I, Pastor Mark Zuehsow, am approaching the last day of May 2026.  I arrived at St. James Lutheran early December 2025.  So it's nearly six months that I'm here at Saint James Lutheran Church in Canton, Massachusetts. 

 

I might ask myself, what are our goals?  I found the answer in Acts chapter 2.  It says:  And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

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Really, this is our business that we call on the name of the Lord in our church service,  And we shall be saved.  This is why the church is here; to call on the name of the Lord, to remember our Savior Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again on the third day, he ascended into heaven after forty days and he sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  Through God's Holy Spirit working in us, we believe and are saved. This is what the church is all about.  This is what we are doing.

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We do this through word and sacrament.  We read and contemplate God's Word in every Sunday service.  We give Holy Communion, Jesus body and blood in every Sunday service.  We offer Holy Baptism to all who desire to receive it.

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I once visited colleges with my daughter when she was a junior or senior in high school.  At one of the colleges they talked about sustainability, I had never heard that name before, or that concept, sustainability. I understand that sustainability is the practice of using natural resources responsibly today so that they are still available for future generations.

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It's important to ask is what we're doing in the church sustainable?  One thing we have to look at is that as we believe and are saved, God will sustain us forever and ever.  This is eternal sustainability.  It's the best type, and that's what we're looking for as we come to church.  We want to be eternally sustained, because God loves us and forgives us through Jesus Christ, he call us to be his children and he will sustain us forever and ever.

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The real issue of the church is to share this message of eternal sustainability through faith in Jesus Christ.  Many people are not tied into his message of eternal sustainability.  We understand that because Adam sinned, we die, and because Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins, as we believe in him, we live.

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1Corinthians 15:22  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

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This is how God sustains us.  God wants us to be with him, sustained forever, through faith in Jesus.  Somehow, this sounds all too good to be true.  What's the catch?  What do we have to do to be sustained eternally?  The strange answer is, we have to only believe, call on the name of the Lord because we trust him and he saves us.

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Titus 3:  God saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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So here it says God saves us according to his own mercy, not because of what we have done.  and he does it through the washing of regeneration, which is Baptism and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, which is conversion.

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Titus 5:5-7 is one of my favorite Bible verses.  I hope you like it too!

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