Sermon Notes for October 29, 2017
Why are you here this morning? Or more accurately, why did you come to worship here at the Presbyterian church in town?For many of us in this congregation, we grew up in the Presbyterian church. Our parents were Presbyterian, and their parents before that. We were born into and raised in the Presbyterian church, and we never left.
Others of you might have married into the Presbyterian Church. You grew up in another tradition, maybe Baptist, Episcopal, or Catholic, and married someone who was a Presbyterian. Rather than worship at two different churches, you joined your spouse at the Presbyterian church.
Still others live in the community surrounding this church. You come here to worship because it is the closest church to your house, and you want to be a part of this community.
I am one of those who grew up in the Presbyterian church. By that I don't mean that my parents brought me to the Presbyterian church on Sunday morning, I mean that I spent the much of my childhood inside the walls of Presbyterian churches; I literally grew up in the church.
Many of you know my story. My father was a Presbyterian minister and my mother still is. But wait, there's more. My uncle is a Presbyterian minister as was my grandfather and my great-grandfather. My great aunt was a Presbyterian missionary. All told, I am the 8th Presbyterian pastor in my family.
It would seem that I had little choice in being a Presbyterian. But in fact, just as you did, I did have a choice, and I continue to choose the Presbyterian church. Why? Because we believe that education is important, that the Bible is word inspired by God, that the spirit speaks to us through the majority, but reminds us to listen to the minorities. And so many other reasons. Today we celebrate the beginnings of the Presbyterian church and look ahead to what it will become.
On October 31, 1517, a Catholic priest named Martin Luther was concerned about problems within the church, so he nailed 95 ideas for discussion on the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany to foster conversation about ways to improve the church he loved. It didn't turn out like he expected. Instead of bringing about internal change, Luther was excommunicated; his actions and ideas, and those of other reformers, resulted in Protestants. Today, as we celebrate that day 500 years later, let's take a minute to remind ourselves the church is both "reformed and always reforming."
In her book "The Great Emergence", Phyllis Tickle argues that Christianity is currently undergoing a massive upheaval as part of a regular pattern that occurs every 500 years, in which old ideas are rejected and new ones emerge. Ultimately, the old expression of Christianity is refurbished and revitalized, while a new, more vital form also is created. Before the reformation, came the Great Schism in 1054 when the church split into the Eastern and Western branches - that's why there is an Eastern Orthodox and a Roman Catholic church. Before that was the collapse of the Roman empire and the dark ages, when the church did its best to preserve knowledge, creating monasteries and abbeys. And 500 years before that was "The Great Transformation" when Jesus himself came down and changed forever how we would understand our relationship with God.
Because the Church, in all its diversity, is rooted in reformation. Yes, the message – the good news of Jesus Christ – is the same in every age, but how it finds its expression and its practice is deeply rooted in context and therefore constantly re-forming. The world around us changes. We either re-form for the sake of the gospel, or we entrench in the security of our traditions and assumptions. We must constantly explore new and fresh ways to share the good news, employ effective ways of catechizing and incorporating folks into our communities of faith, and retool our approaches to ministry and mission.
It's easy to identify the changes of the last century. Our understanding of science has progressed exponentially, forcing us to reconcile scientific and religious thought. We are culturally more diverse. We are living longer. Family units take a variety of forms. We are a global community, no longer confined to the boundaries of our physical neighborhoods. We have access to facts, data, opinions, and information instantly through computers we keep in our pockets. Communication and access to news is immediate and unfiltered. Our minds are changing (for better or worse) with the way we process information. How could these things not alter how we understand who we are, why we exist, and where God is in our lives?
The danger comes when we assume that this transformation is a bad thing, that change is the same as death. It's not, even when it feels like it at the moment. During every single one of these periods of reformation, whichever part of the church was strongest had to adapt, change and sometimes even shrink, but it never ceased to be. Luther and Calvin and all of the other reformers changed Christianity forever, but the Catholic church did not cease to be. It changed, and is still changing, but it did not die. Instead, the faith spread farther than ever throughout the world because of the existence of Protestants.
So 500 years after the reformation, we are looking at another one of these great 'rummage sales' of faith which Tickle calls The Great Emmergence. And this time it is the Protestants who are the dominant group in the Christian faith. So yes, churches are scared about dying, but that isn't the end of the story.
Phyllis Tickle spoke about this in an interview, saying: "Denominations aren't going to cease to exist. Protestantism isn't going to cease to exist. It has never been true, and it won't be true this time. The faith will spread. It will be spread primarily by emergence Christianity as it flows out from our culture to embrace more of the world or more within our culture. But denominations will stay."
Even though some parts of our church are shrinking, Presbyterians aren't going anywhere. That is both a joy and a responsibility, because it's important to remember the second part of what happens during these periods of re-formation: change. Tickle says "Those denominations are going to have to change the way they do business. Protestant Christianity is going to have to regroup and reconfigure in the same way that Orthodoxy had to, in the same way Catholicism had to, in the same way apostolic Christianity had to, monastic Christianity had to -- so Protestantism is going to have to. It will be a response to the changes that are the Great Emergence, more than to emergence Christianity itself."
So today we look back and remember where we began as a church: Martin Luther trying to tell the church he loved that the practice of selling forgiveness for money was wrong. He never meant to create his own church, but because he did, we can now read the Bibles in our own languages. Worship is held in more than just Latin. We do not have the practice of paying to be forgiven. The world had changed and so did the church.
The world is changing again, and so is the church. Yes, a number of mainline white protestant churches are shrinking, but african american, hispanic and asian churches are all growing. Yes, millennials have less time and inclination to go to worship services on Sunday morning, but they are also more generous and mission minded than the generations before them.
In 2016 I was lucky enough to be a Presbytery delegate to General Assembly - the nationwide meeting of the PCUSA to do the work of the church. It was a long, wonderful week, but the best part was that we held worship every day. The worship services were filled with hundreds of people, the commissioners and staff, but also the people who were in the area and wanted to participate in worship. Young and old, men and women, hispanic, black, white, asian, a kaleidoscope of people made up the worship, all passionately devoted to the Presbyterian church. Friends, our church is alive, and though it may be changing, it remains strong and vibrant.
So on this Reformation Sunday, I again choose to be a Presbyterian. I choose to be a part of this church that is not dead, but is alive to the world and adapting to the people in it.
Who do you choose to be?
