Arise, O Church of God, Arise!
Sermon
THE CHALLENGE OF GOD'S HARVEST
(NOTE ON PRESENTATION. This sermon for the first Sunday after Pentecost, also observed as Holy Trinity Sunday, expands the text above, and also uses the contemporary hymn printed below as the basis for the message. The hymn may be sung as a sermon hymn in its entirety and referred to during the sermon, or the stanzas may be sung individually after they have been treated in the pulpit, as a way of re-inforcing and celebrating through song the message just shared.)
This hymn was written in 1965 by W. Krieger, a vicepresident of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod who died last year. The tune is Lasst uns erfreuen. The music can be found in The Lutheran Hymnal (#475) and The Service Book and Hymnal (#437) as well as most standard hymnals. The words may be printed out in your service bulletin.
1. Arise, O Church of God, arise!
Bestir thyself, lift up thine eyes.
See the nations in commotion.
See tumult, warfare, earthquake, flood,
Sun turn to darkness, moon to blood!
Men's hearts fail them. Fears assail them.
Hear their sighing. Souls are dying.
Time is flying!
2. Attend, O Church of God, give ear!
Thy King commands in accents clear:
Spread the tidings of salvation.
As once My Father sent Me forth
So send I you through all the earth.
Rise, delay not. Go and stay out.
I who send you will attend you
And defend you.
3. Fail not, O Church of God, to heed
The world's sad cry, her anguish, need.
If thou bleed not, thou canst bless not.
Despise not thou the servant's place.
So came thy Lord in matchless grace.
Christ most holy, served the lowly.
Thus he taught us, He who sought us,
Loved and bought us.
4. Exult, O Church of God, and bless
The Lamb, the Lord our Righteousness.
His the kingdom, His the power!
To Him all laud and glory be
Through time and through eternity.
Heav'n rejoices, Lift your voices.
Come before Him, Pray, implore Him.
Praise, adore Him!
The words of our Bible text here this morning are among the most familiar that Jesus ever spoke. But that's the problem. How are we going to make these familiar words of Jesus fresh again in our minds? "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." I'm sure most of us memorized those words back in Sunday school or confirmation class. They remind us that as God's spirit-filled people, living in the season of the Spirit, there is work to be done. There is a mission to be fulfilled. Today we are called in this text to honor the name of the Holy Trinity not by dissecting and analyzing this hard-to-understand teaching about our three-in-one God, but by carrying out his mission across the face of the earth and in our own backyards. "Go ye into all the world ..."
To help us get over the familiarity of these words so that hopefully they take on a little life for us here this morning, I would like to have you focus on the collateral material found in the sermon hymn we have just sung (or will sing, etc.).
The hymn stirs us to consider something like this: you are believers in the Holy Trinity. Today you worship the three-personed God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now answer his call and be the church he has in mind for you. Be on Christ's mission. Do it by being, first of all, a watchful church (stanza one, etc.); secondly, a witnessing church; thirdly, a serving church; and finally, a worshipping church. ARISE, O CHURCH OF GOD, ARISE, AND GIVE GLORY TO THE TRIUNE GOD!
The church that is bent on serving the mission of our Triune God will be, first of all, a watchful church. The hymn writer says,
Arise, O Church of God, arise!
Bestir thyself, lift up thine eyes.
See the nations in commotion
See tumult, warfare, earthquake, flood,
Sun turn to darkness, moon to blood!
Men's hearts fail them. Fears assail them.
Hear their sighing. Souls are dying.
Time is flying!
These words strongly suggest that we shall have to dare to look at and listen to the tumult of the world around us. Some time ago the Milwaukee Journal headlined a news analysis story this way, "Rapid Changes Point to a New World Ahead." The story opened like this:
We must look carefully at the tremendous and rapid changes of the last few years and begin to realize that the world is now passing through the greatest transformation in history.
In almost every field of human endeavor, man's greatest technological achievements before World War II can be matched or surpassed by developments since that time.
Look at the list: nuclear power, nuclear weapons, jet planes, intercontinental missles, space travel, electronic computers, television, DDT, penicillin, oral contraceptives, new grains, new biology, new psychological discoveries, satellite communications, new global organizations.
Whether we like them or hate them, these new developments are now producing massive changes in every part of society - farm, factory, transport, housing, bank, school, church, corporation, Army, police, city and national government - changes in everything from the family to the nation to the global society.
Our present changes have been like 10 Protestant Reformations and Industrial Revolutions rolled into one and occurring within a single generation.
Today television is putting all of this before our eyes in living color. There is no doubt that the newspaper story is true. And there is no doubt that a lot of this tumult and change is hard on us. After the six o'clock news indigestion sets in, and after the 11 o'clock news insomnia.
The story of Cain and Abel is being relived all around us. The loss of paradise is pretty obvious. We would rather not look, lest we plunge even deeper into pessimism and despair about our chances in the future. Many thought that after the Vietnam War America surely would regain her composure and live positively again. Yet a recent Gallup Poll shows that Americans are less satisfied than ever about the future facing them and their families. More than half the national population, in fact, can be categorized as feeling pessimistic about the future.
But the hymn urges us on: "See tumult, warfare, earthquake, flood ... men's hearts fail them, fears assail them, hear their sighing." It is admittedly hard to look at that. But we must dare to focus on the world's and not cop out. We must know all about the world in which we are operating. We must be a watchful church.
But not just watchful in the sense that we look at and listen to the ills of the world in general. We are called to have a heart for the individual souls who are living through these ills. The newspapers and TV reports often have too cumulative an effect on us. We tend to see a conglamorate mess, obviously much too large a challenge for any one of us to deal with alone. We fail to observe the individual soul who is so near us. It is, after all, single human beings, one-by-one, who have needs.
The touching secret of Jesus was his ability to see people amid the masses, to see an individual soul among the vast congregation, to zero in on one struggling person in the tumult of human uproar. Jesus had zoom lens vision as he moved among the crowds. He was acquainted not only with his countrymen's needs in general but was watchful of the one lost soul. When Jesus said, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations," you can be sure he was thinking of the individuals who made it up. So arise, O church of God, arise! Be a watchful church.
[At this point in the sermon the pastor may invite the congregation to sing stanza one, or the sermon may go on as follows.]
Now the second stanza of the hymn enjoins us to be a witnessing church.
Attend, O Church of God, give ear!
Thy King commands in accents clear:
Spread the tidings of salvation.
As once My Father sent Me forth
So send I you through all the earth.
Rise, delay not. Go and stay not.
I who send you will attend you
And defend you.
Once we catch a vision of people and their needs, we are to go to them. But when we go, we'd better have something to say. Have you ever been in the presence of someone who was suffering through a great personal sorrow or illness? "I don't know what to tell you," we sometimes find ourselves saying.
But when Jesus sends us, he sends us with something to say. It is more than a word of human encouragement. It is more than an assessment or judgment of the situation. It is a lot more than a mix of religious sounding words. Jesus sends us with the tidings of salvation. He sends us with that word which points straight back to him and the rescue he can give.
The word of the Cross is the word that says something. It says something to every lost soul. It speaks to the individual. It zeroes in on every human and spiritual need people have. The cross proclaims the cheering word that in whatever suffering we find ourselves, we do not stand alone. God himself is suffering with us. He understands what we are experiencing. He is going through this with us.
And in him there is always hope. Hope even as Christ was raised up on the third day. Here is someone to bank on. Here is something to stand on. The living Lord is bringing the course of our lives toward a glorious destiny. A Christ of victory stands with you now, and there is reason to hope.
The witnessing church has something to say. We have a suffering and victorious Savior to tell the world about. But we hedge. The hymnwriter says, "Rise, delay not; go, and stay not." He is suggesting that it is often a difficult matter for us Christians to get up on our feet and say what we have to say. It is awkward for many of us to share the promising hope of Jesus Christ with others.
That's true in my life, and I know it's sometimes true in yours. We hedge when it comes to being a witnessing church! We hedge because we do not know Christ and experience him richly enough. Know Christ more dearly as your own Savior. Let his word and message dwell in your heart more richly. Do we want to be a witnessing church, unafraid to say something about Christ to a world in need? Then let Christ witness more to us! Let the word about the cross and the open tomb get down in your bones, changing and warming you, giving you a hope for your own life and stirring you to get up on your feet and tell others. God knows, we need to be such a witnessing church!
[At this point in the sermon the pastor may invite the congregation to sing stanza two, or the sermon may go on as follows.]
In the next stanza we are called to be a serving church.
Fail not, O Church of God, to heed
The world's sad cry, her anguish, need.
If thou bleed not, thou canst bless not.
Despise not thou the servant's p/ace.
So came thy Lord in matchless grace.
Christ most holy, served the lowly.
Thus he taught us. He who sought us,
Loved and bought us.
This stanza may be easy to sing but tough to swallow. A serving church? The concept of being a servant is strange to most of us. We have adopted a life-style which has trained us to be served. No kidding, our general affluence today makes it pretty hard to take these words seriously. We despise the servant's role. That's why the poet here has to reprimand us, "Despise thou not the servant's role." To take this seriously requires a shift of mind for most of us.
But again, look to Christ. Let him witness to you in this challenge. The Apostle Paul says it for us: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus ... who humbled himself and took on the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men ... and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."
Why is Christ so believable to you and me today? Why do we have a burning desire to do his will as Christians? It's because his actions of service stand behind his words. Authentic servant is what he was, and that makes him ring true in our hearts. If the world is to listen to the witness of the church in our day, it will be because that word is backed up by our authentic witness of service and love. "If you bleed not, you can bless not," says the writer of the hymn.
Today let us recommit our lives to Christian living, living in the world as servants to others - helping, sacrificing, suffering, bearing, fearing, living and dying for and with any brother in need. Thus we will be the serving church.
[Here sing stanza three or continue on.]
Finally, the church that is living out, and not merely teaching the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, will be a worshipping church.
Exult, O Church of God, and bless
The Lamb, the Lord our Righteousness.
His the kingdom, His the power!
To Him all laud and glory be
Through time and through eternity.
Heav'n rejoices. Lift your voices.
Come before him, Pray, implore him.
Praise, adore him!
We will fail in all these other areas if we do not worship. We cannot continue long to be a watchful, witnessing and serving church if we are not a vitally worshipping church. The noble, glad fellowship of one another's presence and song is what we need. Did you notice that I said a glad fellowship? In both the Old and New Testaments worship was usually conceived of as a feast. It was a celebration and joyful gathering.
For us it doesn't always seem to be that! Are the hymns at fault? Or the other music? Is the liturgy or even the Bible something irrelevant for our time? I doubt it. The things of God are often dreary for us because we have our minds set elsewhere. Our values are straining toward other goals. Our energy is ready to act for receiving things but not to give and serve. Worship is not something for the spectator. If we only want to watch, then TV will be much more exciting.
If the whole business of Christianity, its message and worship, are getting to be a drag for you, then think how much you have actually been engaged in the struggle. We ought to come into this house of worship each week as those who have been involved in a struggle, and a great battle. We have fought a good fight of faith, we have witnessed, we have worn our selves out in service.
Now we come to church! Now we come to worship! Now we come to rest and bask in the light of God's Word and to sing the songs of faith with the faithful, and to hear an encouraging word from fellow servants and to make music to one another about our victories. We exult to be in the privileged presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, worthy Lamb who was slain and who sits at the throne and who feeds us at the Communion table.
This is the worshipping church. This is lively worship, worship made relevant by our own participation in the week-long life of faith. If we don't participate during the week, there's little reason to get excited on Sunday either. And many don't.
"Arise, O Church of God, arise!" Give praise to the Holy Trinity. Sing the Lord's song. "Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
[Now the final stanza may be sung.]
This hymn was written in 1965 by W. Krieger, a vicepresident of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod who died last year. The tune is Lasst uns erfreuen. The music can be found in The Lutheran Hymnal (#475) and The Service Book and Hymnal (#437) as well as most standard hymnals. The words may be printed out in your service bulletin.
1. Arise, O Church of God, arise!
Bestir thyself, lift up thine eyes.
See the nations in commotion.
See tumult, warfare, earthquake, flood,
Sun turn to darkness, moon to blood!
Men's hearts fail them. Fears assail them.
Hear their sighing. Souls are dying.
Time is flying!
2. Attend, O Church of God, give ear!
Thy King commands in accents clear:
Spread the tidings of salvation.
As once My Father sent Me forth
So send I you through all the earth.
Rise, delay not. Go and stay out.
I who send you will attend you
And defend you.
3. Fail not, O Church of God, to heed
The world's sad cry, her anguish, need.
If thou bleed not, thou canst bless not.
Despise not thou the servant's place.
So came thy Lord in matchless grace.
Christ most holy, served the lowly.
Thus he taught us, He who sought us,
Loved and bought us.
4. Exult, O Church of God, and bless
The Lamb, the Lord our Righteousness.
His the kingdom, His the power!
To Him all laud and glory be
Through time and through eternity.
Heav'n rejoices, Lift your voices.
Come before Him, Pray, implore Him.
Praise, adore Him!
The words of our Bible text here this morning are among the most familiar that Jesus ever spoke. But that's the problem. How are we going to make these familiar words of Jesus fresh again in our minds? "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." I'm sure most of us memorized those words back in Sunday school or confirmation class. They remind us that as God's spirit-filled people, living in the season of the Spirit, there is work to be done. There is a mission to be fulfilled. Today we are called in this text to honor the name of the Holy Trinity not by dissecting and analyzing this hard-to-understand teaching about our three-in-one God, but by carrying out his mission across the face of the earth and in our own backyards. "Go ye into all the world ..."
To help us get over the familiarity of these words so that hopefully they take on a little life for us here this morning, I would like to have you focus on the collateral material found in the sermon hymn we have just sung (or will sing, etc.).
The hymn stirs us to consider something like this: you are believers in the Holy Trinity. Today you worship the three-personed God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now answer his call and be the church he has in mind for you. Be on Christ's mission. Do it by being, first of all, a watchful church (stanza one, etc.); secondly, a witnessing church; thirdly, a serving church; and finally, a worshipping church. ARISE, O CHURCH OF GOD, ARISE, AND GIVE GLORY TO THE TRIUNE GOD!
The church that is bent on serving the mission of our Triune God will be, first of all, a watchful church. The hymn writer says,
Arise, O Church of God, arise!
Bestir thyself, lift up thine eyes.
See the nations in commotion
See tumult, warfare, earthquake, flood,
Sun turn to darkness, moon to blood!
Men's hearts fail them. Fears assail them.
Hear their sighing. Souls are dying.
Time is flying!
These words strongly suggest that we shall have to dare to look at and listen to the tumult of the world around us. Some time ago the Milwaukee Journal headlined a news analysis story this way, "Rapid Changes Point to a New World Ahead." The story opened like this:
We must look carefully at the tremendous and rapid changes of the last few years and begin to realize that the world is now passing through the greatest transformation in history.
In almost every field of human endeavor, man's greatest technological achievements before World War II can be matched or surpassed by developments since that time.
Look at the list: nuclear power, nuclear weapons, jet planes, intercontinental missles, space travel, electronic computers, television, DDT, penicillin, oral contraceptives, new grains, new biology, new psychological discoveries, satellite communications, new global organizations.
Whether we like them or hate them, these new developments are now producing massive changes in every part of society - farm, factory, transport, housing, bank, school, church, corporation, Army, police, city and national government - changes in everything from the family to the nation to the global society.
Our present changes have been like 10 Protestant Reformations and Industrial Revolutions rolled into one and occurring within a single generation.
Today television is putting all of this before our eyes in living color. There is no doubt that the newspaper story is true. And there is no doubt that a lot of this tumult and change is hard on us. After the six o'clock news indigestion sets in, and after the 11 o'clock news insomnia.
The story of Cain and Abel is being relived all around us. The loss of paradise is pretty obvious. We would rather not look, lest we plunge even deeper into pessimism and despair about our chances in the future. Many thought that after the Vietnam War America surely would regain her composure and live positively again. Yet a recent Gallup Poll shows that Americans are less satisfied than ever about the future facing them and their families. More than half the national population, in fact, can be categorized as feeling pessimistic about the future.
But the hymn urges us on: "See tumult, warfare, earthquake, flood ... men's hearts fail them, fears assail them, hear their sighing." It is admittedly hard to look at that. But we must dare to focus on the world's and not cop out. We must know all about the world in which we are operating. We must be a watchful church.
But not just watchful in the sense that we look at and listen to the ills of the world in general. We are called to have a heart for the individual souls who are living through these ills. The newspapers and TV reports often have too cumulative an effect on us. We tend to see a conglamorate mess, obviously much too large a challenge for any one of us to deal with alone. We fail to observe the individual soul who is so near us. It is, after all, single human beings, one-by-one, who have needs.
The touching secret of Jesus was his ability to see people amid the masses, to see an individual soul among the vast congregation, to zero in on one struggling person in the tumult of human uproar. Jesus had zoom lens vision as he moved among the crowds. He was acquainted not only with his countrymen's needs in general but was watchful of the one lost soul. When Jesus said, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations," you can be sure he was thinking of the individuals who made it up. So arise, O church of God, arise! Be a watchful church.
[At this point in the sermon the pastor may invite the congregation to sing stanza one, or the sermon may go on as follows.]
Now the second stanza of the hymn enjoins us to be a witnessing church.
Attend, O Church of God, give ear!
Thy King commands in accents clear:
Spread the tidings of salvation.
As once My Father sent Me forth
So send I you through all the earth.
Rise, delay not. Go and stay not.
I who send you will attend you
And defend you.
Once we catch a vision of people and their needs, we are to go to them. But when we go, we'd better have something to say. Have you ever been in the presence of someone who was suffering through a great personal sorrow or illness? "I don't know what to tell you," we sometimes find ourselves saying.
But when Jesus sends us, he sends us with something to say. It is more than a word of human encouragement. It is more than an assessment or judgment of the situation. It is a lot more than a mix of religious sounding words. Jesus sends us with the tidings of salvation. He sends us with that word which points straight back to him and the rescue he can give.
The word of the Cross is the word that says something. It says something to every lost soul. It speaks to the individual. It zeroes in on every human and spiritual need people have. The cross proclaims the cheering word that in whatever suffering we find ourselves, we do not stand alone. God himself is suffering with us. He understands what we are experiencing. He is going through this with us.
And in him there is always hope. Hope even as Christ was raised up on the third day. Here is someone to bank on. Here is something to stand on. The living Lord is bringing the course of our lives toward a glorious destiny. A Christ of victory stands with you now, and there is reason to hope.
The witnessing church has something to say. We have a suffering and victorious Savior to tell the world about. But we hedge. The hymnwriter says, "Rise, delay not; go, and stay not." He is suggesting that it is often a difficult matter for us Christians to get up on our feet and say what we have to say. It is awkward for many of us to share the promising hope of Jesus Christ with others.
That's true in my life, and I know it's sometimes true in yours. We hedge when it comes to being a witnessing church! We hedge because we do not know Christ and experience him richly enough. Know Christ more dearly as your own Savior. Let his word and message dwell in your heart more richly. Do we want to be a witnessing church, unafraid to say something about Christ to a world in need? Then let Christ witness more to us! Let the word about the cross and the open tomb get down in your bones, changing and warming you, giving you a hope for your own life and stirring you to get up on your feet and tell others. God knows, we need to be such a witnessing church!
[At this point in the sermon the pastor may invite the congregation to sing stanza two, or the sermon may go on as follows.]
In the next stanza we are called to be a serving church.
Fail not, O Church of God, to heed
The world's sad cry, her anguish, need.
If thou bleed not, thou canst bless not.
Despise not thou the servant's p/ace.
So came thy Lord in matchless grace.
Christ most holy, served the lowly.
Thus he taught us. He who sought us,
Loved and bought us.
This stanza may be easy to sing but tough to swallow. A serving church? The concept of being a servant is strange to most of us. We have adopted a life-style which has trained us to be served. No kidding, our general affluence today makes it pretty hard to take these words seriously. We despise the servant's role. That's why the poet here has to reprimand us, "Despise thou not the servant's role." To take this seriously requires a shift of mind for most of us.
But again, look to Christ. Let him witness to you in this challenge. The Apostle Paul says it for us: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus ... who humbled himself and took on the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men ... and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."
Why is Christ so believable to you and me today? Why do we have a burning desire to do his will as Christians? It's because his actions of service stand behind his words. Authentic servant is what he was, and that makes him ring true in our hearts. If the world is to listen to the witness of the church in our day, it will be because that word is backed up by our authentic witness of service and love. "If you bleed not, you can bless not," says the writer of the hymn.
Today let us recommit our lives to Christian living, living in the world as servants to others - helping, sacrificing, suffering, bearing, fearing, living and dying for and with any brother in need. Thus we will be the serving church.
[Here sing stanza three or continue on.]
Finally, the church that is living out, and not merely teaching the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, will be a worshipping church.
Exult, O Church of God, and bless
The Lamb, the Lord our Righteousness.
His the kingdom, His the power!
To Him all laud and glory be
Through time and through eternity.
Heav'n rejoices. Lift your voices.
Come before him, Pray, implore him.
Praise, adore him!
We will fail in all these other areas if we do not worship. We cannot continue long to be a watchful, witnessing and serving church if we are not a vitally worshipping church. The noble, glad fellowship of one another's presence and song is what we need. Did you notice that I said a glad fellowship? In both the Old and New Testaments worship was usually conceived of as a feast. It was a celebration and joyful gathering.
For us it doesn't always seem to be that! Are the hymns at fault? Or the other music? Is the liturgy or even the Bible something irrelevant for our time? I doubt it. The things of God are often dreary for us because we have our minds set elsewhere. Our values are straining toward other goals. Our energy is ready to act for receiving things but not to give and serve. Worship is not something for the spectator. If we only want to watch, then TV will be much more exciting.
If the whole business of Christianity, its message and worship, are getting to be a drag for you, then think how much you have actually been engaged in the struggle. We ought to come into this house of worship each week as those who have been involved in a struggle, and a great battle. We have fought a good fight of faith, we have witnessed, we have worn our selves out in service.
Now we come to church! Now we come to worship! Now we come to rest and bask in the light of God's Word and to sing the songs of faith with the faithful, and to hear an encouraging word from fellow servants and to make music to one another about our victories. We exult to be in the privileged presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, worthy Lamb who was slain and who sits at the throne and who feeds us at the Communion table.
This is the worshipping church. This is lively worship, worship made relevant by our own participation in the week-long life of faith. If we don't participate during the week, there's little reason to get excited on Sunday either. And many don't.
"Arise, O Church of God, arise!" Give praise to the Holy Trinity. Sing the Lord's song. "Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
[Now the final stanza may be sung.]
