Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Adell, Wisconsin

Trinity 1 (June 22, 2003)

The Installation of the Reverend Michael Frese

Luke 16:19-31

TITLE: “In the Bosom”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.  Our text is the Gospel lesson just read, the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus from Luke 16.

God sends pastors to His Church because He promised He would do so.  The last words of Jesus before His Ascension into heaven were: Lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.  In other words, Jesus promises that He will always, always be with us as long as we dwell here on earth.

That’s quite a promise, isn’t it?  Christ our Lord promises to be with you no matter what.  No matter how hard and trying the times are in your life.  No matter the sorrow you face.  No matter how far you fall, Christ promises He will be with you.  His passion is for you, for He loves you with an everlasting love.  This promise of our Lord’s is the bedrock upon which the Church of God is based.  For Christ is our Rock.  This is not just theological talk or a cute picture.  Christ promises to be with you through thick and thin, even in the face of death itself.  Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 

Now there was another man who trusted in that great promise of our Lord.  His name was Lazarus.  He had a lot of reasons to doubt God’s Word and promise, at least from our perspective.  He was a beggar.  His life was pathetic and painful.  No food, no home, even the dogs came and licked his sores.  Yuk.  And yet Lazarus had the one thing needful: he had a name.  God had called Him by name.  He was in the bosom of Abraham.  And because of that, no matter what the trial and difficulty the world threw at him, He was safe and at peace.

There was another man, we don’t even know his name.  In the eyes of the world, he had everything: money, clothes, sumptuous food, everything a man would want.  But what He lacked was the one thing needful.  He had no name.  He was not written in the book of life.  And so all of his riches amounted to nothing, because he refused to trust the word and promise of God.

This is how things work in the world sometimes, isn’t it?  On the outside, God’s children are hard to spot.  They are the sinners: the weak, the depressed, the poor in heart and body.  While on the outside, the world seems to get all of the winners: the ones with money and power, happiness and contentment. 

But what God preaches to you today is that you have the one thing needful when you have His Word, that is, Christ Himself.  For when Lazarus and the rich man both died, one went to heaven and the other to hell.  The rich man for all his riches was poor.  And poor Lazarus, for all of his poverty was rich beyond all measure.

Why was this so?  This was so because Lazarus received the Word of God with joy, and it sprang up in Him and yielded a great and mighty crop of eternal life.  The rich man couldn’t see it.  Try as he might, he could not understand that it is the Word of God which creates faith and gives eternal life.  He couldn’t get it.  Even when he tried to save his poor brothers, he wanted a miracle.  He wanted Lazarus to go back to earth and appear from the dead for them so that they would be shocked into faith.  He wanted, if you will pardon the expression, for Lazarus to “scare the hell” out of them.  But God does not work through shows and miracles and great displays of power.  He works through His Word of promise given to beggars like you and I.

Now this is a wonderful text for us to remember as God answers your prayers for a kind and faithful pastor.  Emmanuel Lutheran Church, God With Us Lutheran Church.  It’s a great name for a church, for God truly is with us.  In fact, the Apology to the Augsburg Confession speaks quite specifically about how God is with us today in His Church:

The church has the command to appoint ministers; to this we must subscribe wholeheartedly, for we know that God approves this ministry and is present in it. ¹³ It is good to extol the ministry of the Word with every possible kind of praise in opposition to the fanatics who dream that the Holy Spirit does not come through the Word but because of their own preparations. They sit in a dark corner doing and saying nothing, but only waiting for illumination, as the enthusiasts taught formerly and the Anabaptists teach now.^[1]

What this means for you in English is that God has sent you a pastor so that you will know without any doubt or question where God is at work and how He will work.  God is at work through your pastor to give you His Holy Word, to baptize, to forgive your sins in Holy Absolution, and to deliver Christ’s body and blood to you week after week.

Today is a great day for Emmanuel Lutheran Church.  It is a great day because God continues to answer the prayer of His Church to send faithful pastors.  Martin Luther, as he was on his deathbed, said Wir sind alle Bettler; hoc est verum.  We are all beggars, this is true.  We are all beggars, but you are beggars in the kingdom of God, where our kind and merciful King sends us His servants who lift us up and seat us at the very right hand of God.  You are the richest beggars in all the world, for God has heard your cry for mercy, and has given you His Son, so that whoever believes on Him may not perish, but might have eternal life.  Believe it for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.