Ordination of Jon Olson
June 4, 2006
The Day of Pentecost
DEAR HEARERS OF THE WORD
IT IS A MIRACULOUS DAY OF SPEAKING AND HEARING!
Dear members of Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Candidate Olson and Emily, fellow pastors, brothers and sisters in Christ, and most pointedly, Dear Hearers of the Word. Back in the 1890s my Grandfather was sent as a missionary from what now includes your district (Minnesota South) to the area of Alcester, S. Dak (Just south and west of Sioux Falls). About a decade ago, I preached the 100th anniversary of his ordination there. When someone translated a few sermons he preached in German, I became aware of how he often addressed the congregation: “Dear Hearers of the Word”. On this Day of Pentecost, on this Day of Ordination and Installation of a new pastor at Our Saviour, take that address for all its worth – because its worth a lot – “Dear Hearers of the Word.”
Pentecost is a miracle of speaking and hearing! Fifty days after the resurrection, it was originally a feast of first fruits of the wheat harvest. The rabbis had also made it into a celebration of God’s giving the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. When the Holy Spirit came down in rich measure He did not major in marvels of nature or displays of physical phenomenon. He majored in words about the Word made flesh. The other wonders (the tongues of fire, the mighty rushing wind) called attention to this miracle of speaking and hearing.
“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues (languages) as the Spirit gave them utterance.” The international audience that was present asked in astonishment, “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” Dear Hearers of the Word You would have heard in English from those who normally spoke in Aramaic or Greek or Hebrew.
Sometimes it is necessary to restate the obvious. An obvious truth that needs restating in our day is this: the profusion of languages in the world is not a good thing. Every so often one hears the multiplicity of languages described as a richness of evolution. It is not richness, however, but poverty due to human sin. And man did not evolve he was created in the image of God. The language God gave at creation was shared by all human beings until Babel. “Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.”
On the Day of Pentecost that confusion was temporarily set aside. Everyone in Jerusalem heard the Spirit-given words about Christ in their own language? The miracle of speaking and hearing that occurred centered on God’s accusing law and God’s forgiving Gospel. With painful and pointed sharpness, Peter said, “You put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross (Acts 2:23). Those who came to celebrate the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai were cut down by the law on the Day of Pentecost. “You put Him (that is the Messiah/the Saviour) to death”. God knows how vital it is that we recognize our sin, our own, grievous, damnable sin.
Dear Hearers of the Word – Your sin and mine also put Him to death on the cross. The heart of sin is unbelief. We want to take God off the throne and put ourselves on - everyday. And so we worry and whine and wish for other things. We seek to build our own towers of Babel, towers of pride or pleasure or profit or self-protection or self-promotion; towers of misplaced priorities or misguided spirituality. Why is it that from our youth any of us would withhold our first fruit proportionate gifts for the spread of the Gospel? Why is it, try as we might, that we cannot tame our tongues?
The planners of the tower of Babel didn’t have anything over on the people in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. The planners of the tower of Babel don’t have anything over on you or me or the people of Pipestone in 2006. “You put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross”. That’s what our self-centered tower building does. God knows how vital it is that we recognize our sin, our own, grievous, damnable sin.
On Pentecost, God provided the miracle of speaking and hearing that tears down self-made towers that can never reach heaven. On Pentecost, God poured out the Holy Spirit to teach the Apostles all things, bringing to their remembrance all that Jesus said and did (John 14: 15). Dear Hearers of the Word, Pentecost is a miracle that is still going on today. Pentecost is all about words – words the Holy Spirit brings us from the tongue of Jesus, which words He received from the Father. The Holy Trinity is united in this miracle of words that bring us the Word made flesh, to save us from sin and death and hell.
These words are so vital, they determine whether we love God or not. “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” Love as God defines it is not a matter of how we feel. Rather, true love lives from the words of Jesus Christ.
Not only the singular “word”, is used here, but the plural “words”. Words are the means by which the Holy Spirit brings Jesus to us. Jesus and His words go together. Refusal to cherish Jesus’ words is a rejection of the Father and a rejection of the Holy Spirit. In the battle for our souls, the tool the Holy Spirit uses is words, God’s words. That’s what the risen Christ sent out the Apostles to deliver. That’s what the risen and ascended Christ calls pastors to hand over to His people today. Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the speaking of Christ (Rom. 10:17).
Dear Hearers of the Word, God gives you a pastor today whom he wants you to listen to. You are to pray for Him. You are to encourage Him. You are to share all good things with him in monetary support. You are to respect him for the work God calls him to in your midst. But most of all, you are to listen to the Word of God he proclaims to you. That’s why God gives him to you today. You are not to try to build your pastor into a tower of you own choosing. The first two offices in Luther’s Table of Duties in the Small Catechism are wonderful helps to us in this regard.
Candidate Olson, you are not to try to make the office of the public ministry into a tower of your own choosing. You are not to lord it over His sheep in this place. You are not to dream up a master plan for this congregation and use the people as stepping stones in an effort to achieve it. You are to love God’s people by giving attention to the Word and Sacrament of the true Master and rejoice in the blessings it brings and suffer through the crosses it brings. And it will bring both.
You are not to offer God’s people here one of the contemporary models of Jesus separated from His words. There are plenty of such models to choose from in pop-Christianity. There is the practical Jesus who is politically correct, who guarantees statistical success and social approval. There is the Americanized Jesus who feels equally at home in church, synagogue, or mosque and who accepts every prayer to any god. There is the spiritual Jesus who will help you tap the divine potential within yourself or get in touch with the spiritual forces of nature or Eastern meditation. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Jesus here, Jesus there! That Jesus, this Jesus! There are plenty of Jesus models to choose from. You and I and our synod are not immune from these temptations. The pressure is on to find a Jesus who fits our tower building plans. The one Jesus that is not particularly popular today nor in any age is the Jesus of true doctrine, the one who says, “whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” That’s also why the loving scriptural practice of Closed Communion is not well understood in our day. It is not a statement that we are better than someone else on some scale of religious goodness. It is rather the loving statement that we are in the same boat as everyone else, dying sinners in a dying world, and that our only hope is the presence and words of Jesus.
You see, the true Jesus always goes together with His words. It is no accident that St. Paul bids young pastor Timothy, “pay close attention to yourself and the doctrine; persevere in these things: for as you do this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (I Tim. 4:16). It is no accident that the rite of ordination and installation requires Candidate Olson to promise faithfulness to the Scriptures and to the Lutheran Confessions. Eternal salvation is tied to the Word and the words that are preached from this pulpit.
You see the miracle of Pentecost is still going on today, a miracle of speaking and hearing, a miracle of words grounded in the Word made flesh. Christ’s pastor in this place is to preach the law so clearly that it will crush towers of self-righteousness and statistical sainthood and guide hearts to believe what the liturgy leads them to confess, “I, a poor miserable sinner”.
If they don’t hear the truth from you, where will they hear it? The evening news won’t tell us lest we switch channels. Political candidates won’t tell us, lest we vote for another. Educational institutions are too busy defending a religion that teaches these beautiful people are descended from flat worms. Pop-Christianity is too busy pointing out sin in society to major on sin in here (in our hearts). But Christ shed His blood to save real sinners, not pretend sinners. If they don’t hear the truth, the uncomfortable, accusing truth from you, where under God’s heaven will they hear it?
And yet, the message of our rebellious, tower building hearts is not the ultimate message of the miracle of Pentecost. If the law of God predominates from this pulpit than the pastor preaching needs to repent. The Holy Spirit never plays nice with our sin. But having nailed us, having put us to death, the Holy Spirit never fails to proclaim another life-giving Word. The ultimate message that everyone heard in their own language on that day centered on the forgiveness of sins that Jesus won on the cross. The ultimate message that everyone heard on Pentecost led to Holy Baptism, and to steadfast devotion to the Apostolic Word and the Breaking of the Bread (The Lord’s Supper). We need no new Pentecost for the first Pentecost is still upon us wherever Jesus is present to teach us and to feed us.
Dear Christians, Dear Hearers of the Word – hear this. He who hung the earth in space was hung on a cross – for you. He who fastened the universe in place was fastened to a tree of death – for you. O love beyond our knowing! O Grace beyond all measure! Do you see the beauty and richness of the very name of your congregation, Our Saviour? Not my personal buddy Jesus or my tower building Jesus, but Our Saviour! Not primarily Jesus my example or my leader, but the beating heart of all God’s love and work, Jesus, Our Saviour!
The real Jesus is the Son of God, true God and true Man! At creation, He said “let there be light” – and there was light. Yet at His incarnation, the Light of the World was knit together in the darkness of His virgin mother’s womb. At His crucifixion The Light of the World was laid in the darkness of death and the grave. O love beyond our knowing! O Grace beyond all measure! Our Saviour! This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and gave His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, our grievous, damnable sins.
That’s what Jesus meant when He said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” His peace doesn’t automatically come with a happy marriage or with enough income to pay the bills or with retirement and relaxation. And whoever said that relaxation necessarily comes with retirement. In fact, His peace can be present when all these things are absent. The truth is that His peace can’t be pursued or procured by us in any way. His peace is a gift!
“Not as the world gives do I give to you”. His peace is a gift that is more than a vague feeling of peace. His peace is more than the fragile peace between peoples and within our own hearts. Whether earthly peace is sought through written treaties or with ceremonies employing pipestone peace pipes it is always temporary and under attack. Peace is threatened by the confusion of languages and the differences in cultures. Peace is threatened by our sinful tower building desires. Peace is threatened by the moral free fall of our culture of death and the dishonoring of God’s gift of marriage. True peace is threatened by the modern church so willing to set aside doctrine to be at peace with our decaying culture. Peace is threatened by our own fearful and restless and troubled hearts.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.” The peace Jesus promised here is an objective peace purchased by the blood of His cross. It is peace in the heart of God toward you for Jesus’ sake. Beloved, God is at perfect peace with you in Christ, Our Saviour. No matter how much turmoil may buffet your life, no matter how unsettled your heart may feel, in the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, God is at peace with you. If you think some sin of the past is too great for His forgiveness – not so. Jesus and His words go together and it was He who said from the cross, “It is finished!” Your sins are not greater than the death of the Holy Son of God. God is at perfect peace with you in Christ, Our Saviour.
That’s why He baptized you into the death of Christ. That’s why the first words the risen Christ spoke to His fearful, hiding disciples were “Peace be with you”, words of Holy Absolution. Dear Hearers of the Word, did you know that Dr. Martin Luther considered these words spoken in the Divine Service the one and most worthy preparation for the Lord’s Supper. Luther said the pastor should say the words “The peace of the Lord be with you always” facing the people. This is, he said, “a public absolution of the sins of the communicants, the true voice of the gospel announcing the remission of sins, and therefore the one and most worthy preparation for the Lord’s Table if faith holds to these words as coming from the mouth of Christ himself.” (LW 53: 28)
Dear Christians, that’s why nothing in all the world even comes close to the importance of gathering together in the Lord’s presence to receive His gifts each week. The Divine Service is the center of life because the living Christ comes into our midst to teach us and to feed us. He comes into our midst to give us peace – peace nothing in the world can give. “My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.”
His gift of peace comes in water and word and bread and wine in which He Himself is present. That’s what He calls pastors to serve His dear people. His gift of peace provides eternal pleasures beyond the Valley of the Shadow of death. You have His word on that, and Jesus and His words always go together.
Those who have died in the faith in the five decades of this congregation’s life do not miss anything in this valley of sorrow. While you miss your loved ones, they receive fullness of pleasure at God’s right hand. They are part of the company of heaven lauding and honoring Christ even as He comes into our midst to serve us His holy body and His holy blood. Their salvation, just like yours, depended on the work and the words of Jesus. Jesus and His words always go together – that’s why you can be sure of their eternal peace in Him.
Dear members of Our Saviour, dear Jon, as you begin your life together as pastor and congregation the Holy Spirit bless you with His ongoing miracle of speaking and hearing. The Holy Spirit bless you with humble witness and invitation to others to receive Christ’s peace- bestowing gifts in Word and Sacrament in this place and to spread them far beyond.
Dear Hearers of the Word “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Jesus is here in your midst and He is Your peace, In His Name, Amen.
The Day of Pentecost
DEAR HEARERS OF THE WORD
IT IS A MIRACULOUS DAY OF SPEAKING AND HEARING!
Dear members of Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Candidate Olson and Emily, fellow pastors, brothers and sisters in Christ, and most pointedly, Dear Hearers of the Word. Back in the 1890s my Grandfather was sent as a missionary from what now includes your district (Minnesota South) to the area of Alcester, S. Dak (Just south and west of Sioux Falls). About a decade ago, I preached the 100th anniversary of his ordination there. When someone translated a few sermons he preached in German, I became aware of how he often addressed the congregation: “Dear Hearers of the Word”. On this Day of Pentecost, on this Day of Ordination and Installation of a new pastor at Our Saviour, take that address for all its worth – because its worth a lot – “Dear Hearers of the Word.”
Pentecost is a miracle of speaking and hearing! Fifty days after the resurrection, it was originally a feast of first fruits of the wheat harvest. The rabbis had also made it into a celebration of God’s giving the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. When the Holy Spirit came down in rich measure He did not major in marvels of nature or displays of physical phenomenon. He majored in words about the Word made flesh. The other wonders (the tongues of fire, the mighty rushing wind) called attention to this miracle of speaking and hearing.
“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues (languages) as the Spirit gave them utterance.” The international audience that was present asked in astonishment, “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” Dear Hearers of the Word You would have heard in English from those who normally spoke in Aramaic or Greek or Hebrew.
Sometimes it is necessary to restate the obvious. An obvious truth that needs restating in our day is this: the profusion of languages in the world is not a good thing. Every so often one hears the multiplicity of languages described as a richness of evolution. It is not richness, however, but poverty due to human sin. And man did not evolve he was created in the image of God. The language God gave at creation was shared by all human beings until Babel. “Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.”
On the Day of Pentecost that confusion was temporarily set aside. Everyone in Jerusalem heard the Spirit-given words about Christ in their own language? The miracle of speaking and hearing that occurred centered on God’s accusing law and God’s forgiving Gospel. With painful and pointed sharpness, Peter said, “You put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross (Acts 2:23). Those who came to celebrate the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai were cut down by the law on the Day of Pentecost. “You put Him (that is the Messiah/the Saviour) to death”. God knows how vital it is that we recognize our sin, our own, grievous, damnable sin.
Dear Hearers of the Word – Your sin and mine also put Him to death on the cross. The heart of sin is unbelief. We want to take God off the throne and put ourselves on - everyday. And so we worry and whine and wish for other things. We seek to build our own towers of Babel, towers of pride or pleasure or profit or self-protection or self-promotion; towers of misplaced priorities or misguided spirituality. Why is it that from our youth any of us would withhold our first fruit proportionate gifts for the spread of the Gospel? Why is it, try as we might, that we cannot tame our tongues?
The planners of the tower of Babel didn’t have anything over on the people in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. The planners of the tower of Babel don’t have anything over on you or me or the people of Pipestone in 2006. “You put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross”. That’s what our self-centered tower building does. God knows how vital it is that we recognize our sin, our own, grievous, damnable sin.
On Pentecost, God provided the miracle of speaking and hearing that tears down self-made towers that can never reach heaven. On Pentecost, God poured out the Holy Spirit to teach the Apostles all things, bringing to their remembrance all that Jesus said and did (John 14: 15). Dear Hearers of the Word, Pentecost is a miracle that is still going on today. Pentecost is all about words – words the Holy Spirit brings us from the tongue of Jesus, which words He received from the Father. The Holy Trinity is united in this miracle of words that bring us the Word made flesh, to save us from sin and death and hell.
These words are so vital, they determine whether we love God or not. “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” Love as God defines it is not a matter of how we feel. Rather, true love lives from the words of Jesus Christ.
Not only the singular “word”, is used here, but the plural “words”. Words are the means by which the Holy Spirit brings Jesus to us. Jesus and His words go together. Refusal to cherish Jesus’ words is a rejection of the Father and a rejection of the Holy Spirit. In the battle for our souls, the tool the Holy Spirit uses is words, God’s words. That’s what the risen Christ sent out the Apostles to deliver. That’s what the risen and ascended Christ calls pastors to hand over to His people today. Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the speaking of Christ (Rom. 10:17).
Dear Hearers of the Word, God gives you a pastor today whom he wants you to listen to. You are to pray for Him. You are to encourage Him. You are to share all good things with him in monetary support. You are to respect him for the work God calls him to in your midst. But most of all, you are to listen to the Word of God he proclaims to you. That’s why God gives him to you today. You are not to try to build your pastor into a tower of you own choosing. The first two offices in Luther’s Table of Duties in the Small Catechism are wonderful helps to us in this regard.
Candidate Olson, you are not to try to make the office of the public ministry into a tower of your own choosing. You are not to lord it over His sheep in this place. You are not to dream up a master plan for this congregation and use the people as stepping stones in an effort to achieve it. You are to love God’s people by giving attention to the Word and Sacrament of the true Master and rejoice in the blessings it brings and suffer through the crosses it brings. And it will bring both.
You are not to offer God’s people here one of the contemporary models of Jesus separated from His words. There are plenty of such models to choose from in pop-Christianity. There is the practical Jesus who is politically correct, who guarantees statistical success and social approval. There is the Americanized Jesus who feels equally at home in church, synagogue, or mosque and who accepts every prayer to any god. There is the spiritual Jesus who will help you tap the divine potential within yourself or get in touch with the spiritual forces of nature or Eastern meditation. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Jesus here, Jesus there! That Jesus, this Jesus! There are plenty of Jesus models to choose from. You and I and our synod are not immune from these temptations. The pressure is on to find a Jesus who fits our tower building plans. The one Jesus that is not particularly popular today nor in any age is the Jesus of true doctrine, the one who says, “whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” That’s also why the loving scriptural practice of Closed Communion is not well understood in our day. It is not a statement that we are better than someone else on some scale of religious goodness. It is rather the loving statement that we are in the same boat as everyone else, dying sinners in a dying world, and that our only hope is the presence and words of Jesus.
You see, the true Jesus always goes together with His words. It is no accident that St. Paul bids young pastor Timothy, “pay close attention to yourself and the doctrine; persevere in these things: for as you do this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (I Tim. 4:16). It is no accident that the rite of ordination and installation requires Candidate Olson to promise faithfulness to the Scriptures and to the Lutheran Confessions. Eternal salvation is tied to the Word and the words that are preached from this pulpit.
You see the miracle of Pentecost is still going on today, a miracle of speaking and hearing, a miracle of words grounded in the Word made flesh. Christ’s pastor in this place is to preach the law so clearly that it will crush towers of self-righteousness and statistical sainthood and guide hearts to believe what the liturgy leads them to confess, “I, a poor miserable sinner”.
If they don’t hear the truth from you, where will they hear it? The evening news won’t tell us lest we switch channels. Political candidates won’t tell us, lest we vote for another. Educational institutions are too busy defending a religion that teaches these beautiful people are descended from flat worms. Pop-Christianity is too busy pointing out sin in society to major on sin in here (in our hearts). But Christ shed His blood to save real sinners, not pretend sinners. If they don’t hear the truth, the uncomfortable, accusing truth from you, where under God’s heaven will they hear it?
And yet, the message of our rebellious, tower building hearts is not the ultimate message of the miracle of Pentecost. If the law of God predominates from this pulpit than the pastor preaching needs to repent. The Holy Spirit never plays nice with our sin. But having nailed us, having put us to death, the Holy Spirit never fails to proclaim another life-giving Word. The ultimate message that everyone heard in their own language on that day centered on the forgiveness of sins that Jesus won on the cross. The ultimate message that everyone heard on Pentecost led to Holy Baptism, and to steadfast devotion to the Apostolic Word and the Breaking of the Bread (The Lord’s Supper). We need no new Pentecost for the first Pentecost is still upon us wherever Jesus is present to teach us and to feed us.
Dear Christians, Dear Hearers of the Word – hear this. He who hung the earth in space was hung on a cross – for you. He who fastened the universe in place was fastened to a tree of death – for you. O love beyond our knowing! O Grace beyond all measure! Do you see the beauty and richness of the very name of your congregation, Our Saviour? Not my personal buddy Jesus or my tower building Jesus, but Our Saviour! Not primarily Jesus my example or my leader, but the beating heart of all God’s love and work, Jesus, Our Saviour!
The real Jesus is the Son of God, true God and true Man! At creation, He said “let there be light” – and there was light. Yet at His incarnation, the Light of the World was knit together in the darkness of His virgin mother’s womb. At His crucifixion The Light of the World was laid in the darkness of death and the grave. O love beyond our knowing! O Grace beyond all measure! Our Saviour! This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and gave His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, our grievous, damnable sins.
That’s what Jesus meant when He said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” His peace doesn’t automatically come with a happy marriage or with enough income to pay the bills or with retirement and relaxation. And whoever said that relaxation necessarily comes with retirement. In fact, His peace can be present when all these things are absent. The truth is that His peace can’t be pursued or procured by us in any way. His peace is a gift!
“Not as the world gives do I give to you”. His peace is a gift that is more than a vague feeling of peace. His peace is more than the fragile peace between peoples and within our own hearts. Whether earthly peace is sought through written treaties or with ceremonies employing pipestone peace pipes it is always temporary and under attack. Peace is threatened by the confusion of languages and the differences in cultures. Peace is threatened by our sinful tower building desires. Peace is threatened by the moral free fall of our culture of death and the dishonoring of God’s gift of marriage. True peace is threatened by the modern church so willing to set aside doctrine to be at peace with our decaying culture. Peace is threatened by our own fearful and restless and troubled hearts.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.” The peace Jesus promised here is an objective peace purchased by the blood of His cross. It is peace in the heart of God toward you for Jesus’ sake. Beloved, God is at perfect peace with you in Christ, Our Saviour. No matter how much turmoil may buffet your life, no matter how unsettled your heart may feel, in the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, God is at peace with you. If you think some sin of the past is too great for His forgiveness – not so. Jesus and His words go together and it was He who said from the cross, “It is finished!” Your sins are not greater than the death of the Holy Son of God. God is at perfect peace with you in Christ, Our Saviour.
That’s why He baptized you into the death of Christ. That’s why the first words the risen Christ spoke to His fearful, hiding disciples were “Peace be with you”, words of Holy Absolution. Dear Hearers of the Word, did you know that Dr. Martin Luther considered these words spoken in the Divine Service the one and most worthy preparation for the Lord’s Supper. Luther said the pastor should say the words “The peace of the Lord be with you always” facing the people. This is, he said, “a public absolution of the sins of the communicants, the true voice of the gospel announcing the remission of sins, and therefore the one and most worthy preparation for the Lord’s Table if faith holds to these words as coming from the mouth of Christ himself.” (LW 53: 28)
Dear Christians, that’s why nothing in all the world even comes close to the importance of gathering together in the Lord’s presence to receive His gifts each week. The Divine Service is the center of life because the living Christ comes into our midst to teach us and to feed us. He comes into our midst to give us peace – peace nothing in the world can give. “My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.”
His gift of peace comes in water and word and bread and wine in which He Himself is present. That’s what He calls pastors to serve His dear people. His gift of peace provides eternal pleasures beyond the Valley of the Shadow of death. You have His word on that, and Jesus and His words always go together.
Those who have died in the faith in the five decades of this congregation’s life do not miss anything in this valley of sorrow. While you miss your loved ones, they receive fullness of pleasure at God’s right hand. They are part of the company of heaven lauding and honoring Christ even as He comes into our midst to serve us His holy body and His holy blood. Their salvation, just like yours, depended on the work and the words of Jesus. Jesus and His words always go together – that’s why you can be sure of their eternal peace in Him.
Dear members of Our Saviour, dear Jon, as you begin your life together as pastor and congregation the Holy Spirit bless you with His ongoing miracle of speaking and hearing. The Holy Spirit bless you with humble witness and invitation to others to receive Christ’s peace- bestowing gifts in Word and Sacrament in this place and to spread them far beyond.
Dear Hearers of the Word “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Jesus is here in your midst and He is Your peace, In His Name, Amen.
posted by Luther Memorial Chapel at
6/08/2006
