Change, Or Not

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

Congregations, like human beings, grow old. A large congregation once filled these pews. You may become nostalgic for the olden day. A century ago people walked to church, walked to work, walked to school, walked to the store. Now we drive everywhere.

A photograph taken of the congregation from the pulpit today would be different from a picture taken ten years ago. A picture taken from the back pews toward the chancel would be just as different. Faces you thought you would never forget have slipped over the cliff of your memory. If “all the world is a stage” where we all are actors, so is the church.

Pastors and people are constantly changing, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Since the Church is His Body, she also stays the same. Perhaps a church that advertises itself as “contemporary” is no church at all. The true Church has one Baptism and she partakes of the one spiritual food in the Holy Sacrament. She reads the same Scriptures, hears the same Gospel, and sings the same liturgies and hymns. St. Paul said that there is one Church, one Spirit, one Lord Jesus, and one God and Father of all.

Change is a fact of life, whether you like it or not, and we Lutherans should be the last ones to complain about change. Rarely was there ever such a change as the Lutheran Reformation. It was a disruption of magnificent proportions. To exaggerate, one day the church was Catholic, then next it was Protestant.

The pope lost his power as a world ruler, and, for many, he no longer had the last word. Thanks to Luther, the people no longer watched the church services, but actually participated in them. Preaching was revived. Latin was out and the common language, understood by all, was in. People could actually understand what was going on, if they bothered to pay attention. Monasteries filled with groaning monks became parsonages filled with noisy children.

If there had been no change, there would have been no Reformation, and we would not be Lutherans. The pope has never forgiven Luther; he remains excommunicated, and you with him. You cannot avoid change. Some of your Catholic friends may have told you that they do not like changes happening in their churches. Singing hymns and listening to sermons takes effort.

However, All Saints Day is not about change; it is about how things stay the same. It is not about one congregation, or even the Lutheran Church, but it is about a Church that exists everywhere and at all times. This Church is eternal. She has her origins in the mind of God, and is firmly established in the heavens. This Church does not reminisce about the good times of the past, and she does not hope for better times. Her future glory is already her possession.

The kingdom of God is present in this church right now. This kingdom belongs as much to the present as it does to the past or the future. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.” Right now. What the Church hopes for is already present in the preaching of Christ's cross and His Sacraments. The Gospel tells us that the kingdom of the heavens is coming, and in the Sacraments that kingdom comes – just as you pray in the Lord's Prayer.

The kingdom of the heavens, which Jesus said belonged to the poor in spirit, is nothing else that Christ's taking on flesh by the Virgin Mary, His death for our salvation, His rising from the tombs, and His glorious ascent into heaven.

This kingdom has no political boundaries and flies no national flags. She gives her allegiance to no earthly ruler. She speaks countless languages, but says and confesses only one thing. The boundaries of this one holy catholic and apostolic Church are established by Holy Baptism. She feeds on the Holy Communion. This Church is everywhere in the world: “It is truly meet, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all place give thanks to You, O Lord, holy Father, almighty and everlasting God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”

One church building comes down and another is built. One church has twenty members and another has thousands. But still there is only one Church. No time or place is superior to another. “It is truly meet, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to You, Holy Father.”

This congregation has changed throughout her years. Once this was a German-speaking Gemeinde. Once men and women sat separately. Once a schoolhouse stood out back and a parsonage stood next door, both filled with children. Once the pews were filled with people of every age and walk of life. Now, the schoolhouse and parsonage have been moved away. The pews are a bit more vacant than they used to be. The faces are a bit more drawn, the hair a bit more grey. The liturgy and hymnody resound in English, save the occasional Christmas song.

And you have changed. The damned and condemned heathen you were born was drowned and died with all sins and evil desires. The evil foe within you was cast out and put down by the washing of the Holy Spirit and the blood of the Lamb. The hunger for righteousness that you feel yearning within you is fed with the Body and Blood of our Lord Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. You are not the same as you were, and you shall never again be so.

You are different than you were, and different than you shall be. But you are still the same Church. You are the same, because you are members, each together, of the one Head.

The face of the Church is always changing. Death sees to that. Sin corrupts human bodies, just like it rusts and destroys buildings and fixtures and foundations. You see this every time you gather here for a funeral. There and then, the proclamation of the Law is laid out before you. See your wages, see what your sinful flesh deserves, see the end of mankind. The wages of sin is death.

The saints and martyrs have known this, in every place and every age. Today, we commemorate all who have fallen asleep in faith and rest from their labors. They have confessed their Lord, and they have endured the consequences. They have faced the persecution, the slander, the reviling, the hatred. They are now blessed before God in heaven because they were cursed before men on earth for the sake of Christ.

There are those in the history of the Church who have faced great suffering and persecution for the sake of the Truth. Just read the account of the seven brothers in 2 Maccabees, or the Martyrdom of Polycarp, or the history of Perpetua and Felicitas. Or consider the thousands of martyrs who are dying each year now in our age in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and other such places. But chances are, you have not suffered like that. You probably do not even personally know someone who has been martyred for the faith. So what have you to share with them? Will you inherit the earth? Will you see God?

You may not be remembered with a commemoration of your own on the Church calendar. You may not have your name splashed up in lights as a champion of the faith. You may never give a public testimony to the resurrection of our Lord before princes and rulers. You may fade into the grayness of history in a generation or two. But you will never be forgotten by the One whose memory truly matters. You have not been, and never will be, forgotten by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died to give the martyrs and saints birth.

The Church contains many members. Some great, some small. Some young, some old. Some martyrs, some confessors. Some persecuted, some protected. But you are all members of one Lord, one faith, one Baptism. You are all baptized into Christ, the one head of the whole Church in heaven and on earth.

You are all covered with the blood of the one Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You are all redeemed by the one Christ the Crucified. Your sins are forgiven by the same grace as covers St. Peter and St. Paul. You are bound up with the saints and martyrs, the patriarchs and prophets, the apostles and evangelists, the reformers and confessors. You are one in faith and Spirit with the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia and the Martyrs of Uganda. You are one in Christ with all the innumerable multitude of every nation, tribe, and language who are and who will be gathered around the throne of God in heaven.

And until you are there before the throne of grace in the flesh, heaven comes to earth as our Lord unites Himself to you. When you sing “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven” you sing with all the saints who have gone before you into eternal rest. The dead who die in the Lord are not gone from you; they are here, where heaven comes to earth and where you enter into the blessed feast at which they already sit.

Some things change. The faces you see and the voices you hear in this building change. The language you speak and the books you hold change. But the Word of the Lord remains forever. The kingdom of the heavens suffers no violence, and the saints are one in every place. The Church of God does not change, because she is built on the immovable Rock which is Christ. He is faithful to His Bride. His love and His grace do not change. Thanks be to God!

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.