Pastor Halverson's FINAL SERMON at First
Lutheran Church on June 7, 2015
In this final
Sunday sermon after 25 years of preaching from this pulpit, I’d like to review
the basics of my understanding of ministry in this parish.
In 1st
Corinthians 2:1 St. Paul
wrote: “When I came to you, brethren, I
did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words of
wisdom. For I decided to know nothing
among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in much
fear and trembling….that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in
the power of God.”
Pastoral ministry is all about preaching the Word of God and
administering the sacraments so that people come to believe and are
strengthened in their faith. The Word of
God is all about the mercy and love of God conveyed to the believer in word and
sacrament. So under girding everything
else any of us do as pastors is this basic charge: to preach Christ crucified
and risen. Sometimes it may not be so
evident as we get caught up in other things, but there is the foundation. Let me repeat part of that scripture
again: “For I decided to know nothing
among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
St. Paul returned to this theme in the 15th
chapter of 1st Corinthians when he wrote in verse 3, “For I
delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died
for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was
raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures….” 25
years ago, when I began to preach what was of first importance and what I
received through baptism, confirmation, and my education at the seminary. Today it is still of first importance. It will always be of first importance.
There are
times when I can readily identify with Paul’s confession, “I was with you in
fear and much weakness and trembling…”
Early in my yeas here, one dear member of our congregation, now long
gone home to the Lord, told me that I seemed quite timid much of time. And I have had to own that all of my
life. I have never lived up to my own
image of the pastor as a big, dominating, charismatic, dynamic, gregarious,
energetic figure in the community. After
entering the ministry and getting to know many pastors, I learned that no
pastor fits that bill. So I have
learned to hold on to what Paul wrote a few verses later, in 1st
Corinthians 15:10, “But by
the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.”
The head of
the congregation is not the pastor. It
is Jesus Christ. If you read our
constitution it says that Christ is the head of this church. Most important of all is that Christ be preached
so that people may come to believe and continue to believe.
A second
emphasis of my ministry has been to be fully Lutheran. My letter of call back in 1990 specifically
spelled out that I lead worship using traditional Lutheran worship resources
and that I increase cooperation with the synod and the newly formed ELCA. I have tried to do that throughout the
years. Before my ordination I had to
sign my allegiance to Luther’s Catechism and the Augsburg Confession just like
the Reformers did back in 1530, and when coming here to this place I was
pleased to make our Lutheran identity a key characteristic of our life together. There are plenty of other opportunities in
this area to join a generic Protestant congregation, or a Catholic one, or a
Pentecostal one. Our purpose in this
community is to be a clearly Lutheran parish.
My appreciation of liturgical worship and traditional preaching from the
pulpit have only increased over the years.
I do
appreciate other forms of worship, too, form time to time. I enjoyed working on baccalaureate this year
at the school and smiled when our local priest took the microphone and paced
back and forth right in front of the graduates through his whole sermon. I was on the stage and could see some of the
graduates lean back as if to say, “whoa, there back off brother, er I mean
father.” But we are traditional Lutherans
in this parish. We use the catechism in
confirmation. We use the liturgy in
worship. We are heirs of the Reformation
in preaching.
Two things are
worth noting here. We bought the new
Lutheran hymnal at the discounted pre-publication price and began using it in
its entirety as soon as it was published in 2006. We were the first parish in our area to do
this. And then when the 2009 ELCA
churchwide assembly made a controversial decision, that controversy did not
disrupt things here in this parish. We
know that we do not like everything in any hymnal, and we know that we do not
agree with every action of our brothers and sisters in Christ, but we stick
with them and still work with them.
And that leads
me to a third emphasis during my years here: working together with our brothers
and sisters in Christ in other denominations.
All 40 years of my ministry I have been a regular member of the local
ministerial association. Sometimes it
isn’t easy to cooperate with others; at other times it is a great joy; but it
is always important, in my opinion. More
than half of my years here I have been an officer in our little ministerial
association. I have preached at some
community service or another in every church in this town except the Catholic,
and even there I was invited to speak at a funeral visitation once. I alone represented our local ministerial
association at the dedication of St. Edward’s Catholic Church in Karlstad back in
1997. Sorry if that sounds like
bragging, but it was important to me. At
the same time as we fully embrace our own Lutheran heritage, we still work with
and appreciate our brothers and sisters in Christ in other churches. As Paul says in Ephesians 4:5 there is “one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all
and through all and in all.”
One of the best things our local ministerial
has done in recent years is to sponsor the annual Karlstad Area Choir in its
annual Palm Sunday cantata. Ruth and I
have supported this whole heartedly every year.
It is so great to blend all our voices in one song of praise and together
in song tell the story of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The
First Lutheran Choir is the core of the area choir, but the area choir is truly
an ecumenical group. We deserved the
coverage The Grand Forks Herald gave
us a few years back for our work together.
Music is one
of the great strengths of this parish, and has been one of the great joys of
life here for Ruth and me. Some of you
may remember that on the afternoon of June 3, 1990 (you surely remember that
day!) I said in my installation response that I was eager to join the choir
that was sitting in the old choir loft.
Through all the years, the choir has been a source of inspiration for
us, singing at times of great joy and times of intense sorrow. Martin Luther famously said, “Next to the
Word of God, music deserves the highest praise.
The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man
that he should proclaim the Word of God through Music.” We have been blessed with great music in this
parish starting with our organists, Kirstin Olson and Jackie Anderson, our
choir, and our many soloists. By the
way, Kirstin played the organ at my installation service and is at the organ
today. She has probably heard more of my
sermons than any person other than Ruth, and still manages to pay
attention. It has been good.
Let me say
that about the whole of our 25 years in this parish. It has been good. There have been ups and downs, as there
always are. I have made plenty of
mistakes, but the people here have been gracious and understanding, generally
willing to forgive and move on. That’s
the way it is in a family. Over the last
few weeks I have been recalling so many missed opportunities when I held back
from something or did not reach out to someone.
Regrets are probably normal at this time, but they cannot be allowed to
overshadow all that is good. Thank you
all for your kindness, your love, your support, your patience, and your
understanding over these 25 years.
In today’s gospel
reading Mary and some others came from Nazareth
to investigate what Jesus was doing.
Jesus loved his mother and all his other relatives, but he chose this
occasion to emphasize another family – the family of God. When he was told they were waiting outside to
see him, he asked, “Who are my mother and brothers?” And then he answered his own question. Looking out at the people gathered around him,
he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
It in
that sense that Ruth and I regard all of you as our brothers and sisters in
Christ, and though this particular pastoral ministry is ending, we