Our Savior Lutheran Church Burlington

Our Savior Lutheran Church Burlington Our Savior Lutheran Church is a member of the LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) Please join us for worship, Sunday School, and adult Bible class.

Saturday evenings 5:30 - 6:30
Sunday mornings 8:00 - 9:15 and 10:45 - 12:00
Sunday School 9:20 - 10:30 (temp. virtual)
Adult Bible class 9:30 - 10:30 visit www.oursaviorburlington.com for details

06/08/2026

June 7 Digging Deeper: Prayer as heartbeat
First in a series, “Digging Deeper: Prayer”
1 Thessalonians 5:13-18 // John 16:20-24

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon for today begins a series that goes deep into the nature of prayer, beginning with Paul’s exhortation at the end of 1 Thessalonians, “pray unceasingly.” Our text thus far.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

First today and for these five weeks, we’re going to be considering Prayer. Prayer as conversation. Prayer as struggle. Prayer as sacrifice. Prayer as both powerful and effective.

And today, prayer as the heartbeat of the Christian. I get this from Luther.

Here’s Martin Luther, commenting on John 14. It’s a long quote, but it’s a good one. “Wherever there is a Christian, there is none other than the Holy Spirit, who does nothing but pray without ceasing. Even though one does not move one’s lips and form words continually” (and here’s his first point) “one’s heart nonetheless does beat incessantly; and, like the pulse and the heart in the body, (here’s his second point) it beats with sighs such as these: ‘Oh, dear Father, please let Thy name be hallowed, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done among us and everyone!’ And when blows fall, when temptations thicken, and adversity presses harder, (here’s his third point) then such sighing prayers become more fervent and also find words. A Christian without prayer is just as impossible as a living person without a pulse. The pulse is never motionless; it moves and beats constantly, whether one is asleep or something else keeps one from being aware of it.”

There’s a couple things that I want to comment on here.

First, Luther says, it’s the Holy Spirit who prays in your heart. That means what we’ve been saying above, that it is only in the power of the Holy Spirit that prayer is actually prayer. You cannot pray unless you are a Christian.

And today, Prayer as the heartbeat of the Christian. So, what does that mean and where do I get it from?

Well, before I can say that, I need to answer the question, “What is prayer?” Prayer is, in some ways, in need of no introduction. Every religion ever has a sense of prayer in it. Every sports movie ever has a point at which the main character goes, “God, if you’re out there…”

It’s baked into the bones of your humanity to pray.

But, since it’s so ubiquitous, since it seems to be the air that we breath, it is especially good to find a definition. So, here goes. The English word prayer, it is derived from the word for begging, or asking. Prayer is communication with the divine. Communication, the passing of information and conversation, not with humanity, not to saints dead and gone, but communication with the divine.

Buddhists pray. Muslims pray. Jews pray. Hindus pray. Agnostics pray. And I dare say, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” So, what does it mean for a Christian pray Christian prayer, and how is it different from other prayer?

Well, not only do we have a different name, the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that we pray to, and the name—the identity—of our God is very important to prayer.

But the most important thing, the thing that differentiates Christian prayer from non-Christian prayer is salvation. A Christian’s prayers are heard because heaven itself is yours. Because Jesus who says he is in the Father and the Father is in him, he has cast out all of your sin and made your heart the temple of the Holy Spirit. Alive in Christ!

And because he has made you alive, he sent the Holy Spirit to live in your heart. “The Spirit of Truth, the world cannot receive.” Only Christians have the Spirit of Truth living in their hearts, so only Christians can call God their Father, so only Christians can “ask anything in [Jesus’s] name” and he will do it. More on that in four weeks.

Now, you may be thinking in your head, but what about Jonah and Nineveh. The Ninevites prayed and God heard them and then relented of his anger. What about that? Weren’t they unbelievers? Well, they were until the Word of God worked in their hearts. Then, the Word of God worked in their hearts and they prayed, not to earn salvation (like the Muslim), nor to empty themselves (like the Buddhist), nor to force God to act (like pagans), but as beggars falling on the mercy of this God.

Second, Luther says that the Holy Spirit’s prayer in our hearts is unconscious and unceasing. Have you ever wondered about that? Paul says “Pray unceasingly and you think, “How am I supposed to do that? Do I need to fold my hands and bow my head all day long?” “Is it bad if I fall asleep in the middle of my nightly prayers?” “What if I don’t know the words to say?”

Like Loren Gottschalk that could still remember the Lord’s prayer even when everything else in his life had faded away. Like baptism gives a faith deeper than just your intellect, so your prayer life, directed and begun by the Holy Spirit, is deeper than just words.

That’s how Paul says it in Romans 8:26, Groanings too deep for words, the Holy Spirit intercedes. You don’t have to come up with the exact right words for the Father to hear you rightly. Prayer is the pulse of faith, and our God, like a good Father, knows our needs and well provides us.

Third, Luther says that when adversity presses and temptation thickens and blows fall, then prayer becomes words too.

Like when your body’s working hard, and you have to calm down, you focus on your heart, focus on your breathing. Then things that you do every time, every day, these become the focus.

The prayer that is the pulse of the Christian becomes words when times call for it.
Sometimes those are long prayers. Sometimes they are ramble-y prayers. What I’d invite you to consider for today is something that some would call breath prayers. That’s just a fancy way of saying, a short prayer that you can pray in and out as you go for a walk or get on with your day.

Phrases like “Lord, have mercy.”
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
“Christ Jesus, be my peace.”
“God Almighty, you are my strength.”

I was going for a walk the other day contemplating some problems as I prayed, “Lord be my peace.” Which made me ask him “What do I mean by peace when I ask this?” Which let me down a rabbit hole of what I was really asking for.

And I wonder for you, what would it look like if you thought about your prayer life like you thought about your breath, your pulse?

Prayer is the heartbeat of the Christian.

Amen and amen.

05/18/2026

May 17, Easter 7, The Christian Community waits together.
Acts 1:12-26 // 1 Peter 4:12-19, 5:6-11 // John 17:1-11

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon text considers the readings underneath of the collect, which asks, “Leave us not without consolation but send us the Spirit of truth whom You promised from the Father.”

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

We’re at the end of the Easter Season, and we’ve been exploring what it is that the Christian community does together. We confess our faith together. We share together. We meet together. We die together. We suffer together. And today, we wait together.

A couple of months ago, my dad had his surgery, so I drove up there. Got there just in time to see him before he went in. And do you know what I did the rest of the time there? I sat by mom, and I waited.

There’s a lot of waiting to do in life. I remember waiting in the car for my parents to get done talking after church. It was a lot of waiting, the kind of waiting that my kids have to do now for me, for me to leave from church.

You wait for doctor appointments, then wait for the results, then wait for the follow up and wait for the specialist. You wait to get going and then wait as you go, and then when you get there you have to wait.

In our reading from Acts, we’re in the in-between, we’re in the waiting room. Peter and the other disciples, they’re witnesses to Jesus risen from the dead on the third day. They’ve been in Bible study with Jesus for thirty-seven days. They’ve seen Jesus ascend into heaven on the fortieth day. And they don’t know that it will be on the fiftieth day, on Pentecost, that Jesus will send the Holy Spirit. There’s a little bit of waiting.

And, like we can see from hindsight, Jesus also promised to return, and that would take more than ten days. I mean, the church has been waiting for two thousand years for Jesus to return. That’s a lot of waiting.

Now, Acts 1 at this point is the story of these ten days, these ten days of waiting, as the disciples and the eleven apostles are studying the Scriptures, they are making decisions and they are filling out the number of apostles by appointing Matthias to Judas’s place.

As a side-note, there’s no small amount of debate on how much Matthias ACTUALLY takes Judas’s place, or how much they should have made this decision. Notice this last little bit: he was numbered WITH the eleven. That foreshadows how perhaps a true twelfth apostle is only going to show up later, as called by Jesus himself, that is Saul whose name is changed to Paul.

And, I tell you that to tell you this. As they wait, they make the decisions that they can make. There are always reasons to wait. There are always times of waiting, and we are often waiting for many things. Make the decisions that you can make, as you wait. And when, like the apostles, you see the Lord reveal his will in his time, then recognize his will for what it is.

The Christian church waits together.

That’s what Peter means when he is saying, “Be sober-minded; be watchful.” To be sober-minded, it means, deal with what’s true and not with fantasy.

It’s like one of the words for patient, in Greek, the word hypomone. Hypo means under, and Mone means to remain. To remain, to keep integrity, even under pressure. To maintain your shape, even under a load.

Like a weightlifter, keeping good form even when he starts getting to his limit. He remains, under pressure.
Like a firefighter, keeping the hose steady, even when water is blasting through it. He remains, under pressure.

Keeping steady, under pressure. That’s patience. Which means that impatience is falling apart under pressure. Impatience is losing your integrity under load. Think about that net time you’re in line.

Go back to when I was in the waiting room with my mom. We did, like many of you have done, we waited for the surgeons to come out. We didn’t know when that would be, and much of the afternoon, we were there, sitting near, sometimes speaking about the surgery, sometimes not. Sometimes talking, sometimes not. Sometimes still, sometimes doing other things.

The real power of your Christianity is that, as we were there, together, there also was the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus promised. And the greatest comfort that comes isn’t that either of us had the power to fix what was wrong; the greatest comfort was that we were there together.

And, you see, when the Christian community waits, it matters less what you say and more that you are there.

Oftentimes, people will worry quite a bit about what they will say and whether they have the right words for it. Sometimes that will keep people away or stop them from sending that text.

But the real trick of it, the real value, isn’t primarily the words. It’s not your words that do the good anyways. It’s the way that the Gospel of John says, the value is that Jesus is with us because he is at his father’s side, and he is sending the Spirit, and we are in him and he is in us.

The real value is that we wait together. The real treasure, worth more than gold or silver, is that the life we live, we share together. The life we live is the life of the Body of Christ. And even when we cannot solve problems or take away all the pain…. And be honest with yourself, that’s most of the time that you aren’t the one that can do it.

Even when we cannot do any of that, and even when we don’t have the “right” words, still we can be there together.

But that’s not even the best part. Because this is merely a reflection of what Christ promised to his disciples and what he promises to us too.

The best part is ultimately what we wait for. From 1 Peter: 10And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” An eternal glory. A lovely ending. A day, to quote Samwise Gamgee at the end of Lord of the Rings, “when everything sad becomes untrue.”

He promises to send us a spirit of consolation and then he consoles us and through us, makes a presence of comfort for others. He promises that his word is a word that makes us steady, that sustains us, even under pressure. He promises that his Spirit is a Spirit of truth, that causes us to see the good and the bad and to see them as they really are.

And, most of all, he promises us that, just as he promised to send his Holy Spirit, which he did, and just as he promised to rise from the dead, which he did, which he did, and just as he promised that he would “surely be with us always to the very end of the age” which he is, he will return, just as he says.

And until then, the Christian community waits together.

Amen and amen.

05/11/2026

May 10, Easter 6, The Christian Community suffers together.
Acts 17: 16-31 // 1 Peter 3:13-22 // John 14:15-21

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon text is all three readings, but hear again the words of Jesus, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you…” and again in our opening hymn, “Alleluia! Not as orphans are we left in sorrow now!”

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

The Christian community suffers together.

This Easter season, we’re all about the Christian community. What does the body of Christ actually look like and what do we do together? The Christian community, we confess the faith together. We share together. We meet together. We die together.

And today, the Christian community suffers together.

There’s a thing or two that you can learn about theology underneath of a car. Not too long ago, I took my vehicle in for service to a local mechanic, and while they were fixing one thing, I asked them to look at another. They told me what it was, and I thought, it’s just a couple of bolts and a gasket. I can’t do much but I can do that.

I thought so, until I crawled under the vehicle myself at 9 o’clock at night and saw what it looked like. Two rusty bolts, as rusty as you’d think a ten-year-old vehicle driven on snow-and-salt roads all its life would be, so rusty that you couldn’t tell where the nut ended and where the bolt began. Held together by as far as I could tell, only a wish with a little bit of prayer sprinkled in.

And, underneath of that car, all alone, I thought, (1) why in the world does anyone own a car? And (2) how in the world am I going to do this? Why didn’t I just let someone else do it?

And here we find some of the first lessons of trouble. It can be very easy. It can be oh-so-easy, to sit underneath of your suffering, to be trapped under the overwhelming weight of what is assailing you, and to feel like you are alone, that there is no help there is no solution, there is no end.

Consider the people that Peter is writing to. Chapter one, verse one, he calls them “the elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” More than likely, that includes people that he had known and live together with in Jerusalem until the killing of Stephen the martyr. More than likely, these were people who were scattered to their homes across the Roman empire after persecution, and when he talks about suffering for them, it is a present reality, and one that they may wonder, “Am I all alone? Will it be like this forever? Will this fiery trial’ never end?” Scattered from the church in Jerusalem, suffering for the sake of Christ, I could wonder how many asked themselves, “Is there still anyone else like me out there?”

To this, Jesus says, “I will not leave you as orphans!” What does this mean? It means, I will not leave you as ones that are cut off. I will not leave you as those who are alone. I will not leave you as those stuck underneath of an overwhelming weight of sin and care and loneliness and suffering.

I will not leave you alone.

And this is the Gospel. In John 14, Jesus is, just like last week, still talking on the night when he was betrayed, to his disciples. He says, even when he is going to prepare a place, even when he is leaving them, he is not leaving them alone. Jesus in his death, he dies for you. In your baptism, you die with him, You are not alone. In his resurrection, he’s raised for you. In your baptism, you are raised with him. You are not alone.

The Holy Spirit he would send on Pentecost, so that, by the inspiration of the Spirit, he would dwell with them in his word. He was sent by the Father so that he could send the Spirit, so that the disciples would dwell with him as often as he

Alright, back to the story. So, regretting every decision I’ve ever made, I lay there alone underneath of my vehicle. And, what did I do? I called up my dad. We talked. I sent him a few pictures. He gave me a couple suggestions. Hit it with a hammer! Hit with a wire brush! Hit it with some penetrating oil! Do it once, do it again. Let it sit. Do it again. Let it sit. Just be patient. Take it one step at a time.

During suffering, it’s easy to be crushed. It’s easy to take the whole thing as a whole and say, “There’s no way. I can’t do it.” But the way forward isn’t one giant leap. The way forward isn’t one silver bullet. The way forward is, one day at a time, one step at a time, trusting in that his grace is his grace. Be patient. Be persistent. Just keep walking.

After a week or more of that, it eventually looked less like a fused piece of metal and more like a bolt and a nut. And as I was talking about it with a church member, saying, I think I only have one shot to crack this loose, I don’t think it could handle more than that, they said, “Well, pastor, I don’t think I’ve told you this before, but I have a pneumatic impact driver. Just come over, and we’ll figure it out.”

So, that’s what we did. Got out the impact driver. Forty minutes later, figured out a few things. And in the end, here’s the point, what seemed unbearable alone, it was all said and done, in the end.

Now, they couldn’t go through it for me, just like no one but Jesus can bear your suffering for you. They couldn’t go through this for me, but they could give me the tools that they had learned along. They could give me the wisdom they had. They could stay right there next to me, as I walked, one day at time, one step at a time, trusting in his grace.

Today, we’re talking about suffering, but not just about suffering. We’re talking about how the Christian church, the community of the church suffers together.

I could tell you a hundred stories of moms that bring Legos to church, just in case they sit next to someone that might need a little more, of water bottles knocked over, just for the person behind you to set it back up, of grandmas and grandpas who decide to adopt a young person, and give them a gift card just to take someone special out, of, well…

Like this last week, when a member’s granddaughter’s fiancé had a stroke, and though she couldn’t be here, she tuned into the livestream and could feel the care and emotion of people who cared for her.

You are not alone because the body of Christ, when one part suffers, we all are to suffer when one part rejoices, we all are to rejoice, and a lot of that’s going to happen at the same time.

Three final thoughts. First, all this, so far, is really on suffering in general. Suffering in general, not particularly for doing good nor for the sake of Christ. It’s pretty easy to see that the hearer’s of Peter’s letter weren’t just going through bad times, they were going through bad times because of their faith.

Second, usually, for us, it’s nothing so seemingly dramatic, to call it suffering for Christ seems overblown. But there are ways and times and places where the Christian must say no to something everyone else is saying yes to. Where you have to miss out on opportunities that others say yes to. When would you say no? Sports that take priority over worship times. Vacations that take priority over giving. Comfort that takes over the uncomfortable task of caring for another. When would you say no?

Third, in the good times, in the easy and smooth sailing days, it’s pretty easy not to evaluate yourself. For example, when I’m bowling well, it doesn’t matter how many steps I take, which board I pick out and which arrow to pick out, it doesn’t matter, because I’m feeling good.

But it’s on the days when everything’s going wrong that you have to examine every part. It’s on the days when life gets really bad that you have to be sure about what is good and what is not good. It’s on the days when you need to cry out to your Lord and God that your prayer life becomes what it should be all along.

But, of course, number four, it isn’t the strength of your prayer life that saves you. It is the head of the Body. It is Jesus Christ. It is his life and death and resurrection.

The Christian community suffers together.

Amen and amen.

05/04/2026

May 3, Easter 5, The Christian Community dies well.
Acts 6:1-9, 7:2a, 51-60 // 1 Peter 2:2-10 // John 14:1-14

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Once upon a time, someone on social media asked people to describe in the most obscure terms what their job was and he would guess. I wrote, “I train people to die well.” And, right away, he guessed, “Pastor?”

A pastor’s job is to train you to die well.

You may know inspirational quotes like “People say you only live once. That’s not true. You only die once. You live every day.”

A pastor’s job is to train you to die well.

You might think about that and take some umbrage to it. You might say, Pastor, in this sermon series, aren’t we talking about the church’s LIFE together, not their DEATH together? Yeah, you’re right about that.

“Pastor, doesn’t it matter the way that you live?” The astute listener and remember-er might have listened to and remembered the sermon from last week, how in Acts chapter two the cut-to-the-heart people didn’t just get baptized and say, “I’m ready, Lord! Take me home!” They had to live. So, why, Pastor, are you saying that a pastor’s job is to train you to die well?

Three reasons. First, it’s unavoidable. Second, it’s a place of God’s glory. Third, in it we follow Christ.

First, it’s unavoidable. Until Christ returns, it is an unavoidable fact of life. To be alive means that one day you will die. To love today means that one day you will feel loss. To serve today means that one day you will have to be served. To increase today means that one day you will diminish.

It’s unavoidable. Paul says it in Romans, “Through the one man, Adam, came death.” “The wages of Adam’s sin, which leads to your sin, is death.”

So, like many things in life, it’s not an “if” but a “when.” And since it’s a “when,” then the best question to ask is “how.” How do we die well?

The answer to that is our second point. Second, it’s a place of God’s glory.

In Acts chapters six and seven, we see the turning point of the first half of Acts. The church in Jerusalem, their situation has reached the boiling point. They are facing opposition that’s grown just as the church has grown, and now, it comes down to the point where a deacon, a named Stephen, becomes the focus. He has a whole long speech that we didn’t read, where he puts the Pharisees on the wrong side of history every time. And here we see what Luke, the writer of Acts, wants us to see: Stephen, dying with the Word of God on his lips, seeing a vision of heaven before him, with the words of Jesus from the cross, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

The death of Stephen, it’s a place of God’s glory.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that’s how it went for you, too? I’m not sure you’re wanting the martyr part of it, but the vision of heaven, seeing Jesus, with God’s word on his lips, simply “falling asleep” (that’s the word that Luke uses).

I realize that as a pastor, I encounter death more than most. It’s a privilege of a pastor to sit with the hale and hearty and to walk with people in the slow decline of age.

I have the opportunity to sit next to sick beds and enter hospice homes and wait for the last breaths and see the way that loved ones and nurses are giving care, moistening their lips with a sponge, holding their hands, keeping them safe.

And I can tell you, no one person dies like another. There is no formula. There is no set and certain timeline. Everyone is different and you don’t get to choose how it happens. And, for the Christian, precisely because it is an event out of the control of your hands, because of that, it is a place of God’s glory.

What do I mean by that? I mean, first, what we say responsively at the beginning of the funeral service, from Romans chapter six, “Do you not know that all who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? “We were buried therefore with him, by baptism, into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

I mean, your salvation is secure before the moment of that day. You have died in Christ and so are already raised with him on high. Whether there are visions of heaven or not. Whether there are moments of peace or not. Whether the words of Jesus are on your lips or not. Whether you’ve made it for the last grandchild to be there or not, it is a place of God’s glory, because by the death of Jesus, he has destroyed death for you.

And (this is Romans again) “neither death nor life nor angels nor demons nor anything else in all of creation can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

What binds you to the love of God in Christ Jesus? His Word, his Sacraments, the forgiveness of sins that they promise, won on the cross, distributed for you. They are his faithfulness to you.

This is a message that you were baptized into. It’s a message that we tell to our children, every funeral that they go to, they hear it. It’s a message we repeat in confirmation class (and then I tell them, read this again in ten years. You know it now. You’ll live it later). It’s a message that we tell on the days when it’s easy to believe, so that on the days when life ¬¬is really, really hard, we can remember it again.

Third, and, by extension from point number two, third, in death we follow Christ.

John 14, it’s the extended dialog that Jesus has on the night when he was betrayed, with disciples that will be not following where he goes. He goes to the cross. He goes to his death, a death that is not just for him but “so that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

He says, you will go where I am leading. He says, I am preparing a place for you. He says, where I go, at the right time, you will follow. He says, I am the way and the truth and the life, and because that’s who I reveal myself to be, then your life is conformed to mine.

It’s cruciform; it’s formed by the cross. “We were buried therefore with him, by baptism, into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” And it is so very cruciformed that not only do we pray that God would use our courage and our patience and our best days… and that he would use even our struggle and our trouble so that his will would be done and his kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.

I remember a man I met in the twilight of his life. A farmer kind-of-a-guy, who went from chatting and communing, to just kind of listening and nodding, to not really anything at all, until he was right there, right near the end. I remember him restless, troubled, agitated, until we said the 23rd Psalm together, and he calmed down, like it had done to him hundreds of times before. We said the Lord’s Prayer, and he folded his hands like he had done thousands of times before. And what his pastors had trained him in, it did its work.

I remember a woman who worried a lot how she would die. She desperately wished to die with the dignity that her husband had passed, with the courage of Stephen, with the patience of Job. Some days, it terrified her to think that it was coming and that she didn’t know how she would react when it did come.

There are moments when it terrifies me. But the good news, of course, is that I’m not saved because I have a vision of heaven, or because I have courage and dignity to the end. I won’t be saved because I was gentle and not combative. I won’t be saved because I passed away peacefully in my sleep.

I’m saved because God is true to his promises. In every moment when we have the courage and every moment when it terrifies us, God is true to his promises.

Your pastor’s job is to train you to die well.

Your Savior is a Good Shepherd who gathers the lambs of his flock into the arms of his mercy and brings them home, in his time.

Amen and amen.

04/27/2026

April 25, Easter 4, The Christian Community meets together.
Third in a series, “The Christian Community”
Acts 2:42-47 // 1 Peter 2:19-25 // John 10:1-10

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon text this Good Shepherd Sunday is John 10, Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep” and “The sheep hear their shepherd’s voice. They follow him, for they know his voice.”

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

The Christian Church meets together. It may seem silly to say it, to acknowledge it, it may seem silly but it isn’t; it’s foundational. The Christian church meets together.

So, we’re in the Easter season, after Jesus’s resurrection, as we see the growth of the church and the way that God’s people live. And we’re considering what it means to be the community of the church. What does the Church do? Last week, we saw that the church confesses together. This week we see that the church meets together.

Two points for today. First, the church meets together. Second, the center of our meeting togetherness is Jesus.

Here we go. First, the church meets together

A pastor that I knew told this little parable once: Once upon a time there was a man who was a firefighter. He was trained as a firefighter. He passed the test to become a firefighter. He had served as a firefighter. But after a while he stopped going to the firehouse. He stopped fighting fires and taking calls. It had been years since he had gotten in the truck. At what point is he no longer a firefighter?

Interesting question. Now change firefighter to church member. At what point, after Sunday school, after confirmation, if you stop coming to church, do you stop being part of the Church?

We talk about this in new member class. Do you have to go to church to be part of the capital C church?

Well, I realize, with some irony, that I’m preaching to people who are actually here, and not to people who aren’t here. I get that.

Yes, the members gathered here are not synonymous with the whole capital C Church. They can’t be. Luther has this concept of the invisible and the visible church. The invisible church is every believer who has ever lived from the beginning all the way to the end. It is the One Holy Christian and Apostolic Church that we confess in the Apostle’s Creed. It’s the church from God’s view, from the top down.

So, if you miss a Sunday, are you totally out? Well, no. It doesn’t work that way because your salvation and existence within the Body of Christ isn’t based on the Law.

But, look at this. Remarkably consistent through the New Testament. The people of God find a way to meet regularly together and to share their life together.

Here it is in Acts 2. This happens on the heels of last week’s reading. After the moment of salvation, there’s a life that you have to live.

You may have seen this and wondered, Pastor, if this is your ideal church, then why haven’t you asked us to sell all our possessions and live in a compound? Well, let’s look at what’s consistent in New Testament churches and what changes from church to church.

Wherever there are churches—Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus, Berea, Thessalonica—there God’s people are gathering around his word and the breaking of the bread and prayer. Wherever they were (and this is in Galatians 2), the church was to look after the poor.

Consistent throughout is this life together that Peter and Paul and the whole church seem to hold.

What varies is how they follow through. In Jerusalem, they did it one way. In Corinth, they had different struggles. In Thessalonica, they did it another way.

So, how do you get to be a part of a church that you’re a part of? Do the things of the church. Be a part of what you can be a part of. If you can participate, come.

Hold babies in our nursery. Provide a lunch for our teachers. Help with VBS. Clean the kitchen. Come to Bible study. Bring a potluck dish. Serve in positions that you can serve in.

None of that is heart of our church – that’s the gospel and worship-but all of it is how we are living out our faith together.

None of it is the car engine, but it is the light and the heat and the movement.

The Christian church takes joy in this gracious thing: to meet together as often as is possible and to do so with joy.

Second, the center of our meeting togetherness is Jesus who is, and this is John 10, the door of the sheep.

Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep.” “I am the door of the sheep.” “I’m not a thief. I’m the shepherd.” “My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.” Jesus says all this, and it’s really hard for the Christian to try and wiggle out of Jesus’s claims of exclusivity.

He says, “Everyone and everything else that promises to give what I give is lying when I tell the truth. They are usurping the power that I have. They are derivative, not the bottom line. They are, they may even be good things, but they are not ultimate things.

I tell you, I’ve been thinking about this lately, as I get past, what is likely to be the middle point of my life, if I’m blessed to live another forty years. I think about, and now, I pray, “Thank you God that I get to be a husband to my wife for all these days, for every day that you give to me. Thank you, that you are the true bridegroom, and give me the strength to lay down my life for my wife.

I thank you, God that I get to be a pastor to this church for these days, for every day that you give to me. For however long that’s true, I thank you. You are the great shepherd of your sheep, so watch over your flock even when I sleep. I thank you God that you have made me a father to my children for these days, for every day that you give to me. Thank you, that you are their heavenly father and you watch over them even when I cannot.

He’s the giver of all good things. He’s the ultimate and every other good thing does its right work when it gives up the glory, ultimately, to him.

If it doesn’t. If we don’t. If it doesn’t, then it is a thief and a liar.

I was thinking about this lately too. These verses, they are very easy for a leader, for a church leader, for a trusted church leader to abuse. Namely, it’s easy to equate their own voice with God’s voice, their own opinion with God’s truth. Their own preferences and particular church as the only church of God, and, if you don’t agree with me, you better get off the bus.

The hired hand, the undershepherd, has just stolen the mantle of the shepherd.

But, of course, we don’t confess one Our Savior Lutheran church in the Apostle’s Creed. We confess one holy Christian and Apostolic church, a church that was gathered by Jesus, is led by Jesus, and, though pastors come and go, it is the Word of Jesus that remains.

The Christian church meets together and our center is Jesus.

I was visiting someone in the hospital a few months ago, and usually what I’ll say, to open or to close our visit, is some version of “Your family loves you, your church is praying for you, and your Savior Jesus is by your side.” To which, this person, who was not particularly close to our church said, “My church? My church is praying for me?” Yes! They do and we are.

The Christian community meets together and our center is Jesus.

Amen and amen.

Address

417 S Kane Street
Burlington, WI
53105

Opening Hours

Monday 1pm - 5pm
Tuesday 1pm - 5pm
Wednesday 1pm - 5pm
Thursday 1pm - 5pm
Friday 1pm - 5pm
Saturday 5:30pm - 6:30pm
Sunday 8am - 9am
10:45am - 12pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Our Savior Lutheran Church Burlington posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category