{"id":51915,"date":"2015-10-15T15:26:23","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T15:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/?p=51915"},"modified":"2015-10-19T16:24:51","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T16:24:51","slug":"where-you-go-i-go-a-homily-by-rev-peter-weston-miller-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/2015\/10\/15\/where-you-go-i-go-a-homily-by-rev-peter-weston-miller-10\/","title":{"rendered":"“Where you go, I go” \u2013 A Homily by Rev. Peter Weston Miller ’10"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>Rev. Peter Weston Miller ’10,\u00a0Pastor at Atonement Lutheran Church in New Brighton, preached in daily chapel for our homecoming week series, “Journeys Home.”\u00a0 Here, he shares his homily from October 5, 2015:<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

You know it is such a sweet thing to be back at Augsburg and to kick off this 2015 Homecoming week.\u00a0This chapel is where I preached my first sermon. \u00a0I get to preach almost every week now at Atonement(!)\u00a0Through Augsburg Campus ministry, I got to fly in an airplane for the first time.\u00a0Augsburg is where that \u201cV\u201d word (vocation) really started to find me and I learned this vocation vocabulary that so many Auggies share.\u00a0Augsburg is where I met my partner. \u00a0We were both Campus Ministry commissioners.\u00a0Augsburg was where I really learned to love the city and felt like I was a part of the community.\u00a0Augsburg, also opened my eyes and my heart to cycles of oppression, white privilege, and where it really sunk it that no one should have to heat there home with a kitchen stove.\u00a0And Augsburg is where I really where I felt like I found my heart and my home, like I found my people, and found not just the family that is your blood but that family that becomes your blood (line from Finding Forester<\/em>).\u00a0It was the family that I met here that allowed me to be real, honest, broken, hurt, critical.\u00a0And yet also was gifted, unique, passionate, committed, and driven to discern what God and the world needed of me. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Family that Blood that Becomes <\/strong><\/p>\n

You see, I came to Augsburg pretty beat up and struggling. I was not quite 20 and I had been through a whirlwind of loss, my mom had just died of cancer, I had dropped out of school at that other place across the river and I was really disillusioned by the life.\u00a0I was wounded by life, I had squandered a lot of opportunities, I had self-medicated, played the popularity games and loss. I felt pretty worthless and didn\u2019t know what was next. I had me, but I never really knew what we was.\u00a0I needed this chapel family. I needed a gospel family.<\/p>\n

Ruth: I will go where you go<\/strong><\/p>\n

Augsburg is where I heard these words of radical form of family from Ruth for the first time.\u00a0Where you go, I will go.\u00a0Where you stay I will stay.\u00a0Your people will be my people, and your God my God.\u00a0Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried.\u00a0Ruth is someone who was wounded by life, she married into a foreign family, became a widow way too young, experienced famine, and really the loss of everything. She was the widowed daughter of a widow, which by all standards was pretty low in the ancient world.\u00a0So in other words, she is real.\u00a0And yet, she was fearless and committed in risking everything to become a new family, despite the naysayers.\u00a0She felt in her heart called to keep moving forward with Naomi and with the family that was her blood.\u00a0This foreign widow, resilient and fearless, becomes the great-grandmother of David \u2013 the greatest king in Israel\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Conclusion:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Good News for us in this text and what I p experienced at Augsburg:\u00a0There is solidarity and family here.\u00a0There is the family that can become your blood here.\u00a0There is kinship, a community of hope, and people that challenge you to be the God-inspired wonder that you are.\u00a0And through all the finals and events and relationships and heartbreak and journeys home and again:<\/p>\n

God continues to speak through people like Ruth saying: Where you go I will go, where you stay I will stay.\u00a0God always promises to be there through it all.\u00a0And that as we find our heart and our home and our people, I thank God that I found my family here \u2013 my people. And that wherever our feet may find other places and spaces, we have a community here that beats with the blood in the hearts of so many.<\/p>\n

Thanks be to God. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rev. Peter Weston Miller ’10,\u00a0Pastor at Atonement Lutheran Church in New Brighton, preached in daily chapel for our homecoming week series, “Journeys Home.”\u00a0 Here, he shares his homily from October 5, 2015: Introduction You know it is such a sweet thing to be back at Augsburg and to kick off this 2015 Homecoming week.\u00a0This chapel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":326,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[59,57,58,56,55],"class_list":["post-51915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapel","tag-atonement-lutheran-church","tag-augsburg-alumni","tag-daily-chapel","tag-homecoming-2015","tag-peter-weston-miller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51915"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51947,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51915\/revisions\/51947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}