A sermon delivered at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN May 12, 2013 texts: Rev. 22:12-17; John 17:20-26
We have followed the path of the disciples from Easter
to the time of absence between Jesus’ Ascension and Pentecost. Last week we
heard Jesus’ promise to send the helping Holy Spirit that is the essence of God
to teach and remind us of Jesus’ words. Next Sunday we celebrate Pentecost (wear
some red) when the HS descended to the disciples. Today in this time of waiting, we recall the
prayer Jesus voiced at the Last Supper before his crucifixion. It is called the
Prayer of Consecration since Jesus
calls for the blessing of God upon the new Church. It also is known the last
Testament of Jesus, the disposition of his estate.
As I read the passage preparing the sermon and thinking
about the Church, I was amazed at what we as a Church have fulfilled of that
prayer, almost in spite of ourselves.
This final testament of Jesus goes directly to the heart
of the question, what is the purpose of the Church (capital “C”)? This prayer connects
God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Disciples, you and me to yield an answer about
that, and how the “C”hurch relates to the “c”hurch.
Jesus clearly prays for blessing on his disciples and future
believers, but Jesus talks as if we are already a Church of Christians in
congregations who share and live in the body of God and Jesus. Verse 21: “… As you, Father,
are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may
believe that you have sent me.” The
issue is not whether we individually will be one in Christ. The issue is that
we are all one in Christ. The issue
is not whether as a Church we will be corporately one in Christ. The issue is the
Church is one in God and Christ.
Yet each of us knows if we are one with God it is in
spite of ourselves. We sorely lack in the department of “good examples.” Isn’t
that the whole message of the Good News, we have an undeserved blessing of
grace from God? A blessing that reminds us of the power of God to reconcile
with humanity; A blessing that constantly
reminds that we are a Church formed from congregations formed of individuals
who carry the burden of sin. It is a blessing that reminds us individually and
as a congregation that we are always in need of repenting, again and again and
again...
Our critics are quick to point this out. We should
listen to them, not because they are always right but because they might be
right, and are a clear mirror of our appearance. We need to be mindful that our
external critics may expect us to adhere to a standard of the world that is not
God’s standard. BUT…
The world does have some reason to wonder about our
integrity. Consider:
(1) In Acts, our earliest record of an organized system of congregations,
unity often gave way to schism. Peter and Paul argued about whether you must be
a Jew to be a Christian and what kind of food should be eaten. They argued over
how much wealth congregants should share with the group and whether pastors
should serve meals or just preach. They argued over mission territory.
(2) Paul’s letters describe his fights with other Christian evangelists
who he feels are invading his turf. He tells of congregations fighting over
where to sit, how to do communion, what is proper decorum in worship, backbiting,
and so on.
(3) In one of the earliest formal controversies, faithful Christian
believers argued over interpreting the nature of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit
in our reading from John. One side formed the idea of the Trinity and put it into
words of a creed. The tragedy of these older religious controversies is the
absence of a good historical record of the losing side. When you lost one of
those arguments, you really lost. Losing tended to be fatal. Many earnest
Christians who found themselves on the wrong side of the argument lost their
life or were exiled in the name of the Trinity.
(4) The universal Church split
over how to do the evangelism in verse 21. People went to war over this
question, “Do you have to join the Church to become a Christian (Catholic), or
do you have to be a Christian to join the Church (Protestant)?” Thousands of lives were lost in this war
fought in the name of Christ because folks forgot verse 26 of Jesus’ prayer, “I made your name (God’s name) known to them, and I will
make it known (to all), so that the love with which you have loved me may be in
them, and I in them.”
(5) Immediately the Protestant church split over how to do baptism and
age of qualification and other dogma. That battle costs thousands of lives in the name of
Christ.
(6) Most Protestant Churches in the US split over sanctioning slavery and
the power of government in local affairs in the time of the War Between The
States. Hundreds of thousands died in the name of Jesus. As the hymn goes, “they
died to make men free.”
(7) The German Church ceded obedience to the civil authority of Hitler.
Millions of people died in ovens and on battlefields for Christ’s name.
I could go on with depressing examples. I could point to
the bloodletting in our US Churches over ordination standards and national
politics, but my point is not to defend any side of these issues to foment
discord. To defend a side demands I condemn myself to ignoring Jesus’ prayer
for unity and consecration.
My point is to look at the conflicted history of our Church
through the lens of Jesus’ last Testament and ask what do we look like to the
world and to ourselves, how did we accomplish what we have done, and can we do
even better?
On the positive side, Christianity has grown from a small
band of poorly organized frightened disciples and followers into the hundreds
in the time of Acts and into thousands of Christian denominations today numbering
about 2.2 billion people who profess Christian faith. On the negative side, many
of us are still prone to worship a denomination rather than Christ and will not
hesitate to fight over a specific denominational belief at the drop of a hat.
In spite of ourselves we have done some things right
because we are a visible Church of 2.2 billion when we are not fighting with
each other, and even more visible when we are. Are all those 2.2 billion
Christian people? Only God knows who is in the invisible church. What I can say
is that our record is something to be proud of, not of our own works in it, but
of the work of the Holy Spirit and glory that Jesus asked for us. We should be
proud and penitent that He is doing the saving work of the Church, not us.
We know the Church uses our arms and legs led by the
Holy Spirit. The remarkable thing is that if each one of us is honest, we have
to wonder how a flawed and broken people have done God’s work so well?
I have a great respect for Richard Niebuhr, a theologian/ethicist
born in the Midwest. His family emigrated from Germany with the heritage of the
German Evangelical Church. He was a pastor who taught at Yale and was president
of Elmhurst College. He struggled with these flaws of the Church and its war
with the world as he searched for an orthodox (conservative) belief that was
true to the core of Christianity.* As an
ethical Christian he was concerned about making Christ-like decisions in life.
Every decision of a Christian is an ethical choice to act or not. He believed humbly that a Christian stands on
the moral high ground only in the sense that such a person can look over the US
Christian landscape as an inside participant and be an honest critic, not an
outsider whose only intent may be to tear down the Church.
He observed that the Church has yet to stop a war, has
yet to create a lasting peace, has yet to eliminate poverty and implement
charity. He lamented that it teaches moral responsibility, self-discipline, and
brotherly love, yet neither the ranks of the disadvantaged and the morally
corrupt, or those with privilege subside, rather the progress of social
disintegration continues. He lamented that often the church finds itself of the
side of the crucifiers rather than the crucified. He concluded the Church faces
a single question: ”What must it do to be saved?” He wrote these words in 1930.
Are they true today? I’ve heard a lot of
people say the same things - our society is disintegrating and the Church has
lost its way.
What is the church to do? Richard Niebuhr said the
outside critic criticizes the Church for failing to achieve some standard of society
or civilization, and for not being the savior of the World. The outside critic and frankly some of us insiders
seem forget the Church has always known it is not a savior but lives in the
company of those who have found a Savior. Our vocation as insiders is to
proclaim the Gospel in word and deed. (Share the secret.)
The Church is the congregation of all believers. We must
embrace the reality of criticism. It reveals to us that we desire to live as
part of the world even though we are supposed to live in the world but not be of
it. Remember, the Church is not subject to the world’s judgment. It is subject
to judgment by One who has his own standard measured against that final testament
that we just read.
I am sorry I cannot sugar coat it. We are blind not to recognize
that we are individually susceptible to the seduction of the world, and we
bring it into the Church in all manner of ways like a bad cold. The history of denominations begins nobly but
always evolves into an effort to shape the denomination to match our cultural
views. Henry VIII and the Church of England is a good example. The split of the
Baptist and Presbyterian Church in the Civil War, and even now, is an example. In
Alabama if you see a person ill and hungry on the street and feed them and let
them stay with you at church until they are well, you risk imprisonment if the
person is an illegal immigrant. The problem of the Church is not that a crisis
in the world is besetting the Church and will defeat it. Our crisis is that we
have let the world into our Church and embraced the world’s values, not God’s.
They are not always the same.
It is God’s Church, it cannot be defeated without his
will. Jesus will preserve and rule it until he returns. Our risk is we may not
be part of that Church. RHN in 1930 said “The cracks in time, the disruption of
the world are too deep to be of human origin and reveal the justice of a God
who judges. God is not the amiable parent of soft faith, or the miracle worker
of a radical Pentecostalism but the Creator, Judge, and Redeemer who is at work
in time using his instruments,” you and me. These are the words we heard in Revelation,
“See, I am coming soon; my reward is
with me, to repay according to everyone’s work…Blessed are those who wash their
robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the
city by the gates. Outside are the dogs
and …everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” Our job as a Church is not to
judge the outsiders, the dogs and liars, but to wash our own clothes after a
good day’s Christian work living the Gospel until Jesus returns.
Richard Niebuhr said we are most likely to hear God’s
promised guidance to do that work in prayerful contemplation of scripture, not in
worship of the letter, but because we find in scripture the Holy Spirit who reminds
us of what Jesus said and guides us to understand and live it. This is how we
find the answer to the perpetual question to the church, “What must it do to be
saved?”
The Gospel of John tells us that we need to consider that the prayer of Jesus was not to urge his
disciples onward, but a call for the unity of the church with God, so that the
world will see that the reconciling power of God in Christ is in the world but
not of the world.
Now, let us remember that this prayer of Jesus was his
last testament given after a meal as we partake today. It is a meal partaken
not at a Presbyterian, Baptist or any other denomination’s table, but the
Lord’s Table. This meal is open to every professing Christian from east and
west, and north and south. Come let us
break the bread and share the cup together to honor Christ’s presence in us and
with us. Amen.
* H. R. Niebuhr's comments come from "The Responsibility of the Church for Society," Westminster-JohnKnox: Louisville, 2008, pp3-46
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