The sermon of the century

For the Rev. William Berg, the decision to celebrate his "first 100 years" by delivering a Sunday morning sermon in his old church was a no-brainer. But next weekend's service at Augustana Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis will go beyond that.

Berg plans to lead a service like the ones "back in the day." He means waaay back in the day -- the services he observed as a boy sitting in his father's church in 1915.

Nearly a century later, he still remembers "the minister beginning by raising his arms and proclaiming: 'Holy! Holy! Holy!'" There was more ritual, the minister sang most of the liturgy and the language was much more formal.

"There are going to be a lot of 'thous' and 'thees,'" said Augustana's pastor, the Rev. Michelene Verlautz. "It's going to be a living history lesson."

Verlautz had trouble finding a hymnal with the liturgy dating back that far. Not to worry. Berg still has one that his father's church used. Granted, it's in Swedish, but he translated.

Not that he needed the book, anyway.

"I know it by heart," he said. Not just in English. He demonstrated by reciting the first few lines of the Apostles' Creed in Swedish.

100 years sharp

The notion of a 100-year-old delivering a sermon might seem unusual -- until you meet Berg. "That's what my life has been all about," he said.

He needs a rolling walker to help him get around -- "Every morning I get up and thank God for wheels," he said -- but his mental dexterity is jet-propelled.

While other people plop down in front of the TV set and go channel surfing, Berg does the same thing with books. The reading table in his living room is piled high with books, 24 in all, that he's reading simultaneously.

"I like to read a little bit from each book every day," he explained of the stack.

"She was brilliant," he said. "That's one of my regrets, that she was so involved in helping with my ministry that she never got time to write more. But whenever I mention that, my daughter reminds me that Marta always said, 'This is what I would rather do than anything else in the world.'"

Berg could say the same thing. In fact, the one thing he has resoundingly failed at is retirement. When he left Augustana, he and his wife spent 14 years traveling worldwide on behalf of Lutheran missions. They stopped in 1996 when her health deteriorated.

Now he's in the process of writing his eighth book. Granted, there are ministers who have written more books, but he didn't write his first one until he was 88. He also is setting up out-of-town speaking engagements for June, July and August.

"I still marvel that someone like me was called to deliver the greatest news in the world, the news of Jesus Christ," he said.

Jumped at Minneapolis call

"When I graduated, I was invited to preach at my father's church," Berg said. "I asked them if I could preach in English, and once they heard my Swedish, they said, 'Yes, you can preach in English.'"

His first church was in Rock Island, Ill. "That's where I met Marta," he said. "She and her family were members there."

They moved to Minneapolis in 1951 when he took a position in the central office of the Augustana Synod. (In 1962, the Augustana Synod merged with three other denominations to become the Lutheran Church in America, which merged with two other groups in 1988 to become the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.)

When the office relocated to New York City, they went with it. But when a call came in 1965 to be the pastor at Augustana Church, Berg didn't hesitate.

"How could I pass it up?" he asked. "I believe that a church exists primarily for the people who live outside its fellowship, and here was an inner-city church, a wonderful church where we would have the chance to go out in the world and do the Lord's work of healing and reconciliation."

"Christmas is nice because it celebrates Jesus' birth, God being with us," he said. "And Easter is nice because it celebrates God being for us. But Pentecost -- God in us -- is the most important, because nothing happens until God is in it."

He's hard at work on his sermon.

"It is going through many rewrites, as any good sermon should," he said. "I'm going to talk about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, which has been my theme through 75 years of ministry. One theme, one cross."

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392