Sermons

Bearing the Name

John Wilkinson                            Third Presbyterian Church
October 1, 2006                              Mark 9:38-41

The word itself – “catholic” – can be confusing.

Depending on where you grew up, or when you grew up, that word carried with it connotations.

For me, it meant that a few of my friends went to St. Nick, a few went to St. Thomas, and none could play football on Thursday afternoons in the fall because they went to something called “catechism,” which sounded pretty dreadful.

I know more now than I did then, but the word, “catholic,” stills brings confusion with it.

The word itself originated from the Greek, and later the Latin.

Its first meaning had something to do with the notion of “whole,” but soon thereafter the accepted understanding became something like “universal.”

So to say that the word “catholic,” at least with a lower case “c,” means “universal,” is more than accurate but perhaps no less confusing.

And as fascinating as a lecture in early church history would be right now, it will not happen, so we can cut to the chase.

From this Protestant’s point of view, when we say in the Apostles’ Creed “I believe in the holy catholic church,” that is to say that we are all a part of the church universal.

The Roman Catholic Church, headquartered in Rome, is just that.

I can live with the shorthand “catholic” to mean “Roman Catholic.”

It’s just worth fussing over, and our Roman friends have other fish to fry at this moment.

There is a deeper point to be made beyond denominational labels.

And today, World Communion Sunday, is as good of a day to make it as any.

“I believe in the holy catholic church.”

I do.

And I am not even prepared to say that such belief is teetering, because it is not.

But it is certainly being given a workout.

We know well the travails of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

We are not at orange alert, but we are experiencing all sorts of agitations, some around theology and ideology, some around finances and leadership.

We know well, as well, the travails of the mainline, and though we are all singing different hymns, we are singing from the same hymnal of conflict and change.

Even the so-called evangelical mega churches are experiencing a kind of conflict as they face disagreement about what one needs to believe to be a part of any particular community and how those beliefs are enacted in the political and cultural world.

In this moment in which we live, we face many challenges, but one of the challenges we face as a church is also a great opportunity for ecumenical – among the church – and interfaith – beyond the church – dialogue.

We are to know ourselves as well as we can, and to share that identity with others, clearly and humbly.

Too much activity these days that masquerades as dialogue smoothes over differences.

We do not seek easy tolerance, but deeper understanding.

And yet we believe in what the theologians call the “catholicity” of the church, a fancy word for universality.

I prefer to say that “we are all in this together.”

That would seem to be the gospel message of the day.

In Mark’s gospel, the disciples are all worked up over credentials. Earlier, it was about who the greatest was.

Now it is about whether you need to be part of the following to do the work of the leader.

They are worked up.

Jesus is not.

Any deed of power in my name is a deed of power.

You need not be Methodist or Lutheran or Roman Catholic or evangelical or conservative or liberal.

You need to be “small c” catholic. Christian.

A cup of water is a cup of water. The one who is thirsty simply needs their thirst quenched.

The food we distribute on Monday and Thursday mornings is not Presbyterian food.

The nails we drive in New Orleans are not Presbyterian nails.

The criteria is simple: the willingness to give, and receive.

We ignore boundaries and build bridges instead of walls.

The image on this World Communion Sunday is a table where there are no sections at the table, no separate seatings based on right thinking or proper behavior or denominational label.

Walter Brueggemann writes that the Bible often portrays the people of God as beleaguered community, always vulnerable.

And so we are.

And when we are at our most vulnerable, we call on the peculiar presence of God.

(Texts for Preaching, Year B, page 522 and ff.)

And because of our vulnerability, we cannot assume that we alone are the chosen instruments of God. We are not. (Page 533)

Being chosen does not put us in an elite group.

We must welcome and accept others and seek to demonstrate, among other things, a willingness to be self-critical about the establishment, the human institution called the church.

Jesus says that we need room for mavericks and outsiders, particularly those who have the gifts and abilities to serve up that cup of water so desperately needed, in whatever form it takes. The lone criteria we need to evaluate is whether the water serve and welcomes.

If it does, that is plenty Christian, plenty catholic, at least for Jesus.

Perhaps you read the book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a book of interesting economic and cultural observations.

One such observation is that the names that parents give to children have some future correlation to what place they will occupy in society and what their earning power will be.

That chapter, as amusing as it is, has also been controversial because of the racial implications the authors make.

Nonetheless, it made me think of the power of names.

One new fall TV show, which looked absolutely awful on the commercial, has a set of new parents naming their first-born child “Oprah.”

I’m a fan, the father gushed.

For a while in Chicago, some large percentage of newborns was named Jordan, for a certain number 23.

For a moment this morning, I would suggest a new name for all of us. “Whoever bears the name of Christ,” Jesus says.

“Christopher.”

Christopher – one who bears Christ. Christ-bearer.

That is who we are.

It is a dangerous name, to be sure, for even though we are given power, we now where this all will lead the one whose name we bear.

But we who believe in the holy catholic church are given a name and given work to do, to deliver a cup of water to heal this broken world and all the souls in it.

We are given a place at the table – on World Commnion Sunday and every other day.

And the vision is that they will know we are Christians, not by our disputes and divisions, but they will know we are Christains by the cup of cold water we bear, and the one in whose name we bear it.

They will know we are Christians by our love, by the love that gathers us at this table and by the cup that runneth over into all the world. Amen.