Video of the Divine Service is here. The sermon begins around the 19:00 mark.

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

In two days, it will have been seven years since I was installed as the pastor here. That seems about as good a time as any to revisit what a Christian congregation is about, and so what we’re about. I printed in the bulletin a sentence that I’ve been using for the Workshops in the Word (which we haven’t had for a long time, of course). It has basically two parts, the first about what a Christian congregation is, and the second about what the members of a Christian congregation do as they go out into the world. This isn’t anything that applies only to us, or only to Lutherans. This is simply the summary of what the Scriptures reveal to us of the Church that God has established on the rock and cornerstone of Jesus Christ, who makes and sustains His Church by the gifts and means He has chosen. This is who we are and this is what we do, whether we vote on it or not. Today we’re going to focus on the first part, who we are: a congregation of baptized believers gathered together by Christ around His life-giving Word and Sacraments.