Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of Lake of the Isles Church, I will be sharing stories that may have been forgotten or overlooked in the written history.  The Lutheran congregation was not formed until 1936, but the foundation was laid a decade earlier.  Today, I would like to continue with the discovery of the empty Lake of the Isles Church by a Lutheran pastor searching for an organ.

The Great Depression was hard on many churches, and Lake of the Isles was no different.  In 1931, Earl Ware Foster was installed as the congregational church’s last regular pastor, but his tenure was short lived. There are no records of any activity after 1932.  The $200,000 debt weighed heavily on the diminished congregation. Church services were discontinued and the congregation disbanded.  Two years later in the winter of 1934, Pastor William Passavant Christy from St. Mark’s Church in North Minneapolis was told that the pipe organ at Lake of the Isles Church was being removed by the Kimball Organ Company, so he visited the church to make inquiries into purchasing it. Christy, however, found the doors of the building unlocked and no one on the premises.  He soon discovered that the organ had already been removed, but since there was no one to stop him, he inspected the building from basement to tower.  It was evident that the building had not been maintained well but the beautiful structure, the superb location on the lake, and the possibilities of ministry, outweighed the disappointment of not finding an organ.

Pastor Christy was born in a Lutheran parsonage in Pennsylvania in 1878, and was named after a famous William Passavant, a 19^th century Lutheran pioneer pastor who championed English language missions in America, seminary education and the deaconess movement.  He was also a frequent guest in Christy’s father’s home. Inspired by Passavant, Christy studied theology. In 1898, he enlisted in Company K of the 15^th Pennsylvania Regiment and served in the Spanish-American War. After service and school, he moved westward from Pennsylvania to Illinois, Wisconsin and finally to Minnesota. He was actively involved in the United Lutheran Church’s Synod of the Northwest serving as the chair of the missions and seminary board.  As a missionary developer himself, Christy helped congregation through the early years of meeting and worshiping in lodge halls and make-shift chapels, so finding the vacant Lake of the Isles Church was a true, rare gem.

He soon shared his discovery with the Synod President, Dr. R. H. Gerberding who was equally impressed with the building and the possibility for mission.  Together they visited a prominent owner of the church’s bonds to discuss the possibility of renting or purchasing the building for organizing a Lutheran congregation.  The terms were not agreeable with the bondholders nor their lawyers, and the negotiations ended in June 1934.

Six months later, in January 1935, new Lutheran residents in the neighborhood resurrected the idea of Lake of the Isles Church housing a Lutheran congregation.  Once again, the bondholders, and their lawyers met with Dr. Gerberding. This meeting, however, brought about a different result granting permission to Gerberding to conduct services in the church for an indefinite period with the defined purpose of forming a Lutheran congregation as its goal.  The Synod of the Northwest provided the first $300 for operating expenses.  Gerberding personally assumed responsibility for this venture, including a survey of the neighborhood for potential members.  The results were disappointing.  Among the 870 respondents in the neighborhood, there were only 23 Lutherans, and the majority already belonged to Lutheran congregations elsewhere. Surprisingly, there was a second survey taken which included the maids and housekeepers in the neighborhood. The new tally included 121 Scandinavian maids.  Motivated by this new number, the first service was held in February 1935.

Throughout the spring, the aspiring congregation organized a choir, Sunday School, a Boy Scout Troop, then a Girl Scout Troop and a women’s organization. Weekly worship services were led by Dr. Gerberding and the Northwestern seminary students. Interest was growing in the church, but it was impossible to register 50 members, the number necessary for an organized congregation. Many visitors and worshipers were simply too intimidated by the debt. Still, negotiations between the bondholders and Gerberding were progressing. In January 1936, the congregation was finally recognized and called its first pastor Albert E. Birch. Unfortunately, two years later the court refused to ratify the promising sales agreement accepted by the trustees and the church which would have transferred the property. Burdened by the setback, Pastor Birch resigned and accepted a new call in Milwaukee.  Negotiations continued for two more years.  When the deal was finally closed in May 1940, the Northwest Synod purchased the $200,000 church for $22,424.45.  This was the fruit of Dr. Gerberding’s 6 years of steadfast negotiations and regular ministry, and it all began with a pastor’s search for an organ, and the faith of a mustard seed and a vision of what an empty church building could become.  As for Pastor Christy, in 1942, at age 64, he was called to be the Pastor at Lake of the Isles Church. Many thought he was too old for the task, but it was during his 8-year tenure that a new organ installed in the balcony, and all the windows were fitted with stained glass. Christy could see the mulberry bush growing from the tiny mustard seed.

My friends, God has placed a mustard seed of faith within each one of us to do great and amazing things. Unfortunately, many of us never allow that faith to do what God can make it do.  We simply take it for granted, or worse yet, we neglect it.  We want God to increase our faith, but without working on it ourselves. That is the challenge I would like to share with you today.

Let me remind you that faith always begins with personal choice.  Oh, yes, God has chosen you first, but now it is your choice to invest in your life so that the power of God can break through.  We all know that joy and inner peace, the peace that passes understanding comes from the knowledge that we are doing what we ought to be doing.  We know that a fulfilling life is one in which we use our gifts and abilities to serve God. Yes, we know these things, and countless other truths. Unfortunately, we often ignore them.  Instead, we pursue tricks or short cuts which do not demand much real work or commitment.  Faith is a personal choice of prioritizing your life.  It is opening yourselves to the possibilities of God in prayer, in studying scripture, in worship and working side by side with fellow believers towards a common goal.

Of course, not all our efforts are genuine.  Instead, we can be like the young boy who had been sent to his room because he had been bad. A short time later he came out and said to his mother, “I’ve been thinking about what I did and I said a prayer.” “That’s fine,” she said, “if you ask God to make you good, He will help you.” “Oh, I didn’t ask Him to help me be good,” replied the boy. “I asked Him to help you put up with me.” My friends, some people never increase their faith, simply because they never make a personal choice and commitment to opening their own lives to what God can do through them.

Second, as personal as your faith may be, it must be public as well. To choose to live with God as your strength, you must also open yourself to an accountability for all the world to see.  That is the true character of discipleship.  Certainly, faith begins as a personal choice, but it will never uproot the mulberry tree and cast in into the sea, if it is invisible to those who know you.  God wants a personal relationship with you; he wants you to be a disciple.  But that’s not where it ends.  God then wants your “light to shine before others,”  so that, through your words and actions, others too may come to know of God’s wondrous love and grace.  For ultimately, the mustard seed of faith is not about you.  No, it is about what God can do through you and using you.. Your faith cannot be private any longer, it must be public.

Finally, faith must be a steady presence to those in need. Loved ones and even mere acquaintances can sense whether you truly are involved in their lives simply by your physical presence in “just being there.”  They can also see whether the mustard of seed of faith that God has placed within you is doing it’s work as well.

My father would routinely go through the entire list of six children in our family when he saw me naming all the others first, but that didn’t dismiss the memory that I had of him always being there and caring.  I could see that his faith was active, alive and working by his steady presence in my life. I hope my grandchildren will feel the same.  You see, faith can’t throw the mulberry tree into the sea, if you aren’t there- up close and personal and invested.

That is what is really at the heart of this personal, public, and present faith known as Christian discipleship. Faith is found not simply in the mighty acts of heaven.  But it is found in the ordinary and everyday acts of people doing what needs to be done, responding to the needs around them and caring for the people who come their way. That is what moved the men and women here at Lake of the Isles to organize the church. Faith, as Jesus describes it, doesn’t increase by degrees by simple requests to God.  Faith increases by just doing your job, doing your duty and showing kindness, and -and in so doing, your faith will increase.  As Martin Luther said, “Pray as if everything depends on God, then work as if everything depends on you.”

My friends, the challenge and choice of faith is always before you.  Consider again the early struggles of the congregation with discontent, discouragement, the Great Depression, and the possibilities of indebtedness, but men and women, like Christy and Gerberding, chose to let that little grain of faith become, personal, public and present, and it made all the difference. God has placed the mustard of seed within you, so, do the things that are before you, and your faith will increase, and through you God will be able to accomplish great things.  Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.