LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 117

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3. GREETINGS FROM BISHOP OF EVANGELICAL
LUTHERAN CHURCH IN KENYA
Ninawasalimu wote katika Jina la Yesu Kristo alive
Bwana na Mwokozi wetu—I greet you all in the name of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!
Being with you during this convention and witnessing
the historic discussions on the proposed pulpit and altar fellowship between The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya, I want to
take us all before the magnificent picture of the church portrayed in the Old Testament in a passage, to which our
dear Lord Jesus Christ and His holy apostles referred when
they taught the primitive church about its present time and
the future. This passage is taken from the hymnbook of
Jesus, the Book of Psalms:
“The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ The
LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion; you
will rule in the midst of your enemies. Your troops will
be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy
majesty, from the womb of the dawn you will receive the
dew of your youth.” Ps. 110:1–3

First of all, we read here the Ascension and the celestial
coronation of the Son of Man and the Lamb of God: “Sit at
my right hand.” This very same truth has entered the chief
Christian symbols as the fulfillment of the prophetic hymn
of the Messiah of Israel in Ps. 110. But the Lord of David
sitting at the right hand of God has not disappeared far
away from us, but He is carrying out His divine and royal
authority in Zion, in the church, in this world, in the midst
of the mankind: “The LORD will extend your mighty scepter
from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies.” The
Great Commission at the end of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew comprises these two realities into one: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me . ... And
surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
To carry out this divine and royal task means toiling
and suffering amongst all people. The toiling comes out of
the divine love so solemnly expressed in John 3:16, God
gives Himself to the sinners in His beloved son Jesus
Christ. God’s love demands us, makes us to go out with the
pure Word of God and the Holy Sacraments to find and
bring back to the living God, the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit, those who are lost: “Therefore go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them.”
In Ps. 110 it is being prophesied: “The Lord will extend your
mighty scepter.”
The suffering comes out of the reality that the church of
Christ is His Zion, in which He reigns always surrounded
by God’s enemies: “The Lord will extend your mighty scepter
from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies.” The
Epistle to the Hebrews encourages us in patience: “In
putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not
subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him.” Heb. 2:8. In 1 Cor. 15 St. Paul is referring to
this very psalm and concludes: “When the perishable has
been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is
your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ ”

In terms of love and in terms of suffering, the church
stands as an army arrayed under its banner, gathered together in its Lord and King of Zion, Jesus Christ: “Arrayed
in holy majesty, from the womb of the dawn you will receive
the dew of your youth.” The church is born out of dew of the
Holy Baptism. It is, indeed, arrayed, not rambling in disorder or chaos. It is not arrayed according to human traditions, not according to politically correct ideas, not in full
packed stadiums and gathering places in which Christianity is being mixed up with religions that have no true
knowledge of the living God. No, Zion, the church, is arrayed according to the Word of God, the doctrine of the
truth.
This doctrine of the truth was regained to us in the bold
struggle of the Lutheran Reformation. The church was set
free from the Babylonian captivity of human traditions and
laws. The church is continuously looking forward to its final
day of Reformation, namely, the second coming of Jesus
Christ. In the meantime, the message of the truth, the
proclamation of the Gospel, must reach out to all the corners of the world. Since the nineteenth century this message has vigorously conquered the African continent and
still continues to conquer drawing closer and closer to the
heartlands of Islam.
We must not shy off the love, not shy off the sinners who
do not know that they have been redeemed and set free in
Jesus Christ. Yet, we cannot approach them with our own
imaginations, our own daydreams of love but with the true
love of God in Jesus Christ, revealed unto us in the Word of
God. True love is always biblical. It neither opposes nor deviates from the divine scriptural truth. It cannot be frustrated even when it faces sheer ingratitude and hostility.
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2004 Convention Proceedings