Holding Fast
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
November 19, 2006
Hebrews 10:19-25/ Mark 13:1
A couple of months ago, a celebration was held in the city of
Philadelphia, an anniversary celebration, the 300th anniversary
of Presbyterians’ first appearance in the United States.
The first congregation met for the first time some 300 years
ago, a small group, a house church in the city of Philadelphia.
We were not necessarily the first one here; we were one of
the first. But a 300-year celebration serves as a reminder that
our history --- the Presbyterian church’s --- and this
nation’s are indeed intertwined. In fact, if you find
your way to Freedom Hall and ask a docent to point out the chair
of John Witherspoon, there you will see the place where the
only minister who signed the Declaration of Independence sat.
He was a Presbyterian minister, a Scotsman, and as he put his
name on that parchment document, he made a political act. But
in his mind, and ours, it was an act of faith as well.
You may have noticed this week and in the past several weeks
that our affirmation of faith has been a portion of something
called “A Declaration of Faith.” The words have
seemed appropriate for this season, although the words themselves
are 30 years old. The Declaration of Faith was adopted by the
General Assembly of what was then called the Presbyterian Church
in the United States. Once it was sent out to the presbyteries,
the presbyteries didn’t approve it. It thus became not
official church doctrine, but a useful worship and teaching
aid.
I’m aware when you start to talk about Presbyterian history
it can become an alphabet soup of denominations. The PCUS, the
UPCUSA, the PCUSA, the GA, the PJC, abbreviation upon abbreviation.
The PCUS, the group that wrote this declaration of faith, was
what we in the North used to call “the southern church,”
and the fact that it existed at all is also a reminder of how
our history and the nation’s history have been intertwined.
We were one church until 1861. In the face of the Civil War
we divided. The official issue was not slavery, but rather the
role of religion in politics. But the real issue was slavery.
For 122 years, we stayed separate, a tragic fact and a scandal
to the Gospel. In 1983 we reunited with the southern church,
and some 23 years later we seem still to be working out the
kinks, still fussing over issues.
In earlier decades the issues seem kind of quaint, in retrospect,
temperance or how we would observe the Sabbath. (Some of you
remember blue laws.) Perhaps decades from now the issues will
seem equally as quaint: immigration, human sexuality. The way
that the fights have happened in previous generations was across
northern and southern boundaries. Now they happen within those
groups as well. The Mason Dixon Line is not a straight line
anymore, nor are ideological positions clear cut, and the visions
of church and culture that we all carry live within us and beyond
us in the Presbyterian family.
It does seem to me that one of the biggest questions we face
these days within our own congregational life and the life of
the church and the world is where the church lives in relation
to all these important issues. Does the church live above culture
or in culture?
I don’t know how you voted ten days ago. It doesn’t
really matter this morning. I’m not sure if that recent
election changes this dynamic at all, either for the church
or for the culture, although I do hope it’ll allow us
to take a deep breath for just a minute, anyway.
But the issues remain on the front burner of our lives. One
way some pose the question is pretty straightforward: Is
the United States a Christian nation? And if it is, should
its laws and perspectives need to take on that Christian tone?
And we simply accommodate those who are different, different
from us in so many ways, but especially religiously.
Another way to frame the question is a way I prefer. Was
the United States founded by people who were Christian
(although their understanding of that was certainly and clearly
not the same as it might be today)?
That’s the approach that historian Jon Meacham takes
in a wonderful new book called American Gospel. Meacham argues
that religion inevitably shapes public life, but that our founders
created a nation in which belief in God was a matter of choice.
I say it in a different way. I say that this nation was not
founded on Christian principles; but more so was given shape
and form by principled Christians who brought what they believed
about God and about the world to the table and hammered out
in an extraordinarily new context a way to be a people.
Just a few days ago ground was broken in Washington for a monument
to Martin Luther King, Jr. It was in the civil rights movement,
as in so many other important social movements in the history
of this nation, where issues of religion and politics and faith
and public life were coming together. In fact, former Chief
Justice Warren Berger wrote “that the line of separation,
far from being a ‘wall,’ is a blurred, indistinct,
and variable barrier.”
Hundreds of us gathered this past week at Mount Olivet Baptist
Church. It was the largest black and white gathering I’ve
yet experienced in Rochester, thank God. There were diversities
of all kinds present on that day. The topic was violence, particularly
what we as people of faith do about violence that’s happening
in our streets every day. For us, we brought a faith perspective
for that conversation, no more clearly than the image of turning
swords into plowshares, or gathering around the name of the
Prince of Peace. We know in our hearts and in our spirits we
are called to do the work to eliminate violence in our city.
And there are others who sense that call as well, some within
the church. We share some beliefs, we differ on others. Some
within the interfaith community would share some beliefs and
differ on others. Some who hold no religious position, or some
who come from a secular world, the police department, for example,
or city hall. And yet, we are committed to peace and to justice,
to equality for all of Rochester’s citizens, to education
that will make some of these problems go away, to finding and
developing jobs that will make the problems seem much less violent
and difficult.
Our task as people of faith, embracing the values that we embrace,
is to hold fast, to hold fast to the confession of faith that
we have been given, to allow the values that we embrace to permeate
all that we say and do and are. Our task is to hold fast to
the confession of our faith, not to insist that others believe
as we do, but rather to allow those beliefs to bubble up and
to make a difference in all the world.
We began this week of study of 1Corinthians, and it seems evident
every day that the world in which we live is much closer to
the New Testament world than was the world of our founders.
Religious and cultural pluralism were not recent “p.c.”
inventions, but rather the context in which the Apostle Paul
did his ministry, and in which his letters emerged. We and the
first century are so much alike.
How do we allow our values to permeate in the world in which
God is calling us? Over the course of this autumn we have been
meandering through the epistle to the Hebrews. It is the end
of what is called “Ordinary Time.” We’ll put
Hebrews away for a little while, although you are certainly
welcome to continue to read from it.
The scholars are uncertain of the place of Hebrews in the biblical
landscape. Some think it doesn’t even belong in the Bible
because it lifts up works more than faith.
I think it doesn’t do that, by the way. I think it belongs
right at the heart of the Gospel. It is practical and ethical.
It tells us what we should be thinking about and what we might
be doing. And in the portion that Deborah read just a moment
ago, it gives a wonderful definition of what grace is and why
we should cling to grace, even as we think about the world in
which we live. Because of Christ, the writer says, our faith
is assured. There is nothing we can do, because of Christ we
need not worry. And because of Christ we therefore hold fast
to the confession of our hope. And because of that gift, being
welcomed into the fellowship of Christ, we are therefore called
to provoke one another ---- that’s a great
phrase --- provoke one another, to love and to good
deeds, to encourage one another.
Because of Christ we love, we love one another; we love the
world, not to earn God’s favor, but as a grateful response
to all that God has done for us. It is the very heart of what
we believe.
John Calvin thought of the Lord’s Supper as a gift, but
he also thought of it as an opportunity to give thanks. Theologian
Brian Gerrish writes some two millennia later that the holy
banquet is simply the liturgical enactment of the theme of grace
and gratitude. We are mindful with the cornucopia on the communion
table that we celebrate a wonderful, wonderful holiday this
week. And I don’t want to draw too straight of a line
of connection between the holy banquet of the Eucharist and
the banquets we may share this week. Some of us, in fact, will
not share with loved ones this week. Some of us will miss those
whom we have loved. Some will have no food, no place to go.
But I do want to claim this theme, this theme of thanksgiving
and gratitude, as central to our life as people of faith.
If, as the Hebrew writer says, we hold fast to the confession
and are provoked to good deeds of love, that gratitude is our
response to grace --- gratitude that seeks to make grace manifest
by sharing the love that we have received. It is the heart of
our faith, and whether those that live around us believe that
or not, they can observe it and be benefited by it.
As the old song says, “They’ll know we are
Christians by our love.”
Yesterday morning, nearly 100 of our neighbors were served
a glorious Thanksgiving meal down in the Celebration Center.
The people who so lovingly prepared that meal, who so lovingly
prepare meals Saturday after Saturday after Saturday, do so
because of their belief. They have been provoked to good deeds.
We do it not for what our guests believe, we do it not to convert
them, but to witness and to share.
On most days I’m glad we were reunited with the southern
church, and on some days I hope they’re glad they reunited
with us. For in that same extraordinary declaration of faith,
we embrace the words that I never would have learned otherwise:
“We believe Christ gives us and demands of us lives in
pilgrimage toward God’s kingdom. Like Christ we may enjoy
on our journey all that sustains life and makes it pleasant
and beautiful… Christ calls each of us to a life appropriate
to that kingdom: to serve as he has served us; to take up our
cross, risking the consequences of faithful discipleship; to
walk by faith, not by sight.” Provoked to love and good
deeds, a life marked by gratitude, by grateful response to God’s
grace in our lives and in the life of the world. We will say
that and do that in countless ways. Christ’s love takes
on many forms, in this place and in our ministry in the world,
but they will know we are Christians by our love, not primarily
by our doctrine, certainly not by our conflict, but by our love,
even in this disquieted time, and particularly in this disquieted
time.
Later this week some of us will utter a prayer. This is the
one I learned as a child. I’m sure one of us will say
it this week around table with those whom we love, and remembering
those whom we miss. “God is great. God is good. Let
us thank him for our food. By his hands we all are fed. Give
us, Lord, our daily bread.”
May that be our prayer: to give thanks for the daily bread
for our bodies, daily bread for our spirits, to work for those
who have no bread to eat this day, for their bodies or for their
spirits, to give thanks for the daily bread of love that we
have received and that we are called to give, daily bread that
is our best witness, and our deepest joy.
May God bless us this week, and every day as we seek to give
thanks, to live as people of gratitude. AMEN.
