Washing and Feeding Sinners for 47 Years

Church Anniversary

November 10, 2013

John 17

Washing and Feeding Sinners for 47 Years

In the name of Jesus.

I.

Let's take a look at Gethsemane by the numbers. Not how much money we have or how many members there are, but how Jesus comes to us in His Gospel Sacraments and takes cares of us through His shepherd.

There are 52 Sundays a year and then we add on the festival days, like Christmas and Easter, and we get 55. But there's Thanksgiving, too, and Ascension and Epiphany and the Presentation of the Augustana, so let's estimate 60 services a year. Times 47 years and we get 2,830 services where the faithful souls of Gethsemane have turned on the lights and have heard their pastor preach Christ and Him crucified in almost all those gatherings.

Throughout the years your pastor has preached in hospitals, where he spoke Christ to the sick or dying souls. Sometimes He went to wash a baby clean through Holy Baptism, and over the years at church, home, and hospital 170 dirty sinners where washed clean by Christ's promise.

Let's guess that the blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion was offered around 1,500 times over these many years, where hungry souls ate and drank Christ for their forgiveness. 1,500 is a good number and we can increase that number even more over the next 47 years if Jesus gives us the time.

II.

These are the numbers of our faithful Savior, and they all are founded on the number One. Jesus prayed before He went out to Gethsemane:

I pray not only for these [disciples],

but also for those who believe in Me

through their message.

May they all be one,

as You, Father,

are in Me and I am in You.

May they also be one in Us,

so the world may believe You sent Me. (John 17:20-21)

Before He was arrested among the trees of Gethsemane, He was already thinking of you, those who believe in Him. And you believe in Him through the message of the apostles, which is confessed simply by you in the Apostles' Creed. You believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one true God.

III.

This is the name that unites two people who have never met: Laura Knutson and Nicholas Trier. Laura's in her 40's; Nicholas just celebrated his ninth day. Yet they share the same faith because of the work of Christ in His Gospel Sacrament. In 1968 Laura became the first baptized soul in the history of Gethsemane, and Nicholas is the latest.

We are from many different places, but our lives have brought us here, and we share the same faith that makes us one.

We are fulfillment of Christ's prayer.

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.