Sunday, October 26, 2025, Reformation Day
St. John’s, Oxford 130th Anniversary, Dual Parish Joint Worship Service
“Hope for Years to Come”
Today we celebrate both the anniversary of the Reformation of our dear Lutheran Church, and also 130 years of Word and Sacrament ministry at St. John’s Lutheran Church of Oxford, Wisconsin. Our Lord has indeed been “our help in ages past,” and we know with all our hearts that He’ll be “our hope for years to come.”
Scripture Readings: Psalm 46; Isaiah 40:27-31; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36
Service Order: Hymn Service with Holy Communion
Hymns: #656 “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”;#732 “All Depends on Our Possessing”; #566 “By Grace I’m Saved”; #733 “O God, Our Help In Ages Past”; #797 “Praise the Almighty”; #805 “Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow”; #895 “Now Thank We All Our God”
Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come
Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home
Under the shadow of Thy throne, Thy saints have dwelt secure
Sufficient is Thine arm alone, and our defense is sure
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
We’re celebrating two anniversaries on this day. One is the Reformation of the Christian Church. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany 508 years ago, on October 31st of this month – and made the beginnings of what we know today as the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
For our other anniversary today, we mark and remember a little group of German immigrants and settlers who established a little ‘Luteran Kirche’ here in Oxford, Wisconsin, back in 1895, 130 years ago.
(There’s another big anniversary coming up in just a few years, by the way. In 2033, just eight years from now, God’s Church everywhere will mark 2000 years since the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ -- unless the Lord should come back first, in which case we’ll all be celebrating in heaven. Aren’t these great days to be alive in?)
Our God says of Himself that He is “the One who was, the One who is, and the One who is to come.” Our own little Church has been “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ Himself as our chief Cornerstone.” Our God is the Beginning and the End of all things. He’s the Alpha and the Omega, the A and the Z – and you and I are blessed to be a part of the holy Gospel alphabet somewhere on the timeline in between. (I don’t know exactly where we are, as far as time goes; I suspect maybe we’re up to the W or the X or the Y).
Our God is God of the past, and the present, and the future, all at the same time, since in Him all things are one. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. To the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. “A thousand ages in Thy sight are like an evening gone.” So wherever it is we’ve come from, He was there for us; and wherever we are, He’s still here for us; and wherever we’re going, whatever our future may hold, He’s already there, too, walking ahead of us, making a way for us, and preparing a place for us. So the saints truly are “dwelling secure!”
Being human, though, and sinners that we are, the future can look like a dark and scary thing. We’re limited creatures. We can look back on things and remember the past and learn from it, if we’re wise enough to do that. And we can live this day as best we can in light of what we know, which is also wise – but we can’t see what’s around the bend. If we look around at our numbers, and our ages, and the state the crazy world around us is in, it’s easy to give in to anxiety, and to get discouraged, and even to wonder if God is still with us, and how long we’ll be able to go on.
We read about Israel’s compliant in the Book of Isaiah, amid all the hard times they were going through, and doesn’t it ring familiar? “Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God’?” Sometimes it’s us crying out, “God, where are You?” And God answers back, “I’m still right here!” Look what God says to His little Jacob, His little Jeshuron, His little Israel: “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.”
God doesn’t get tired, and He’ll never get tired of helping us. Frustrated with us sometimes, sure – but He never gets tired of loving us, forgiving us, and bringing us back to Himself. And strength or power we possess comes from Him -- and “when we are weak, then He is strong.” Where does our help come from? “Our help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and earth.”
“Even youths grow tired and weary, and even young men stumble and fall,” says Isaiah. All of our young men have turned into old men over the years, as they’ve given of themselves to keep the Word preached in this place. (Young men, it will happen to you, too). None of those founders of 130 years ago are here anymore. Most of them are lying over in Oxford village cemetery, awaiting the resurrection yet to come. “Time, like an ever-rolling stream soon bears us all away.” Ah, but their spiritual children and grandchildren are here. Everything they did and all they sacrificed to keep Word and Sacrament ministry going in this place is still bearing fruit. Every child they brought to be baptized in this place, every Gospel Word that was ever put in a sinners ear by the people and ministry of this church, is still remembered and honored by God. What you leave behind you matters.
That’s a is their legacy, a legacy of faith, on that every faithful, evangelical Christian had the blessing of sharing in in their own day. The legacy of faith has been passed on from Luther and the incredibly courageous reformers of all those years ago, to the men and women who stepped out in faith to build a Lutheran Church here in Oxford – and now the task and the honor of it all has come down to us, if only we’ll be faithful to God and trust Him for His promise: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
The truth that Martin Luther took his stand on in the Reformation was as simple as: “By grace are we saved through faith.” That is the foundational, biblical truth that our Lutheran Church has been built on and still stands on, and that any Church ought to be standing on if it still wants to call itself Christian.
And that means we have to keep bringing up sin, uncomfortable and unpopular as the subject may be. God has laws and commandments that He’s given us to keep, and He really does expect all His children to keep them; and there really are consequences, and terrible ones, for disobeying Him. That may not be what people want to hear, but it’s what they need to hear – and this isn’t a popularity contest. If sinners don’t know they’re sinners, how will they know they need to be forgiven? And how will they know unless somebody tells them? Part of our job as a Church is to get people past, “There ain’t no flies on me” or “Oh, I’m not that bad,” to understanding their desperate need for a Savior. So that “every mouth may be silenced,” St. Paul says, and every sorry excuse taken away, until sinners understand that they’re accountable to a holy God for everything they think and say and do. The “law” part of our job is to make people conscious of their sin.
Now if we stopped there, that would be a terrible thing. God doesn’t bring people down with the intent of never letting them up on their feet again, and that’s not something we should be doing to people either. Do you understand what a great thing is happening when St. Paul uses that word “but” in our reading in Romans? That little word “but” is where the whole story changes, and where everything turns from condemnation to grace. “But… now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” From those patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, to that little band of disciples who first took the Good News out into the world; and from Luther and those reformers who fought the good fight of faith with him; and from the fathers of this Church, and now down to us -- we’re blessed to know how to be washed and clean and forgiven for our sins and made righteous before God again. It’s though faith in Jesus Christ alone, to everyone who by the grace of God Has come to believe in Him.
This Lutheran Church, this Church full of Lutheran Christians, should be the most “all men are created equal” place on the face of the earth, don’t you think? Rich or poor, dark skinned or light, short or tall, thin or fat, young or old, we’ve all come here in the same condition. There is no difference between us, Paul says; at least not any difference that matters in the eyes of our Lord. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We’re all in the same sinking boat as far as our sin goes, all of us without a leg to stand on, all of us without a hope in the world apart from the mercy of God. Sin has made equals of us all.
But all of us sinners can be made righteous again in the eyes of God, and “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” That’s the Good News! “Redemption” is an awesome, beautiful, heavenly concept. We who were lost and condemned sinners have now been redeemed, bought back and brought back out of slavery to sin and death and hell, because God our Father has given us His Son as a “sacrifice of atonement.” Look! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! One holy, perfect Son of God, given as a sacrifice to take away our sins. All of them. Every last one.
Here we come to the “past, present, and future” thing again, this “time thing” we’ve been talking about on this day of anniversaries. God could have chosen to punish mankind for their sins any time He so chose, and put an end to our sorry human race a long time ago. But in His mercy and love He chose to be patient (more patient than we have any right to expect), until, in His infinite wisdom, He saw that the time had come to put His one and only Son on a cross in our place, back in 33 A.D.
God is a just God. His justice demands that His laws be kept, and insists that sin has a price and a penalty has to be paid for it. (The wages of sin is death.) But God is also a God of love, and He’s a loving Father who loves His children; so He couldn’t and wouldn’t stand by and do nothing and watch His precious children die. So Jesus the Son of God was given in our place, so we could be justified – that is, made right with God and forgiven -- simply by believing that God would love us enough to do a thing like that for us. Why would He love me enough to die for me? I don’t know; I only know and believe that He does.
And we know and believe that God raised Him up from the dead. That’s the bedrock of our Christian faith, the blessed truth that gives us this hope we have, and the hope we have to share with the world around us. The Good News is that you can live! We all get to live! The gift of life is for all of us, if we’ll open our hands and let God our it in. Jesus has been raised up, so we can be raised up, too! Life is worth the living, just because He lives!
So, no boasting about what I did on my own to be saved, says St. Paul. No bragging about how good or righteous or pious I’ve been, or about all the things I’ve done or tried to do to make God notice and appreciate and love me. That’s all rubbish, as St. Paul says. Those are the things that take the grace out of grace and turn it into law again; and we’re never going back there. All I can claim to be is a sinner saved by the grace of God, and a sinner Jesus loved enough to die for.
That’s what is means, and what it’s always meant, to be a Christian, and a Lutheran Christian. That’s the grace and the Good News that’s sustained us as a Church for all these years. That’s the grace that’s “kept us safe so far,” and will keep us here for all the years to come. That’s the blesses, joyful happy truth that Jesus says will set us free. That’s the only Gospel there is, the only one we have, and the only truth that will bring real peace and freedom to the people we meet in the world around us. May we be always faithful to our calling and faithful to our Lord, as we continue the joyful and happy work of putting the Good News in people’s ears. That’s why God has put us here.
O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be Thou our guard while troubles last and our eternal home!
In Jesus name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Oxford, WI, LCMS Trinity Lutheran Church, Packwaukee, WI, LCMS
pastorshepp@gmail.com