Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church—8:30 AM Morning Promise and the 11:00 AM Traditional services—8/19/01 

by Gregory S. Kaurin, associate pastor for spiritual care and development

 

Text: Matthew 28:20—

“And remember, I am with you, even to the end of the age.”

                                                    

The Sermon--

Making Christ Known by Building His Church

 

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First of all, this is the last Sunday of our six-week worship series that we have called, “A Great Commitment to the Great Commandments and the Great Commission.”  So, the past five weeks we preached on the Two Greatest Commandments and the Great Commission, which was again our gospel lesson this morning.  I would like to return, though, to the very first part of that series title: “A Great Commitment.”

Second, in our scripture lesson we are focusing on that very last sentence, “Remember, I am with you, even to the end of the age.”  Christ’s eternal presence.

Third is my sermon title.  I got it from the Mission Investment Fund of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  …Well, actually I got it from their stationary on which I was writing as I sketched an outline for this sermon.  But this is where I finally want to point us and this whole six-week series, to our commission and responsibility to build Christ’s Church.

Those are the three convolutions through which I need you to follow me: first, a Great Commitment; second, Christ’s promise of Eternal Presence, even to the end of ends; and third, our Commission to build his Church.

 

I.

 

So, first, a Great Commitment.  (It’s possible that you may have felt that we glossed over or assumed this part of the sermon series…until now.)  How many times has anyone, or more to it, how many times has another Lutheran asked you if you are committed to Christ and his Mission?  “Are you committed—heart, soul, strength and mind—to Jesus Christ?”

Well, I’m asking that question, without losing one drop of my Norwegian-German-Lutheran blood, or integrity.  So, take a moment with this question.  Are you committed?  Are you committed to this faith that you claim as your own?  Are you committed to Jesus Christ who claims you as his own?

 

…I believe, with every fiber and nerve synapse that I have, that you are committed to Christ and his mission.  And here’s why: There are two English words that have the same background, the same roots, and that still, today, in their literal sense mean exactly the same thing.  They are the words: “commitment” and “commission.”  Both words mean literally, “sent with.”

As soon as you willing call yourself a Christian and believer, you are embracing a commission that God held out to you, and to accept a commission is a commitment.  Whether you are commissioned from Christ, or committed to Christ—either way—your focus, reliance and base of the mission, or the sending, is Christ.  Maybe that seems a small thing to emphasize so heavily, but it leads well into the second point.

 

II.

 

Christ has promised, he said, “Remember, I will be with you always, to the very end of ends.”  Commission, commitment, they both mean, “sent with.”  In Christianity, that means we are not ever, never, sent alone; we are always sent with Christ!

If anyone is committed in this relationship, it is Christ, and he has committed himself to you.  And to your neighbor.  And to the tasks he calls you to do—not alone, but always commissioned with him.

 

This weekend, I was able to witness and preside over the send-off of another couple into wedded bliss: for richer or poorer, sickness or health, ‘til death parts them.  Wedded bliss? –Whoever came up with such an idea?

I think of myself as happily married as anyone …almost all the time!  But blissful?  (Maybe “blisterful” since it can be hard work!)  And here’s that word that people use, “commitment.” 

A “committed relationship” they call it.  And that’s not just about whether I’m cheating on Pauline or not.  A committed relationship suggests that I am actively “husband-ing,” responding to her mutual commitment by allowing our relationship to affect the way I live my life. 

I must let that title of “husband” change me.  It changes when I come home from work, where I go on vacation, what I eat, and where I sleep, (especially when that’s outside with the dog!)  Clearly, Pauline is a gift to me…and that she loves and accepts me is a huge, amazing gift of grace.  …Just ask her, and she’ll be glad to tell you how true that is!  But she is a gift by which I am willingly changed.  This is a commitment—a sending with—that changes the way I live and what I do.

 

Parents, you tell me: aren’t your kids, or your grandkids, amazing gifts of miraculous life, gifts of God?  (I’m glad you answered, “yes” without pausing too long!)  And aren’t they huge commitments?  Do children in the house change your lives just a little bit?  Yes, of course.  Family life, then, changes us in dramatic, obvious ways that we can see and describe.

 

Well then, …what about God …in your life?  Shouldn’t the promised, eternal, committed presence of Christ affect your life more than any other, his commitment to you and yours to him when you call yourself Christian?  Shouldn’t we see his obvious affect on your vacation, how you use your money, how you treat fellow workers, your spouse, children and parents, how you schedule your week and prioritize your time and life?

As real as your spouse or parent or child, as real as that person right next to you, is God.  He is in your life forever.  And God is not an idea or a moral system.  He is not a theology.  Christ is not the forgiveness of sins.  He is the one, the person, who gave you forgiveness.  He is not the acceptance into the Kingdom.  He is the one who welcomes you into his Kingdom. 

Do you get my point here?  Real, personal, living presence, so real, he needs to be transforming your life.  “Remember,” he said, “I will be with you, even to the end of the age.”

 

“Remember, always, to the end.”  There is a temptation to get all gushy with that text, and preach a bunch of platitudes.  However, Christ was not sending his disciples off with some kind of Hallmark® greeting, letting them know, “I’ll be thinking of you!”

I enjoy songs like the one Bette Midler sings that promises “God is watching us from a distance.”  I think it’s Steve Warner who sings that God and all his angels watch over us through “holes in the floor of heaven.” 

I like them, but I notice how they keep this comfortable distance between God and us.  We have warm feelings at being loved and watched.  At the same time, these songs show our independent streak, our desire to do what we want and when we want, our desire and tendency to strong arm God back up into heaven.  “Love me, God, but love me from up there.  ...Except when I need you.”

How many relationships work well like that?  “Love me from a distance, except when I want or need you.”  God won’t be a God on the shelf, like some favorite doll that we pull out of an old box and cuddle when we want a feeling of home.  God is in, and involved with our life and choices.  Even when we make bad choices, he is here.

I’m not saying, “Nix” to your free will.  I am saying that, if we can understand how our marriage and family commitments will necessarily transform and affect what we do with our “free will,” then we ought to plainly see how our Christianity affects this “free will” and calls us to transformation, …and into mission.

 

III.

 

Mission.  Mission is “the sending.”  This is my third point.

My dear disciples, Christ has risen.  He has defeated death and has given that victory to you.

He taught you about this victory by sending.  He sent parents and grandparents, Sunday school teachers and pastors, friends and others, and he’ll continue to send them to remind you and me.  And the only reason they were able to tell us is because others had passed it on to them.  The sending—the Mission.

So, my dear disciples, you and I have an Apostolic Mission.  We have been handed this Christian legacy.  I don’t know about you, but it is a legacy I believe should go on long after me.

I believe that Christianity is and should be handed on in many different forms.  I am, of course, partial toward Lutheranism and mainline Protestantism.  I think we have both the message, but also a way of telling and sharing it that is especially needed—not just way out there in the general world—but here in the Auburn area.  It is a message that needs to be told…by us!  When the population, when the area is growing, we have a responsibility to at least keep up.  Obviously, this isn’t growing just for growth-sake, but to shift away from ourselves, who have heard the legacy, to those who have yet to hear it.

 

I’d like to end by reading from the concluding remarks of Pastor Michael Foss, a Lutheran pastor who wrote this book, Power Surge.  Your council here at Messiah Lutheran has been reading, studying and discussing this book, one chapter at a time, in our meetings for the last eight or so months.  This Thursday, we are finishing it up.

He concludes this book by telling us about a little boy named Jeffrey, a toddler, who was a member of his congregation and who was dying of leukemia.  He visited Jeffrey in the hospital, and writes,

 

Two days later, Jeffrey lapsed into a coma.  After several hours of sitting at her unresponsive son’s bedside, his mother remembered having been told that hearing is the last sense we lose at death.  So she went to the hospital library and found a children’s book with a story she wanted her son to hear.  Between tears, she read aloud to her son.

The story was about a little boy, like Jeffrey, who was in the hospital.  The boy awoke in the night and, fearful of the darkness and strange place he was in, began to cry.  The next morning another child who shared his hospital room asked if he had cried the night before because he was afraid.  The little boy said yes.

“The next time you awake and are frightened,” his new-found friend told him, “just raise your hand into the air and an angel will come and take your hand and you won’t be frightened anymore.”

That night, the little boy, once again afraid and alone, lifted his hand and an angel came and took his hand, and he died.

When Jeffrey’s mom read that, all of the pain, all of the suffering—her son’s and her own—flooded over her.  Fleeing her son’s bedside, she went into the bathroom and wept.  After she had shed all the tears she could, she returned to her son and, once again, held his hand and wiped his feverish brow.

Hours later, with nurses, a physician, and the hospice worker beside her, she knew that her son would soon leave this world.  Then, unexpectedly, little Jeffrey suddenly opened his eyes, looked over his right shoulder, smiled, and raised his right hand in the air.  Then he died, his hand in the hand of the one who welcomed children into his arms and blessed them.

 

Finally, that’s what this is all about.  [Look around, this building, the altar, this service, and most of all, these people.  That message is what all of this is about.]  As Paul said in Romans 14:8, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”  The church knows that and is called to send disciples out into the world that the world might know it.

…All who bear the name Christian are called to proclaim the gospel of God’s love in Christ—and to live it.  The one who said, “I am the light of the world” also said to his disciples, “You are the light of the world.”  As long as the world is a dark and hurtful place, God will continue to send disciples to bring light and love to those who dwell in it.”

 

He sends us.  This is something I’ve prayed about for some time now, and I believe that this is a mission that God has called Messiah Lutheran to be working on, to build and keep building this church, not for us, but for those who need it.  And through it all, he has promised he’ll be right here alongside of us, to the end.

 

So, now, are you committed to Christ?  Yes, you are.  Because he has committed himself to you, and he has committed you to himself.  Amen.

 

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