We’ve come to the last of our four sermons on what our church name reminds us about who we are and why God has brought us together. We are St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. St. Matthew’s, because we are all sinners, saved by the blood of Jesus and eager to share the forgiveness of Jesus. We are evangelical, because the Evangel, the Gospel, is the heart and center of our faith, and sharing the Gospel is the heart and core of our mission. We are Lutheran because every Word of God is inspired and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:15), and the Lutheran confessions clearly teach the truths of the Bible, neither adding to it nor subtracting from it. We are Lutheran because we know we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone.

Today we want to remember why the very last word in our name is equally important. We are a Church.

The church, contrary to what so many think, is not a building. The church is people. During our history at St. Matthew’s, we’ve had two different buildings with two different addresses, but we’re still the same church. And even if we had no building at all, that doesn’t really matter. As inconvenient as that might be, it really wouldn’t change anything. We’d still be "St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran CHURCH".

In our English language we have two different words: Church and Congregation. But there’s really no difference between the two. Both of them represent one word in the original Greek Bible (ekklesia). It’s a word that means a gathering of people—just as our word congregation does. But the church is not just any gathering of people. The church is not a club. People form clubs so they can get together with people they like, or people who like to do the same kinds of things they like. If you want to join a simple club, like a bridge club all you have to do is call up whoever is in charge and ask them to let you in. Some clubs have lifetime memberships. Once you’re in, you’re in until you die. If you want to join an exclusive country club like Berrien Hills, you’ve got to put lots of money up front and promise to spend even more on drinks and dinners. Some clubs are so exclusive you can only get by special recommendation or even inheritance.

But the church is not a club. You can’t buy membership in the church. The poorest untouchable in India can be a member of the church. So can the richest man in America or Japan. You can’t get in by inheritance or reputation. There’s no such thing as a "lifetime membership"—although you can certainly stay You can stay in the church forever. On the other hand, its possible, sadly, to once be a member of the church, and then lose your membership.

So who gets in and who doesn’t? That’s not a decision that people make at all. God has stated up front that he wants everyone to be a member of his church. So how do people get into the church. Paul wrote: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. God chose us before the creation of the world to be members of his church. He brought us in through the water of baptism. He made us believers in his Son Jesus Christ. So it’s God himself who made you a member of his church. None of us got in because we had the right connections, or because we made the right contributions or because we did the right things. God in his grace simply reached down from heaven and made us his own. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. ²¹ In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.

The hymn writer put it so well: "The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord, Her charter of salvation: One Lord, one faith, one birth." Without Jesus there would be no church. Our membership may be free to us, but someone had to create and found the church and someone had to pay the dues. That someone was Jesus Christ. He made one huge membership payment to cover the dues of anyone and everyone. That payment was his holy precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. And the membership privileges? Well, they’re out of this world: Eternal life in an everlasting, indescribably beautiful paradise, surrounded by the perfect love of God.

Paul uses the picture of a temple to describe the church. Like a huge stone structure with it’s date inscribed on the cornerstone, the church has Jesus Christ as its cornerstone. And the founding date? AD 01. Without him there would be no church. Without him there would be no people. Without him it couldn’t stand. Without him it would never have been built. Every good building has not only a cornerstone, but also a foundation. In the case of the church, that foundation is the apostolic and prophetic Scriptures—the eternal testimony given by God through holy men of God—apostles and prophets—as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pe 1:21).

In Chicago many of you have ridden up the Sears Tower elevator to the observation deck. Until a few years ago, that was the tallest building on earth. Or have you ever been inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral? That’s the biggest building in volume in the whole world. But the church is far bigger. As the hymn writer said, "Elect from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth." Countless millions have become part of the church. Hundreds more are added each day—from every language, tribe, people and nation—all whom the Lord our God calls to faith through the Gospel.

It’s not like the Sears Tower. You can’t see it, because faith is in the heart. But we know it’s there. It leaves clues and signs all over the place. And one of those places is at the corner of Colfax and Kline in Benton Harbor.

Our Congregation is a visible manifestation of God’s invisible, eternal, international church. Jesus Christ himself founded our church. Yes, there were those people who attended the meetings and signed the papers. But Jesus is the real founder. Without him their venture would have resulted in nothing, as did the previous attempt to start a Lutheran congregation in Benton Harbor five years earlier. Without God’s approval and aid, all ventures end in ruin. But St. Matthew’s is still here 101 years later because of Jesus. He’s the cornerstone of this church.

It was the Holy Spirit who brought those first members together. It’s been the Holy Spirit all along who has brought people into God’s kingdom at this church. Sure, a non-Christian observer might look on and see nothing of the work of the Spirit—only German immigrants looking for a better life and a place to meet each other. But we know better. God knew he would found St. Matthew’s long before those immigrants thought of leaving Germany, Prussia and Ukraine. God had plans behind it all. God himself directed and brought them here. He wanted our forefathers to be part of his kingdom. He wanted them to be the core of a new congregation that would found daughter congregations and continue into its second century to reach out with the Gospel in this city. How can we be so certain? Because God himself has said so. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. ²² And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. God’s invisible church is plenty visible in Benton Harbor, because of the outward, visible marks of the church—namely the Gospel in Word and Sacrament.

Wherever God’s Word is preached, wherever children and adults are baptized, wherever the Lord’s Body and Blood are offered for the forgiveness of sins God builds his church. It was Word and Sacrament that brought our forefathers together and made them a single-minded group, united in faith, in love and in purpose. It was Word and Sacrament that kept them together, united in their calling to be the church. It is those same means of grace that are keeping us together today, united in our mission to believe, to worship and to do the work of the kingdom.

If this congregation had gathered together for some other purpose, we would long ago have disbanded. If we were gathered to work for our own mutual comfort and glory we would be making plans for a very different future, certainly somewhere else.

But we’re not. Strangely and miraculously, we’re still here, not planning to go anywhere but heaven, and sweep as many souls along with us as we can on the way. Why? Because we’re the CHURCH! That’s what God the Holy Spirit has accomplished among us and is still accomplishing among us today. It’s a modern day miracle—right here in Benton Harbor. You are part of that miracle!

God has called us together to be his people and to live as his people. He has called us together to do the work of the Church. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. We’re not a club. We’re not a business. We’re not a social service agency. We are the church.

We are not gathered to accomplish earthly things, to pursue our own honor, ease and outward success. By such standards we might easily be written of as a failure. No, Jesus has founded this congregation to do the work of the church: to gather around Word and Sacrament, and to gather others around Word and Sacrament. Everything we do reflects that mission. That’s why we keep our school going, even if it might not make good business sense to do so. Last I checked the school wasn’t turning a profit, but it was still leading children to know their Savior. That’s why we go to all the trouble of putting together a VBS each year. It’s a whole lot of work and we often don’t see immediate results, but still we go on, trusting God’s promise that his Word will accomplish his purpose. Last week a 13 year old girl came to our door just to talk—about her VBS experience five years ago, before moving to California.

That’s why we started our Day Care—to give us more opportunities to bring people into contact with our greatest treasure, the Gospel and to let them meet our founder and Cornerstone, Jesus Christ. Why do we do these things? Because we are the CHURCH! Last week we read a beautiful prayer in our German service—a prayer commemorating the presentation of the Augsburg confession. In that prayer, we asked our Lord to keep us faithful to him and to preserve our congregation alive until the day of his glorious return. Those two things go together, staying faithful to our Savior and his mission and our congregation still being here on the day Jesus comes back. What a wonderful thought. And that’s my prayer, and I trust yours as well.