Please read the note below from Pastor Woodhouse regarding his sermon titled “Thank God for the (Invisible) Church!” :

Our Gospel reading for this week describes a continuation of the discussion between Jesus and His disciples that we began in last week’s Gospel lesson. Last week, the disciples were called out for comparing themselves to one another in order to decide which of them was the greatest. This week, the conversation shifts, though not too much: John invites Jesus to comment on an outsider who is not one of the disciples, but is casting out demons in Jesus’ name. But instead, Jesus replies, “The one who is not against us is for us.”

These words might surprise us just as much as they surprised the disciples! We see a world today in which Christendom is fractured and divided into almost countless different traditions and denominations, with even more people deciding to call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” And while we are often rightly comforted by the certainty of our theology as confessional Lutherans, Jesus’ words this week encourage us to consider how we should approach the multitude of different church bodies that claim the name of Christ. Does it matter which church we go to, if each of them calls itself “Christian”? Well… yes, and no…