Sermons

Faith for the Future: Who We Are

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
April 20, 2008	I Peter 2:2-10

    
“The church is still a sinful institution,’

a Benedictine monk wrote to me when

I was struggling over whether or not to join a church.

‘How could it be otherwise?’ he asked,

and I was startled into a recognition of simple truth.

The church is like the Incarnation itself,

a shaky proposition.

It is a human institution, full of ordinary people,

sinners like me, who say and do cruel, stupid things.

But it is also a divinely inspired institution,

full of good purpose,

which partakes of a unity far greater than the sum of its parts.

That is why it is called the body of Christ.”

Kathleen Norris

Amazing Grace

As we continue to explore the values and visions that underlie our “Faith for the Future” capital campaign, I would call your attention to a moment in our history – approximately one week ago. At that point, we were invited to conjure up images in our imaginations – images of church. Some of you shared those images with me, especially from your childhood. They are powerful. We connected those images with two biblical images – the church as a shepherd, offering protection and sanctuary, and the church as rock, offering stability and steadfastness.

Perhaps we can tap our imaginations again this morning. That is to say, what is the church for you? Now…into the future? What is the church called to do? Who are we, and who are we to be?

One set of responses is provided in the first letter of Peter, which we have heard this morning. Try these on for size: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” Or this image, offered by Jesus: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”

If you’ve been to, or read about Europe, you know that many are fretting the plight of the European church. Large, beautiful buildings inhabited by increasingly shrinking congregations. The church in Europe, including in those places where there has been established a kind of national religion, holding an increasingly marginalized cultural role.

As Europe goes, some say, so goes the U.S. I am not so sure about that. Americans continue to indicate, in polls anyway, that religion plays an important part in their lives, even if that does not always equate with church-going.

At the same time, we can sense intuitively that something is going on. Younger generations are not as compelled by the institutional church. Denominational identification – religious brand loyalty, if you will – is on the decrease. A real tension exists, between the church as a kind of “voluntary association” and as a theological enterprise and gathering of the faithful.

We live in a consumerist world, and Americans these days make decisions about churches based on a range of factors. “Church shopping,” it is sometimes called. Several years ago, the noted church consultant Lyle Schaller wrote that the top two factors people considered when looking for a church were…not preaching, not music, not volunteer opportunities… but parking and the nursery, with restrooms a close third!

Overlay that observation with another – the notion of the church as the body of Christ, a body called, gathered, commissioned, sent.

A real tension – the church as one more thing you join, and a body to which you are joined. Your choice vs. God’s choice.

That’s our reality, more than it ever has been. We may not be England, or France, or Germany, but we know that church occupies a new place on the cultural landscape. We know that because of all that we see happening on Sunday mornings, though that’s hardly a scientific measure. That’s our reality, and we are called to be aware of the context, the world, into which God has called us.

But can we dig deeper, to consider who we are and who we are called to be in this changing, complex world?

What does it mean that we are called a chosen race and royal priesthood and holy nation? What does it mean that we are promised a place to live, a dwelling place, in God’s house?

One of the strongest images from the Protestant Reformation, an image first articulated by Martin Luther and expanded on by John Calvin, was the “priesthood of all believers,” the notion that all have a place and a role in Christ’s church, and that all roles are equal in their importance. No hierarchy here!

That’s the image Peter lifts up, says Beverly Gaventa, a house built from living stones – us – with Jesus as the chief cornerstone, the stone upon which all building happens. We matter, therefore, in the construction of the building, and the building wouldn’t be the same without us. That was important news to a small community who felt pressure from the outside and uncertainty from the inside.

And then this – a chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation. Those images may seem like exclusive ones, Gaventa writes, a kind of “I’m in, you’re out” dynamic, to paraphrase a bit. But in a church struggling to discern who they are, these images offer identity.

Even then, Gaventa holds out a warning: “This ‘spiritual house’ is not a social club which exists solely for the needs of its members,” she writes. “As much as we belong to one another, we belong to God through Jesus…We have a new standing – we are no longer outcasts, or marginalized – we are chosen and precious in God’s sight… yet we cannot convert this gift into a possession… we cannot exclude or make our standing an exclusivist or condescending one.” (Texts for Preaching, Year A, pages 295-297)

As we think about the next era in the life of this particular congregation, these are important words to remember. “In reach” and “outreach,” I like to call it. How do we reach out in this community? To those different, and those similar. To those from different racial and ethnic and social groupings, to those from younger generations, or those moving into our neighborhood, to those who may have been disaffected from the church.

And how do we reach in? How do we connect or re-connect, in a large and diverse congregation? How do we share our life journeys with one another, our journeys of faith? How do we care for one another, pray for one another, reach out and reach in to one another? These questions matter a great deal, because as we wrestle with the images from Peter, we wrestle with the notion of who we are called to be.

Clearly, Peter envisioned a church that was connected, connected spiritually, connected in deep ways, much more than a voluntary association or social club.

Theologians Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon offer the term “resident alien” when describing the church these days. We are strangers in a strange land, they assert, residing here for a season until we inhabit our true home. “The church is a colony,” they write, “an island of one culture in the middle of another. In baptism our citizenship is transferred from one dominion to another, and we become, in whatever culture we find ourselves, resident aliens.” (Page 12)

Is that who we are? A counter–proposal to the resident alien model was offered in Reinhold Niebuhr’s classic work Christ and Culture. Niebuhr went through every possible permutation of the way that the church – called “Christ” here – interacts with the world. Christ opposed to culture. Christ swallowed up by culture. Christ ignoring culture, which we have seen a bit of this week in Eldorado, Texas. Christ fighting with culture, which we see plenty of every day.

The model Niebuhr embraces, though, is that of Christ transforming culture, no resident alien, but a full participant in the world, even as it endeavors to change the world. We can’t make a difference in the world if we are living apart from it, Niebuhr says. And besides, I would add, we know that in this culture, even though religion’s role is diminishing, very few of us are persecuted for our faith, or prevented from worshiping.

I followed with interest Pope Benedict’s U.S. visit this week. I know that his tradition and mine continue to hold some very fundamental disagreements on some matters about theology and the church, including the very notion of who and what constitutes the church. But on this trip, including his ministry regarding sexual abuse, I was gratified. More than speaking to the culture, it seemed, he was speaking to the church. And I could listen, not because I am a member of that particular stream, but that because my stream occupies one of the rooms in the dwelling place that Jesus identifies, as does his tradition.

In that sense, it was a visit about “inreach,” internal evangelism to that part of the church that we were invited to overhear.

He lifted up a complex and layered image, as complex and layered as the one we have been considering. It was more nuanced than the one we often hear that simply states that America is a Christian nation. Rather, Benedict echoed words from Peter, saying that the American church is part of the Christian nation, which knows no geographical boundaries, and that happens to resides in this nation but is not bounded by it. That’s my take anyway, that this church, built on the cornerstone of the Easter experience, is called to remember who it is even as it faces new challenges and new opportunities.

* So consider that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
* Consider these not to be images that set us apart from the world, but rather that draw us into the world.
* Consider that we are called to transform culture, not despise it or reject it, but be a salt and light, making a difference.
* Consider that wherever else in the world that we feel rejected, or displaced, or dispossessed, we have a place here, a home, and that home provides our core identity as we seek to live faithfully in the world.
* Consider this calling, what Beverly Gaventa identifies as the church’s call to “re-engage its peculiar identity and its odd mode of being.”
* Consider that we are an “intentionally alternative household… a unified community capable of risking hospitality.”
* And consider what that hospitality would look like, both within our walls and beyond them.

How we live with one another matters. And how we live in the world – even on this Earth Day weekend – matters.

Who are we? Perhaps the most familiar image is not offered by Peter, nor even by Jesus, but by Paul, and considered by Kathleen Norris on this morning’s bulletin cover. “Together we are the body of Christ,” Paul wrote, “and individually members of it.”

It is a sermon for another day – a sermon about the worth of all, the value of every body part, the way we are called to live and work together and particularly to care for those places where there is pain and hardship. But for this moment, it is a clear enough reminder.

We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, called not away from the world, but into it, set not apart from all of God’s children but in the midst of them. And we are the body of Christ, our primary identity, our calling and our vision, for the transformation of our souls and the healing of the nations.

Believe that. Believe that you’ve been given a place to live, a household, and a place from which you may do the work you are called to do, until the day when God makes all things new. Amen.