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Faith's Assurance Brightly Flashes Text:
2 Corinthians
4:6 On this day, in the year of the Lord 563 or 561, the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Rome was dedicated in honor of the Apostles Philip and James whose remains (or relics) were transferred and interred there. Ever since then it is on or about this date that the western Catholic Church has commemorated these two apostles of our Lord. Though the commemoration of the saints was gradually corrupted by the false teaching that the so-called “merits” of the saints can be applied to the account of individual Christians—the false doctrine of salvation by works—the Church of the pure confession of the Gospel continues to recall the memory of those of exemplary faith who have gone before us in order to encourage us in our struggles and living out of faith. Of these two—Philip and James the Less—little more is known than what we have in the New Testament scriptures. Philip is mentioned three times, all in John's Gospel (John 6:5-7; 12:21-23; 14:8-9). And of the number of men with the name of James in the New Testament, this one is mentioned only in the lists of the apostles (Matthew 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). So we commemorate these two not so much for any exemplary words or deeds they may have said or done as for the simple fact that they were so honored to hear the Lord's call, “Follow me,” to be among the eyewitnesses of Jesus' earthly ministry, death, resurrection and ascension, to be sent to preach the gospel (which is what the word “apostle” means), and to suffer martyrdom for the confession of His name.
In a sense these are the best Apostles to commemorate precisely because we don't know much about them. As St. Paul says in today's Epistle, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.” How different a man like Saint Peter who plays major roles in the Gospels and so has been elevated in the memory of the church as the first of the now 265 so-called “popes” in Rome. Yet this James, son of Alphaeus, is commonly identified as the James who was the Bishop of Church in Jerusalem and therefore was actually more important in the beginning even than Peter in ecclesiastical terms! Saint Paul, of course, holds a high position for his multiple missionary journeys and authorship of most of the New Testament epistles. Of James and Philip we have no writings. But both were called and sent and preached and witnessed to Jesus Christ. Tradition says that Philip preached in Greece and Asia Minor.
This past week we were privileged to attend the vicarage placement service and the candidate call service at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. 241 men from both of our seminaries were assigned churches for their vicarage, the third-year full time internship experience. The process of gathering first calls for the fourth-year candidates from the congregations of the church began a little late and this month started with the prospect of 15 men from each of our two seminaries not yet having been matched up with calls by the placement directors of the seminaries and the Council of District Presidents. By call night, however, 102 men from the St. Louis seminary received their first calls as pastors, only 9 still in the category of "call pending." Our former DCE Mike Mathey is among them. They will receive calls, however, in the next month or two. 64 candidates also received their first calls into the pastoral ministry from Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, for a total of 169 new pastors.
If you've never attended one of those services much less experienced the strange mixture of nerves and joy of hearing your name and your destination spoken publicly for the first time (anywhere from Lansing, Michigan to Novosibirsk, Russia) you can at least imagine the significance for each candidate, their families and the church-at-large. Men from various backgrounds and places, with a variety of gifts are prepared and formed as pastors for the church. They discover that the Lord of the Church has indeed called them upon the blessing of their certification by the seminary faculties and the reception of a divine call as a pastor. In the rite of ordination the participating parish acts in behalf of the whole church in receiving the individual pastor, acknowledging his call as a pastor of the church.
Our risen Lord Jesus Christ instituted the Office of the Ministry when he appeared to the apostles and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld” [John 20:21-23 (ESV)]. The Ministry, therefore, is only and all about the distribution of the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation that Jesus obtained for us by his death and resurrection. He promises his ministers, “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me” [Luke 10:16 (ESV)]. And so it works this way, as St. Paul said, "For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' "But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!'" [Romans 10:13-15 (ESV)].
Paul says, further, that to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord means to “renounce disgraceful, underhanded ways, refusing to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word.” There have always been those who have proved themselves to be quacks, gamesters or hucksters, who pretend to preach the gospel but mix in their own ideas, plans and agendas for personal popularity or gain. Earlier in chapter 2 Paul calls them “peddlers of God's word.” And in 1 Thessalonians he says, “For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts” [1 Thess. 2:3-4 (ESV)]. Here we are reminded of Paul's charge to young Timothy, the same charge and warning to all pastors of every age and of today: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” [2 Tim. 4:1-5 (ESV)].
Prophets, Apostles and pastors are, for their high calling, first, sinners in need of the same forgiveness they are sent to proclaim. The scriptures are the record of their reluctance, weakness of faith, slowness to understand and even outright failure. But as preachers are, as St. Paul said, “to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” so does this same Lord support and nourish them with his daily forgiveness. When it comes to preaching the forgiveness of sins the pastor speaks as one with first-hand experience.
“For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.” Now if this is true of the apostles and of pastors, it ought to be true also of congregations and their individual members. Especially in these days when the church is surrounded by the increase of immorality in society, spiritual disinterest and even antagonism against the Christian church, and of flat out apostasy of some within the church, we must be concerned more than ever of presenting and proclaiming the authentic gospel of God in plain words from pure hearts with the only goal that many may hear and believe and be saved.
For anything and everything else that can be said, the one theme, the one message that must be said is the gospel of Jesus Christ, because we believe and have been convinced that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation, the only Savior. He is the Son of God who came to take on our human flesh and blood and in his body fulfilled God's Law perfectly for us, but then gave his life over to be the perfect and only, all-sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. His resurrection from the dead is the guarantee that God accepted his sacrifice for all sin. And now that Good News must be brought to every person that they may believe, be baptized and be saved.
When we say with Paul, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake,” we confess that it is the result of nothing in ourselves that we have become such proclaimers and servants. At the ordination of a new pastor it is the common practice that the pastors in attendance participate in the laying on of hands and pronounce a blessing. It has always been my practice, after speaking a blessing of scripture that I also make the sign of the cross on the candidate's forehead and say the same blessing I give to the little children that accompany their parents at communion, “The Lord bless and preserve you in the remembrance of your Holy Baptism.” For this is always the starting point—the beginnings of faith, the foundation of the rite of confirmation, the first words of every Divine Service, and the substance of ordination to the office of the ministry. As we will sing in the hymn, God's own child, I gladly say it: I am baptized into Christ! He, because I could not pay it, Gave my full redemption price.
It is in the strength of God's gift of Holy Baptism that we can bid defiance to sin and guilt, to Satan and his enticements, and even to death. Death, you cannot end my gladness: I am baptized into Christ! When I die, I leave all sadness To inherit paradise! Though I lie in dust and ashes Faith's assurance brightly flashes: Baptism has the strength divine To make life immortal mine. [HS98 844] With all the baptized, with Saints Philip and James, with our 169 new pastors and all preachers of the Church, and with the entire Church of every time and every place, we rejoice in the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior that has come to all through the “washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” [Titus 3:5-7 (ESV)]. ____________________
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