Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

As I have mentioned before, as recently as last Sunday, we, within the Lutheran Church, follow a pre-appointed three-year series of Scripture readings. There’s a reason behind that three-year cycle of Scripture readings, but I won’t bore you with all the explanation. Just know that today’s Scripture readings, despite this being the Sunday celebrating the start of my 17th year as your pastor, were not selected by me, but by someone else with no knowledge of how or what we’d be celebrating today.

That being said, please permit me to comment that it’s only about 2 generations ago now that, especially in the Lutheran Church, it was not at all uncommon to call churches not by their official name, but to call churches as “so-and-so’s church.” That “so-and-so” was usually the pastor. Churches were often known as “Walther’s church” or as “Pfotenhauer’s church” or as “Sieck’s church.” That was due to the fact that often pastors spent many, many years at one church. And then it was not at all uncommon for a son to follow his father in ministry at that church. Pastor Fackler can confirm that was the fact in his own life. He succeeded his father as pastor at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Detroit where his father had served for many years.

I am personally glad that is usually no longer the practice. That’s because no one congregation “belongs” to any one pastor. The church belongs to the people who are there. There may be one minister, who might serve as many years as I have served and even more years, but the church belongs to Jesus Christ and the mission and ministry of that one congregation belongs to the people who worship there. There may be a pastor serving there full-time – and maybe even for many years – but the ministers are the people.

That’s what the Lord taught Elijah in our First Reading today [1 Kings 19:9b-21]. Imagine Elijah’s boldness! He thought the entire mission of our Lord was in his hands. Listen to what Elijah told the Lord, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected Your covenant, broken down your altars and put Your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left and now they are trying to kill me, too!” [1 Kings 19:10]. Imagine being as bold as Elijah, to say that to the Almighty God not only once but twice, but God sure showed Elijah what ministry was all about, didn’t He? He told Elijah to go out an anoint his successor, Elisha. The ministry is never about one person.

While mission and ministry is truly all about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ – after all, no one has ever before or after suffered and died to forgive the sins of all people – even Jesus knew that the Church could not be established upon the fact that He would always be physically present on this earth. That’s what we see in our Gospel today. St. Luke tells us that “as the time approached for Jesus to be taken up to Heaven,” He began to set into place a plan. That plan, of course, included the disciples whom He had personally trained through three years of hands-on training, but it also included others – ordinary others: those who had not spent three years being personally trained by Jesus. Some volunteered their service to Jesus. Others were called by two simple words: “Follow Me!”

Have you ever heard those words from the mouth of your Savior? Of, sure, we all have! In the waters of Holy Baptism, we have all heard Jesus say, “Follow Me!” The problem is that far too often we are like the men in our Gospel today. We hear God calling us, but we respond with the word “But.” “But, Lord, I already have a profession.” “But, Lord, I don’t know enough to be Your agent.” “But, Lord, that’s why I contribute to the church – to pay the pastors and the other staff to do Your work.” “But, Lord, I’m too busy right now.” “But, Lord, surely someone else can do a better job.”

It seems we’ve learned a lesson from Elijah, but we’ve learned it too well. Unlike Elijah, we’re not impetuous enough to believe the mission of Jesus Christ singularly depends upon us. But, unfortunately, we have come to believe the mission of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with us.

My friends, “Listen! God is calling!” He’s calling you. He’s calling me. He’s saying “Follow Me” and “As you follow, bring others along with you for all time and all eternity.”

The church is not about the pastor. The church is not about how many baptisms and marriages and confirmations and funerals the pastor records over the course of his ministry. The church is about each of us being followers of Jesus Christ and following Him, doing what He did in His earthly life and ministry – meeting people in their times of brokenness, in their times of sin, in their times of despair, in their time of hopelessness and saying, “Come on! I know Someone Who can help!”

In closing, I’d like to tell you about a legend. It’s a legend I have long heard about, but I didn’t realize just how much of a legend it was until I did a search of the internet this past week. The basis of the legend is a statue of Jesus Christ with no hands, similar to what you see depicted on your bulletin covers this week. And that’s where the legend begins. One version of the legend places the statue in a devastated city in England after World War II. Another versions places the statue in Mainzer Cathedral in Germany. Still another version places the statue in Strasbourg, France, with the hands sheered off by a falling beam after a World War II bombing. Still another version places the statue in a little village in Korea, with the hands the only part of the statue not able to be put back together after heavy artillery fire during the Korean Conflict. With all those different versions out there, I was about to chalk up the legend to truly being a legend until I not only found yet another version of the legend, but also a photograph proving the legend. That photograph is what’s on your bulletin cover. The statue of the handless Christ stands in a church in Soweto, South Africa. During the reign of apartheid, an attack by police upon the church caused the statue to be toppled and the hands were detached. Rather than fix the statue, it was left as it was since “we are Christ’s hands in the world.”

As St. Teresa of Avila one wrote, “Christ has no body on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours.”

“Listen! God is calling!” He is calling you. He is calling me. He needs you. He needs me.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena