LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1992, Page 80

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80 ; LIFELIGHT BIBLE STUDY

He wants to make us prisoners of time and space. He wants
us to think that this little life we lead in this little place
where we lead it is our home. Here life withers away and
wears itself out. Tramp the treadmill, eyes on the ground
till the candle is snuffed. But let a man or a woman see
the church with its spires pointing to heaven, better still,
let them enter that church, let them fling their souls up-
ward, and hell is wise enough to know its time to tremble.
In church we discover that our lives have dimensions no
calendar, no yardstick can measure. To know that we are
not the prisoners of time and space is the gift of the church

to its people. In church we are coaxed and cajoled beyond *

the little city limits of this world toward eternal verities.
The constitutions of a number of New England churches
have in them this sentence: “living as befits those whom
God has bound together in a little bundle of eternal life.”
People who live as befits those who are bound together in
a bundle of eternal life are fearsome opponents of every
evil already in this world and time.

The question is, Is all this too lofty a picture of the’

church? Is your congregation more platoon minded than it
is army minded? As we gather here in Pittsburgh do we
more nearly resemble a religious arm of the chamber of
commerce or a political party at prayer? You and I, for
reasons known only to God Himself have been set down
in the middle of the most unique and challenging set of
circumstances the world has ever known. Never, ever, has
any group of Christians opened its eyes each morning upon
the challenges that face us. What our fathers, with their
agrarian background called “fields white unto the harvest”
refer today to the great metropolitan centers of our world
and country. We are in the process in this convention of
declaring the United States a primary mission field. Eth-

nics are gathering among us in numbers greater here than
in their native lands. We have developed a freeway civi-
lization where people live and move (well, out my way we
don’t really move but we do have our being) and even die
on our streets. If ever the church was called upon to be
God’s army of occupation in an alien land, a fellowship, a
communion joined and arrayed against the forces of evil,
a call, a rallying to a kingdom and a future beyond this
world, that time is now.

President Bohlmann yesterday reminded us that in the
third century Cyprian wrote to a friend, “In the midst of
a really bad world I have found a... holy people. They
have a joy and a purpose better than anything in life. They
are persecuted but they do not.care. These people, Donatus,
are the Christians, and I am one of them.” So am I and so
are you. The time has come to act like it.

Bible Study 2
What’s In a Name?
(Acts 3:1-10)

Our focus this morning is on Acts 3:6: “In the name of
Jesus... walk.” Shakespeare’s. Romeo was the first to
bring it up. “What’s,” he wanted to know, “in a name?”
Well, that depends. There was power to strike abject terror
down to the sockets of a man’s nervous system if you were
a recalcitrant member of the French underground in 1944
and the name somebody whispered hoarsely in your ear
was “Gestapo.” There is what it takes to bring a spring to
your step and a grin to your face if you’re a Portland Blaz-
ers’ fan and the name is Clyde Drexler. For ancient people
particularly, a name went beyond mere identification. You
can do that with numbers, as we have proved in this age