LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 57

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President’s Report, Part 3
“Baptized for This Moment!”

By the Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison,
president, the Lutheran church—Missouri Synod
65th Regular Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod | July 21, 2013

Dear delegates,
Take heart! You are baptized! And you are
baptized for this moment.

A

short time ago, I took into my hand the historic gavel
which has been used to open and close LCMS conventions
for more than a century. It’s been wielded in every fallible
hand from Pfotenhauer to Harrison, and it will continue to be
wielded at every convention after the hand of this sinner is long
gone, dead, and buried. It was commissioned and carved in 1911
in Germany for the 100th anniversary of Dr. C. F. W. Walther’s
birth. Its wood came from the original Concordia Seminary log
cabin, which the Saxon immigrants built in Perry County in 1839,
100 miles south of here, 175 years ago this coming year.
Like most triennia in the history of our Synod, the one capped by
1911 faced real challenges. All the first-generation leaders were gone.
The triennium started with $942.46 in the bank and ended with
a debt of $28,562.99. How gladly I would take the latter number
today! First Vice-President Pfotenhauer was the first ever to lay
hands on this gavel that year, although it should have been Francis
Pieper. But Dr. Pieper—a name that every pastor here knows from
his doctrinal theology textbook—had been serving as President
of both the Synod and of Concordia Seminary, and it was just too
much. This great, second-generation leader and student of Dr.
Walther had suffered a breakdown. And yes, the President of the
Synod missed the convention that year! It would take the next year
and a half for him to recover. And so the Synod—begun with just
a dozen congregations and now 880,000 strong—moved forward
with a new president: President Pfotenhauer.
On the horizon were challenges aplenty. A world war with Germany soon turned ugly at home, where anti-German sentiment
was poured out on the people and churches of the Synod. Soon
after came the Great Depression. Then another world war. Then
the post-war theological challenges with which we still struggle
today. Through it all, this gavel opened and closed convention after
convention, some of them very controversial.
Should this gavel have any meaning for us today? Isn’t it just a piece
of Perry County oak—a quaint, nostalgic relic of our Germanic

RE P ORT O F T H E P RESIDENT

past, now long gone? Not quite. Why are these two faces on the
gavel—Luther and Walther?
You see, there is an extraordinary truth found in God’s Word. In
the Psalms and many other places in the Bible, the fathers (and
also the mothers too) are remembered. “I am so troubled that I
cannot speak,” the psalmist declares in Ps. 77:4. But then he goes
on to find comfort: “ ‘Has the Lord’s steadfast love forever ceased?
Are His promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be
gracious? Has He in anger shut up His compassion?’ Then I said,
‘I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most
High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember
Your wonders of old’ ” (Ps. 77:8–11).
Mary sang the same song, announcing the coming Savior, “He
has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He
spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever”
(Luke 1:54–55). God spoke the promise of a Savior to Abraham
and the fathers. He remembered His promises and brought them
to be in the birth of the Savior.
We are told in the Book of Hebrews, “Remember your leaders,
those who spoke to you the Word of God. Consider the outcome
of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and
strange teachings. For it is good for the heart to be strengthened
by grace” (Heb. 13:7–9a).
These “remember” verses are no navel-gazing, do-nothing, nostalgic,
retro-retreat to recover what was or regret the impossibility of its
retrieval. If you are under the impression that there was a golden
age in the Church—without struggle and controversy, anguish and
politics, without fallible leaders who suffer weakness and breakdown—then you know nothing of the history of the Missouri
Synod, the Lutheran Church, the Reformation, the Church prior
to the Reformation, or the New Testament, for that matter! There
ain’t no goin’ back. There ain’t no golden age to go back to.
2 0 1 3 C o n v e n t io n P r o c e e d i n g s

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