(Sermon by Pastor Michael D. Schultz 05/07/06) 

INTRODUCTION:

There’s a limitless number of things churches get involved in.  How high in importance would you rank them? 

1.  There’s what you might call sports fellowship: the church basketball team, bowling league, soccer team, softball team, volleyball team, golf tournament, and undoubtedly some more sports that I haven’t named.

2. What kind of youth program do you have?  Churches can provide a safe setting where young people can hang out with fellow Christians, make Christian friends, share Christian values and be involved in peer counseling and support.

3. There are also the various “groups” – singles; divorced; 20-something’s; 30-something’s; seniors’ group; AA; cancer support; grief support – all designed to cater to specific demographics.

4. Or there’s the social angle – clothing ministries; running a thrift shop; food pantry; soup kitchen; hotline for abortion counseling, shelter for battered women; orphanages.

5. Or there’s the worship angle of church.  It’s where I go to be transported out of the rat race of the workweek to hopefully have a taste of heaven for what ought to be no more than an hour and ten minutes tops.  What do I want to get out of this worship service?  Where and when and how do I want this worship to take place?

Or I suppose you could adapt the famous JFK line: Ask not what your church can do for you; ask what you can do for your church.

This month upwards of 1200 WELS congregation are observing a Walking Together Sunday like this, and many of them will be studying this section from the letter to Christians in Ephesus.  When we talk, as we often do, about our church and our synod, these words are a reminder for all of us of...

What It’s All About

So before we say anything more, let’s hear those first three words again: It was he.  Strictly speaking, it’s not our church.  It’s Christ’s.  It was his idea.  It was his creation.  “What we want our church to be” is a little off the mark.  Jesus gave to the church various leaders with various functions to make the church what he wanted it to be – an assembly of people where two things happen: leaders equip people to serve people, and people grow strong and mature in the Christian faith.

With the serving and growing that is to take place, there is a goal: unity in what it is that we all believe, unity in how well we know Jesus our Savior.  Everything is to funnel toward that goal.  There’s to be growth in the knowledge and conviction we have and it’s the Word of God that accomplishes the growth.  When the wind whips up in this world of ours, there’s a lot of spiritual crud that blows around.  Don’t buy it.  Don’t be carried off by it.  Know what you believe and why you believe it.  The church exists so that under Christ we can solidify each other in the truth about Jesus.  That’s what it’s all about.

So when several hundred people are all at different levels of knowledge and maturity in things that have to do with Jesus, our words are laced with love and our hearts are filled with patience.  And if we are members of Christ’s body, then we each have our part or role to carry out. 

But churches aren’t always places where love and patience and tact are the order of the day.  Know any examples of that?  The Lord does.  We have what we think are our needs and we have a nature that much prefers to be served than to serve others.  Why is no one reaching out to me!?  And doing our part?  Either we feel that we have done our part plus the part of a dozen other people and we’re tired of having to do everything, or we haven’t done our part at all and we’re content to think that someone else will get the job done anyway so why worry about it.  The church is filled with sinners: the sinners we’ve been in not giving much more than a rip about serving everyone we can, the sinners we’ve been by not being concerned in the least with doing our part or carrying out the role God would have us carry out as a member of the body.  For shame!

For all such sins and for every sin, a hammer struck the nail that pierced the hand and pinned the glorious Head of the Church to a cross.  For all such sins and for every sin, a hammer struck the nail that pierced the other hand and pinned the Lord of the nations to a tree.  For all such sins and for every sin, a hammer struck the nail that pierced the feet and pinned the Son of God to a piece of wood.  Stretched out and stuck there, he became the target for how mad God was at us.  All God’s arrows pierced him.  Life left him, but it came to us just as it came back to him. 

Our church is forgiven sinners to whom God has given the desire and ability to serve each other, forgiven sinners who are willing to spend the rest of their days together working toward knowing and believing all there is to know and believe about Jesus.  That’s what it’s all about.  God use these words to remind us of that!

In our synod, the goals are the same, the group is just a little bigger.  In a synod (Walking Together Sunday), we do as a group of congregations what we could never do as a single congregation.  Our synod is not a label.  We don’t stamp WELS on our foreheads.  We are Christians united in faith in Christ.  What we believe does set us apart from some other Christian groups, but we don’t look down on others or close our eyes to the differences.  We thankfully walk together with fellow Christians in this church body, recognizing that our congregation is part of a larger body.

What is our part in that larger body?  This year worker training is being emphasized.  Training workers is like the tendons in the body.  It’s one of those things that holds everything together.  Without the continuous training of workers, pulpits and classrooms do end up empty.  I invite you, as God moves your heart, to do your part as a member of our synod.  Your prayers, your gifts, your volunteer work, your attendance at events – the Lord brings it all together so that the body can function.  I especially invite you to give your attention to Martin Luther College.  Every pastor, teacher and staff minister in our synod trains at that school.  It’s an important piece of the pie as far as what we all do together to function as a body. 

What’s it all about?  Our church and our synod are all about growing up in Christ.  Working together – pastor and people, leaders and followers, fellow Christians united in Christ – working together so that we know and believe genuine Christian truth and become strong and mature in the faith.  As important if not more important than money is time – to come together so God’s Word can make us grow, to listen to a presentation so we know what to pray about, to take time to encourage or support a student who is preparing to become a gift of Christ to the church, to serve someone else in the body, to get out of my schedule and write others into my schedule.  Investments of time are used by God to bring about great returns.

There a lot of things we could do as a church.  God bless our church and our synod, so that walking together in the truth, we will IN ALL THINGS, grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ.

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