# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1973_S90
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

90 125th ANNIVERSARY SERMON

faith, hold fast to Jesus Christ! “. . . With all these
witnesses around us like a cloud, as examples, hold
fast!”

II

People of God, these words of the holy writer have
special application to us.

Looking to our own history, is there a delegate who
cannot marshal in review men and women of heroic
faith? Such a roll call would read: By faith Martin
Stephan took issue with the prevailing rationalism that
diluted the Holy Scriptures in the State Church of
Saxony in the 1830s. By faith a small band of 665 people
decided to Jeave their homeland in 1838 to travel across
the trackless ocean in order to settle in a strange land,
hoping to find the freedom to worship the true God of
their faith and life. By faith Wilhelm Lche sent forth
a stream of missionaries from a training school in Ba-
varia to a wilderness known as Michigan. What a bless-
ing this Michigan “mix” proved to be for the Saxons!
The plea of Chief Bemassikeh of the Chippewas among
whom the Bavarians labored became a watchword and
a battle cry: “TEACH MY PEOPLE THE TRUTH!”
They themselves soon became “the missionary con-
science” of the Synod soon to be formed. By faith 12
congregations sent delegates to found “The Ev. Luth.
Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States,” in the city
of Chicago, in 1847.

After the manner of the holy writer I, too, must say
that time does not permit me to tell of Dr. Wyneken,
Dr. Sihler, Dr. Pieper, Dr. Behnken, Dr. Harms, Dr.
Preus, and hundreds of pastors and teachers and great
lay men and women of God who through faith led and
guided the church through these 125 years! “Holding
fast the faithful Word” that held them fast, they kept
moving — east and west and north and south — and
very soon to lands beyond the seas. Like the writer to
the Hebrews, we too must conclude this modern-day
application by using the words of the text: “With all
these witnesses to faith around us like a cloud, we must
throw off every encumbrance .. . and run with resolu-
tion the race ... with our eyes fixed on Jesus.”

HI

Those words are intended to hearten us — even prod
us — to move into the future towards God’s great goals.
We are to be people in “mission motion” — no longer
a “kleine Herde” but a mighty army. Jesus, the Savior
of all men, bids us to follow Him. He’s out there “on
the wide and dangerous edge of things” where He
beckons us and wants our company! We dare not daw-
dle along, for the year of celebration does not suggest
that we live in the glories of the past. With “eyes fixed
on Jesus” and remembering “the so great a cloud of
witnesses,” we are to KEEP MOVING forward and on-
ward. No time left for complacency, for “ease in Zion.”
Time only “to redeem the time,” to make what is left
count for Christ!

This bids fair to explain why the Synod’s Anniver-

sary Committee has emphasized the thrilling history
that is ours — all of it His-story of mercy! — but em-
phasized even more the task that is ours, urging us to
move forward “looking unto Jesus upon whom our faith
depends” — and everything else. A twofold thrust is
urged upon us: Thank-outreach and Thank-offering.
Two years ago our revered President challenged the
Synod to win 125,000 souls for Christ before we con-
vened in this city, to get the Word out to people, to all,
as many as we can! Here is the secret of the church’s
strength and power, of her hope and joy! Oh, be very
sure of it—

Lose that Word — and we shall be lost.

Deny that Word — and we shall be denied.

Forsake that Word — and we shall be forsaken.
For this Word alone can teach men how to live, and
how to die, and how to live forever — and no other
word can! We must share it at home and abroad with
the growing multitudes to whom our Christ is still a
Stranger.

All of this is but an extension of the challenge of the
text which calls it a race. “A race” — I like that, if only
because it points up the urgency of the task. In a word
it is MISSION. It is caring for others spiritually and
physically after the pattern of Christ. It is doing all
the things listed in that excellent little TG Guide.

Our Lord Jesus is still the only Light on the dark
horizon of our time. And the JOY of the church is to
hold Him up lovingly, patiently, and persistently that
the world may see Him and be lifted up to God by Him!
Our generation has had enough of the preaching of
foolishness. What our dying world needs is “the fool-
ishness of preaching” — of preaching the Gospel of
Christ who stands in every man’s place as Sin-Bearer
and Substitute.

Some of you have read the play, “The Terrible
Meek,” and you will remember the scene where the
mother of Jesus is standing with the Roman centurion,
weeping in nameless sorrow. He is confessing with
shame the dark deed that he and others had done that
dark day. The mother sobs plaintively: “What makes
them do this?” The centurion replies: “They want
money; they want power; they want to possess the
earth.” And the mother, seeing her Son, hanging there
limp in death, sobs: “They have it then; they have
won.” But the centurion answers with a flash of in-
sight: “No, they have not won. Not while your Son
hangs there!” — So it is today. And so it shall be in the
time of man. The world has not won, the world cannot
win, so long as God’s Son hangs there, lifted up by us
before all — for He alone can save all, and love all, and
heal all, and forgive all.

To this blessed work He still calls us, and for it He
has equipped us. “God is not yet done with Missouri.”
I believe this explains in part the Synod’s remarkable
growth — from 12 congregations to over 6,000, from one
parish school to over 1,200, from one log-cabin college
to a magnificent chain of 16 preparatory schools and
seminaries, from a few scattered colonies in the Midwest
to a great church at work in 34 countries of the world.

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