David Beebe , Evangelical UCC, Highland

Twenty-Third  Sunday after Pentecost, November 4, 2008

Mission Sunday

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS

 FROM JERUSALEM

Lessons:  Scripture: Acts 15:22-33; 16:4-14 and Luke 19:1-10

In the pastor’s office there is an old print of Jesus pointing the way for a fairly timid young man.  Underneath in French are the words:  “Go to the whole creation and preach the Gospel.”  I enjoy this print, because the young man seems to be thinking, “Who, me?”

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This sermon begins with apologies to the great poet, Robert Browning, whose poem about the news of a battle, carried on the backs of failing horses, was brought to the city of Ghent .  “How They Brought the News to Ghent .”

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Let me tell you the story of how Christianity came to Evangelical United Church of Christ in Highland , IL . 

You may know that a group of Swiss German Evangelical Christians organized this church in the year.1840.

But where did it all start?  And how did it get here?

It all began in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts.   Some people had been coming to the Gentile churches  which the Apostle Paul had founded.  They were telling these newly converted Christians that, in order to be Christians,  they had to become Jews and keep all the Jewish regulations.  To Paul this was a denial of Christian freedom in Christ.  To work it out, Paul went up to Jerusalem for the first “General Synod,” called “the Jerusalem Council.”

There James, Jesus’ brother: who was the leader of the Jerusalem Church , kept insisting:  We have to keep the Law.  Then Peter stood up and said; Remember how God sent me to the house of Cornelius.  And how God sent the Holy Spirit on those Gentiles?  The whole gathering responded: “Then God has given salvation to the Gentiles.”

From that first Jerusalem Council they sent out a pastoral letter, which is recorded in the Book of Acts.  They sent out the good news that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone.  Then finally the Church in Antioch , Syria , the leading Christian Church in Syria (“They were first called Christians in Antioch ”)  sent out missionaries to the entire Mediterranean world: Paul, Barnabas, Barsabbas, and Silas.

The Apostle Paul, having preached in Asia Minor (what we now call Turkey ), was restless, uncertain where God wanted him to go next. In a dream, someone from Macedonia appeared to Paul, saying: "Come over to Macedonia and help us".  So he and his companions sailed to Europe .  That was the first time the Gospel  was ever preached in Europe , the ancestral home of most of the people in this congregation.

Paul and his friends came to Philippi .  They  went to the synagogue that met by the river.  There they met a well-to-do business woman named Lydia . They shared with her the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Christ.  She welcomed them into her home and the Christian Church was founded in Europe . Christianity spread throughout Europe . 

But the Church began to forget that the Gospel, the Good News,  is about grace.  They made it again into rules, regulations,  and laws. again. 

Then a German monk named Martin Luther reminded us that it is all about Jesus caring for us enough to die on the cross.  It is all about grace.  And so was born the Protestant Reformation.

Europe , in the Nineteenth Century, sent missionaries to the ends of the world, awakened to the needs of the world by world events such as the invention of the telegraph and the Crimean War. 

It was in this period that the hymn was published which begins:

“We are living, we are dwelling in a grand and awful time,

in an age on ages telling, to be living is sublime.”

Among these emissaries of Christ, missionaries from the Basel Society in Switzerland and the Barmen Society in Germany came to St. Louis , carrying the Gospel.

A number of German and Swiss people had migrated to this area from Europe .  Some were Lutheran, others were from an Evangelical background.  But there were many who came to escape religion and who thought it outmoded and superstitious.  It was in this climate that 1n 1836 the Basel Mission sent two missionaries to this area.  One was George W. Wall,  The other was Joseph Rieger. 

Rieger was a truly frontier pioneer preacher, who rode horseback to many preaching appointments in this area and in Missouri .  He was also active in public life and served as secretary of the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, of which Elijah Lovejoy was president.

In 1840 Joseph Rieger came to Highland where occasional preachers had a preaching point.  He organized the Swiss German people here into this congregation.  The original name of this congregation was “Der Gemeinde Christliche Kirche,” which translates: “The Christian Church for Everyone.” 

Rieger \ went on to sharing in a meeting (167 years ago last  month) in a village now known as Mehlville , MO.   One of the Barmen missioners, Louis Edward Nollau, gathered a number of pastors in his home in the then Gravois Settlement to form the Evangelical Church Society, Der Deutsche Evangelische Kirchenverein des Westens. (The German Evangelical Church Society in the West).  It was at first an association of clergy and later became the Evangelical Synod.

Joseph Rieger went on to establish a church in Jefferson City , Missouri , Central Church .  It is still there in the capitol city of Missouri and Joseph Rieger is buried in the Riverview Cemetery there.

If you would like to see what he looked like, I have posted a sketch of him near the coffee table in the narthex, the lobby. (It is included here.)

But notice that if Paul had not gone to Europe, if Luther and the other Reformers had not recovered the Gospel,  if these missioners and others had not come to America , we would not have heard the gospel.  It is as the fire is spread that the fire burns more brightly.  For the Church, as Emil Brunner said, "is to mission as fire is to burning".  Each local congregation is a part of the whole body of Christ in all the world, and each is a mission station.

All of these great heroes and saints brought the Gospel to you.  With whom will you share the Gospel?

AFFIRMATION (unison)               “The Kansas City Statement” (1913)

(inclusively adapted)

We believe in God the Father, infinite in wisdom, goodness, and love,

and in Jesus Christ, his Son, our Lord and Savior, who for us and our salvation lived and died and rose again and lives forevermore,

and in the Holy Spirit, who takes of the things of Christ and reveals them to us, renewing, comforting, and inspiring human souls.

We are united in striving to know the will of God as taught in the holy scriptures, and in our purpose to walk in the ways of the Lord, made known or to be made known to us.

We hold it to be the mission of the church of Christ to proclaim the gospel to all humanity, exalting the worship of the one true God, and laboring for the progress of knowledge, the promotion of justice, the reign of peace, and the realization of human kinship.

Depending, as did our ancestors, upon the continued guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, we work and pray for the transformation of the world into the kingdom of God, and we look with faith for the triumph of righteousness and the life everlasting.