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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, the text for this morning is the Gospel reading, also pulling some things from the Epistle. You may be seated. I’m sure you’ve had an occasion to quote this oft-said secular or pagan saying that there is nothing certain in this world but death and taxes. Yes. Well, even though that may be true… You and I have never been given, and even if we were, we would still struggle with it, and that is the death part. If you’ve ever had a spouse taken from you, a parent taken from you, a child taken from you, by God, because the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
No one ever trains us to know how to handle that kind of death. No one trains our teachers or our pastors or our principals on how to handle when a school or a church closes. That’s not given in the educational scheme of our concordias or our seminaries. And yet that is a real part of life in the church, is it not? We’re given how to deal with human death. We’re taught how to encourage through the gospel promises that God has given us. But it gets sort of sticky when it comes to the death of people, churches, meaning congregations, or schools.
Who’s to blame? See, when someone dies, most of the time we say, well, that’s God their time. We don’t do that with institutions, do we? How interesting. But in the same way that that is a pagan saying, in this morning’s text there are some very, very strong gospel statements of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. That he plays the cards of the trump and says, in the midst of death, whether it be earthly in the sense of a physical life or whether it be an institution, this is the promise that trumps all things with which your mind is plagued.
One, I’m the good shepherd. I know my sheep well. And my sheep are called out by my voice because they know my voice, and I’m the one who calls them by name. That’s the promise, the certainty. The second one is that once God has called us by name and called us as his sheep, and we hear his voice, he’s not going to let us sit in the confines of the sheep pen. Because the text said the good shepherd leads them out of the sheep pen. Amen.
And once we leave the sheep pen, now we are in the midst of the travails of this world. We as His sheep, the certainty of us, we know what God’s certainty is as good shepherd. We as His sheep, the certainty of you and me, is that we stray. That is the nature of sheep. And if we are sheep, we stray. Oh, we may get very good at how we cloak our straying because we have gotten very good at not wanting it to appear as if we don’t stray in such a bold fashion that we look like those people. But we stray nevertheless, or otherwise, why does God say, I call my sheep by name?
There’s a need to be called by name, not just in the salvation of your baptism, but daily to be called by name by the Good Shepherd. Because that’s the constancy in your life that the Good Shepherd always does. He seeks the welfare of his sheep. Now the Good Shepherd doesn’t lead his sheep with harshness, with cruelty, with dictatorial power. He leads his sheep by serving them. That’s counterintuitive to you and me. But that’s the leadership that he continually and daily calls us back to.
To be led by the one who serves us first. Because the good shepherd is only concerned with sheep and our spiritual welfare. When you and I as sheep are led out by the shepherd, do we know where we’re going? No. Do we know how long we’ll be going on this specific journey? No. Do we know what we’re going to encounter as we go along on this specific journey of which we do not know how long? No. He leads. We follow. He’s the shepherd. We’re the sheep.
When challenges bring change in our life, and change does bring challenges, does it not? The good shepherd has his sheep in his hand and in his heart and leads them with his voice in the midst of change. Nobody in this room likes change. And everyone in this room struggles with change. And our Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, never leads us without daily encountering change.
We appreciate predictability. He does give us predictability, doesn’t He? But the Good Shepherd gives us predictability not in what we’re going to encounter, but in the promises that sustain us in this leading out of his sheep. No one told me how it was going to be to be the pastor of a church that closes a school. You would be hard-pressed to find a theological paper written about such a thing, a professor to preach about it or proclaim about it much. Because woe to the congregation and the pastor of that church that has to close a school.
You know, there’s probably a reason for it. Facetious and sarcastic in order to make the point. When someone overweight dies, we say, oh, they died because. When someone skinny dies, we don’t say that, do we? When someone smokes, they die, we say, oh, they died because they smoked. When someone who didn’t smoke dies of that, we say, wow. It is the same thing that we do when churches go through struggles and schools go through struggles. It is the same thing, and that’s how sheep wonder. I wonder, and so do you. We all wonder.
But the Good Shepherd calls us back to His verdant green pastures to feed our fears and comfort us. And supply us with what we need to endure the changes and the challenges he brings. God be praised that two years after this little congregation got started in this town which isn’t known for Lutheranism, like Lee County, God be praised that these people took a leap of faith and they had no idea how long this school was going to go. They had no idea if it was going to fail in 10 years or in 20. They just knew they wanted to start a school.
When they did all of that work and sacrifice to get the school started, who started the school? They did? Or did Jesus, the Good Shepherd? Oh, our piety will not allow us to say that they did, did we? Our piety will make us say, only the Good Shepherd did that. To God be all the glory.
124 years later, we have to close the school. Who leads us to close the school? Who allows the school to be closed? Do we give that same honor and glory to the same Good Shepherd? Or do we try to blame ourselves or somebody else for the cause? Job said it, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. If Job said that and God recorded it, then it has to be true about all things. He gives and He takes away.
I do not know why. I can think all kinds of thoughts as you can think all kinds of thoughts, and we would all be wandering sheep on this path. And the Good Shepherd calls us back to say, what are the certainties that you know of me, the Good Shepherd? I will call you out. I will lead you. You will hear my voice. You will know me, and I will call you by name. But how long this journey will last, whether it is a school or a church or our own physical life, what kind of health will we have, regardless of how well I took care of myself, vitamins and minerals and exercises, or how badly I took care of my body, God gives us the when. When He decides, not when we figure it out.
Thank you for the sacrifices by congregation members to help us. Who gave their hard-earned money into that offering plate and funded a school that was free. Free. Those days are long gone, but that is how the school began. And there were many people who didn’t have children, who were widows or widowers, whose children had already grown up and yet they gave money for someone else’s child to go. That’s sacrifice. That’s what God’s people do, period. Thank you to the principals and the teachers. Thank you. Thank you also to pastors.
Two congregations of the same size, the pastor of the congregation with the school will always earn less than the pastor of a church without a school of the same size. There were godly men far before I ever came onto the scene that sacrificed greatly in their involvement in the school and in their proclamation and support of the teachers and the principal and the parents who sacrificed also because all of a sudden then we had to begin to pay for the education.
Now you had to figure that amount of parochial school bill into your budget where you once didn’t have to pay a dime. Thank you for sacrificing parents. And you, like me, were parochial school poor for a time. But none of that is why this school endured for 124 years. There was only one sacrifice that got this school to endure 124 years, and that was the Good Shepherds. He gave the school. He closes the school.
Then, then all we can do is allow God to do His work and rejoice in our forgiveness for allowing our minds to wonder and blame and to think we know and assess why things happen. These people and this church wanted the words of our Lord Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to be what is proclaimed. That, if anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Right? And I came that they, the children and their parents and all, may have life and have it abundantly.
When this school first started, it was a one-room schoolhouse with combined grades. Oh, horror of horrors, that’s the death of a school. Yes. And for most of St. Paul’s existence, it was a combined grade school. It wasn’t until later in the 50s and 60s that she began to grow, and she did peak out in the upper or lower 200s with full classes. I can only imagine what a teacher has to do to handle 30-some kids in those classes compared to 10. Markedly different, isn’t it?
And in talking to many of the people here who have been around the block a lot longer than I have, there never was a golden time in this school or church’s history, ever. Never. Your memory is worse if you and I think that there ever was a golden time. We may have thought it was a golden time because of our little corner of the world. It seemed glorious. But there was suffering and struggle in all of those people at all different junctures. They may not have ever shared it with you. Pastors and teachers have gone to their grave and didn’t share the struggles. They may not have ever shared it with you. Congregational members and their families have gone to the grave and didn’t share the struggle.
The thing that sustained the congregation and the thing that sustained the teachers and the principal and the pastors and the parents is the certainty of the good shepherd’s promise. I know my sheep, my sheep know me, I call them out by name, and I will give them eternal life. That’s the gift. That’s the constant promise. When we deal with any death, whether it’s the death of another human being or the death of an institution, that’s the constant in the midst of the death.
We need one another. We’re the ones who remain. It’s easy to move on and go somewhere else because you don’t have to deal with the consequences of God’s desires and God’s purpose in a congregation’s life. You and I who stay, we need one another. And we need to remind one another of these promises because that’s all we have. I need it from you, and I know you need it from me. These certainties of the Good Shepherd. Let these be what sustains us regardless of the death. God and the Good Shepherd is in control, one and the same.
In the name of Him who is our Good Shepherd, Jesus. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.