The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for October 29, 2006 (Reformation Sunday)

Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34/Ephesians 2:1-10

Title: “We spell it PR E S B Y T E R I A N”

              We spell it P R E S B Y T E R I A N.  They spell it Catholic.  They spell it Baptist.  They spell it Lutheran.  They spell it Methodist. 

              So, what’s in a spelling?  Not much.  However you spell it all of the afore-named are C H R I S T I A N. 

              If you affiliate with the Presbyterians, the Catholics, the Baptists, or the Lutherans, or one of the hundreds of other denominations who profess faith in Jesus, the founder and head of the church, you have an identity that trumps all other identities.  You are Christian.  Christian first, so says the Presbyterian, the Catholic, the Baptist, the Lutheran, and all those other folks who share a common baptism in Jesus’ name.

              Christian first, it really doesn’t work any other way.  We may allow those denominational identities to get in the way from time to time, but when we are at our best and our most faithful, it’s Christian first and Presbyterian second, Christian first, Catholic second.

              Christian first.  We Christians believe that God has revealed God’s self to us in three unique persons, co-eternal and co-equal. We call it the Trinity.  The Bible identifies the Trinity, those persons, or personas, [we are stuck with labels such as persons or personas because our language systems are inadequate to define God’s essential being] (the Bible identifies the Trinity) as God, the father, God, the son, and God, the Holy Spirit.  Co-eternal and co-equal, Jesus the son is no less God than God the father, and the Holy Spirit is no less God than Jesus the Son.  The Bible authorizes us to refer to the persons of the Trinity by the specific function with which they are identified. Thus we have God, creating, Jesus, the Christ, redeeming, and the Holy Spirit, sustaining.

              Christian first.  We refer to God as being three in one, and one in three; one God in three persons, three persons in one God.  Don’t be too hard on yourself in trying to get your mind around that business, the best minds in Christendom have been working on it for over two thousand years. What we know of God in these three persons isn’t all neatly worked out in the source book for inquiry into holy mystery. No, the Bible doesn’t really explain the division of labor that exists within God’s self. Best we can do is try to piece together an understanding of who God is based upon what the Scriptures give us. Trust me, there are hundreds of books, many of them several inches thick, that attempt to do just that.  Somewhere in Christendom this very minute there is a person, or many persons, researching the holy text, the Bible, for new clues into the mystery that is God.

              Christian first.  The Presbyterian, the Catholic, the Baptist, and the Methodist worship a triune God, the word “triune,” is the shorthand we use in referring to the God of the Trinity. We Presbyterians, the Catholics, and the others turn to the Bible, Holy Scripture, as the unique and authoritative witness on matters pertaining to God and what God is doing in the world.

              Christian first.  We Christians of all stripe believe God has chosen to reveal God’s self to us in this three fold manner, placing in our hands the Bible, the holy book, that we might more fully comprehend how, when, where, why, and to whom God speaks. Furthermore, we members of the Christian household believe God reveals God’s self to us as the Word, that Jesus, the Son, is the Word incarnate through whom God has chosen to speak to the world.         

              Not Presbyterian, not Methodist, or Baptist, we are Christian first, each of those separate households within the family of God acknowledging that we are Christian by virtue of a single transformative event in our lives. We were baptized. Every Christian church that attempts to faithfully hear and heed God’s word as it is imparted to us in the Bible  elevates baptism as the decisive event certifying that you and I, and all the baptized, are members of God’s household. 

              We baptize at Jesus’ institution, the Lord charging his disciples in chapter twenty-eight of Matthew’s Gospel, to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The waters of baptism symbolize the power of God active to cleanse and reorient the human life to God’s holy purposes. We Christians believe that the flesh, the old sin-tainted garment we wore when we entered the water, is washed clean in that act.  We emerge from the water, or the sprinkling in our case [the churches within Christendom have their own traditions on such matters] (we emerge) new people given brand new identities as the beloved of the Lord.

              Christian first. There is another identifying element we Presbyterians share with the other churches of Christendom, table fellowship.  At the table we memorialize the death of our Lord, who in his death took on the sins of the world. The bread symbolizing the broken body of our Lord, the cup, his spilled blood, make Jesus present to the worshiping community in a profound and immediate way, Jesus declaring, “each time you do this [break the bread and share the cup], do it in remembrance of me.”

                 Present to share that “last supper” with his disciples before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus promised to his disciples, reclining on his right and his left, that he would be with them whenever they gathered to break bread in his name. The promise remains intact, a blessing conferred on this household, and each Christian household, when we gather around the table in his name.

              Christian first.  Every faithful denomination within the greater church acknowledges one Lord, revealed in three distinct persons, while remaining one God.   Every faithful denomination within the greater church upholds the Word, Holy Scripture, as the unique and authoritative witness to God and God’s activity in the world. Likewise those churches acknowledge Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, as being God’s word incarnate, the visible manifestation of God in the world.

              Church’s who are faithful to the triune God, baptize for the remission of sin, the recovery of the identity God intended for us.  They regularly gather at the table to remember Jesus’ death on behalf of the world.

              We are Presbyterian, but we are Christian first, a Christian community held together by our trust in the God revealed to us in God’s word written and incarnate. We are a community that acknowledges baptism as the essential rite of passage a child of God’s creating makes in claiming membership in the household of God.  We gather at the Lord’s table to re-enact the holy mystery acknowledging in the Lord’s Supper, Jesus’ surrender of his own life to secure the world’s freedom from sin.     

              Christian first, but we are also Presbyterian.  So what does that mean?  For that we must cross an ocean and five centuries. The Presbyterian Church emerged out of a protest movement led by several churchmen who were disgusted with, and disaffected by, the policies and programs of the established Catholic Church headquartered in Rome.  Their list of complaints was long, but most substantial was their charge that the church had lost its biblical moorings. The disaffected churchmen came to believe that the Church was more invested in its traditions than in the work of servanthood to which God had called it through Holy Scripture.

                   Their complaint was chiefly based on one key biblical text, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God---not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” “For by grace you have been saved…”  The Roman church had devised all sorts of means to ignore that teaching.  In effect, they made salvation a commodity that could be purchased over the counter by anyone willing to fill the church coffers. A few coins could do wonders in earning a believer a place on God’s roster of the saved.

                    Not by works, not by money, grace was free, the assurance that one was right with God coming through faith, so said the reformers. Unwilling to be challenged by these dissenters, the Pope and his cohorts effectively made it impossible for people like Martin Luther, Helmut Zwingli, and John Calvin, to whom we trace our lineage, to remain in the church.

                    Soon after the split with Rome, individual church leaders began to attract their own followings. Thoughtful and faithful men, but most importantly, passionate, these leaders established fellowships that became churches, that would over time grow into fellowships of churches each strongly influenced by the preaching and teaching of a particular churchman.

                   Suffice it to say there were enough of these dynamic leaders around that soon the predecessor fellowships to the Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Baptist churches began to emerge. 

                  No shrinking violets these church leaders risked all, united in their common distaste for what the Roman church was doing, but their unity frayed on issues of biblical interpretation and doctrine.  Martin Luther staked out his position, John Calvin his, Zwingli his, and others whose names are less well known, staked out theirs. 

                    Christian first, they most decidedly were, but even as their faith commitments were established on the bedrock core convictions concerning God, the Bible, and the sacraments, the Luthers, Calvins, Wesleys, and others found in Holy Scripture sufficient room to lay out their individual positions on the Bible and how individual texts should be interpreted.

                    Furthermore, each of the key reformers began outlining his position, his theology, if you will, on the nature of the church itself, the Trinity, the sacraments, and the way the church should govern itself. Their individual investigations, however, seldom delivered them at the same place, particularly with respect to the sacraments, but ever calling upon a wisdom much greater than their own, they whole-heartedly placed their gifts of faith and intellect in service to God. Freely confessing that the church they so eagerly envisioned would never fulfill the vision of its founder, the reformers were frank to admit that they were committed to a church reformed, [and this is important]“always being reformed through the word of God.”

                     The hallmark of the church’s sixteenth century Reformation was the passage I earlier quoted. God’s free-flowing grace negated all efforts by man to earn standing in God’s kingdom. The reformers also insisted that grace came to the believer unmediated, no intervention of a priest required to dispense it. Instead, the reformers believed that we Christians could be priests to each other.  They earnestly believed that the church was the “priesthood of all believers,” that the gifts God imparted weren’t reserved exclusively for the priest, but that each person who bore the mark of Christ in baptism, had a role to play the up-building of the church.   

                       We Presbyterians, of course, recognize the gifts of the laity in a very special way. The voice of the Spirit, speaking through a congregation, calls men and women to important roles in the life of the local congregation.  The elders of the church, and the deacons, where deacons are present, are ordained and installed to serve with the pastor in maintaining the life and mission of the local congregation.  Elders are vested with voting power equal to the pastor in all decisions into which a congregation enters. Though often accused of being overly fond of meetings, our tolerance of them is made none the easier merely because we label ourselves Presbyterians.

                      Presbyterian, but who are we?  We are children of the Reformation, heirs to a biblical and theological tradition that takes seriously the sinfulness of creation, but entrusts its life and future to a gracious God ever prepared to forgive and redeem. We acknowledge that we are a church reformed, but always in need of reform. We acknowledge and celebrate the two sacraments instituted by Jesus, baptism and Holy Communion, and recognize no other.  We venerate the Bible, not for its own sake, but as the very word of God that continues to speak to us just as assuredly as did to the great cloud of witnesses upon whose shoulders we stand. We do not presume to solve the mystery that is God.  We believe that all doctrine and dogma the church may generate is provisional and thus incomplete, and that God continues to speak through the Spirit, though we may lack ears to hear.

                    We are, and always have been, committed to Christian education, believing that God calls us to worship with the mind as well as the heart.

                    We Presbyterians recognize our responsibility to leave the world a better place than we found it.  We make common cause with the marginalized, the oppressed, and the forgotten who lack the provisions for a quality life that we, in our more privileged circumstances, take for granted. We are civic minded, assuming responsibility for the well-being of our neighborhoods and our cities.

                    We believe that we have been called into the world to be agents of the Risen Christ, endeavoring in both our private lives, and our corporate life as a church, to obey the commandment our Lord cited as the Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

                     We spell it P R E S B Y T E R I A N, but how shall we define it?  Inasmuch as we stand in a tradition centuries old, much of the defining has already taken place. But even as the Church as a whole is challenged to respond to new contingencies, we Presbyterians are challenged to respond to new contingencies.  How we shall respond is ours to decide, but the base and foundation from which we shall serve has already been laid in Christ, and the faithful through the generations. 

                    We stand in a great tradition, but tradition is yesterday’s business.  This generation of Presbyterians are called to serve today. May we do so with a strong faith commitment, and a passion to serve.  

                      PRAYER

                     O God, who revealed yourself to humanity as one God, creating, redeeming, and sustaining, even as the human mind cannot penetrate divine mystery, we praise you that your word continues to penetrate the human heart calling forth our faith and love. You are with us, O Lord, a Father who loves us as if we were the only child of your creating, you are with us, a Son, who was human in every respect as we are, yet without sin, you are with us as the Holy Spirit, whose presence daily enfolds us. All praise be onto you, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who loves us unconditionally, today, and for all eternity.

                  On this Reformation Sunday we recognize the surpassing faith and courage of those whose ardor to reclaim the church from its errant ways would not be stifled even if it meant death.  We praise you for John Calvin, to whom we Presbyterians trace our heritage.  Heart aflame with love for you, with deepest conviction he surrendered his life, preaching, teaching, and witnessing to your grace. We praise you for the wisdom that led Calvin and the other reformers to declare that the church on earth but imperfectly reflects the church Jesus came to earth to found.  A church reformed, constantly being reformed, was the church they envisioned for their time, and so it stands today. 

                    O God, we know we are not the church Jesus envisioned, not so long as we continue to fight over biblical and theological doctrine.  We are not the church so long as we direct our energies inward to self-aggrandizement instead of outward to self-less service.  We are not the church so long as increasing the size of our membership and raising a budget takes precedent over ministry to the world. Not merely privileged to be, O God, we know our privilege as Christians resides in our doing, in expending ourselves in behalf of the world.  

                       Christ, in your mercy, forgive our repeated failures to attend to the agendas that really matter.  Even as we gather under your cross, the reigning symbol of self-sacrifice and self-surrender, the message doesn’t take.  Congregational life absorbs us even as the poor go unclothed, the prisoner remains in chains, and the lost live out their lives without experiencing Christian caring and charity.  Though we may deserve your condemnation, we pray instead for your forbearance, and more time that we might get it right.

                      May your blessing reside on those who reach for the special assurance they crave, the assurance that they are loved and cared for.  Abide with those who experience estrangement from their neighbor, who feel that their lives have somehow fallen through the cracks. Be with those who live in mortal danger, those whom fear has conquered, that they may be empowered to rise out of the shadows of their fears.   

                     God of grace, strengthen our faith, so weak, so tentative.  Seldom in prayer, seldom in the Bible, seldom ready to make the effort to contribute to the building of your kingdom, the ledger sheet is not one we are proud to present.  Not tomorrow, but today, now, reform our minds and reform our hearts into vessels of thy grace, people prepared to live as you appoint, people eager to communicate your life-giving, life-sustaining word.

                       We give thanks, O God, for the saints of this church you have called home in this last year, dedicated women and men whose absence we continue to experience and mourn. Abide with those who experience their loss most immediately and profoundly.

                        For the word, and the opportunity to experience and share it we give you thanks, O God, praying as Jesus taught….