Sermons

What Presbyterians Believe

John Wilkinson                                 Third Presbyterian Church  September 14, 2003                              Psalm 19

What famous American offered this autobiographical reflection? “You never heard of a Presbyterian going crazy on religion. We go too slow for that. You never see us ranting and shouting and tearing up the ground… We get up on a Sunday morning and put on the best harness we have got and trip cheerfully down town; we subside into solemnity and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our…choir (is) singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don't shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove, so to speak. No frenzy, no fanaticism--no skirmishing; everything perfectly serene. You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion…”

Mark Twain said that ("The New Wildcat Religion"), and aside from a certain lack of bonnets, here we are some century-and-a-half later.

The term “Presbyterian” indicated something, in Twain’s case, and perhaps in our circles, not always flattering, but something, anyway. Some image is conjured up in the mind, some word-association. The same is true for every denominational grouping, of course. Similar paragraphs could be uncovered about Lutherans, or Episcopalians, or Methodists, or Baptists or Roman Catholics. Those very names indicate something, do they not, a set of beliefs and practices, perhaps even something social or cultural. In all these cases, something is suggested beyond a simple name brand, something beyond the particular practice of piety in a local congregation.

That all is changing, by the way, and we shall get to that. But for the moment, the rather straightforward, un-nuanced sermon title “What Presbyterians Believe” will focus our attention. It will do so for two reasons. The first is that today is something we are calling “Spotlight Sunday,” a day when Third Presbyterian Church, with great intentionality and with a certain touch of non-Presbyterian zeal, seeks to welcome visitors, to encourage them to check us out.

If there are visitors among us, we are delighted to welcome you, and we hope that a sermon entitled “What Presbyterians Believe” will not scare you away. Please know how grateful we are for your presence, and how deeply we would seek to extend hospitality to you and to welcome you into our membership. Do check us out. There are flyers and brochures everywhere, and people prepared to share with you about what we do around here. It’s all detailed in the bulletin. And do come back and visit us again, as you sense God is calling you to find meaning in your life and to share your life in community, and even inviting you to discover a church home.

That’s the first reason for this conversation, Spotlight Sunday. The second reason is a lingering question articulated by many of you, at times directly to me. Who are we? What is our identity? Just what do we believe?

It is actually a wonderful question. We are people with a long legacy, a portion of a story grafted onto an even longer one, a rich tradition with much to celebrate. How are we bound to tradition but not bound by it?

Our history includes episodes we might rather forget, when we wander away from the tradition and into traditionalism. One of our central affirmations is ecclesia reformanda, semper reformata: the church reformed and always to be reformed. Note that we are the object of reformation and not the subject. And though I confess that a more accurate sermon title might have been “What It Means To Be Presbyterian,” we will stick with the original, getting to the broader spirit of things as we move ahead.

And one more huge disclaimer from the get go. A majority of what we believe is shared by a majority of the Christian family. This conversation is truly about emphasis and distinctives, rather than divisions and separations. It is never quite accurate to say about denominations, as I sometimes hear, that “you guys are all the same.” It’s much more accurate to say that the church IS one foundation, and that the broadest Christian family shares some very foundational beliefs.

We believe in a triune God, known by the tradition as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that Jesus is the incarnation of God’s Word. We believe that Jesus is Lord, and that Christ’s life, death and resurrection is a saving event for us and for all creation. We believe that the Bible is the Word of God. And we further believe in the church, and that the church is a community called to offer worship and service.

Having said that, however, let’s start from the very beginning, a very good place to start. And let’s start with the word itself. Presbyterian. It is from a Greek word, presbyteros, spread throughout the New Testament. It means “elder,” in this case the ones chosen from among the people to lead the people.

Methodists are Methodists because of John Wesley’s theological “method;” Episcopalians are Episcopalian because the word “episcopal” means “bishop;” Lutherans are Lutheran because of Martin Luther; we are Presbyterians because we believe in a Presbyterian form of doing things, a kind of elected representative democracy – elders.

In fact, one of the key factors in the ways that denominations distinguish themselves is that of authority – who has it and how is it exercised. For the most part this morning, we will not focus on the way that we govern ourselves – an inherently interesting topic for wonks like me but not nearly as interesting as the topic du jour. Except to say that the way we do things flows directly from what we believe, and they are inextricably, as they say, linked.

This presbyterian way of doing things is attached to a set of ideas, most often called “Reformed theology.” We connect the notion of Reformed theology most directly to a sixteenth century French lawyer, John Calvin, who took the “protest” of Luther’s initial Protestantism and “reformed” it even further in the life of a city, Geneva, and in a set of writings called The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

And we connect the notion of Presbyterianism most directly to a Scottish cleric, John Knox. Kicked out of Scotland by the queen, Knox observed Calvin in Geneva and imported his theology to a specific setting.

In the broadest of brushstrokes, there you are, a “presbyterian” polity in the context of Reformed theology.

Reformed Protestantism with various Presbyterian attributes grew legs and began to travel: to the Netherlands, to German parts of Switzerland, French-speaking parts of Switzerland, to France and England and Ireland, to Eastern Europe. Relative to the broad sweeps of world history, it made its way around the world. Korea, South Africa, Africa, so that the theological affirmations became steeped within cultures and evolved even further.

And, some 50 years or so before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it made its way to the American colonies, where it evolved and transformed according to the particular uniqueness of our history. As fascinating as a sermon on the history of American Presbyterianism would be, and believe me, it would be utterly fascinating, that, too, is a conversation for another day.

Having said all that as background, please take the notions to follow now for what they are intended to be, a set of discussion starters, a set of notions by which to check practices. Lists in our history, by the way, are usually the outcome of theological controversy, and we have had plenty of that. When things seem rocky or shifting, we want to write things down, capture things with precision so as to leave little room for confusion. That’s OK, but it must be done with care and sensitivity. List-making is never fully adequate to the task, and it never fully solves the problem that generated the quest for the list in the first place. Nonetheless, here we go.

Sola scriptura, sola fides, sola gratia; scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone. Our constitution affirms that “In its confessions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) identifies with the affirmations of the Protestant Reformation. The focus of these affirmations is the rediscovery of God’s grace in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures. The Protestant watchwords--grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone--embody principles of understanding which continue to guide and motivate the people of God in the life of faith.” (G-2.0400)

It is grace, particularly, that stands at the center of our tradition.

Then there is a favorite set of mine, an alliterative trio: constitutional, connectional, confessional. We are constitutional; that is to say that the ultimate locus of decision-making, not unlike the United States itself, is in a document, a constitution. Again, we are never quite sure about placing much authority in the hands of a few, and a document, forged in the rigor of the legislative process, has worked for us.

And we are connectional, that is to say that what happens beyond this church, these four walls, in churches Presbyterian and otherwise, matters to us.

And we are confessional; that is to say that we value writing things down. Every tradition has theology, of course; our tradition has raised its theology to a constitutional level in something called the Book of Confessions. Our Book of Confessions has eleven theological statements, as old as the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and as new as the Brief Statement of Faith, from which we will share in a moment.

In particularly conflicted moments of our history, we have further attempted to construct theological formulas, insisting that members, and at times more so ministers, need to believe a certain set of things. The term we have embraced is “essential and necessary,” though we have rarely determined with airtight precision what should be included on a Presbyterian essential and necessary list.

Some of you remember the acronym T.U.L.I.P. – coming from the Dutch arm, happily enough, of our tradition. I will spare you the waiting. Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints. The even of that list is that it prompts a very good Reformed conversation, even with the upbeat concept of “total depravity.”

There have been other lists. Our General Assemblies in the early 1900’s insisted that candidates for the ministry affirm five fundamentals in order to be ordained: inerrancy of the Bible, virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, Christ’s bodily resurrection, his miracles. In the 1920’s, a predecessor group to the current Presbyterian Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church insisted that while those theological affirmations continued to matter, that ministers would not have to declare their allegiance to them full-cloth in order to be ordained.

A current list exists in our Book of Order. (G-2.0500a.) “In its confessions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) expresses the faith of the Reformed tradition. Central to this tradition is the affirmation of the majesty, holiness, and providence of God who creates, sustains, rules, and redeems the world in the freedom of sovereign righteousness and love. Related to this central affirmation of God's sovereignty are other great themes of the Reformed tradition: G-2.0500a. (1) The election of the people of God for service as well as for salvation; G-2.0500a. (2) Covenant life marked by a disciplined concern for order in the church according to the Word of God; G-2.0500a. (3) A faithful stewardship that shuns ostentation and seeks proper use of the gifts of God's creation; G-2.0500a. (4) The recognition of the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny, which calls the people of God to work for the transformation of society by seeking justice and living in obedience to the Word of God.” Not bad.

The sovereignty of God is a big one for us, perhaps the biggest, the insistence that God is God of the whole world and all of life, and not just little fragments. It is also the notion of the sovereignty of God from which springs Calvin’s understanding of “predestination” and even “double predestination,” for which we are most infamous.

I am a fan of predestination, by the way, not because I don’t believe in things such as free will and morality and human choice, but because I would rather stake my claim with a God who in loving-kindness rules over all the world than anything else, including my own ability to move beyond my own limitations and preferences, and yes, even sin.

It’s perhaps the notion of being biblical that has us in the most conflict in the moment, particularly as it relates to issues that seem to be dividing us. We are a biblical people; sola scriptura, remember, the “centrality of the Word.” What is most important for us, I would submit, is a church that spends more time with the book open than closed, taking it seriously more so than we worry about taking it literally.

Psalm 19, the Psalter appointed for the day, is as good of a jumping off point as any. It reminds us that we have taken the Old Testament seriously. Its very structure could be a textbook for what we are exploring. It considers, in what C. S. Lewis called the most lyrical of all the psalms, the sovereignty of God, how the knowledge of God is made known in all creation.

Clinton McCann (New Interpreters Bible, pages 751 and forward) writes that “God’s sovereign love is the basic reality of the cosmos.” And when we join the sun and the moon and stars and all the created order in worshipping God, our lives are transformed and we join in the transformation of the world. That sounds pretty Presbyterian to me.

That’s why I appreciate lists that are suggestive and that prompt action, rather than simply seek to tie up loose ends and establish boundaries. Theologian B.A. Gerrish writes that our attempts at compiling lists pushes out of the way an even more fundamental Presbyterian affirmation, what he calls the “Reformed habit of mind.” Ways of thinking that lead to ways of doing, service that flows from theology.

And yet Gerrish the scholar has a list, five approaches. Our theology should be deferential to its forbears; what’s classic matters still. It should at the same time be critical, even of its forbears, because what’s new matters as well. It should be open, open to wisdom and truth wherever they are to be found, whether that truth is said in the church or said to the church. It should be practical. Theology that does not lead to usefulness is not very useful. And it should be evangelical, not in the way that we’ve ruined that word in the church wars of this era, but evangelical in the sense that is always points back to the good news of the gospel. (Reformed Theology for the Third Christian Millennium)

That’s not a bad list, because it allows us to take our tradition seriously and to be transformed by it at the same time, for something like the 21st century.

All of which is to say that these things matter, and they matter very deeply, but they matter only so much as they prompt faithfulness in this moment, in this context. We live in a world changing far more rapidly that we could ever comprehend. Part of the evolving landscape is a religious one. A great majority of Americans still say that they believe in God, and yet institutional religion is changing. More than half the people who join this church, and we are not a statistical anomaly, do so from traditions other than Presbyterian, or no tradition at all. “Brand loyalty” is a much different dynamic than it was even a generation ago. That’s not a problem to be solved, but rather an extraordinary opportunity.

I heard of a study this week, for example, that suggests that children and youth are “hardwired” for religious experience, to find meaning in community, to seek some higher purpose, some ultimate destiny. So “what Presbyterians believe” matters because it serves those big questions of meaning and purpose.

Our theology only matters, as Shirley Guthrie insists, as it leads us to “liberation and reconciliation and transformation.”

That can happen in the church down the street, or up the street. But it can happen here as well, in part because we have been given the precious gift of this tradition through which a difference can be made right here, right now.

On this morning of lists, here is one more, drawn from the writings of our history. If I ever got a tattoo, which I won’t, because I am afraid of needles and what my presbytery, and my children, might say, here are the candidates:

That “God alone is lord of the conscience.” (G-1.0301)

That “truth is in order to goodness.” (G-1.0304)

That “our chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy God forever.” (Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 1)

That list could get old Mark Twain excited, and maybe even John Calvin himself. Soli Deo Gloria – to God alone be the glory. Amen.