October 6, 2024
Trinity Lutheran Church
Rev. Dr. John Stephenson

Text: Prov 1:1-7 & Eph 4:7-11

A stroke of genius on someone’s part has us hear the opening verses of the Book of Proverbs as we consecrate to the Lord and place in His hands the ministry of Harold Ristau as founding president of Luther Classical College. Ever since the cultural changes of the 1960s started their advanced demolition work on Church and State and everything in between, Israel’s beautiful and sonorous Wisdom literature has been a sadly neglected portion of Sacred Scripture. Oh, all that blather about respect for elders, with students respectfully heeding their teachers, and the goofy assumption that human life in community has a God-given structure to it—as our minds got fried by the Beatles and just about everything else in the media, entertainment, and education, the sages of Israel seemed so, well, passé.

Those of you blessed—or saddled—with my natural hair color are, whether or not you take measures artificially to hide the fact, the products and victims of the 1960s. Already by the turn of the twenty-first century in France and Germany people infected by the ideas of the most radical year of that turbulent decade had a special name in the local languages, and in the last ten years the Anglosphere has caught up as we’ve translated Achtundsechziger and soixante-huitards and have ourselves started to use the term 68ers. In the Providence of Almighty God Who does not abandon His fallen creatures to the chastisement they, we, deserve, the bold venture of striking out onto uncharted territory by establishing Luther Classical College is one of many signs that the layfolk and clergy who make up the mystical Body of Christ here below are taking up arms, however belatedly, against the wiles of the old evil foe in the sphere of education and the school, which in every culture forges a link between the State and public authority, on the one hand, and the Church or whatever impaired or even fake outfit passes for it, on the other.

Imparting age-old wisdom, instruction, and also even skill in the crafts and trades that do more to benefit human life than computer technology ever could, this enterprise requires open minds and receptive hearts on the part of vigorous youth of both sexes and also gifts of communication and care on the side of those charged with the duty of teaching those who are likely closer in time to their date of manufacture than, like today’s preacher, to their date of expiry. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that He guided your Board of Regents to extend to my dear colleague, good friend, and beloved brother in the Lord Harold Ristau the call to exercise his created and acquired gifts as the spiritual, administrative, and academic head of this community. Blessed be God that a quarter century ago He seemed to throw a curve ball in Harold’s way when his first pastoral call took him to the poorest area in Canada, away from his English and ancestrally German comfort zone not only into French Canada but into an immigrant neighborhood that offered a 24/7 tutorial in what multiculturalism is all about. I recall staying at Ascension Montreal’s parsonage one summer in company with my youngest daughter who is now Theresa Preus and being impressed by the sight of Elise with her nose stuck in a Teach Yourself Urdu paperback that was helping her relate to Pakistani women coming to the church basement for ESL classes.

Yes, Blessed be God that He led you, Harold, into a decade and more of military chaplaincy that took you for an extended period to the danger zone of Afghanistan. The courage that led to your decoration with a high military honor must be of sterling quality when it was displayed on an ongoing basis in a theatre of war where, as a chaplain, you were not permitted to bear arms. And blessed be God for the valor and leadership you showed when, two years into the totalitarian nightmare forged by covid lockdowns and compulsory experimental injections deceptively packaged as so-called vaccinations, you led the spiritual arm of Canada’s Freedom Convoy, making connections with blue collar Canadians and recent immigrants who otherwise seemed impervious to the voice of the Gospel. You certainly have received from the Lord the qualities needed to lead the spiritual dimension of what to the naked eye is nothing more than the opening of yet another college on American soil. As you know, Harold, I have for you the protective fondness of an older brother; so, woe betide any malicious worldling who sticks a knife in you!

Yet I come neither, pray God, to bury Harold Ristau, nor to praise him. Instead, we seek a word from the Lord welling up from the texts we have heard, so let’s wend our way back to that train of thought after a slight personal digression.

Well now, vital though it be and essential though it is for a right conduct of human life, the Wisdom literature of Israel takes you only so far; at worst it could lead you to Pharisaism or despair. Even Solomon himself proved unable to walk the path that he articulated under inspiration for the benefit of other people. That son of David who made it to become suzerain lord of a big chunk of today’s Middle East diluted his commitment to the God of Israel when he tried to secure his high position by compromise with the pagan mores and religion of the surrounding nations and cultures. Back in my teens I sometimes made New Year’s resolutions but soon dropped the habit when I realized that you can’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. No matter how many good intentions you may have, however resolved you are to avoid the mistakes of the past several generations in education and culture, you, the students, staff, faculty, and supporters of Luther Classical College inevitably bring your own flesh with you to the campus of the new College. Pep talks may help before a ball game, but walking in the face of mighty demonically infested cultural headwinds is going to involve, nay does involve a good share of toil, tears, and sweat. Tragically, as you struggle to put one foot in front of another, you are always to going to have the ball and chain of your own original and actual sin around your ankles.

So, Harold and his whole team, his entire student body, and all his constituency stretching across North America and even up over the border, you all need both here and now and every day till you breathe your last to reaffirm your enlistment under the Commander in Chief whose principal angelic lieutenant is St Michael. Solomon gets at best a C as one invested with the vocation of son of David, so that it was left to the virginally conceived legal son of Joseph, the one and only Son of God and Mary, to accomplish and do aright what all God prefigured in the son of Jesse who once reigned from Hebron and Jerusalem. St Paul strikes a preemptive blow against Zwingli by proclaiming how the glorified Jesus was exalted above all heavens to ‘fill all things,’ which He already did in His divine nature and which He realized in His human nature so that He can be humanly present in His Body and Blood wherever He wishes and according to whichever mode He sees fit. But of supreme relevance to us here today is the nature of our blessed Lord’s military exploits, in the conduct of which He waived all self-defense and fell on the battlefield only to rise again and lead a whole host of captives in His train. How could you, how dare you resist the 1968ers who right now ride roughshod over the whole Western world if you can’t count on Christ’s victory over the demonic powers who have orchestrated the corruption of every square inch of public space, if the Lord does not have your back with His triumph through the Blood of His Cross over the demonic hierarchy of principalities and powers, rulers and dominations who gave themselves over to the service of the great dragon? Precisely because He has led those powers in His triumphal procession, even in 2024 Jesus remains mighty to establish His kingdom against all odds here below. Among His captives, of course, we also include ourselves as people graciously delivered from the deceiver of the whole world, we who in unbelief suffered Stockholm syndrome under Satan’s tyranny, we who are now able to say of our Lord, in the words of a collect we gladly borrow from the Anglicans, ‘Whose service is perfect freedom.’

The Lord exalted above all heavens to fill all things has given gifts to men, gifts that obviously include all the lay men and women who will be studying and teaching and filling administrative positions in the College, but gifts that in our text are specifically named as the whole spread of ordained men at whose head stand the holy apostles. Among these gifts on this day a special focus rests on my friend and colleague and brother Harold, who is called to preside and oversee, to coordinate and to plan, and not least to exercise pastoral care of everyone involved in this bold yet trustful venture. Seminarians in St Catharines thank the Lord for the tenderhearted spiritual fatherhood and other forms of assistance you lavished on them.

‘For the equipment of the holy people, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the Body of Christ’ both within and far beyond the limits of orthodox Lutheranism. Standing up with nought but an unimpressive-looking sling of Word and Sacrament small stones against the fearsome Goliath of the Woke establishment can sometimes impress us as an impossible uphill task with potential for keeping you up at night. But it involves nothing more than the time-and-place-specific exercise of the mandates given to the holy apostles; and, dear brother Harold, it’s simply a continuation, under the kingship of your same Lord Jesus Christ, of what began in inner city Montreal and continued in chaplaincy in Canada and Afghanistan and then in all too short years of seminary professorship in St Catharines and over in Kenya. The earthly and ecclesiastical authorities set over you have changed as you and I no longer routinely stand to sing O Canada and what we still have to remind ourselves is now once more God Save The King, but you and I and all of us here today have no higher calling than to surrender ourselves to the service of Jesus Christ our Lord the King of Kings to whom the Father has committed all authority in heaven and earth. Keep serving till your last breath under His sovereign banner.