folks then went through the surveys carefully and lovingly, pulling out words and phrases and trying out different combinations of them to try to express the overall thrust of people’s understanding of what God is up to at Good Shepherd. Then, last Sunday, those who assembled for the annual meeting voted between two nominated statements. Here’s the one you chose:

The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion, inspires healing, and promotes justice as we journey with Christ in love.

Would you look at that? I want to suggest that perhaps we did use Micah 6:8 after all, but in reverse.

The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion. This means walking humbly—welcoming people as they are and recognizing that even when we don’t yet understand one another, we can get curious in our desire to do so, loving first and establishing trusting relationships.

The Church of the Good Shepherd inspires healing. Healing comes not through correction or punishment, but through kindness and prayer. Humility plays a role here as well. A pompous church hurts people. A humble church helps people heal.

The Church of the Good Shepherd promotes justice. The term “justice” can be a loaded one. Politicians talk blithely about “bringing people to justice” when sometimes they just mean killing them. In its theological sense, justice does not mean mere punishment, but making things right, even if that takes time and patience.

All of this is part of an ongoing journey with Christ, in love. As we mature spiritually, we fall more deeply in love with God’s world, God’s people, and God’s hopes for us. And we trust that Christ is with us every step of the way.

[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion, inspires healing, and promotes justice as we journey with Christ in love.

Our new mission statement expresses an ideal. We don’t always succeed, but with this statement in front of us, we have a small encapsulation of what we expect of one another.

And you know, our other readings today are also about our mission. Psalm 15 lays out minimum standards of morality, in summary … Do the right thing. Speak truth from the depths of your heart. Don’t lie or misrepresent. Don’t be contemptuous of others. Do hold evildoers accountable and expect God to help them change and grow! Honor others who do good. Keep the oaths you swear. Give money away without expecting anything back. Don’t take bribes. God promises to uphold those who live like this.

But then, our passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians shows that these behaviors make for a paradoxical life. While God promises to uphold those who keep to this mission, God doesn’t prevent us from suffering for it! For Paul, this is the truth that Jesus came to reveal. If you insist on never suffering, you will be completely unable to keep to the mission God gives you.

This is something that many people simply won’t accept. Doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly may well lead directly to the Cross. We are to live like this anyway. Or as I love to put it—and you can see it as a bumper sticker on my car—“Since all else fails, love.”

Because all else does indeed fail: only the difficult work of love lives up to God’s dreams for humankind. And so we proclaim “Christ crucified.” Paul says this is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” which is a shorthand way of saying that nobody on earth really likes this message. It’s uncomfortable. It’s inconvenient. It’s the truth. Why? Because “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

Those who appear foolish and weak according to conventional wisdom are often the ones walking most closely with God. Those who insist on being winners are completely missing the point.

Which brings us to the Beatitudes, as our passage from Matthew is commonly known. “Beatitudes” is Latin for “the Blesseds.” For Matthew, this is the beginning of Jesus’ teaching. It is his manifesto and mission statement—the key to everything else that follows. What makes you blessed? Not your behavior so much as your situation. When you are poor in spirit—cast down, depressed, rejected—God is with you. When you find yourself grieving, God will draw close and comfort you. When you are outright persecuted for your dedication to God’s priorities, you are living as a citizen of God’s realm.

Other Beatitudes are about the best ways to go about in the world: with meekness, mercy, and purity of heart, making peace among people, and always hungering and thirsting to be in close relationship with the God who created you and loves you eternally. I’ve known many people who live like this, and I’m always in awe of them. They show me how often I fail to emulate them, but simultaneously, they encourage me to keep trying.

And that brings us to the corollary: how we know when we’re not living by the Beatitudes. If you deny that you need God’s help, you will never accept it when it’s given. If you refuse to mourn, you will never be invested enough in people to receive God’s truest gifts. If you insist on stomping around the world seeking immediate gratification and always getting your own way, God’s world will actually be snatched out of your hands. And so on. If you spend all your life avoiding suffering, avoiding persecution, avoiding the hard work of being in relationship with people who are very different from you … you’ll simply never come to know God.

The sacrifices God asks of us, then, form the backbone of our mission, because the work of Christians is indeed actual work. It takes commitment and energy to seek good for others. It takes all the imagination and curiosity God has given us to live fully into the gifts with which God showers us every day. It also requires participation in and devotion to Christian community, because none of us lives in a vacuum. We get to carry each other.

The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion, inspires healing, and promotes justice as we journey with Christ in love. What is your part in this mission? What have you been doing, and can you relate to others the rewards that have come from it? Or maybe the specific work you’ve been doing has become ill-fitting—sapping energy from you without much positive effect on others. Or maybe you’ve found that you can’t keep doing what you were doing and must now change your expectations for yourself. God is still with you, and you still have love to give. The most mature Christians I know are the ones who listen closely for God’s voice and then take risks to try new things—new ways of loving.

Well, if you’re hearing this, you’ve gone to the trouble of showing up today—or, at the very least, hitting “play” on a page on the Good Shepherd website! So today, make a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God. And in the silence of your heart, ask humbly, “God, how shall I take on my part of this mission? What would you have me do next for the sake of others?” Amen.