Greetings, good people of Trinity Lutheran in Pleasanton!

This has been a full couple of weeks! We celebrated our Reformation roots, we honored the faithful saints in our lives, and we voted on Election Day. 

We reflected on our theological tradition, we remembered those that have informed our faith, and we practiced being good citizens. Tradition, faith, and civic duty. 

I suppose this is what it means to be a Christian these days. We carry the intersections of our chosen expression of faith, along with those people and communities that have poured into us and shaped our lives of faith, all while living and working together as fellow Americans. We hold to our beliefs grounded in the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, alongside what we know is true and good from our varied and vast lived experience, tied up in the complexities of our national and political environment. 

In the Old Testament, the prophet Micah (6:8) reminds the people of Israel, “The Lord 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?” 

As Christians in America in 2025, we too have heard what the Lord requires of us: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. We do this together, dear church, as members of this faith community. We do this together, dear church, walking in the footsteps of those who led the way. We do this together, dear church, through our votes and through our civility and through our love of neighbor and stranger alike. We do this together, dear church.

Go in peace. Christ is with you.

Thanks be to God!