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August 14, 2005
One Word that Divided the Church
One Word that Divided the Church
II Kings 2: 5-11 / John 20: 19-23
August 14th, 2005
Three weeks ago Thursday I had the arthritic knees God gave me that I wore out with much use replaced with steel and plastic ones. Yesterday I took a two-mile walk with Bonnie. I marvel at the skills of Dr. Hagen and even more at the healing properties God has put into our bodies.
Not the least of what I learned in this ordeal is how pleasant it is to be connected to other people when I was hurting. The avalanche of cards, flowers, emails, visits, phone calls, and meals made me inclined to say, paraphrasing Patrick Henry, “I regret I have only two knees to give.” Dr. Gerhard Schmidt reminded me to be glad I’m not a centipede.
As I thought about the situation of undergoing such a radical surgery with the care that followed it from so many people, the analogy of the body to larger matters often came to mind. It’s a wonderful analogy for the Body of Christ in particular. Our New Testament teaches us that in Christ we are like a body, each one members one of the other. We often think of this teaching of the Apostle Paul with regard to using the different gifts we have for the good of the whole. But it also has to do with the healing of the body, which is as important as the healthy functioning of the body.
Now I did not begin on this theme merely to tell of how well I’m doing and how much I appreciate your care. The theme before us this morning is “One word that divided the Church.” The one word I have in mind you will find in the Nicene Creed in the back of the Psalter Hymnal. There you read that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The word meaning “and the Son” was added to the Nicene Creed much later in the Western Church even though the Eastern sector of the Church did not agree.
When this word was tacked on to the Creed, even though it was added to fight a heresy that had developed, it had the effect of driving a wide wedge between Christians in the East and Christians in the West. Already they were divided culturally, by the language they used, by when they celebrated Easter, and by a sharply different view of how the Church was to be governed. But it was when the foundation of Christian doctrine was changed that a great mistrust and anxiety arose in the East that was to lead eventually to a formal split of the Church into the Catholic West and the Orthodox East.
Nowadays we’re used to all sorts of differences on details of doctrine and ways of worship and government between the churches so maybe you’re thinking this was much ado about nothing. Who cares whether we say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son? Who knows for sure about this kind of thing? In point of fact it is not clear that the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit came to us from the Father and the Son.
In our New Testament reading Jesus breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This makes it seem that Jesus gave them the Holy Spirit right then. But earlier in John’s Gospel we read that Jesus said, “I will pray the Father and He will send you another Comforter . . . the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name.” Perhaps what Jesus meant in saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” was a command that they receive the one who would soon be given to them by the Father at Pentecost. At the moment John tells us Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” there was no sudden change in them as would happen at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit “blew” on “all flesh” in fulfillment of the prophecy of the Old Testament prophet Joel.
But more than the question of what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit was at issue here. Though what we believe, our doctrine, is very important, it is as important how we arrive at the details of our beliefs. It is never right for an idea to be strong-armed onto other Christians by a powerful personality, or by political means. While we never arrive at matters of doctrine by the democratic method, it is vital that discernment of the Bible’s teaching should be something that we study together and compose particular doctrines with great humility and caution.
Indeed, there is something risky about forming doctrines that are not clearly and unmistakably taught in the Bible. Very often it is the doctrines we have derived from what the Bible teaches that divide Christians.
Since the Reformation a strong urge to systematize the unsystematic information the Bible gives us on many things has splintered the Church again and again. How wise the Bible is in simply telling us what Jesus said at various times, what the Apostle Paul wrote at various times in response to problems in the Church. We must read the Bible with humility, receiving the ambiguities that are there just as they are. We do not know the mind of God on many things and ought not to assume that we can figure them out. How I wish that more humility were evident in the spelling out of Christian doctrine by those who by reason of high intellect, much schooling, and strong personality presume to know the mind of God—and speak with great confidence.
I found it very comforting to learn that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whom we now know as Pope Benedict XVI, at the time he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published on August 6th, 2000 a document quoting the Nicene Creed leaving out the word filioque. This was a remarkable gesture of fellowship with the Eastern Church hopefully leading to the joining once again the Eastern and Western branches of the Church into one Church.
Why does this matter? An assumption that many of us take for granted that matters of faith are strictly personal. Our Bill of Rights tells us that our government may not establish religion. As America has become a melting pot of nations it has become a melting pot of religions. We rightly believe that people should have complete religious freedom. You and I would protest if the government said we had to become Muslims, or required that Hindu prayers be said in our schools. But this is an entirely secular matter. As Christians, members of the Body of Christ, a very different principal is to govern us whose origin is very old, dating back to ancient Israel.
We read this morning of Elijah being taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. It was a great loss for God’s people because Elijah had worked hard to keep their focus on God, the creator of heaven and earth, the One who told Moses, “Israel is my son.” The first of the Ten Commandments said, “You shall have no other gods before me.” But this was hard for the Israelites to remember.
The Israelites then were much like people today. They thought that in matters of religion they would not be bound by the authority of Moses. Perhaps the seed of this challenge not only to Moses but also to God began when Moses’ brother and sister led a rebellion against Moses.
Miriam and Aaron ridiculed Moses personally, referring to his wife with a racial slur. His wife was not from the nation of Israel. Then they asked, “Has the Lord indeed only spoken through Moses?”
This challenge echoed through Israel’s history. The people of Israel continually looked around them and chose to worship the gods of neighboring peoples, that seemed more attractive than the God who had revealed Himself to their ancient forebears. Time does not change God even though ideas about God are often changing. But more than theology was involved in the worship of Israel.
The reason why God demanded of Israel no other gods before Him was not mere jealousy, but also concern for their wellbeing. The prophet Elijah had the burden throughout his ministry of calling Israel back to worshipping the One God who called them as a special people. But they fought against him. Leading the protest against God was the king and the mob of false prophets that he infested into the nation to persuade them to worship the much more alluring God Baal. When Elijah was taken from Israel, perhaps God swept him up in the storm cloud as a sign of giving up on His people for now. The effect was the complete disintegration and weakening of the nation and would lead to their defeat and exile.
And it was one of the chief purposes of our Lord in coming to this earth to reunite God’s people in the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ high priestly prayer “that we may be one as He and the Father were one,” revealed the momentum of Jesus longings. Part of the wonder of Jesus’ plea to the Father was that this unity would include more than just the people of Israel. Jesus commanded His disciples to tell the Gospel to the whole world. Thus, included in this One Body for which Jesus prayed were people of every nation and language. This prayer came toward the end of His ministry, at a time when the things most important to him were uppermost in His mind.
But if it was impossible for the people of Israel to hold together under God, it would be even more so to hold together a much broader communion from all over the world. This is why Jesus prayed so intensely, with heaviness of heart. To maintain unity among those who are drawn to God through Jesus Christ is a goal to be achieved. It is not something that could happen automatically.
And essential to achieving this goal would be the work of the Holy Spirit of God. So that when, many years later, Christians were splitting into sectors that did not even recognize the other as Christians over a definition of the Holy Spirit, it was a great tragedy. It is the Holy Spirit who quietly works in our hearts to teach us to trust in Jesus and to want to follow Him in our way of life. For us to argue about the person of the Holy Spirit is a great tragedy. It reveals an immodesty, a lack of humility which keeps us unavailable to God.
Of course, it was unthinkable that as the years rolled on after Jesus left His disciples to continue His work that the church would look and think exactly the same as the small community that gathered around Jesus at the start. As the disciples obeyed the Great Commission and the Gospel reached all parts of Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth it was inevitable that the way people thought and lived in response to the Gospel in one place would differ in ways from how people responded in other places.
Variations naturally appeared from town to town, from nation to nation, and even from one small circle of believers in town to other circles of believers in the same town. The way they held together was by keeping focus on Jesus Christ and by a process of mutual submission when it came to answering questions that arose in the churches.
We live in a day when much more emphasis is placed on our religious freedom than on any kind of obligation we might have to the One Lord of the Church. If there is any legitimacy to the existence of the sector of the Church we are in, the PCUSA, it is as we are in fellowship with other sectors of the One Body of Christ. It is my duty as a pastor to be in fellowship with other pastors, with all of us in deliberate submission to each other and to the Lord. But what about all of us in the local church?
In the second-century an elderly pastor on his way to martyrdom taught a principle that was fundamental for the cohesion of the local church. I think that in my now completed nineteen years as pastor of this congregation I have demonstrated that I have no interest in exercising personal authority over this congregation. But I need to remind us of the principal that Ignatius of Antioch pounded home to the seven churches in Turkey that were apparently torn by conflict. In some mysterious way a congregation is to be united with its pastor as the Church as a whole is one in Christ.
Whereas I believe it is a mistake how many pastors have taken on great authority over their congregations, making of their congregations little empires, it is vital to the health of a congregation that it live in harmony with the pastor, accepting pastoral authority when it is offered in a clear sense of submission to the Lord.
Nowadays many churches live in disharmony. The opinions that divide us often seem to be greater importance than the Lord who unites us. It is my duty to live with a sense of the Lordship of Christ in a spirit of submission to you. And it is your duty to live with a sense of the Lordship of Christ in a spirit of submission to the pastor. When we live together like this, the sovereignty of God over our lives will be evident in the peace, the harmony, the joy we have.
And when we live together in joy, we will grow in grace. And when we are growing together in grace the Lord will add to our number those who can share our joy. We are one Body in Christ or we are nothing at all.
I pray that you may ponder these things as we head into the new year together. And as we gather around this table and I administer to you the bread and the wine, the Body and Blood of our Lord, receive it in gratitude that you have been welcomed into this fellowship with the Son of God.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we have heard your voice inviting us to you. We are grateful to be included in the number beloved to you. By your grace grant us to live so as to reveal our gratitude to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at August 14, 2005 09:30 AM