Why Church?
Basics of Faith 8 – August
20, 2017
A Sermon by Rev. M. Gayle MacDonald
Texts read on August 20: Deuteronomy
31:12-23; The
Universal Pilgrimage ~Paraphrase
of Psalm 122 by James Taylor (printed below); Acts
2:42-47; Luke 6:1-12
The
Universal Pilgrimage
Paraphrase
of Psalm 122 by James Taylor
God calls people
everywhere to a pilgrimage.
From all over the world,
many feet beat a path to God’s holy places.
They struggle over
high mountain passes;
they shuffle across dusty deserts;
they crawl along
the walls of river canyons.
Straggling lines of
searchers
converge in a
fertile valley;
a great shout of
joy goes up to the heavens.
Muslims,
Christians, Jews, Hindus
—in common cause
the great religions
rise above
doctrinal differences.
Pray for their
unity;
pray for their
commitment.
May they not
threaten each other;
may they generate
peace among their peoples.
God, watching over
them, says,
“They do not all
call themselves my followers.
Yet because they
are brothers and sisters,
meeting in harmony,
I will treat them as my own.”
Because they do God’s will, God welcomes them.
This morning’s topic is “Why Church?” I have
been re-thinking this topic in light of the events of the past two week: the gathering of a white supremacist in
Charlottesville, Virginia and the terrorist bombings in Spain. I have heard some liken the white supremacist
and neo-Nazi groups who claim to be Christian as not much different from
members of Isis who claim to be Muslim.
The events of this week highlight the need to
really understand why we gather and what we are about? My understanding of church and its place in
the world is no different now than it was some four years ago when I last
preached on this topic. At that time it
was Mother's Day and the news that dominated the television reporting was that
Boko Haram had just kidnapped some 376 school girls. Most of the world was outraged then, as most
of the world is outraged now by the White Supremacists and neo-Nazi's and
wonder how they can still consider their cause legitimate in light of the
holocaust of World War II.
Arnold
Schwarzenegger posted an excellent talk on the
Internet calling out white supremacist groups, and calling out President Trump
for not speaking out against them more decisively. He spoke in light having been born in 1947 in
Austria. Growing up, he saw and felt the
guilt and remorse and shame of the generation before him who blindly followed
Hitler; who returned home defeated and, in their defeat, came to a realization
of just exactly what they had done. Schwarzenegger
admonished people to speak out loudly and quickly; that it is important not to
be silent in the face of such groups.
Considering all that has been happening and in the
news, I went back and began re-reading a classic: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Life
Together". Dietrich Bonhoeffer was
a German Lutheran Pastor who taught at seminary. He was in the United States teaching when the
World War II broke out. His colleagues
wanted him to stay in the U.S. where he was safe, but he insisted on returning
to Germany. His twin sister was married
to a Jew.
Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law were part of a
German resistance. He was arrested and
continued his ministry while in prison.
His "Letters from Prison" is another well-known book of
his. Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazi's
for treason just before the end of the war.
In his book "Life Together", Bonhoeffer
talks of the Christian community, what it is and what it isn't. He warns that if one comes into the Christian
community with a dream or a vision of what it should look like, the best thing
that can happen is that that dream be shattered quickly. The Christian community is not an ideal we
can think of and create; it is simply a gathering of people under the grace of
the Christ. This is what the community
has in common. That one who is lonely, sick,
or in prison and is visited by a fellow Christian, or those who are denied the
opportunity to gather understand the joy of such a fellowship; whereas those
who gather regularly may not realize such a gift and forget to be thankful for
the small things and start complaining about the community or about one
another. If this is the case, Bonhoeffer
suggests that they do not yet understand the nature of the fellowship, but
maybe are still expecting some ideal that doesn't exist.
He warns Pastors who desire to create a community
to fit some ideal or vision that they have that the vision will soon be
shattered and they will become disillusioned.
And as far as Bonhoeffer is concerned, the sooner this happens the
betters. A Christian community is not an
ideal but a reality, it is not a psychic (i.e., not of the mind) community, but
a spiritual community. It is faith and
love that bonds its members.
We are all on a journey through life and we have
chosen to travel that journey as a spiritual path. We have chosen, as our teacher and spiritual
guide, Jesus of Nazareth. I agree with
Bonhoeffer in that Jesus is what binds us together in community. This does not make our community superior to
other faith communities, but it is our centre and it is our faith and it is our
identity.
We are on a human journey and ours is a human
community as is the journey and community of other faiths who seek to grown in
love and compassion. Our scriptures
teach us that God is love; and perhaps that, in the end, will be what binds us
as humans – love that transcends boundaries, race, colour, gender, creed or
belief systems – but we learn that love by gathering in community; gathering with the humility to know that
without each other our understanding in partial; gathering knowing that each
one of us learns from the othe, that none of us is perfect. As a Christian church, we gather in the name of Jesus whose love
knew no boundaries.
There is hope for us in the events in
Charlottesville in that people, prominent people and everyday ordinary folk are
speaking out against racism and violence.
One of the photographs shown frequently is of a long line of clergy
marching together in protest to what the white supremacists stand for – clergy
of all faiths walking arm in arm against exclusion and violence. At least we have come this far, far enough to
agree that discrimination based on the colour of one's skin should not exist in
the civilized world.
These things cannot be separated: the outrage of
the world against violence, against discrimination, against kidnapping, against
acts of terrorism and the need to gather and reflect as a people of faith
living in such a world. The common
thread in all of this is the radical and incessant demand for justice; the
respect and value for of all life; and the need to support one another in these
pursuits as we struggle with issues of morality, and the place of faith and of
God in the midst of the reality of living.
So, in the light of all that is happening, in the
world in this time and in this place, I ask the question: "Why Church?" Why do we continue to gather? What is the Christian church, and is it
relevant today?
Whether or not the church is relevant depends on
what you consider the church to be. If
we are not “being the church” in the world then we are irrelevant. And you
get to decide, as the gathered people what the church in your time and your
place will be. Can you live together as
brothers and sisters with one love – sometimes broken and in need of healing,
sometimes in disagreement and in need of reconciliation, but always bound
together with the one love that calls us to live with compassion, respect and humility
in our life together.
For too many years, the church was too comfortable.
It had a dominant place in society. If you wanted to get ahead, if you
wanted respect, that came with attending your local Christian Church. The
church was the norm and, while it was a good place to be, it was also, at times
easy to forget it roots in radical transformation; too easy to forget that at its
root the church was never envisioned as a middle or upper-class institution
where the comfortable feel comfortable.
Rather the gathered community of the followers of "the Christ"
was a place that turned the world on its ear; because it was the opposite of
groups like the white supremacists. I
don’t want to lead you astray; because the early church did have arguments
about “inclusion” rules – i.e., certain foods, circumscion, etc. – but in the
end these were cast aside as unnecessary for inclusion in the community. The Christian community was and is intended
to be a place where everyone should feel welcomed and accepted and cared for –
especially those who normally aren’t: a place where none are hungry and all are
valued.
If the church is living true to its roots, then church
is not just a place to belong, but a place to question the very act of
belonging; and a lens through which to look at the world.
Listen to this description of the earliest of gatherings of the community of
the followers of the teachings of Jesus from the book of Acts (NRSV).
Acts 2:42-47
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. . . . All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. . . . All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
One sentence in there caught my attention as I read
it this week:
“Day by day, as they spent much time
together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with
glad and generous hearts,”
It is their gathering together which seems to have
provided them the ability to break bread at home and eat with glad and generous
hearts. Gathering and remembering are acts of the community – along with
feeding and supporting. Breaking bread
is reminiscent of the command of Jesus to remember him at the table; and that
memory, that assurance that telling of the stories in community and the
prayers they shared in community, was spiritual sustenance to carry them into their
lives.
The first century gatherings were places of hope, places
to be fed and cared for, places of learning or re-learning what it meant to be
followers of the one called Christ. They were places of fellowship, and
places that provided the strength, the courage, and the insight to live what
they experienced and learned when they returned to their homes.
Though their lives could, at times, be a life of
unjust suffering; they were people of God; they were followers of the one they
saw as the Christ; they belonged to a community who cared; they were loved and treated
as worthy; they could choose to feed one another and share with generous hearts
and know in their hearts that their suffering was unjust – that God did not
cause their suffering, but humans.
When
they gathered they learned that they, together, created and made real the
vision of God’s way of living here is this life, despite, maybe even because of,
their own circumstances. In the gathered community, there was hope and
love and freedom.
This gathered community is as important now as it
was then, perhaps more so when there are so many opportunities for gathering,
but few opportunities to recall that your life is lived within a greater whole
and has importance and meaning beyond our own likes and dislikes. We call
our gathered community ‘church’.
It is true that church as we imagined it was/is
changing, but maybe that is a good thing.
The church is not about what we imagine, but what God imagines. It is not there to make us feel good, but to support
us be a microcosm of the Kin-dom of God.
We, the gathered community are still the church,
and we will be quite alright if we remember that church is wherever people
gather to hear the story of God’s people; to study and live what it means to be
part of an invisible country where all are equal, where love is the motivating
principle for seeking justice and for action; it is the place where we seek
together a way to express the ineffable experience of faith; it is the place
that provides us with a framework for the rest of our living.
Here we
share our concerns in this life and struggle together to understand our deeper
life in the spirit. Yet even as the people, the church, gather and draw
closer to God, we are challenged to bring love and hope into the world. We
gather and then we scatter, bringing a kingdom or kin-dom sensibility of love
and justice to the world; for what is the church if not a microcosm of the
kin-dom of God? And how could we do all
this if we don’t first meet to learn, to
challenge, to grow, to do?
It is not an easy task to be the church in the
world. And so, we gather regularly: for a refresher course in Christian
spirituality, or simply to absorb the nurturing and strengthening gift of being
in fellowship with one another – because, after all, we are the church.
So Why Church? Because the church is people; because the church is not a
building but is everywhere that we live our radical, life-altering,
transformative faith; because the church is who we are everyday; and we gather
as a church community so that we can be the church together in the world.
United Church of Canada Statements and Creeds on
Communion
1925 – Basis of Union
Article
XV. Of the Church. We acknowledge one Holy Catholic Church, the innumerable
company of saints of every age and nation, who being united by the Holy Spirit
to Christ their Head are one body in Him and have communion with their Lord and
with one another. Further, we receive it as the will of Christ that His Church
on earth should exist as a visible and sacred brotherhood, consisting of those
who profess faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to Him, together with their
children and other baptized children, and organized for the confession of His
name, for the public worship of God, for the administration of the sacraments,
for the upbuilding of the saints, and for the universal propagation of the
Gospel; and we acknowledge as a part, more or less pure, of this universal
brotherhood, every particular church throughout the world which professes this
faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to Him as divine Lord and Saviour.
1940 – Statement of Faith
VII.
The Church We believe that the Church, the society of the redeemed, was brought
into existence by God Himself through the work and risen power of Christ, Who
in calling men into fellowship with Himself calls them by the same act into
fellowship with one another in Him.
We
believe that the Church is the organ of Christ’s mind and redemptive will, the
body of which He is the Head. Under Him the Church is called to the
proclamation of the everlasting Gospel with its offer of salvation, to the worship
of God, Creator and Redeemer, to the loving service of mankind, and to the care
and nurture of the flock.
We
believe that all members of the Church are one in Him, and that the life of the
Church in every age is continuous with that of the first apostolic company. The
groups commonly known as “churches” are called to share in the life of the
whole Church, of all ages and of all lands, entering freely into the full
heritage of thought, worship, and discipline, and living together in mutual
confidence.
We believe that for the fulfillment of her mission
in the world God has given to the Church the Ministry, the Scriptures and the
Sacraments. So we acknowledge one holy, catholic, apostolic Church, the Body of
Christ, the household and family of God.
1968 (Rev. 1980, 1995) - A New Creed
We
are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God’s presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
to celebrate God’s presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
2006 – A Song of Faith
We sing of a church
seeking to continue the
story of Jesus
by embodying Christ’s
presence in the world.
We are called together by Christ
as a community of broken
but hopeful believers,
loving what he loved,
living what he taught,
striving to be faithful
servants of God
in our time and place.
Our ancestors in faith
bequeath to us
experiences of their faithful living;
upon their lives our
lives are built.
Our living of the gospel makes us a part of this communion of
saints,
experiencing the fulfilment
of God’s reign
even as we actively
anticipate a new heaven and a new earth.
The church has not always lived up to its vision.
It requires the Spirit to reorient it,
helping it to live an
emerging faith while honouring tradition,
challenging it to live by
grace rather than entitlement,
for we are called to be a blessing to the earth.
We sing of God’s good news lived out,
a church with purpose:
faith nurtured and hearts
comforted,
gifts shared for the good
of all,
resistance to the forces
that exploit and marginalize,
fierce love in the face
of violence,
human dignity defended,
members of a community
held and inspired by God,
corrected and
comforted,
instrument of the loving
Spirit of Christ,
creation’s mending.
We sing of God’s mission.
We are each given particular gifts of the Spirit.
For the sake of the world,
God calls all followers
of Jesus to Christian ministry.
In the church,
some are called to
specific ministries of leadership,
both lay and ordered;
some witness to the good
news;
some uphold the art of
worship;
some comfort the grieving
and guide the wandering;
some build up the
community of wisdom;
some stand with the
oppressed and work for justice.
To embody God’s love in the world,
the work of the church
requires the ministry and discipleship
of all believers.
In grateful response to God’s abundant love,
we bear in mind our
integral connection
to the earth and one
another;
we participate in God’s work of healing and mending creation.
To point to the presence of the holy in the world,
the church receives,
consecrates, and shares
visible signs of the
grace of God.
In company with the churches
of the Reformed and
Methodist traditions,
we celebrate two sacraments as gifts of Christ:
baptism and holy
communion.
In these sacraments the ordinary things of life
—water, bread, wine—
point beyond themselves to God and God’s love,
teaching us to be alert
to the sacred in the
midst of life.
