W 9^th Sunday after Pentecost

On the Ministry

            In the name of him who is the Good Shepherd of the Church, dear friends in Christ:  Last week when we met for worship, we spent some time examining the challenges faced by our spiritual ancestors who came to this country in the middle part of the nineteenth century.   They came seeking religious freedom and the right to worship God according to their consciences.  Strange as it may seem, at that time, authentic Lutheranism had been outlawed in the land of Luther.  Instead, the German Kaiser had decreed that there would be only two churches allowed in his empire:  the Roman Catholic Church and the Union Church, the latter of which was a theologically impossible and spiritually unsatisfying forced blend of the Reformed (Calvinistic) Church and the Lutheran Church.  The two would mix together about as well as oil and water.  But since the Kaiser himself was a Calvinist, it’s no surprise that whatever was distinctly Lutheran was completely covered up when the two were forced together.  The Lutheran part, like water in oil, sank to the bottom and disappeared.

So, if you were a Lutheran in Germany, things were pretty bleak.  Most of them, however, took the path of least resistance and went along with it.  But others, including a fairly large number of Saxon Germans, were unwilling to compromise the truths of the Gospel.   And because they were no longer permitted to worship as they wished in their own country, they immigrated to the United States and settled along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers in what is today Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa.  Here they organized their own church body – that eventually became our Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  And as we heard last week, its founding was less than trouble-free. In part, that’s because these Lutheran Saxons were all well accustomed to the national government having its hands all over matters of the church.  If fact, they were used to relying on the government’s involvement.  Back in Germany, church buildings belonged to the state and were maintained with public monies.  Pastors were educated in state-run seminaries, and placed in churches by mayors and city councils, and they were paid by the state.  That’s the way these immigrants had always known it, and so it’s how they imagined it was supposed to be.  But that’s not the way things could possibly work in America where church and state are separate.  They needed an entirely different way to do things, a way that was both biblical and workable within their new environment.  The trouble was that they didn’t know it yet.

Well, it happened that a crisis in the leadership of the church forced them to confront these issues all at once.  As a result of it, they were forced to ask such questions as, “What exactly is the church?”  “What makes a church legitimate?”  “What power and authority does a church have?”  “Who is in charge of the church?”  “Who determines who the pastor will be?”  “Is the pastor’s authority merely human, or does it come from God?” There were lots of other questions.

Fortunately, they had in their midst a very faithful and clear thinking young pastor named C.F.W. Walther.  He sought the answers to these questions in the Holy Scriptures.  The result of his studies was a total of nineteen theses (doctrinal statements derived from Scripture) on the church and the ministry. After he completed them, he presented them to the churches for consideration.  They were analyzed, discussed, and finally adopted by all the congregations that founded the Synod.  And as was said, they are to our church pretty much what the Declaration of Independence is to our country – so it would be good for all of us to be familiar with them.  (At least Pastor thinks so.)

So, last week we looked at the theses about the church.  We learned that the Church is not a visible organization, but rather its the sum total of all true believers in Jesus Christ – those who trust him for their salvation.  We also learned that the power and authority of the church is that of the Gospel:  to preach the Word of God, to proclaim the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name, and to administer the holy sacraments, which are the visible means by which this same forgiveness is delivered to the faithful, and by which the Holy Spirit creates and strengthens faith.  This power belongs to the whole church, both to the whole church collectively, to its individual congregation, and also to each one of its many members.

            Today we want to continue the discussion by looking at the theses on ministry.  (You have them as a bulletin insert, and you may wish to get them out now to refer to as we go along.)  We heard in this morning’s Old Testament reading that God promised to raise up shepherds for his people.  We understand that these shepherds are the pastors of the Church.  As a matter fact, the word “pastor” means “shepherd”.  They serve the Church of Christ under the Good Shepherd himself – just as Jesus directed St. Peter when he told him to, “Feed my Sheep.”

            Looking at the first two Theses together, we see that God himself has created the office of the pastor or minister, and that it’s something different than the priesthood of all believers that every member of the Church possesses.  According to the Scriptures, every Christian is a priest before God.  We all can and should share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we can all forgive the sins of those who repent.  We can do it because we have God’s own Holy Spirit within us.  And through us – through our words and actions – the Spirit works to bring to people the gifts of the Gospel:  faith, forgiveness, life, and salvation.  The pastor, since he too is a part of the church, possesses this priesthood just like everyone else – and yet, he has a distinct position in the church, with specific duties and responsibilities, that are assigned to him by God.  Today, in some religious circles, it’s common to hear that “everyone is a minister”; but the idea is not biblical.  It’s really more of a recent innovation that is part political correctness and part gimmick designed to help people feel “more involved”.  Coming from that point of view, instead of being a Sunday School Teacher, you’d be a “Minister of Spiritual Development for Christian Youth”; instead of being a Greeter, you’d be a “Minister of Public Relations and Evangelistic Assistance“.  Get the idea? It’s pretty silly – and it can get fairly confusing.  If everyone is a minister, then who is – or rather who needs – the minister?  Better to leave it the very clean and simple way the Lord set it up to begin with.

            Okay then, Thesis Three says that having a pastor is not an option for a church.  In the normal order of things that God has ordained for the good of his people, he wants his congregations to call and maintain ministers to be his undershepherds and to proclaim the Gospel in their midst.  We see this pattern established throughout the book of Acts and also in St. Paul’s many letters.  Wherever congregations appeared, pastors were placed over them to guide them and feed them with God’s Word.

But these pastors do not belong to a special class or order that makes them somehow “better” or “holier” than other Christians.  That’s what Thesis Four is about.  It happens that in some religious groups, the ministers are looked upon as being something special.  In the Roman Catholic Church, for example, priests, monks, and nuns are believed to be part of a higher order of spirituality.  They are a little closer to the Lord than the rest of us. Priests especially are thought to possess certain powers that have been handed down to them by “apostolic succession”; that is, from the Lord Jesus, through the apostles, and from them through countless generations of other priests, a special mark is placed upon their souls at the time of their ordinations.  This mark or “grace” as it’s called, is what empowers them to perform the sacraments – but it also puts them a cut above the rest of God’s people in a spiritual sense. We say, “No.  The minister is merely a servant of the church, with no special powers or “graces”.  He’s no closer to God, and no holier than the rest of God’s people.”

            Well then, what authority does the pastor have? These Five explains:  only the authority to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments – the same authority that belongs to all of God’s Church. You also see there “the authority of spiritual tribunal”.  That does not mean that the pastor is some kind of judge who tries cases and decides who goes to heaven or hell.  What that is referring to is what we reviewed in the Catechism earlier:  that the pastor has the duty of withholding God’s forgiveness to those who are in sin and who are openly unrepentant.  Instead, he has the duty to warn such people that unless they repent of their sins and receive the forgiveness that comes from trusting in the Gospel, they cannot be saved.  When he does this, he is not using some special power inherent in himself. He’s only saying what God’s Word says.

            Thesis Six has to do with the authority to call and “create” pastors.  We believe that it is God alone who has the right to call men to serve as ministers and place them in congregations to serve as pastor.  No one dare take this responsibility upon himself – and so no one can come along to a church without a pastor and announce, “Now hear this:  I am your pastor now.  Listen to me.”  Remember it was the Lord who called his prophets; and Jesus who called his disciples, saying to them, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”  Obviously, these days Jesus doesn’t walk up to people like he did to St. Matthew who was busily working as a tax collector and say, “Stop what you’re doing and come follow me.”  That physical, visible, walking, talking Jesus is not seen today. But the body of Christ is here:  it’s his Church.  And within the Church is Christ’s Holy Spirit.  And so, when a church, which is the body of Christ, operating according to God’s Word, and with the guidance of his Holy Spirit, determines to call a certain individual to serve as its pastor, we recognize that Christ has called that person through the congregation.  That’s why we say it’s a “divine call” mediated through the church, and we do not speak of “hiring a preacher”, like folks in some other churches do.

            Because the authority to proclaim the Gospel and administer the sacraments belongs to every church, every church has the authority and right to call men to do it.  That seems simple enough – but again, that’s not the way it works in some other church bodies.  Many believe that only some kind of higher church organization or a specially authorized official of the church, like say a bishop or a cardinal, can make a person a minister.  Those who believe that usually also believe that the ceremony of ordination actually empowers a person to be a pastor, and that ordination can only be done by someone who has the power himself – it’s all part of that idea of “apostolic succession” I mentioned earlier.  We find no support for such ideas in the Scriptures. 

            Moving on then … in Thesis Seven we finally get to what a pastor actually does – and that’s the public proclamation of the Gospel and administration of the Sacraments.  Remember, as Christians, we can all proclaim the Gospel and announce the forgiveness of sins that is ours as a result of Christ’s sacrifice; but we do so privately in the conduct of our day-to-day business. We do it “one on one” as it were, like when you tell a friend about your faith in Jesus, or when you as a parent bring the forgiveness of God to your repentant child.  The pastor’s call is to do in the public sphere what we all can do privately:  specifically in the context of collective worship.  That’s why it’s the pastor who leads the worship, does the readings, and preaches the sermon.  And on those mornings that we have confession and absolution, when the pastor turns around and says, “I, by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the word, announce the grace of God to all of you; and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins …”, he’s not saying, “my ordination gives me the power to forgive sins”, rather he’s saying, “the fact that you called me to do this for you gives me the right to declare your forgiveness publicly.”

            It’s the same with the Sacraments.  Any Christian can baptize – and in cases of emergency, they should baptize.  But we also recognize that Baptism belongs to the whole church.  And so, when we gather here for a Baptism, the pastor performs the Sacrament publicly.  It gets a little trickier with the Lord’s Supper because there’s more involved; but the same idea holds.  Theoretically any Christian could administer Communion because it’s God’s Word that makes the Sacrament, not the qualifications of the individual who does it. Just the same, we usually don’t work that way.  First, because it’s hard to imagine a case of “emergency Communion”.  Secondly, because by it’s very nature, the Lord’s Supper is a group activity.  And there are a number of other reasons that would take too long to try to explain now. If you’re dying to know, ask Pastor when he gets back.

            But hey, we’re getting close to the end now. Thesis Eight may set off some alarms, but it shouldn’t.  Because the Church’s highest authority is to proclaim the Gospel, it makes sense that a person charged with doing that publicly has the highest office.  Which means, pastor to pastor anyway, that all pastors are equal since they all hold exactly the same office.  That’s why we don’t recognize bishops or some kind of priestly hierarchy in our church.  It’s true that we have a Synodical political structure – but that’s purely administrative and for our convenience.  Pastors serve their respective congregations; they do not serve the District or Synodical Presidents.  At the local level, all of the offices within a congregation serve or support the office of pastor – at least with respect to the primary mission of the church.  For example, the elders are charged with ensuring that worship services take place regularly and in good order, and they help the pastor with calling on the sick and overseeing the spiritual life of the congregation.  The board of Christian education assists the pastor by ensuring that children are being taught the Gospel, and so on.  These and other offices support and extend the pastor’s ministry.

            This does not mean that the pastor is some kind of spiritual dictator though – that’s addressed in Thesis Nine.  This one too sounds a little scary at first; but when you think about it, it’s a no-brainer.  When the pastor is speaking God’s Word, or expounding and explaining it, then he’s just a mouthpiece through which the Lord is speaking.  At such times, he is due appropriate reverence and obedience. After all, here is the guy whom God has called to speak his Word doing exactly that.  If you want to argue or resist, okay; but understand that it really isn’t the pastor that you’re going up against.  On the other hand, the pastor’s authority stops where God’s Word does. He has no business making things up or demanding that things be a certain way if God has not addressed it. Furthermore, following the procedure described in Matthew chapter 18 in which Jesus describes how to deal with a church member who has committed a sin and is unrepentant, the decision to excommunicate belongs to the whole church.  The pastor cannot do this unilaterally – and that’s good because pastors are human too, and they can let personal prejudices and feelings cloud their judgment.

Finally we come to Thesis Ten.  The idea here is that the pastor is the primary teacher and theologian for the congregation he serves.  As such, it falls to him to judge doctrine.  He is to “test the spirits” of all those religious ideas floating around out there, and evaluate how they stand up in light of God’s Word.  He is to make sure that God’s people entrusted to his care are not carried away by false teachings, or that they are enticed to sin by those who would lead them astray.  So he teaches, reproves, corrects, and warns the congregation about potential dangers and errors.  At the same time, every member has the right and duty to judge what they are being taught in light of God’s Word.  Sometimes even a good pastor could be wrong or mistaken – or maybe he’s just not making things clear.  On the other hand, some pastors are not good to begin with.  Others have fallen into error.  The church’s first and best line of defense against being led astray by a false teacher is a solid cadre of faithful and knowledgeable laypeople who know the voice of the true Shepherd, and can distinguish it from imposters. So everyone must be on the guard. But it’s also important to see that God’s Word is not subject to the whims of popular opinion.  Just because we can all judge doctrine does not mean that we can vote to cancel what God has said.

In conclusion, I’d like to say this:  we owe a great debt of gratitude to Walther and to our Saxon spiritual ancestors for having the insight and wisdom to develop and adopt these theses on Church and Ministry that we’ve been reviewing for the past two weeks. Because they are firmly based on God’s Word, they’ve helped keep our church faithful to the Gospel and flexible enough to keep operating in changing times and circumstances.  If you’re interested in learning more about our stand on these issues, or about the early history of our church, Pastor says he can recommend a number of resources to you.  Again, may our gracious God keep us through his church and his ministry in the true and living faith.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!