Our Partnership in the Gospel

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text for our message this morning comes from Paul's letter to the Philippians the first chapter, beginning at verse two. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ. I thank my God and all my remembrance of you always, and every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this: that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. These are the words of our text.

Partnerships in the Gospel, Paul says, this is the reason for his great joy in remembering these brothers and sisters in Christ at Philippi. Partnership in the Gospel. Partnerships are part of our lives. Much of our time is spent in partnerships. It's in partnerships that we learn to work with other people. We maybe learn to set aside a little bit of ourselves. And those go all the way back to, you know, those first days of kindergarten when you got put in a group, or those project groups in school. Then they evolve into work partnerships, business partnerships, community partnerships. Even to the very basic husband-wife partnership, family partnerships.

Now, the perfect partnership is, of course, the Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they are the perfect partnership. They work well together. They communicate well together. They're always on the same page. They're always about the same work. And wouldn't it be wonderful if all of our partnerships were as united and as efficient and effective as the Trinity is? But sadly, sin entered into the world. And that sin, well that makes even the best of partnerships sometimes go a little sour. Because that sin raises its ugly head, and my pride gets in the way. My ego gets in the way. Your ego and your pride get in the way. My need to be right gets in the way of your need to be right. And even if I'm wrong, I'm still right. And you're wrong, even if you're right. You know what I'm talking about. You've been in enough partnerships and enough collaborations to know that at some point, something is not going to function as a well-oiled machine. Something will get in there to jam up the gears.

And that's sin. And even even Paul and his relationships: some of them are very good. Some of them are very effective. His partnership with Priscilla and Aquila. Very good partnership with Lydia and others, but then there's also times when things don't work out, and the partnership has to be dissolved.

For instance, we all think primarily of Paul and Barnabas, don't we? Paul and Barnabas. They go out as partners in spreading the good news of the Gospel to the Gentiles. That is to the nations. And things are going smoothly for a while, but then Barnabas wants to bring on another partner. And this partner isn't quite ready yet for the challenge. He's young. He's inexperienced. He's immature. And Paul says, "This isn't working out. I want him to go." And Barnabas says, "Well, maybe you want him to go, but I want him to stay."

And so they part ways, Paul and Barnabas. Paul now partners up with Silas. And Barnabas, he goes off with the junior partner around whom all the commotion surrounds. The young man's name is John Mark. And he wasn't ready for the vigors of sharing the Gospel. And Paul said, "You need to go home. You need to grow up. You need to mature." Probably physically, emotionally, as well as spiritually. And it might seem at first glance that hey, wow, this great partnership is breaking up. And what is that going to mean for the Gospel proclamation?

Well, God had it all worked out. Now, instead of one partnership going forth to share the good news, now there's two partnerships going off. They've doubled the number of people going out, sharing the Gospel with the Gentiles. And eventually, this young John Mark, he gets his act together, and he connects with Saint Peter and he writes a Gospel According to Mark that we have in our scriptures.

So, while things didn't always go smoothly, God had a plan. And God's work always, always is accomplished. Even in spite of his relying upon a sinful human being like you and I. Now, our partnership, I think, has gone relatively smoothly, but it's been a rather short partnership. My ego hasn't gotten in the way, yet.

God knows that His business is going to continue here. And what is your business? It is the proclamation of the Gospel, proclaiming of God's word. That's still going to continue. Welcoming new people into the family of God, through the water of baptism - that's going to continue. Feeding God's people on the Lord's Supper - that's going to continue. Sinners will be reminded of their sin and move to repentance and they'll be refreshed, forgiven, calmed with a calming message of the Gospel. And sometimes, that law, it comes - I kind of describe it as my mother going after a sliver in my finger. Maybe your mother was the same. Or maybe, you are the mother, and you do it the same way. My mother would get the tweezer, and she'd dig and dig and dig at that sliver. And then she'd dig and dig and dig some more. And I'd say, "Mom, give it a rest, it's out!" "Well, I'm just making sure," and she'd dig a little more, until she was convinced that there was not a tiny bit of sliver left in my finger. Which makes me glad I didn't, you know, sit on a sliver. But afterwards, what did she do? Well, one time, we didn't have any of the peroxide to put on it, so she pulls out this bottle of Mercurochrome and paints where that sliver was. Boy, did that sting. I don't know which was worse: Mom digging or the Mercurochrome.

But sometimes God's law works in us and we say, "Okay, God, I get it. You can stop digging now." But He's going to keep digging and digging and digging till, you know, He really gets to the root of that sin. But then, unlike pouring Mercurochrome on the wound, He covers that wound with the Gospel balm. The message of the Gospel: that even though your sin is as red as scarlet, yet you are white as snow. White as snow. That's all going to continue to go on here.

And that partnership in the Gospel, it goes all the way back beyond the founding fathers and mothers of Immanuel congregation. Beyond the early pastors that served here, up to our present day, and it's going to go on beyond us into the future until the Lord's return. But it also reaches back all the way to the apostles, and before them, the prophets. We've all been in this partnership of proclaiming a Savior: Jesus Christ. And sometimes, we forget that we're part of that partnership.

At St. John, there's portraits of the past pastors on the back wall, all the way back to the first pastor that came and served them. And I would tell the members again and again, I'm just one of a partnership with all those pastors that served here. And I said, some of those, I hear stories about some of them you like, some of them, you didn't like something about then. I said, I figure it's the same with me. There's some things you like about me, some things you don't care for. That's okay, but the important thing is our partnership in the Gospel.

Here at Immanuel, you've got pictures of the pastors and other workers at the church. I go down there, I look, I see the Pastor Bittner. And I wonder. Gee, I wonder if that Pastor Bittner is somehow related to the Pastor Bittner I knew. And I looked down a few more pictures and there's Pastor Raver. And I'm like, wow, who would have thought that I'd be looking at a picture of a pastor who baptized me. Yeah, how about that? And I go down a little further, and then there's a picture of Pastor Vedder and I met him a few times. It's like, wow. We're all partners.

And what a wonderful thing it is, because the job is too much for one person, or a few people. You know, the pastor can't come in here and lord it over the rest of you. And say, well, this is what I want you to do. So go at it. No. A pastor is to show servant leadership like our Lord Jesus did. But by the same token, the job is too much for the pastor to do on his own, and so the congregation can't say, hey Pastor, this is what we want you to be doing for us, now you go to work, and we'll just re-evaluate how well you're doing on that.

That is not going to lead to a healthy partnership. Even if it is around the Gospel. And as Paul says in the letter to the Corinthians: God gives to each of us a variety of gifts. Not all of us have the same gift. We all have the same faith in the Son of God through the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit gives us that same faith. But how that faith works in our lives, and how that works in the body of Christ, well, it's unique to each and every one of us. Just like all those different parts of our human body are unique, but they serve a particular function, that when it's working right, the body is healthy. But as soon as it starts breaking down, or things aren't going, right, we become ill. Same with the church. We don't all have the same gifts. But I firmly believe that God has put in place everything necessary for Immanuel or St. John, or any other congregation to be a healthy part of the body of Christ.

Problem is, well, that sin makes us a little slothful. Lazy. Well, somebody else will take care of it. You know the story. Everybody thought somebody would do it, and nobody ended up doing it.

But this partnership in the Gospel: it brought Paul great joy, and that isn't to mean that everything is always joyous and rosy. But the amazing thing, when we look back, there may be difficulties. There may have been hard times. But we don't really dwell on those, do we? We may dwell, or we may see the growth and maturing that took place during those times, but even those, we have paused to give thanks to God for them.

As a young pastor, I'd read these words of Saint Paul and I'd say, "Gee, that's really nice. He really liked that congregation. He really loved those people." And that was about the extent of it. Now, I read those words, I'm much more mature in the ministry and in my own faith, and it's like "You know, I get where Paul's coming from." Because in all my years in the ministry, there have been a variety of partnerships in the Gospel.

Thankfully, many of those who were partners with me, well, they've already gone to be with the Lord. But just as I said to them when I left their midst, just as I'm sure Paul said to those whom he left to go to another area of ministry: we'll meet again. We'll meet again. Because as Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we have that blessed hope of meeting once again. Maybe not face-to-face and time and space again. But certainly in heaven. In heaven. We have that opportunity. And guess what? I won't be the only one that knows people's names. You'll know everybody's name. Because we'll have perfect knowledge. We'll have perfect bliss. We'll have perfect partnership.

But in the meantime, God gives us one another. And over these last months, I have come to know you. Appreciate you. Work with you. And love you. And care for you. And I'm sure it's kind of mutual. And I give God thanks for this time with you in working together. To getting back on track with the plan, and praying with you for a new shepherd to come and to continue to be about the Lord's business. Not working for you. But working with you, together in partnership, to continue to share the good news. Comfort sin-sick souls with the good news of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of their sins. To bring comfort and peace to those who are grieving the loss of loved ones. To establish before God's altar a partnership between husband and wife. To welcome in new family members through the water of baptism. And to gather again and again at the Lord's table.

You see, that partnership will continue between you and I and the church and those who serve the church, no matter where we're at. Because we all share in the same Gospel. Even as we confess one Lord, one faith, one hope. And as Paul understood and was so certain of it, so, too, am I, that the One who began a good work in you and began a good work in me, well, He's going to continue to work at it. And He is going to bring it to completion in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. So, bearing in mind that the work won't be completed, that He began in you and I, won't come to completion until the day of the Lord Jesus Christ, my word to you is be loving and patient with one another. Like the bumper sticker I so loved looking at ahead of me at the stoplight: "Be patient with me. God isn't finished on me yet." Not finished on me, yet. Not finished on you, yet. But He does promise to bring it to completion in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. So be loving. Be patient. Be confessing and forgiving. And above all these things, put on love.

And indeed, may that peace of God, which is beyond our human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in faith in Christ Jesus, unto life everlasting. Amen.