Sermon: Blessed Are...

Grace Presbyterian Church

February 2, 2020, Epiphany 4A

Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12

 

Blessed Are...

 

 

I think most folks in this church is at least vaguely aware that I was a professor, specifically a music history professor, before changing vocations and heading off to seminary. That is in some ways a challenging subject for teaching on the college or university level. Early in your career, as I was, the core class you’ll end up teaching the most is some part of the music history sequence for majors, the one that over two or four terms covers the full sweep of the development of music in the European classical tradition from the Middle Ages up to the current day. 

The reason that the courses in this sequence can be the most challenging of all to teach is that inevitably, you’re going to have some substantial chunk of the population of that class coming to it pre-prejudiced with a particular bias, one that is summarized “why do I have to take this?” A great many music students come to higher education believing that the only thing that matters is their applied study – the lessons they take on their instrument – and any other ensemble playing or singing that they do. As a result, they have a habit of viewing anything that “distracts” them from those studies as a “waste of time.” Whatever core classes the school requires fall into that category without fail. 

You can spot these performers out in their careers. They are often technically brilliant performers, befitting the time and energy they have spent in that practice room. They are also, very often, bereft of anything beyond that technical brilliance. It might be described as having “no feel” for the music, or being aesthetically dull or lacking in interpretive nuance or skill, the kind of ability that is formed not only by knowing the notes but knowing the music, the in and out and how and why of how Bach or Beethoven or Brahms came to write the way they wrote, the kind of learning formed by classes such as music theory and, yes, music history.

I am convinced that something like this applies in the life of the Christian faith as well. For an awful lot of Christians, what matters is the death and resurrection of Jesus. There might also be space for the Incarnation – the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, God-with-us, God in the flesh. But beyond that, these Christians (some so-called Christian “leaders” even) seem strangely disinterested in all the things that come in between those two events in the life of Jesus. 

Matthew would be horrified at that. 

After the baptism of Jesus, the temptation in the wilderness, and the initiation of his public ministry and calling of his first disciples, we read in 4:23-25 that Jesus began to minister to great crowds of people, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of heaven come near and healing all manner of diseases. His fame spread quickly as a result, to the point that people were coming from far and wide to hear him and be healed.

And we then read in 5:1 that “when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them…” Specifically he began by teaching them these thoroughly upside-down lessons known as the Beatitudes, continuing with what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

Notice about these Beatitudes: on some level all of them are formatted “Blessed are… for they will …”.  Good thing, because we can easily look at all of these and, without that “will” qualification, think the poor in spirit, blessed? the ones who mourn, blessed? the meek, blessed? None of those things look at all “blessed” to us, and being persecuted or treated ill for Jesus's sake certainly doesn't look "blessed." Yet in sitting down to hear what Jesus teaches we learn what it is to repent – to “turn around” and see not from the world’s perspective, but from Christ’s own view. 

As is so often the case with Matthew's record of Jesus's teachings, these words have many roots in Hebrew scripture. Perhaps most worth noting today is their connection to today's reading from the prophet Micah, which might not be apparent on the surface. Following the rhetoric of the courtroom that opens this oracle, we come to its core in verse 6, as the prophet ponders what kind of offering would be needed before the Lord; burnt offerings, even the offering of the firstborn are rejected. Instead the prophet reminds the people, 

 

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

 

 

It isn't hard to draw the line from these three "requirements" to the characteristics of the "blessed" as described in the Beatitudes. And yet so many self-proclaimed Christians proceed as if Jesus never said such things, living according to the world’s idea of what “blessed” means, what the world says is important – gaining and wielding power, getting ahead no matter who gets hurt, punishing or killing anyone who gets in the way. Self-proclaimed Christians – even or maybe especially pastors with all the fancy titles and great big pulpits in great big churches – treating with utter contempt those with whom they come into conflict, as if Jesus never said a word about hungering for righteousness or being peacemakers.

Or there is the tendency observed by the late Rachel Held Evans in many Christians, described as follows:

 

“Jesus came to die,” they often say, referring to a view of Christianity that reduces the gospel to a transaction, whereby God needed a sinless sacrifice to atone for the world’s sins and thus sacrificed Jesus on the cross so believers could go to heaven. In this view, Jesus basically shows up to post our bail. His life and teachings make for an interesting backstory but prove largely irrelevant to the work of salvation.

 

 

Like that student wondering why they have to take music history, too many Christians get hung up on the death (and maybe resurrection) of Jesus to the neglect of, well, pretty much everything else about Jesus's life. That is, suffice to say, a woefully incomplete theology. What Jesus said and taught matters. No less a figure than Pope Benedict XVI, of all people, summed up the alternative thus: “Jesus himself, the entirety of his acting, teaching, living, raising and remaining with us is the ‘gospel’.” All of it, beginning right here with these backwards “blessed”s, is our good news. The Christian faith is not a get-out-of-Hell-free card; it is no less than a call to repent - not just to confess, but to repent, to turn away from sin altogether, and see the world from a turned-around perspective. These Beatitudes are a beginning – but only a beginning – to understanding what that means. 

And we must, no matter how awkward or difficult it may be, be very clear that attitudes and behaviors and wielding of powers that is not guided by these teachings of Jesus cannot be reconciled with the gospel of Jesus. Not now, not ever.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #386, Come, Worship God; #731, Give Thanks for Those Whose Faith Is Firm; #525, Let Us Break Bread Together; #700, I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me

 

Sermon: The Church Under Repair

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

October 26, 2025, Reformation

Psalm 46; Jeremiah 31:31-34; 

         Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36

 

 

The Church Under Repair

 

Today we are celebrating the anniversary of the Reformation.

Of course this is not strictly correct. We are celebrating the anniversary of one particular branch of the Reformation, or more precisely yet, one key event in one particular branch of the Reformation – an event which, to be sure, may not have happened quite precisely in the way it is often depicted, and which (if it happened that way) happened more than five hundred years ago this coming Friday, not today.

But, to keep things accurate: it was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther, then a young-ish German monk assigned to teach classes on scripture at the University of Wittemburg, first promulgated his ninety-five theses, or arguments, on the corruptions of the church and the need for reform. The theses were definitely sent to his superiors at the Vatican; popular lore also says he nailed a copy of those ninety-five theses to the door of the church at Wittemburg, as depicted in a number of popular paintings, though more concrete documentation of that event is not so easy to come by.

It would not, contrary to some portrayals of the story, have necessarily been a scandalous thing to do to use the doors of the church for such a purpose; in a still-rather-medieval town like Wittemburg, those doors were quite possibly a virtual bulletin board for the town, and Luther’s biggest difficulty might have been clearing a space to post his own rather substantial document. 

The corruptions charged by Luther included such practices (under the guise of raising funds for building projects) as the selling of indulgences, something that smelled way too much like buying forgiveness of sin to Luther. His theses enumerated scriptural and moral arguments against that and other practices and called for a sweeping reform of the church to eliminate such corruptions.

Luther was a pretty unlikely candidate to trigger such an upheaval; much of his adult life had been consumed with nearly crippling self-doubt, he being convinced that he could never be good enough for God. The supreme irony of Luther’s career is that the study of scripture his new teaching vocation demanded of him had the effect of convincing him, ultimately, that he was right; of his own efforts he never would be good enough; a passage like today’s reading from Romans (as well as several others from that book) showed him that he was saved not by any work or effort of his own, but only by the great gift of God’s grace. So liberated, Luther found the nerve to bear witness against the all-powerful church even at the cost of his own excommunication, and thousands of others found similar courage to follow into something new and unknown,

Luther does teach us a lesson, one applicable even to us modern Christians; things don’t change if we don’t speak up. Whether perpetrated by church, corporation (an entity unknown to Luther, of course), or government (or by the thoroughly unholy alliance of all three), injustice and corruption aren’t simply going to go away by themselves. Followers of Christ are obliged to bear witness – to speak out – against those injustices, no matter how pervasive or powerful, and no matter how much it costs us our standing in our community.

Let me repeat: followers of Christ are obliged to bear witness – to speak out – against injustices, no matter how pervasive or powerful, and no matter how much it costs us our standing in our community. Otherwise we’re fooling ourselves. After all, the word “protest” is embedded in the name “Protestant.” It’s in our spiritual D.N.A., so to speak.

Of course, Luther’s “reformation” was not the only one that took root in the church during this period. John Calvin was all of eight years old when Luther promulgated those theses, but by 1536 (at age 27) he produced his monumental theological treatise Institutes of the Christian Religion, which became a bulwark of the branches of Protestantism that bear the term “Reformed” in their names, as well as our own Presbyterian tradition via Calvin’s Scottish admirer John Knox. The work of Ulrich Zwingli and others also played a role in Reformed theology: the Second Helvetic Confession found in our own Book of Confessionsis a Zwinglian document. The Anglican Reformation would take root some decades later, and Methodism would evolve out of that tradition about two centuries later under the leadership of John and Charles Wesley. In short, the Protestant Reformation was no one-time thing. 

Sadly, no branch of the Reformation can claim any innocence of its own corruption. For many centuries Lutheranism drank far too deeply of Luther’s own anti-Semitism, which long outlived him and was useful to the Nazis in their consolidation of power in twentieth-century Germany. The theological extremes of Calvin and Zwingli (predestination comes to mind) were easily twisted into harsh and destructive theologies that we are only now coming to grips with.

Calvin might look at passages such as those from Jeremiah and John as evidences for the sovereignty of God – the absolute freedom of God to do as God wills, unbound by any theological or other bind. It is ironic that his descendants have preached some of the most oppressive theologies against that sovereignty, claiming God to be “bound” to send person X to hell or give you great riches if you just say the magic scripture and pray the magic prayer. (I exaggerate, but not as much as you think.) Where such preachers seek to bind, the scripture found in John points to quite the opposite – “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” It resonates in such doctrinal ideas as the “priesthood of the believer”, the idea that every person is both free and responsible to minister to one another in the name of God and to, in the words of 2 Timothy from a couple of weeks ago, to present himself or herself to God as “a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.” It’s an idea that every Protestant tradition somehow manages to claim as unique to itself. 

In fact, the history of pretty much every reformation is one of taking such words of scripture and, often after a good start, failing to live up to them. Hence Calvin’s famous instruction that the church was to be “reformata et semper reformanda” – “reformed and always being reformed”; to be brief, we are – or always need to be – under repair. Being composed of fallible human beings, churches will fail and must be constantly challenged to return to the scriptures and to be under the charge of the Holy Spirit to reclaim our calling, in order to live into whatever challenge might await God’s church over, say, the next five hundred years or so.

If we take today’s reading from Jeremiah seriously, we are under the watchful care of an all-sovereign God, a God who yet in the midst of such sovereignty and power knows us, and places in each of us nothing less than knowledge of God, writing on our very hearts.

If we take today’s psalm seriously, we have in our God a strong fortress, a “bulwark never failing” in the words of the famous hymn we sang earlier. We are never abandoned by God no matter how much we abandon God. 

If we take today’s reading from Romans seriously, we know that despite our deep sinfulness, we are preserved and redeemed by Christ, who is faithful to be the mediator of divine grace even unto death on a cross – a death that could not in the end keep him.

If we take today’s reading from John seriously, we are free. Free, that is, in Christ – we are freed from sin, freed to continue in the words and work of our Savior, free to know the truth. 

None of these were new at the time of all those reformations. All of them are as old as the scriptures those reformers fought to put in the hands of followers of Christ and to teach and preach. It’s fair to say, though, that perhaps those ideas had faded a bit from the church’s collective memory and needed to be refreshed. The same is true for us. It’s on us – all of us – to reclaim all of those legacies, as well as the legacy that give us our name “Protestant.” It’s time to speak up. After all, a little reformation now and then is a healthy thing.

For a legacy, and for the ongoing repair of that legacy, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #275, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God; #329, God Is Our Refuge and Our Strength; #---, O hear this word today

Sermon: No Shame at the Table

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL
October 5, 2025, Pentecost 17C
2 Timothy 1:8-14

 

No Shame at the Table

 

 

{sing} I know whom I have belie-ved

and am persuaded that he is able 

to keep that which I've committed 

unto Him against that day

 

That's one I remember from my childhood. I'm going to be honest with you; I had no clue in the world what that was supposed to be about. It made no sense to young me whatsoever. I know people get all sentimental and attached to the King James Version of the Bible (and some folks more than that, quite viciously combative about it), but had you showed the young me verse 12 from today's reading and said that this was the verse that this old gospel refrain came from, I wouldn't have believed you one bit. This is one case where I'm quite grateful for modern translations.

This comes to us in a strong and admirable bit of testimony from the author of this letter, acknowledging the struggles he has faced and yet declaring his continuing trust in God and encouraging his reader(s) to do the same. But getting to this testimony takes us through some challenging territory.

[Quick note: even though Paul's name and Timothy's are both on the letter, it is extremely unlikely that Paul actually wrote this letter or 1 Timothy. The roles of bishop and other church leaders described in 1 Timothy simply didn't exist by the time Paul had died, and the writing style is frankly alien to the rest of Paul's letters. This was not uncommon practice at the time. For the sake of convenience in the rest of this sermon, I will refer to writer and reader as "Paul" and "Timothy" anyway.]

The author, who we're calling Paul, seems to want to make a big deal of his imprisonment, and seems awfully concerned that his young reader might be feeling some shame over Paul's situation, whether for Paul directly or for how it might reflect on himself to have his teacher and mentor in jail. Perhaps as a result, this dynamic duo of "shame" and "suffering" pops up twice in this brief passage. First, in verse 8, Paul is encouraging Timothy not to be ashamed of Paul's testimony or of Paul himself, but to "join with me in suffering for the gospel." Later, in verse 12, Paul, having spoken of his call to apostleship, acknowledges that he suffers for this, but again encourages Timothy not to be ashamed. 

For anyone who knew Paul's career, suffering was almost a given. Paul had been jailed so many times that under modern marketing practices he would probably have earned a free stay somewhere. He had faced any number of arrests, tortures, and harsh punishments for his proclamation work. Speaking of suffering simply was talking about life for Paul. This business of shame, though, is something different. 

Paul's most well-known statement on suffering came back in Romans, where he proclaimed that "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of salvation...". In other epistle passages there is talk of others being ashamed for various misdeeds they might have done. This business of whether "Paul" might feel shame over his imprisonment is new, and frankly odd. 

The idea that Timothy (or whatever reader might see this) might be ashamed of Paul for this is still farther afield. Actually, this might make a decent argument for why Paul did not write these letters, as such attitudes about Paul (while not unheard of in his lifetime) became much stronger after his death, as different leaders with different ideas and attitudes came to the fore in the church. 

Still, whatever its sources, this does raise some questions that it's worthwhile for the church today to consider. What brings about shame these days? 

You would think that, say, reports of rampant sexual abuse and subsequent coverups by Roman Catholic priests some years ago, and Southern Baptist pastors more recently, would be the kind of thing that might provoke some degree of shame. But no, the only responses seem to be more coverup, more hiding, or sometimes "doubling down" and endorsing the leaders exposed for their wrongdoings. Somehow, shame at the abuse of other human beings doesn't seem to enter the picture; the only ones who end up being shamed are the victims of abuse, shamed for not forgiving their unrepentant and unpunished abusers. 

One might think the church's past complicity in the eradication of Native American peoples from their lands and erasure of their Native identities might also be an object of shame. There have been some fitful and tentative gestures towards acknowledgement and apology, and some church bodies have very recently returned lands to the native tribes or nations from which they were taken, there isn't a whole lot of evidence that any church so involved has experienced much shame for their actions in those times. 

So what do churches "get shamed" for these days?

Maybe for being small? 

You ever see that, or hear it? Someone affiliated with a larger church maybe being a little bit pitying, a little bit patronizing toward someone who goes to a smaller church? What are the automatic assumptions about a small church, the default words used to describe it? Maybe "struggling"? Maybe even "dying"? Maybe the higher-ups in that church's denominational struggle get into hushed conversations about how to gracefully ease that church aside and devote more resources to the bigger, more "successful" churches? (Or maybe that just happens among pastors...)

Well, for one thing, small churches are trendy now. There's even a book on the subject of the trend towards very small churches - even smaller than us in some cases[1]. For another, small ain't necessarily dead. I've been in small churches that crackle with activity and mission, and large churches that are - bluntly put - dead as a doornail. Seems from here that one church shaming another over size needs to worry less over the one finger pointing at the small church, and the three others pointing right back at them. 

In short, there are reasons churches should be ashamed, but they seldom are. And there are things about which churches don't need to be ashamed but sometimes get told they ought to be. Neither is good - the first because something very bad has clearly happened, and the second because one church trying to shame another for no good reason is, well, frankly, something to be ashamed of. 

Whatever shame was being experienced by Timothy (or whatever reader of this letter) was doing no good and probably distracting from the work that needed to be done. The same can be said for us. Getting caught up in shame over being small or over being ostracized by some fundamentalist church types doesn't help anything and probably gets in the way of the work that is before us. So, let's not waste time with that, okay?

And let's certainly not waste any time with that on World Communion Sunday. On a day (first proposed and carried out by a Presbyterian minister and his congregation) when we are reminded that the table is something we share with all of God's children, we certainly have no reason for shame. 

For not getting caught up in pointless shame, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns: (from Glory to God: the Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #310, I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord; #---, I'm not ashamed, whate'er my trial; #503, Lord, We Have Come at Your Own Invitation; #641, When in our Music God is Glorified

---

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Microchurches-Smaller-Way-Brian-Sanders/dp/1088455662

Sermon: We Didn't Come This Far Just to Come This Far

First Presbyterian Church

July 27, 2025, Pentecost 7C

Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13

 

We Didn't Come This Far Just to Come This Far

 

 

The quote itself can be found attributed to a number of different individuals, including a sci-fi/fantasy author and a reality TV star. It came to my attention, though, when it was quoted several times by one of the top athletes on the Kansas City professional sports scene. No, I'm not talking about Patrick Mahomes or Taylor Swift's boyfriend or anybody on the Chiefs. I'm talking about Bobby Witt, Jr., the young All-Star shortstop for the Kansas City Royals (Side note: if I were going to talk about *the* top athlete, it would have to be someone from one of KC's soccer clubs. You can't play that sport at all without being an insanely good athlete.)

As the Royals were making their unlikely push for the playoffs, Witt Jr. was increasingly the member of the Royals sought out by the media to get a feel for where the team was. First as the team assured themselves of a winning record for the first time in nine years, Witt Jr. refused to be satisfied with that achievement; then when the team clinched a playoff spot, that wasn't enough either; finally, winning that first playoff series prompted that same refusal to be satisfied one more time, in these words: "We didn't come this far just to come this far." The quote and the spirit behind it became popular enough to be turned into a t-shirt. [show t-shirt]

Wherever Bobby Witt Jr. came up with that line, it's a good one, even for churches. 

We've been through two years together of study and reflection on this church and its place in this community, sometimes intense, sometimes more casual. We've looked at questions about how things have changed since the last time this church called a non-temporary pastor, whether it might be time to think about the building or about a part-time pastor or even if closing the church might be an option (not at this time, came the conclusion). Then a Pastor Nominating Committee was formed and did the work of putting together a profile of the church for potential pastors to consider. They conducted several interviews, narrowed the field of candidates, and finally chose Pastor Amie Vanderford, who will be in this pulpit next Sunday and the Sundays going forward. Eventually I’ll be off to another church to do this process again.

For any church looking to go forward, there are always precautions to be observed and things to remember. Our scriptures for today offer a couple of examples. Neither of these should be earth-shaking, but they're still worth remembering.

The rather dense passage from Colossians, one of those books with Paul's name on it but probably not actually written by Paul, contains some language that isn't typical of Paul's letters but nonetheless does make a point that Paul would want to make: do not be put off from the fullness of Christ by things that are, so to speak, only human. Here our author speaks of "hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of the world" as a thing to be avoided; indeed he urges the church to "let no one take you captive" to such things. 

It might be a shock to see "human tradition" cast in such a negative light, particularly given the church's propensity to honor and revere tradition in its theology and practice. I find (and I freely admit this is my own conclusion) that this statement might be better understood in modern minds by reference to a variant of that word: traditionalism. 

Tradition is a foundation, something that can be and is even meant to be built upon. Traditionalism, on the other hand, uses that foundation to build a prison, limiting and constricting rather than growing and encouraging. In the words of theologian Jaroslav Pelikan, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name."[1]

There will be temptations in this community around us, seeking to impose "human tradition" on us. To put it bluntly, there will be churches in this town that condemn this church for calling a woman as pastor. Clearly, they've never read Romans 16, in which Paul commends the deacon Phoebe, the evangelist Prisca, and the apostle Junia for their work in the church. Those strictures are "human traditions" best left aside.

The foundation of our faith in Christ is in Christ. Seems like a redundant thing to say, but clearly the church has a habit of forgetting that on a regular basis. But in all earnestness, the foundation of our faith in Christ is in Christ, and nothing else. Not human-enforced doctrine, or human-based tradition, nor even in human comfort and familiarity.

Speaking of familiarity...

Hopefully you've noticed that the passage we heard from Luke sounds familiar and sounds different at the same time. (I truly and deeply pray that no one said that it sounded "wrong"...) As is often the case, the same event - the disciples asking Jesus to pray - is covered by both Matthew and Luke, but those two gospel writers cover it just a little bit differently. 

You might notice that Luke, in comparison to Matthew, doesn't quite finish the prayer. And of course, where we are accustomed to asking God to "forgive us our debts," here the text simply says "Forgive us our sins." Admittedly "debts" can be a big deal, but "sins" really does get to the point more directly and clearly. And yet churches can split over which version or translation of the Lord's Prayer is used in a service. 

I know that this is a horrifying thought. There's a reason we Presbyterians are the butt of a particular version of the old light bulb joke. It goes like this:

Q.: How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?

A.: Change???!!!

 

If that's you, I have news for you: some things will change.

Pastor Amie, who will be in this pulpit next Sunday, is going to be a different pastor and preacher than I am or than Pastor John was before me. Change will happen. 

Here's the thing, though; things would have changed anyway, no matter what pastor you called. For that matter, some things would have changed even if Pastor John had stayed all this time. It is an inevitability of human existence and of the church in a world that changes. Things change. It simply happens.

If the church remains rooted in Christ, as Colossians instructs us to do, all the change in the world cannot change that. If the church remains rooted in Christ, all the "human tradition" and the "basic principles of the world" cannot change that. If the church remains rooted in Christ, in fact, we will discover that some things about the way we do church may need to change, but the church's rootedness in Christ does not change. Whether we say "debts" or "trespasses" or "sins" in the Lord's Prayer does not change the need for the church to remain rooted in Christ. 

While the Royals don't look like there's another playoff charge in them this season, Bobby Witt Jr. still got one thing right: we really don't come this far just to come this far. Next Sunday will mark a new beginning for this church, not the end of anything. 

We didn't come this far just to come this far. The church still has more work to do.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #41, O Worship the King All Glorious Above; #275, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God; #693, Though I May Speak (The Gift of Love)

 

 

---

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, "The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.

See, it really did get made into a t-shirt...

Note: this was the final sermon I preached at First Presbyterian Church of Independence.

Sermon: We're All In This Together

First Presbyterian Church

January 26, 2025, Epiphany 3C

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

 

We’re All in This Together

 

 

It was a nearly unavoidable song not that many years ago, when the Disney Channel first aired its infectious little show called High School Musical. First it was the television musical, then it became an actual high school musical, and now you can find television shows about productions of the high school musical. And wrapping it all up was the one inescapable, irresistible song that represented the show’s climax: “We’re All in This Together.”

That title happened upon a phrase and idea that has been batted around endlessly, it seems. You could go out and google dozens upon dozens of quotes that either use that phrase as a basis or comment upon the idea. While I don’t want to think about Lily Tomlin’s spin – “We’re all in this together alone” – I have to acknowledge, if this quote is accurate, that Johnny Cash might have put the best spin on the quote in his version: “We’re all in this together if we’re in it at all.” 

I’m pretty sure the Apostle Paul was not much for song and dance, and I doubt he played the guitar or sang songs about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. But he’d be able to appreciate at least the basic sentiment found in this pithy little saying. Being the eloquent preacher and letter-writer he was, however, it befitted Paul to find a clever and illustrative metaphor to demonstrate just how thoroughly we, the followers of Christ, really are all in this together. Borrowing a metaphor found fairly often in Greco-Roman philosophical rhetoric, Paul came up with the theme of today’s reading: the body of Christ.

That Paul chooses the body as a metaphor for the innerworkings of the people of God is striking and informative in ways that the apostle himself might not even have imagined. 

As noted just now, it wasn’t uncommon for teachers and writers in the Greco-Roman world to use such a metaphor to describe communal life, though no other biblical author makes use of it. Philosophers and political figures were particularly fond of the body metaphor in that culture. For a politician, for example, the metaphor of the body might well be used to suggest that every member of a society had his or place to fill. A body needs a head; that place was to be filled by the “elites” of society – the wealthy, the military elite, those in power. A body also needs hands and feet; here pretty much everybody else in society, those charged with the hard or dirty or dangerous work of society was to fulfill his or her role. Needless to say that metaphor never really has gone away even it if might be expressed in different ways.

Paul, though, takes a different angle on this metaphor. For Paul, what matters is the utter interdependence of the body – the degree to which the body needs everything in good working order. Parts of the body that might be regarded as weaker, or less “respectable,” are treated with greater care and covered or protected more carefully. In Paul’s scheme of the body, no part can claim to be independent of all the other parts. The eye can see all it wants to see, but without feet and legs to move, or hands to hold or to pick up, the eye is powerless. The head is useless without the rest of the body.

Many of us know what it is for our physical bodes to fail us or betray us. We see what needs to be done but we just aren’t capable of doing it physically. If one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers with it. And so it goes with the body of Christ, the church; when one member of this body suffers, we all suffer with that member.

Paul wants us to understand, in verse 13, that in being baptized in Christ we are baptized into this one body, no matter the differences between us. Indeed, following on the first part of this chapter we heard last week, the differences we bring to the body are not accidental; they are necessary, they are by design, both in a given local congregation and in the church universal – we need all those different experiences, all those different backgrounds, for the body of Christ to function rightly and bear witness to the good news.

This is where it gets tricky, though. We are not always good at dealing with difference. We don’t always care for diversity, even as we need it. New Testament scholar Brian Peterson puts it bluntly in noting that “We often confuse unity with uniformity, because it is much easer to gather with people who are like ourselves than it is to reach across the divisions which mark our culture.”[i] We are more comfortable with a church where everybody looks like us, talks like us, is about the same age as us, reads the Bible in the same way as we do – or for that matter, votes like us, roots for the Chiefs like us, and all sorts of other things that may have very little to do with the life of the church. It’s a natural inclination, but it isn’t really all that Christlike. 

In verse 13 Paul refers to two of the great divisions he knew to be at work in the church – “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free.” Admittedly, “Jew or Greek” is not a huge dividing line in the modern church, and while slavery certainly does exist in the modern world still, such a dividing line doesn’t run through the modern church in quite the same way it did for Paul’s Corinthian readers. We do, though, have lots of dividing lines among us in the church today:

Black or white, or Asian, or Hispanic, or Native American…

Or how about Democratic or Republican?

Maybe rich or poor?

Native-born, naturalized citizen, immigrant waiting to be citizen?

Straight or gay?

How about married or single?

Progressive or mainline or evangelical or fundamentalist?

How are we, as the church, the body of Christ, at truly living in the diversity that makes us work? Or are we still inclined to hole up in like-minded enclaves of homogeneity?

Whether we acknowledge it or not, when any part of the body of Christ suffers, whether they look like us or think like us or sound like us or have anything in common with us other than Christ, we all suffer, and we don’t bear witness to the gospel the way the body of Christ is meant to do. And to the degree that we stand by and let that suffering continue, we are complicit in damaging the body and its witness.

Having worked through this body metaphor, Paul now returns to the diversity of spiritual gifts, or manifestations of the presence of the Spirit, that he had discussed earlier in this chapter. Again, the list is incomplete, but Paul now places those gifts in the context of the church as God appoints people to contribute: apostles, prophets, teachers, doers of powerful deeds, healers, helpers, leaders, speakers of various tongues. And just as the body would look rather ridiculous if it were nothing but an eye or a foot, so the church becomes rather ridiculous if it consists of nothing but apostles or preachers or teachers. 

But as Paul closes this thought, he actually “teases” us with something even better, a better, “more excellent” way for the church to live or for the body of Christ to function. 

The diverse and distinctive appropriation of gifts is characteristic and even needful in the church, and the diversity of members matters profoundly as well. And yet, there is something else that matters more than all of these, or more precisely is the very thing that makes this distinctiveness and diversity work. What is it that makes the body of Christ what it is meant to be? What is it that brings all those diverse gifts and abilities and manifestations of the Spirit together in a way that enables us truly to bear witness to the Christ we say we follow?

But that's for next Sunday. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #409, God Is Here!; #318, In Christ There Is No East or West; #306, Blest Be the Tie that Binds

 

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[i] Brian Peterson, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a,” Working Preacher (workingpreacher.org, 24 January 2016 2^nd reading), accessed 21 January 2016.

 

 

Sermon: One Table

First Presbyterian Church

October 6, 2024, World Communion Sunday

Isaiah 25:6-9; Ephesians 2:13-22

 

One Table

 

 

You might have noticed that I've got my white stole out this morning, which is actually recommended for Sundays on which communion is observed. I don't usually do that, though. That’s because if the white vestments came out every time the sacrament should be observed in worship, we would never get to use any other vestments. There is no qualified religious authority or text that gives a good credible argument for why the sacrament should not be observed every time a congregation comes together for worship, even including such occasions as weddings and Services of Witness to the Resurrection. The first reactions against weekly communion came as anti-Catholic backlash in some Reformed areas during the Reformation, and over time that backlash morphed into the perceived “impracticality” of weekly observance, and sometimes into a desire to keep the Lord’s Supper “special,” which is to say, I guess, that nothing else about worship is “special.” But for today's occasion of World Communion Sunday, I'll use white.

The occasion of World Communion Sunday, marked today in many Protestant traditions, provides an occasion to critique those reluctances among many other things. It might be worth remembering that there is nothing else we do in worship that has quite the direct mandate as this sacrament, given most immediately by Jesus on the night before his death. The church at large was quick to make it the central feature of their gatherings, even if the teaching/preaching parts of their worship took up much more time. They sometimes got it wrong, as we see from Paul’s reprimand to the Corinthians in chapter 11 of his first letter to them, but they did it. It is, in short, a direct ministering of grace to his disciples, and to us who follow over the many centuries as part of the body of Christ.

I wonder sometimes if there’s something else at work in some churches’ reluctance to observe the sacrament more regularly. It’s a lot of work, especially when pandemic conditions have not forced these little two-sided containers of “bread” and “wine” upon us, to get together that much bread and (in most Protestant churches) grape juice for particularly larger congregation, to be sure. It’s also true that it takes time. There’s also the matter of the awkwardness of much theology about the table; is Christ really present in the bread and cup, or spiritually present (this would be the position of most churches in the Reformed tradition, like us Presbyterians), or is it all just symbolic? And there’s also the challenge of acknowledging Christ as the one who serves us all, when any idiot can look and see that I am not Christ, and nor is any other minister presiding at table this morning anywhere in the world.

But I wonder if the biggest obstacle for some churches is that this sacrament is something we share – not just among ourselves in one sanctuary, wherever we may be, but with all the church in all the world. That passage from Isaiah, with its references to "all peoples" and "all nations," reminds us that this vision doesn't merely date from Jesus's last meal with his disciples; it was the stuff of prophets' proclamations as well.

I’m not sure everybody likes that. Particularly in this country, it’s kind of a thing for churches – especially those on the presumed cutting edge of contemporary worship – to pride themselves on creating a distinct “culture,” of worship and pretty much everything else. The implied promise is that You won’t find this experience anywhere else. That attitude, honestly, can turn up in a church whether it plays the hottest new songs on the CCLI worship music charts or fills the air with the sounds of Bach and Mozart. 

The Lord’s Supper, though, is not unique, and is almost designed to thwart uniqueness. You break bread and pass it around, and you pour out the wine or juice and share it too. The bread will be different in different places, but it’s hard to be terribly different about the observance of this sacrament. We kinda have to share it, and not just with that church a few blocks away we don’t like. We share it with a worldful of churches in places we don’t like full of people we don’t like, against whom we’d much rather discriminate.

Among many other things this sacrament, and this particular occasion of observing it, does to us is this compelling to see ourselves not as some kind of “special” or “unique” outfit but elementally as part of Christ’s body, the church.

We don’t necessarily like that. I know there are probably some churches in this town where I’d be horrified to sit through a worship service, and my own past traumatic experiences make it hard to conceive of participating in much of anything with some churches. But that’s not up to me, and those churches are part of the body of Christ too. So to with churches in Haiti or Lebanon or Gaza or Afghanistan (to the degree that any churches are allowed to exist there anymore) or any number of places in the world that too many of our leaders and people demonize at every opportunity. 

And yet here this particular table stands, one of many around the world where bread and cup will be ministered on this day, with absolutely no checkpoints or gates or gatekeepers, open to anybody to whom the Lord calls. It stands as an open rebuke to the likes of the “church growth movement,” a seemingly innocuous thing in recent decades that promoted the use of things like “market segmentation” to encourage churches to seek out their members in moderately affluent, middle- to upper-class, and almost exclusively white neighborhoods – “people like us” as many churches would put it.

There are Christians at tables around the world on this day who are, to say the least, not like us. The reading from Ephesians reminds us, though, that even we ourselves were “not like us” before the working of Christ’s mercy and redemption opened the good news up beyond the Jewish origins of its earliest followers. We “Gentiles” – i.e. anyone non-Jewish – were the outsiders. You might even borrow a Jimmy Buffett song line and say that we were the people our parents warned us about. Indeed, those in churches these days who want to keep folks “out” are only “in” by the grace of God, and they really don’t like being reminded of that.

If they don’t like that, they really won’t like eternity. The feast we keep today is, again among many other things, a foreshadowing of the great feast to come. It will be a real "y'all come" feast, with God's children from all over - "all peoples" and "all nations" - joining in.

But for now, until that day in glory, we keep the feast here in this one small corner of the body of Christ, one part of a world of Christ’s followers, seeking to be faithful and to bear witness. And we share this meal with Christians all over God's good earth, whether anyone particularly likes that fact or not. 

For the whole church in the whole world, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #504, We Come as Guests Invited; #---, When Christ's own body comes to table; #---, As we go now from this table 

I didn't think this was a literal thing...