Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – St. Gregory the Great, 2024

3 Sept 2024 

Text: Eph 3:1-21

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

In the previous chapter of Ephesians, St. Paul summed up the Good News that Christians have for the world: “For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” And “for this reason,” Paul is a prisoner, and has been called to proclaim this mystery to the Gentiles.  For the faith is a “mystery” made known to Paul by “revelation.”  And of this “gospel,” this good news, Paul was “made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace.”  This Gospel is what Paul calls “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

This proclamation doesn’t stop with the apostles.  In fact, it just begins with them.  Our Lord told the apostles to preach this good news to every nation, making disciples by baptizing and teaching.  It started very small, but grew according to God’s will.  More than five hundred years after Paul was put to death in Rome, a bishop of Rome, in a Europe that had converted to Christianity, carried forward this order of Jesus to spread the wealth to every nation.  St. Gregory the Great, the former mayor of Rome, was called into the office of the holy ministry.  He gave away his worldly wealth and evangelized new Gentiles: people in the north who lacked these “unsearchable riches of Christ.” 

St. Gregory understood how important the liturgy was for missions.  We still speak of his Gregorian chant today, and many of the collects we still use in the liturgy were standardized by St. Gregory.  He gave us the church calendar, and launched missionaries into northern Europe – parts of which took centuries for the Gospel to be established, including the ancestors of most Americans.  Today is the feast day of St. Gregory the Great.  And what made him “great” was that he was saved by grace, and received this gift through faith.  His redemption in Christ was not because of his works, and thus when we boast on this feast of Gregory, we are not boasting in him, but rejoicing in what God did through him.  For even as Paul explained that we are saved by grace, through faith, not by works, the apostle pointed out that good works are a result of our salvation: “We are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

We look to the saints to teach us what this looks like in a fallen world.  What does it mean to be a saint still embodied in fallen flesh – but flesh that has been redeemed by the God who took flesh?  For here we are today still proclaiming this same Good News to all nations.  Some of us in our Wittenberg Academy community live on the other side of the world, engaged in foreign missions, like St. Paul, and like St. Gregory’s missionaries.  Most of us are carrying out domestic missions, since the nations have come to us, and there are many among us who lack the “unsearchable riches of Christ.”  For we “bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages.”  This “manifold wisdom of God” is proclaimed, as Paul says, “through the church.”

Dear friends, we are the church.  Our confession is our mission.  Like Paul and Gregory, we live by faith, and we do what we are called to do, whether studying, teaching, honoring our parents, sacrificing for our children’s education, carrying out administrative tasks for our school, planning, donating time, talent, or treasure to its mission.  For its mission – our mission – is the Gospel.  We are called to make it known and to live it out.  Let us keep this desire of St. Paul central in our mission, dear friends: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

That is our confession.  That is our Gospel.  Thank be to God!  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.