LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 65

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THE DOCTRINAL ESSAY 65

We need Christians who will help indeed. But we
need Christians discontented with giving help short
of the great healing word of witness that in Jesus
Christ God is Father all the way, not only feeding
but forgiving. The greatest love that the Father can
have for His creature is not simply that through an-
other person He brings bread and medicine and com-
passion and peace but that He brings the Word of
peace through Christ and the forgiveness of sins through
the cross.

More than that: we need to help Christians so to
help. Other fields of endeavor know this well. The huge
amusement industry is there to cheer people with a
bit of escape in order to send them back to their jobs
somewhat refreshed. The automobile industry couldn’t
exist without the thousands of filling stations and ser-
vice centers that supply fuel and repairs for the mil-
lions of automobiles on the streets and highways. The
food industry would stop cold without the trucking and
distribution that supplies the retailer.

Christian men, do you realize how crucial the task
of every congregation is, and your task in the middle
of it? In these days we see the worldwide enterprise
of The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, we meet
missionaries from overseas, we get an insight into the
planning and plant that go into the training of the
church’s teachers and pastors. But all of it is ready to
fade into oblivion unless the Christians at home in the
congregations which you represent and of which you
are a part are willing to share the burden and contribute
to the work in prayer and interest and money. But
where does the will to that sharing come from? It
comes from them themselves as they encourage one
another and supply the will straight from the heart
of God in the edifying Word, the reminder of Christ,
who became poor that we be rich in our sharing, Christ,
who gave Himself a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
Through Him we have the Word of that work to share
which gives the faith and the love to make the church’s
witness possible and steady in every age and every
place. (Heb. 10:19-25)

Cc

Let’s look at the components of the work of the
Christian congregation. A television manufacturer ad-
vertises a set built into a drawer that you can pull
out and repair the components if necessary. Examine
this enterprise that you call the Christian church in
the place, and see what makes it work as it builds up
the weak and sends us all out into our world holding
forth the Word of life.

We put all of this work together under the term
“Word and sacraments.” Those words get stale, and
we have to fill them with meaning again and again.
“Word” means the edifying Word, the action of God
for us in Jesus Christ, His cross and resurrection reach-
ing us through the ways by which God causes them
to go to work in our lives. “Word” suggests the words
that are spoken in our services of worship, the lessons
from Scripture, the preaching, and the teaching. That
will do provided that we realize that through those

words God is causing the work of the Lord Jesus Christ
to take hold in our lives. This is the way that the Holy
Spirit becomes alive in us, namely as He causes us
to remember what Jesus said and did. (John 14:26)

To be wholly accurate we would say: “The edifying
Word in the words of the Gospel and in the sacraments,”
for the Word is at work in the sacraments too. In Holy
Baptism God for the first time sets up His heavenly
housekeeping in the human heart, as a person gets a
share in the death which Jesus died for his sins so
that he rises in the resurrection to a new life in and
for God with Christ. In Holy Communion, as we eat
and drink the body and the blood of Jesus, He causes
us to remember the very death on the cross by which
we have the forgiveness of sins from God and are
welded together into the body and family of people
who are pledged to love and help one another.

As the Christian congregation joins in Gospel and
sacraments, each one of its members has the oppor-
tunity to share that life-giving remembrance of Jesus
Christ with each other one. How does it come that
this live action of God in Christ doesn’t always seem
to happen in a service of Christian worship?

It can happen where the participants don’t under-
tand the words that they are hearing and saying and
singing in their hymns, or where they think that it
doesn’t matter that they understand. Then the whole
thing becomes a form and a sham.

Or it can happen where each participant imagines
that he is there for his own sake. He listens just for
himself; the Word dies as it reaches him; he is not
conscious of sharing it and passing it on. Practice that
sort of worship in a Christian congregation for a while,
and the whole process soon becomes sterile.

In this room at this moment sit three or four hun-
dred pastors who once studied preaching with me at
Concordia Seminary. I can imagine some of you say-
ing after these many years in which we have not seen
each other, “Prof, .have you learned anything about
preaching since we were in school? What’s new?”

Yes, the philosophers are telling us that our lan-
guage is really not capable of talking about God at all.
The communications experts are telling us that there
is no sense of addressing people unless they are minded
to talk to one another about what we are saying. The
Biblical scholars are saying that the first element in
the process of preaching is that the preacher himself
be struck by the meaning of the Biblical words and
give meaning to what he is saying. The interesting
thing in all of this is that Jesus and the apostles had
said it long ago, and we tended not to notice. (1 Cor.
1 and 2; Luke 24: 44-48)

The Christian pastor-preacher in the midst of his
people is in a most strategic spot for causing the edify-
ing Word to get started among them. But he has to be
sure that he is helping them to remember Jesus Christ
as Savior and Lord. He is crucial for helping his people
see what the Word of Christ can do. He himself has
to be displaying what it does, how much he himself