February 15, 2026
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Sailing Into Something New
1 Thessalonians 5:13b-22
2/15/2026
My name is Mindie and I want to welcome you again to St. Luke’s Midtown! This is such an exciting day because this is our first Sunday of two services!
We are a community that’s growing, and growth brings a lot of new and exciting things with it. And I want you to know that there has been so much planning and prayer that has gone into this new thing that we’re doing, and I’m so grateful for every person who has played a part in it. On Thursday, members of our staff and a few of our volunteers gathered in this building to pray over this new season, and the person who organized it was our Contemporary Worship Director for North Indy, Joel. I want to read you what he sent out to our staff, because I thought it was so perfect for what we’re doing. As he framed the new service times here at Midtown he said:
This is more than a schedule shift.
It’s about people.
It’s about new faces walking through the doors.
It’s about creating more space for the inclusive and radical love of Jesus to be experienced in real, tangible ways.
And that’s what we’re about here at St. Luke’s Midtown. You might be one of the new people who have connected with us today and that is SUPER exciting—I know that’s a big deal to show up at a new church or just a church in general. OR you might be attending service at a different time than you’re used to or serving in a way you haven’t before—that is ALSO a big deal, because we love our routines! Maybe nothing has changed about your Sunday rhythm, but you’re just excited to be part of what’s going on here. Wherever you fall—I'm so thankful for you, and can’t wait to see how we continue to grow together.
Let’s pray as we go into our message today.
PRAY
Our theme this morning is “Sailing Into Something New,” which is appropriate as we embark on this new season of our church. And as we talk about sailing, I want to specifically think about a piece of the sailboat we don’t notice right away—the anchor. While I’m not a sailor, my Uncle Mark IS. He’s had a sailboat since I was a kid. And so I reached out to him to get a good opening illustration for this message. I was hoping he would have some really dramatic story about sailing and needing an anchor and I was ready to take notes.
But his response was completely anticlimactic. He reminded me that because until very recently he’s been working full time, his boat is pretty small and his sailing adventures are fairly brief in their duration, so while he—his words—always PACKS his anchor, he has NEVER ACTUALLY USED IT. And I was like, “well, that kind of kills this illustration,” but then he said this—he said, “I hope that as I’m retired now, that I can upgrade to a different kind of boat and a different level of sailing where I actually NEED to use an anchor.”
And I thought, yeah, Uncle Mark, coming through for me! Because that‘s it. What he said was such a simple, but profound observation. Because (SLIDE) sometimes a new journey calls for the right equipment. When we are taking risks and trying new things, we have to reach for the things that will equip us in whatever that new season is. And just like an anchor on a boat keeps the boat from drifting away and helps it stay on course to eventually keep moving towards its ultimate goal, we have things in our spiritual lives that act like anchors too. Ways of living, truths about God that we hold on to, community that we connect with—all these things help us stay the course, even when we encounter change...good change, but change nonetheless, or those moments where the seas are a little more turbulent and we have to figure out how to navigate through it.
The Scripture we read today out of 1 Thessalonians is a reminder to a church community to find their own kind of spiritual anchoring. Now, their circumstances were very specific to them, just like our circumstances are very specific to us. But the message that Paul and others who were investing in this community wanted them to know is a message that I think transcends time and place. It’s an encouragement to keep living out the way of Jesus, in EVERY season. To have these things that are so ingrained in us that we know who we are and we know what we’re about.
The church in Thessalonica needed this encouragement because they were going through so much as a community. I would say they were firmly in the turbulent seas category and they had been ever since they first started gathering together. Like many of the early churches that we have letters for in the New Testament, this is a group of people who, simply by existing, is doing something pretty risky—they’ve decided to orient their lives around the teaching and example of Jesus.
And if I’m real with us for a moment...that probably doesn’t sound like much of a risk as we hear it today. We’ve got churches on every other corner! But we have to remember that back in their world, it WAS incredibly risky. Because the folks who had religious power at the time? They weren’t really asking anyone to shake things up. They had centuries of tradition and expectation, and most everything that Jesus and his followers did pushed back against those ways of living out faith. These new faith communities challenged how the Scriptures were interpreted. They created a much more expansive view of who was allowed to be in community with each other. And as this new thing called the Church started to evolve and grow, not everyone was excited about it. Not everyone was particularly supportive.
And so this church was facing a lot of pushback and suspicion as they tried to do this. If we go back to the book of Acts, which is a book of the Bible that really chronicles the beginnings of these early Christian communities, we quickly find that it was like that from the beginning for them. Here’s what Acts 17 tells us people were saying about these particular Christians: (SLIDE)
“These people who have been disturbing the peace throughout the empire have also come here...Every one of them does what is contrary to Caesar’s decrees by naming someone else as king: Jesus.” (Acts 17:6-7)
Just so we’re all super aware—this was the kind of stuff that got you in trouble with the people in charge. It wasn’t a simple difference of opinion...claiming Jesus was king was very much against the law.
So as this church starts, they don’t exactly begin from a place of favor with the larger culture. And as they grow and reach more and more people, I imagine that they can feel that pressure and hostility sort of closing in. There’s got to be some level of anxiety about what all this noteriety is going to mean for them. Are they going to be safe? Are they going to be able to continue to gather? Would it be easier to just give up and go with the flow, even if they know that God is calling them to something different?
This letter speaks to some of those anxieties. It speaks to the temptation to downplay the pieces of this church’s identity that makes them so distinct. This section of the letter that we read today is full of metaphorical equipment that this church is going to need to use in order to get where they’re trying to go. I’m guessing some of this that’s mentioned is pretty familiar territory, while some of it might be a new way of looking at things or practicing their faith. But either way, this is what they’re going to need to make it through the moment that they’re in.
Listen to how they are encouraged to navigate through where they are (SLIDE):
· Live in peace
· Warn those who are disorderly
· Comfort and help each other
· Be patient, rejoice, pray, give thanks
· Notice how the Spirit is moving and don’t ignore that movement
· Hold on to the good and get as far away from evil as you can
What I find to be so powerful about these instructions is that they are all distinctively expressions of who this faith community is. This isn’t generic. It’s not some mass-produced self help kind of thing. This has come from people who know the community and the context and understand why this church matters and what this church will need to do to keep living out its call. This is deeply authentic and these are challenging but realistic ways for the people of this church to keep drawing back to God as they stay on course for where the Holy Spirit is going to lead them next.
Living in the ways described in this letter is going to provide anchors for them to know who they are and what they’re about, no matter WHAT comes their way. They can’t control the world around them. They can’t stop people with a lot of power saying whatever they’re going to say. But what they CAN do is know who they are and be so very faithful to the things God has called them to.
Lately when I think about the church NOW, and I guess I’m referring more to the bigger American Church, I do often lament and wonder if we need a collective anchoring moment. If we need to be woken up and reminded what Jesus was ACTUALLY about. If we need to remember who we are and what we’ve been called to do in this world. Because that call to distinctiveness, to reflect something better and truer to our world, even if it’s risky or costly or make us feel very vulnerable and exposed...that’s one of those things that I think still applies to the church today. Sure, our context is different...but our call hasn’t really changed. And when we lose our distinctiveness and stop reflecting Jesus more than anything else, we lose something really important. We lose the power of the role that the Church can play in the world.
I want to tell you a story about something we did at my church in California that gives us a good illustration of what this can look like. And if I had to title this story, maybe this will be a chapter in my book someday, I would call it, “Too Many Salads.”
I was on staff at this church, and my friend Megan and I quickly realized that one of the things that this community needed was more opportunities for people in different life stages to connect and form relationships. So we started hosting what we called “Community Dinner.” It was at Megan’s house and we wanted this to be very chill. When I say chill, I mean we were not trying to manage a sign-up sheet or anything like that—we figured people would just bring what they brought, and it would be great (some of you event planners in the room can’t handle this, I know)
The church LOVED this idea. And the very first one had an awesome turn out, we had like 50 people in Megan’s backyard, lots of new friends were made, a huge church event success!
There was just one challenge.
Everyone, and I am not kidding, EVERYONE brought some kind of salad.
Now, Megan and I, we are both Midwest people who found ourselves living in Southern California, and because of our Midwestern roots, we both had a pretty specific idea of what a church potluck should consist of. And I’m just gonna let you know, while there might be a salad or TWO present...a good Midwest church potluck is going to need to involve more than a table full of leafy greens!
So before the next one, Megan stood up in front of the congregation to have a little talk. And she invited everyone to think beyond the salad. In fact, she invited people to bring a dish that was distinctively representative of them and their culture. The MAJORITY of our congregation was originally from somewhere other than California, some were from other countries, so the encouragement was to show up, not with something that seemed like it would be an easy crowd-pleaser, but with something that was totally, authentically an expression of who they were. THAT was what we wanted to see at these dinners.
And that next Community Dinner was AWESOME. Our friends from Minnesota brought Hot Dish...I didn’t even know what hot dish was, just FYI, it’s a casserole with a better name. Another friend brought his mom’s signature holiday side, someone else brought tacos. Yes, there were still some salads! But there was nothing generic about this meal. It was memorable, it made an impact. People exchanged recipes and told stories and what I saw was that (SLIDE) when we show up as our authentic, distinctive selves, it impacts everything.
I think that’s why this reminder to this church is so specific in how it’s presented. It IS a list of ways to live, but I really believe it’s deeper than behavior management or a bunch of do’s and don'ts. It’s about the power of when people and a faith community show up in a way that is real and reflects who Jesus is. The world can swirl all it wants, and it’s going to. But the Church and the people in it can anchor into who God wants us to be and as we do that, we can not only hold true to who we were made to be, but we can live in a way that lets the love and hope and justice of Jesus be present around us.
As we sail into a new season as a church community, I want us to keep the things that are authentically and distinctively us in front of us. To remember who God has called us uniquely to be. I really believe God has given this church a unique and specific call for this exact moment in time, in this exact community, with the exact people who gather here.
And so I just want to remind you, of what our list of what makes us US looks like. These are our anchors:
(SLIDE) We are an open community of Christians. This expresses itself in so many different ways, we see it in the way we practice LGBTQIA+ inclusion and affirmation, we see it in the ways we work for racial and economic justice, we see it in the ways that we can be a spiritual home for people who have felt hurt or rejected by the Church. It’s one of my favorite things about us, because I know that we all bring our different stories and experiences and it’s THROUGH those differences and diversity that we reflect who God is to each other.
(SLIDE) We find and give hope through Jesus Christ. Something I love to talk about is how our faith and following of Jesus informs everything I just told you about. We BASE our whole expression of Church on trying to be more like Jesus and bringing that hope to our world. Every action we take, we want it to be based on who Jesus is and how Jesus calls us to love each other.
(SLIDE) We create spaces of belonging. You hear it every single week on our announcement video: “You belong here.” You see it on our shirts and signs, it’s a big part of who we are! We’re a community that, when we’re at our best, we’re curious about each other, we hold our stories with tenderness and empathy, we celebrate each other, we mourn together, we make space to grow and change and be who we are together.
These are just a few of the pieces that make us a distinctive church community. We’re not perfect, and I don’t think any church is; I don’t think the church we read about today was either. But I do believe we are called by God to do some really significant things. And as we hold on to God’s calling, as we hold on to who God has made us to be, as we hold on to who Jesus is...those are our anchors that will keep us where we want to be, as keep moving in the direction that God wants us to go.
Let’s pray.