REFORMED, ALWAYS BEING REFORMED
2 Kings 23:1-4, Matthew 17:1-4
[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript seeks to stay close to the exact words spoken.]
Good morning. I feel like I've been away forever. It's been awhile since I've been up here, in service of the Word with you. I was, of course, leading worship last week, but I'd been away for about two and one half weeks before that. And I have to say, it's good to be back. It's good to be sleeping in my own bed. I was at the General Assembly and then went to a conference immediately after that called Church Unbound. And actually, this morning, I'm going to be preaching upon the two scriptures that were read, but a lot of my reflections have come out of that time away, doing sort of "churchy" stuff. And actually, this morning, I want to reflect with you on some "churchy" stuff. Actually, I want to reflect on the question, "What does it mean for us to be the church, together?" And more specifically, we are members of the reformed family of faith--the reformed tradition. And so the question I invite us to reflect upon is, "What does that mean for us to be the church reformed, always being reformed, according to the Word of God?" That was a favorite slogan among the earliest reformers like Calvin and Knox, our forbearers who gave us this church, the Presbyterian Church. What does is mean to be the "church reformed, always being reformed, according to the Word of God?"
The story that Tina read--I know you're all familiar with that story, right, the story of King Josiah? Maybe some of you are familiar with it. King Josiah was seen as a good and righteous king in the history of Israel. And, like maybe we have been doing here at Lawrenceville, he was doing some renovations--renovations to the temple. And in the midst of that, he found a scroll. And the story is that when he found the scroll, he rent his garment, because the scroll spoke to how the tradition was practiced originally. And he realized that the religion of Israel had become corrupted. He pledged to go back to the way it was originally, the original religious practices of the Israelites. The reforms he instituted are called Josiah's reforms. The attempt was to get back to what it was, in its pristine, original form.
Now the reformers like Calvin and Knox read that story, and saw in that story their story. Their attempt to reform the church--now mind you, it wasn't an attempt to, sort of, make the church more appealing, because times have changed and we need to adapt to the young people's culture. No, their attempt was really to get back to the original thing, to return to the original spirit of Christ that had given birth to the church of the book of Acts. To get back to the original form of the church. But their concept then wasn't that there's only one form of being church that you gotta have. Actually, there were two marks that Calvin lifted up as marks of the true church--things that formed a "minimum requirement" for being "church." And I'm sure the seminary students know what those are. Some reformers had three or four, but Calvin gave us two. Two essential things that one has to have to be church. Are you ready? Where the Word is rightly preached; and where the sacraments are rightly administered. Hopefully we're going to both of those things right today in worship. But basically the idea is that the structure--it's like in architecture: form needs to follow function. The structure needs to enhance the spirit of Christ that gave birth to the structure itself, but there's no one magic form. There's no one-way of being church that we can freeze-dry and say that's it for all time.
I think that points out one of the tensions in all of religious history--the phenomenon that happens when a group of people has a powerful religious experience. The tendency is to then want to build a structure around that experience, to contain it. I love the story of the transfiguration because it's a sort of archetypal story that speaks to that tendency of human beings. Jesus took a few of the disciples up a mountain--I think the disciples he thought could handle it--and together they had an incredible experience, a religious experience, there on the mountaintop. Now let me ask--you might think to yourself--have you had in your life a powerful religious experience? I have had several I could say...that I considered a conversion experience for me. If you've fallen in love, you've had a religious experience. That's really kind of what it's about. Falling in love and religious experiences are very, very similar.
But what is our tendency as human beings when we get to that place? We want to stay there, do we not? If you've fallen in love, you want to stay there forever. And so what is it that Peter wants to do when he is having this religious experience? He wants to build tents around Jesus, and Moses, and Elijah. Build a structure around the experience so that they can have it, keep it. And the problem is that when we have an experience like that, and start trying to build a structure around it to contain it, to bound it, then often we lose the experience itself.
The problem for the reformers was the fact that the church had become corrupt. The structure itself, the structure--and we have to have a structure to enable us to live together as a community, to continue to nourish the spirit...but the structure had become more important than the spirit of Christ that had given birth to it.
Have you ever seen the movie Babette's Feast? Because if you haven't, you have to go out tonight and rent it. It's one of the best films ever made. Of course, it's one of my favorite movies, so therefore it's one of the best films ever made. And it's in Danish, I warn you. You can't just eat pizza--you gotta pay attention, because there are subtitles. But Babette's Feast is a story about a religious community that was founded around a Lutheran pastor. They had a powerful religious experience with this guy, this person who founded their community. And the story takes place--it begins when the disciples of this pastor had grown old, after the Pastor, the leader, had died. Now is this story sounding familiar? The master had died, and the community is left trying to figure out how to continue in that same spirit that had called them together--how to get that back. Because they had become old and crusty and backbiting. And they were singing the same old songs that they had sung before, the songs that had stirred their hearts so much, but now they were just going through the motions. They were trying to sing the same old songs to have the old experience that had called them together, and they couldn't. It wasn't working. They were just going through the motions.
Now this is where I'm looping around to a reflection about my experience at the General Assembly in San Jose. Because I think one of the dangers that we spoke of at that event, at that meeting, was the danger that the church is becoming a "going through the motions" church. Like that community in Babette's Feast, going through the motions, trying to re-create that spirit of the master, they had gotten stuck in just going through the motions. There was a lot of talk about the fact that the Presbyterian Church (USA) has lost hundreds of thousands of members since the 1960s.
But I want to bear witness to you that I have come back from that meeting with a real sense that there is a new spirit alive in the church. You might say that there is a new spirit that has been unleashed in the church. And that is creating change among us that is enabling us to imagine a new way of doing church that is different from how we have done it before. The church is being reformed, whether we like it or not. And I have to say, I think that that is really good news. I think that now is a very exciting time to be a Presbyterian, and to be a Christian.
There was a lot of talk about what it means to be a missional church. And if you haven't heard that phrase before, I daresay you'll probably be hearing it again. It's the idea that no longer can we say that everybody's Christian in this town, so ya'll come to church and we'll service your religious needs, and the mission field is out in Africa. No, the mission field is right outside our door, because the people outside these doors, they're no longer predominantly Christian. The people in our own neighborhoods are the ones who are thirsting for the fresh water of the gospel. Out there is our mission field--it's still in Africa, to be sure--but the primary mission field is right outside our doors. And it's our job to signify that hope, the hope of the gospel, to the people right here.
But you know what my brothers and sisters? We have a ways to go if we're going to signify that hope to an often hopeless world. When I was at General Assembly--I'm not going to give you and exhaustive list of what I experienced at General Assembly--but a couple of quick things, quick reflections. We're going to have a full report on General Assembly in the fall. But one of the things that was remarkable to me is that the General Assembly...that at General Assembly, people go into their own camps. You know, we have our own caucuses that are organized around issues. And people try to get legislation passed. But what's remarkable is that people don't talk to each other. They don't cross those well-drawn battle lines that we all know so clearly. One of the things that I kind of got really excited about was that...you know, I know how people like me think...but I made it a point to hang out with people who are different from me, and how I think. So I went to the Covenant Network Dinner--those are sort of my people--but I spent most of the time with Presbyterians for Renewal. And I don't agree with much of anything that they stand for, but I was so--I mean I was so edified by being there. And I don't mean that in a patronizing way--I truly learned from being with those folks. In some sense they became my folks.
But, if we are to welcome this new spirit, this spirit of Christ that is seeking to reform our church...we need to learn to talk to each other.
We especially need to learn to talk to each other around issues that divide us. Now the General Assembly did a lot of really good work, and important work, but the fact is, and some might say the sad fact is, that the only thing that people really are going to talk about or hear about in the pews, is mostly around just one issue. And you all probably know what it is, right? Human sexuality. The church is obsessed with sex. And it was no different this year. Now I think the General Assembly spoke pretty clearly about where the church is going. And it's very complex set of decisions that they made, and there's not time to describe them fully here, but suffice it to say that the church moved in the direction of full inclusion for gay and lesbian Christians. The direction is pretty clear. They recommended to the Presbyteries to delete the language in the Book of Order that prevents gay and lesbian Christians from participating fully in the life of the church through ordination. There are ways that they can actually be ordained now, given the decisions that the General Assembly made.
I have to say that I have some mixed feelings about that, though, and I'll tell you why. First of all, for whatever it's worth, I feel like I need to kind of come out of the closet, in case you don't know where I am on these issues. I am pretty passionate about being against the language in the Book of Order that prevents gay and lesbian people from fully serving in the church. We have lost so many gifts from so many good people in making gay and lesbian Christians the designated sinners of our denomination for the past 25 years. I feel passionately about that. And I believe that history will judge us--moreover, God will judge us about that. But I also understand that there are people just as passionate about that who believe the very opposite thing. And I hope I'm humble enough to admit that I may be wrong about this issue. Again we will stand to be judged by our Creator, and by history.
The thing that I feel sort of ambivalent about, is the fact that I think we've become obsessed by this argument about sex. This "capture the flag" game that we have been playing in the past decade or so about human sexuality. And I think it's become an idol for the church. I realize that it's easy for me to say that, because it doesn't affect my life directly. But I just wish that we could find a way of being together, of allowing people to exercise their conscience faithfully, to disagree gracefully, and to follow Jesus together. I wish we could to that, and as a matter of fact, I actually think we can. I think that that's what this new spirit that has been unleashed in the church is helping us do.
I want to end by just bearing witness to that for a moment, and saying a brief word about the conference I attended after going to General Assembly, which was called Church Unbound. It was a group of people that came together who, I thought, were remarkable because...we didn't agree. People who went to that conference didn't agree about issues of human sexuality and theology. But it seemed to me that we were united in our love for Jesus Christ and our commitment to be disciples of Jesus Christ. And I think, in listening to the voices of younger people--the younger people who were at that conference--you know what? They don't care about this. They want to follow Christ and get over the things that are dividing the church. My overwhelming impression is that those who are going to be the future leaders of the church really don't get why we're spending so much energy on this.
I think the main spokesperson for that new spirit, at least for me, is a young guy named Shane Claiborne. Now if you haven't heard his name, I think that probably you will in the months ahead. He's a guy with dreadlocks; he dresses like a skater; and he tells stories about practicing the gospel that are truly inspiring. He worked with Mother Theresa in Calcutta. He worked with homeless people in Philadelphia. He found a community of people to do crazy things for the sake of the gospel. For example, one homeless guy from their community got a $10,000 lawsuit settlement; and he didn't want to spend it on himself, so they went to Wall Street. And they redistributed the wealth on Wall Street and bore witness to the idea that we can live a different lifestyle than the kind of money-chasing lifestyle that we often live.
I think that's good news, that kind of creative spirit that Shane Claiborne embodies, a creative way to signify the gospel. But here's even better news. You know that phrase, "the church reformed, always being reformed?" Sometimes people say it's the, "church reformed, always reforming." But you know what? The grammatical precision of that Latin phrase is very important. Because the phrase is, "the church reformed, always being reformed." The passive voice, I think, is really important for us to hear. Because the idea is that it's not always us reforming the church--it's God reforming the church, according to the Word of God. And the good news is that God is reforming the church whether we like it or not...according to this gospel. Because we need to realize that wherever the Word is rightly preached, and the sacraments are rightly administered, there's a housing over us that allows the spirit of Christ to move, and mold, and change us. And that can be a difficult and challenging process. And it can also be a wonderful, and life-giving, and resurrecting process. I hope so. And I can hardly wait to see what happens.
Let the people of God say, Amen.
July 13, 2008
The Reverend Jeffrey A. Vamos
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