Praying for Pastors ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 4)

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during morning worship today. The message is the fourth installment in a series addressing Biblical themes surfaced in the book, I Am a Church Member. We're also doing Tuesday discussion groups with the people of another area Lutheran congregation built around the themes of the book.]

Ephesians 6:16-20
Exodus 17:13-18
In 1527, Martin Luther wrote a letter to his friend and colleague, Philip Melanchthon. This is part of what he said: “For more than a week I have been thrown back and forth in death and hell; my whole body feels beaten, my limbs are still trembling. I almost lost Christ completely, driven about...the ways and storms of despair and blasphemy against God. But because of...[the prayers for me] of the faithful, God began to take mercy on me and tore my soul from the depths of hell.”

Were these the rantings of a superstitious medieval man? Or did the prayers of others for Luther, this pastor, theologian, writer, and leader, make an actual difference in his life?

When we confess Jesus as Lord and set out to be faithful to Him, we become targets of the evil one, the devil, just as Jesus was when, after His baptism in the Jordan River, He set out to fulfill His ministry on earth. 

The devil and all evils, including sin, death, and futility, were defeated when Jesus, true God and true man, went to the cross and bore our sins and the death sentence for them you and I deserve. 

But the devil is still waging war to prevent us from living with God. This is why the book of Ephesians tells us that for disciples of Jesus, “...our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12) 

When you’re a believer in Jesus, your enemies are never other human beings, no matter how vexing other human beings may be, no matter how much they have sought or seek to hurt us. Our enemies are evil, the devil, and the demons of hell. And the only way they can be overcome is through humble, submissive, incessant prayer in Jesus’ name. Martin Luther knew this. And we should know it too.

Personally, I’ve experienced too much in life to hold onto any naive belief that evil, the devil, and the demons of hell are fictional. 

After the Lutheran church body of which many of us were a part made the decision to abandon the authority of God’s Word, like many of you, Ann and I came under immediate assault from people who disagreed with us. 

But other things also took place. 

One night, in the midst of all of this, a man plowed into our cars, totaling both of them. The man, clearly in a drugged stupor, staggered to my porch. He pulled out a cigarette and asked for a light. When I told him that I didn't have matches or a lighter, he broke the cigarette in half and tossed it aside. Suddenly, he remembered something and went back to his car, which sat there, headlights still blazing like Marty McFly's stranded DeLorean in Back to the Future. When the guy returned to the porch, he was holding a handgun. When I saw that, I prayed even more earnestly that the police would soon arrive!

In this same period, I had a heart attack. My cardiologist has told me more than once, "I can't explain why you had a heart attack and I don't know why you survived the heart attack you had."

At about the same time, our house and the church were broken into on seven occasions. 

There were other out-of-the-ordinary things that happened to us in this period. When Ann told an in-town Christian friend about all that had happened, the friend said, “The devil clearly doesn’t want you here.” 

I’m convinced of this: Our lives and our capacity to fight the good fight of faith were sustained not by us or by our tenacity, but by the intervention of God that was invited into our lives and the life of the congregation by the prayers in Jesus’ name of the faithful disciples in Saint Matthew Lutheran Church and others. And I will always be grateful.

Today, we turn our consideration to the Biblical theme raised by author Thom Rainer in the fourth chapter of his book, I Am a Church Member. This chapter culminates in the suggested pledge, “I will pray for my church leaders.” 

On the face of it, the notion of leadership in Christ’s Church may seem oxymoronic. After all, aren’t we called to humble submission to Christ? Yes, we are. 

But Jesus and the New Testament writers frequently speak about leaders in Christ’s Church, the special responsibilities they have, and the need for others in the Church to support them and pray for them. In Romans 12, the apostle Paul lists leadership as one of seven primary spiritual gifts by which the life of the Church is empowered to live faithfully and to fulfill its mission of making disciples. If your gift is leadership, Paul says, then do it diligently. (Romans 12:8)

But, let's be clear: Leadership is not dictatorship! There is no room in the Church for pastors who strive to control everything. Such pastors forget that it is Christ Who is the Lord of the Church. And they forget too, that Christ, the greatest leader who ever walked the earth, relied, not on coercion or power plays but on the Holy Spirit to carry His message of new life through faith in Him into the hearts and wills of people.

Paul shows us what leadership in Christ’s Church is like when he writes in 1 Corinthians 11:1: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” The first part of that passage would paint Paul as an egomaniacal control freak if the second part of it wasn't there. Pastors can lead only insofar as they seek each day to follow Christ. 

This doesn’t mean, thank God, that pastors must be perfect. The preeminent pastor of the first-century church was the apostle Paul who honestly wrote, “...I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin...what I want to do [the good] I do not do, but what I hate I do...What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:14-15, 24-25) 

A faithful pastor, the kind I seek, fitfully and inconsistently, to be each day, is one who openly acknowledges that he or she is a sinner saved only by grace through faith in Christ. 

Faithful pastors know that the call to spiritual leadership makes them different from others in Christ’s Church not in status or importance, but only in function, in calling.

But pastors cannot, at least this pastor cannot do our work without the prayers of our congregations. (And I know that many of you pray for me regularly!) 

In Exodus 17, we read that a people called the Amalekites attacked God’s Old Testament people, the Israelites, in the wilderness. Moses ordered Joshua to gather an army. 

After that we read, “So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.” (Exodus 17:10-13) 

What happened? 

The leader of the Israelites, Moses, prayed for God’s people as they fought. He reached his arms out to God in prayer. Aaron and Hur were there to prop up Moses’ arms when Moses got tired. 

In truth, all of us should be praying for our fellow disciples and church members, lifting each other up, encouraging one another, and, sometimes, kicking each other in the seats of our pants. We need each other. 

But pastors, need the prayers of their churches. I need you to ask the Holy Spirit to guide me, to protect me from temptation, to give me the right thoughts, words, and silences when I study, preach, teach, counsel, vision, and work with the staff and the congregation. I pray for all of these things for myself, of course. But, just like you and just like Moses, weariness can creep into my life. I need a congregation of Aarons and Hurs.

Take a look, please at Ephesians 6:16-20. Paul writes: “...take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” Paul is telling the church at Ephesus to pray about everything. As he writes elsewhere, “Pray without ceasing.”

And then Paul writes this: “Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.”

Folks, I’m not in chains. But I am one of Christ’s ambassador. I’m called to lead this flock and its witness for Jesus Christ in this community and in the world. I’m called to lead diligently, to share the gospel and the Sacraments, to follow Christ the Savior and invite others to do the same, to study and rightly teach God’s Word, to offer godly counsel, to be and to make disciples. 

And this is what I know: In my own power, I know for a fact that I am not competent to fulfill the call to pastoral ministry, which I’ve been privileged to do for almost thirty-four years. But it’s the Holy Spirit Who has called me and to quote Paul one more time, “...by the grace of God, I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10): a pastor of Christ’s Church, your pastor. 

When you pray for me, the Holy Spirit goes to work in me. There are several beneficiaries when that happens: 

• your pastor, who works more confidently and hopefully; 
• the congregation, which is being led not by a pastor, but by Christ through its pastor; and 
• the community and the world you and I seek to reach with the good news. 

Your prayers enable me to more courageously proclaim the Word of God in its fullness, centered on the good news of new and everlasting life for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ. I am sure that that’s a good thing. 

That’s why in closing today, I simply ask you, beg you: Please pray for me, that I may be a faithful servant-leader in Christ’s Church. And, please know that, as is true, each and every day, I am also praying for you, beloved disciples of Jesus and friends. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Fight the Good Fight!

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
A pastor once told a group of us who were meeting together his theory on communicating information to people. “Just about the time you’re sick of hearing yourself say it,” he said, “is probably just the time that people are beginning to hear what you’re saying.”

As we come to our second Bible lesson for today, we may suspect that the apostle Paul had a similar theory about communication.

In 1 Timothy, the first letter he sent to the young pastor, Timothy, Paul wrote, “ I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well…” (1 Timothy 1:18).

Later in that first letter, Paul wrote, “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.…” (1 Timothy 6:12)

And in today’s lesson, Paul encourages Timothy to learn from Paul’s life, telling Timothy, even as Paul faced what he regarded as the certainty of execution for his faith in Christ, “ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.…” (2 Timothy 4:7)

For any who have grown sleepy with an unchristian sentimentality over the Bible’s description of Jesus as “the Prince of peace,” all of Paul’s talk about living out faith in Christ as a “fight,” may be a bit jarring.

Don’t misunderstand, though! Jesus is the Prince of peace, of course. Paul himself wrote about how, in Christ, God made peace with the human race and offered us the incredible peace of knowing that all who trust in Christ belong to God forever. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:18 about how “God, who reconciled us to himself [or made peace with us] through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…” Through Christ, we can have peace with God, with others, and even with ourselves. And we are called to share that peace.

But that doesn’t mean that following Jesus Christ in this world will be without its struggles.

Sometimes, those struggles will be within us, as we battle to stay faithful in the midst of experiences we can’t explain and, that we fear, are beyond our endurance. Or, when we struggle to justify our own sins despite the will of God made clear in His Word.

Often though, those struggles will come in the form of conflict with other people. Mark it down: Hold onto Jesus and you will sometimes be in conflict with others, sometimes with people you once thought were close to you.

“Do not suppose,” Jesus says in Matthew 10:34-38, “that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Each week during worship, through the words of either the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, we confess that the God we know in Jesus Christ is the only rightful Lord and King of the universe. We confess that only Jesus is worthy of our ultimate allegiance. And we also confess that it is only through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance for sin in His Name that humanity can find joy, healing, hope, forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with our Maker Who we push our of our lives when we sin, and everlasting life.

Make confessions like these, both Jesus and Paul tell us, and you will have a fight on your hands! And that's especially true if your faith in Jesus Christ is more than just words recited in this sanctuary on Sunday mornings. When we dare to carry Jesus beyond these walls, we may find ourselves in a fight or two.

Whenever, for example. we, in Jesus’ name and in the power of the Holy Spirit, dare to love the unlovable or forgive the unpardonable, we will offend people and get a fight.

But even in the face of resistance, we must ask God for strength to keep fighting the good fight: to keep making disciples by sharing Jesus and our lives with others.

The reason for this is simple. C.S. Lewis puts it this way in Mere Christianity: “Christianity is a fighting religion.”

As Christians, our call isn’t as Paul reminds us elsewhere, to struggle against flesh and blood, other people. We fight the devil and the demonic powers who want to hold people for whom Jesus died and rose eternally captive to sin, death, and darkness.

But we don't fight alone...or even in our own power!

God fought for us--for our very lives--all the way to the cross and then, after Jesus’ crucifixion had seemingly signaled that nothing about us could be made right, the Father pulled the Son up from the grave and gave Him life again, a life that He shares with all who turn from sin and trust in Him.

This good news--this gospel--changes the lives of those who follow Jesus forever! We have victory no matter what the devil may hurl at us!

Today, it’s our task, no matter how we may be buffeted, rejected, ignored, or scoffed at, to fight the good fight to communicate over and over, however many times we may need to repeat it in words and actions and service and love, that God really did so love the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will be not be separated from God and the life that only God can give, but live with God and God’s people for all eternity!

Sharing and living this message is the good fight of faith. And friends: It’s the only fight worth our time or attention!

I know that in the midst of a hotly contested election season, that may be hard to remember. But we must remember it! A president will be elected and serve four or eight years. But Jesus is Lord, Savior, God, and King for eternity. No accomplishment of any president or king or emperor or prime minister  comes even close to what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross!

It’s this message of new, eternal life with God for dying sinners that Paul felt worth repeating again and again, in many different ways and circumstances. It's a message worth building our lives on too!

When life throws you a bad break, fight the good fight: hold onto Jesus.

When you find yourself disagreeing with God about what constitutes a sin, fight the good fight: repent and ask God to help you to live according to God’s will, not your own.

When a friend loses a loved one, don’t make yourself scarce, afraid of saying the wrong thing; pray God to give you the right words and the right listening silences, and go to that friend. That’s fighting the good fight, too.

When you see a classmate mistreated or a co-worker shafted, fight the good fight; go to them and be the loving presence of Christ and pray with them.

When you see someone struggling with life without a clue, fight the good fight; go to them, pray with them, and tell them about the hope you have in Jesus Christ.

Pastor George Hartman, a former missionary, was the senior pastor of Saint John Lutheran Church in Grove City for many years. I first got to know George when I was the twenty-five year old Elder of our home church on the west side of Columbus and Saint John was part of the same cluster of congregations. I came to know George better when Saint John was a mission partner to the mission congregation I pastored in Cincinnati, Friendship. George Hartman was absolutely sold-out, no turning back, no-doubt-about-it in love with Jesus Christ! He wanted people to be saved from sin and death by becoming Jesus’ disciples.

I’ll never forget one Sunday afternoon about twenty-five years ago. The people of Friendship were invited to Saint John for a joint worship service celebrating and praying for our partnership. (At that time, Friendship had grown to a whole 20 members, including my family!) I preached.

Sitting in the front row was George Hartman. I explained that though Friendship was small, already we had seen several adults come to faith in Jesus Christ. “Thanks to you, your prayers, and your gifts” I told the people of Saint John, “there are people you will meet one day in heaven, even if you never meet them on earth, people who, without your commitment to Jesus, might have been lost to God for all eternity.”

I wasn’t going for sentimentality, just stating the facts. But just as I said that, I caught sight of George. Tears were streaming down his face as he thought about the people saved by the sharing of Christ’s gospel who he would one day see in heaven. Folks, those were the joyful tears of a follower of Jesus committed to fighting the good fight of faith, fighting to ensure that every lost soul has a chance to know and follow Jesus!

Among our neighbors, family members, co-workers, and classmates, there are people you and I know who face their days without Christ and without the help that only He can bring.

There are people we know facing an eternity without Jesus Christ, of eternal separation from God and an eternity in hell.

There are people we know who need Jesus Christ.

Doesn’t that make you fighting mad at sin, death, and the devil, the devil who has always tried to deceive people into believing that they can be their own gods, that their sins aren’t so bad?

Don't you want, every single day, to fight for the eternal salvation of such people?

Please, in Jesus’ Name, I beg you to pray for the people in your lives who don’t know Jesus.

Serve them in Jesus’ Name.

Help them to know Jesus.

Help them to see how your perfect Savior is helping you, loving you, and saving you despite your imperfections.

Start a Bible study with them. (I’ll direct you to materials to make it happen.)

Pray with them.

Be there for them.

More than ever before, the world needs Christians to fulfill the mission Jesus has given to us: to be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

That’s the fight of our lives!

It’s a fight fought with the love of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth of God’s Word, and the prayers of disciples who know that all is hopeless without Jesus.

When we fight this fight, the devil opposes us, (the devil always opposes faithful churches and faithful people) but God-the God Who died on a cross and rose from the dead and gave us faith--stands with us, just as He did with Paul.

Fight the good fight of faith in Christ. It truly is the only fight worth fighting in this world. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared at both worship services this morning.]

What About Saints? (Part 15, The Augsburg Confession)

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Whenever Lutheran and Roman Catholic friends happen to talk about their churches, there’s one topic they probably both avoid more than any other. That topic is the issue of saints, who saints are, and, most especially, the place and role of deceased saints in the faith lives of Christians.

Lutherans believe that there are people who can be described as saints. After all, we celebrate All Saints Day every year and this congregation is called Saint Matthew Lutheran Church.

But what is a saint? Please turn to Philippians 1:1. This is the beginning of a letter dictated by the apostle Paul to Christians in the city of Philippi. It starts in the fashion typical of letters in those days, by naming who’s sending the letter first, then naming those to whom it’s addressed. It says: “Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops [overseers] and deacons.”

Now, go back one book, to Ephesians 1:1. This letter begins: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus...”

In both of these letters, all the members of the respective churches were called saints, hagioi in the Greek in which the New Testament was originally written, a word that literally means holy ones.

Holy ones sounds pretty special, doesn’t it?

Were all the Christians in Ephesus and Philippi special?

Were they especially virtuous and faithful?

Or was the term being used to butter the believers up for the letters that followed?

Well, anyone who reads the New Testament with any care knows that, for example, the apostle Paul never buttered people up. He always told it like it was, whether the people he addressed would like his words or not. He was honest. He told the truth in love.

Fact is, Paul knew that every Christian to whom he wrote was a sinner, just like himself. (He once referred to himself as "the foremost" of sinners.)

But he also knew that every Christian he addressed was also a saint, a sinner set apart for all eternity by God because they had been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

If you are a repentant believer in Jesus Christ who knows that your hope is built on Jesus Christ alone, you are a saint.

Not perfect. Not sinless. Not flawless. A saint, a holy one of God, set apart for all eternity for the kingdom of God.

“Simply put,” ELCA Pastor D.J. Lura writes, “a saint is a Child of God, made such by God’s grace through Jesus Christ. God is in the business of making sinners into saints through faith in Christ alone.”

And this leads us, as we continue to consider what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, to Article 21 of The Augsburg Confession. Please pull a copy of the Confession from the pew rack and turn to page 21.

To start, I want to give you permission to mentally amend the copy you have in your hand. You can read it as saying, Invocation of the Saints. That’s how other translations put it, not as it appears in this translation, Worship of the Saints. Our Roman Catholic friends invoke the names of dead saints in prayer. They believe that they can enlist the prayers of dead saints on behalf of what they pray about.

To a Lutheran this seems to say that having Jesus as our advocate before the throne of God is insufficient. Or, that prayers offered to the Father in Christ alone lack the needed power to move God.

But Christ is the only advocate, Savior, and Lord anyone needs!

Let’s take a look at what the article says.

“Our [Lutheran] churches teach that the history of saints may be set before us so that we may follow the example of their faith and good works, according to our calling.”

Phillip Melanchthon, who wrote the article, then goes on to say that the Emperor Charles, to whom the article was primarily addressed, could look to King David from the Old Testament for a saintly example of how a believer in the God you and I know through crucified and risen Jesus, might best execute a war.

Then, Melanchthon writes: “But the Scriptures do not teach that we are to call on the saints or ask the saints for help. Scripture sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator, Atoning Sacrifice, High Priest, and Intercessor...He is to be prayed to. He has promised that He will hear our prayer...This is the worship that He approves above all other worship, that He is to be called upon in all afflictions. [Then, Melanchthon cites 1 John 2:1:] “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate [Jesus, God the Son] with the Father.”

Go, please to 1 Timothy 2:5-6, one of the passages cited in the article. It says:

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and [humanity], the Man, Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified [or attested to, confirmed by His return to the earth in glory on the last Day] in due time. 

What does this mean? It means that the only way a human being can communicate with or can know God is through Jesus Christ. Out of God’s great love for all of us, Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, died for your sin and mine, then rose from the dead in order to give forgiveness and everlasting life, freedom from sin, death, and the devil to all who entrust their lives to Him.

There is nothing more powerful than Jesus’ Name! Philippians 2 tells us that because Jesus willingly left the glories of heaven in order to become the Servant of the human race He created, enduring the indignity of suffering and death, He was given by God the Father “the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on the earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

If we want a relationship with God, to talk with God, to seek God’s blessings, help, or strength, there is only one way to seek these things: through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."

Many of you have heard me speak of my great grandmother. She had a profound impact on my life. She taught me about the love of God given through Jesus Christ. She was a committed follower of Jesus, a Methodist, who sought to live her faith. She was a saint.

She could also be domineering and petulant toward her family members. She was a sinner.

When I pray, I do not ask Saint Elva to put in a good word for me. I don’t need to. Why would I invoke the help of a dead saint when I can go directly to God through Jesus Christ?

This is why Lutherans have always rejected invoking the names of saints in their prayers. Jesus says, “If you ask anything in My Name [which doesn’t mean using Jesus’ Name like a magical word, but praying in accordance with His will, His timing, His priorities, His grace, and His character. “If you ask anything in My Name...] I will do it.”

But, as the Confession reminds us, the Bible, God’s Word, doesn’t teach that we should just forget about saints who have gone before us. In another part of our Lutheran Confessions, Melanchthon summarizes the three ways in which Christians can and should honor the saints.

First, we honor the saints in thanksgiving. We should be thankful for the examples of Christian faithfulness we see in saints no longer on this earth. Becky mentioned Saint Matthew saints no longer with us in her presentation a few Sundays ago.

Personally, I think of saints like Pastor Bruce Schein, one of my professors at seminary, who, despite the challenges of Parkinson’s Disease, devoted himself totally to imparting the truth about Christ and the new life that only Christ can give to his students and everyone he knew. He reminded us that our job as Christians and as Christian leaders was, in a phrase from Paul's first letter to the young pastor, Timothy, to “fight the good fight,” combating things like spiritual indifference, idolatry, and evil so that people could be set free by the good news of new life given to all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.

Several years after I had been ordained, I got a note from him. He had been going through major health challenges and had, for a time, been clinically dead. He wrote by saying that he was happy that the "saints" at Bethlehem in Okolona had a "faithful shepherd." By the way, he wrote, he had been in God's throne room. "I put in a good word for you," he said.

Pastor Schein died at 42, having fought that loving fight for people’s eternal destinies to the end!

Another saint I remember with thankfulness is Martha Schneider. When I came to faith in my early twenties, Martha was already in her late sixties. Improbably, she took me under her wing. She taught me how to pray. She taught me what it means to follow Jesus. She was incredibly patient with me. And when, a few years later, I sensed God calling me to become a pastor, Martha was my biggest cheerleader. She never failed to end every conversation we had together by saying, "I love you."

Saints like these always point us to Jesus Christ, the only way to God. We honor them by thanking God for their example. We would dishonor them by praying through them rather than through the Lord they honored, served, worshiped, and trusted and to Whom they pointed!

A second way we honor saints is through veneration. To venerate saints, D.J. Lura points out, is to be comforted by how, despite their sins, the saints who have preceded us to eternity experienced the grace and forgiveness of God that comes to those who repent and believe.

• Moses murdered a man, yet led God’s people to the promised land. 
• Rahab was a prostitute who came to believe in the God of Israel and so, saved her family when the Israelites conquered Jericho. 
• King David was called a man after God’s own heart even though he murdered and committed adultery. 
• The life of Mary Magdalene was such a spiritual vacuum that she became filled with seven demons from which Jesus freed her. Then made her one of the first to proclaim Jesus’ resurrection, to preach the good news of Easter! 
• Peter was empowered to preach the Word about Jesus Christ and even honored with martyrdom in Christ’s Name despite having turned his back on Jesus on the night of Jesus’ arrest. 
• Paul approved the murder of Christians and yet, by God’s grace in Christ, became an apostle, the greatest evangelist in history. 

The saints show us that God willingly forgives sinners. I don’t know about you, but that gives me hope because I am a sinner in daily need of Christ’s forgiveness and the renewal that comes from the Holy Spirit!

Finally, we honor saints when we imitate their faith. As another commentator on The Augsburg Confession, Leif Grane, points out, the saints show us what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in our everyday lives, in our daily work, in daily interactions with others, in our ambitions and our decisions.

Do Lutherans believe in saints? Absolutely! We believe that every person in whom the Holy Spirit has planted the gift of faith in Christ is a saint. Not perfect. Forgiven.

But when it comes to praying, worshiping, seeking the help of God, invoking the names of saintly middle men or women is as pointless as praying in the name of some idol, or a block of wood, or Elvis.

When we pray, there is only one name that’s needed, only one name that will do, the name that’s above every name, the name of Jesus Christ, the One Who died and rose to make saints from sinners, set apart for God for all eternity. Amen