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September 04, 2005
Are We Catholics?
Hosea 11: 1-12 / John 17: 14-26
September 4th, 2005
As I prepared for this morning’s message I found myself wrestling inside. How can I not respond to the calamity that has hit Louisiana and Mississippi? The effects are much harsher than at the gas pump. How do the texts I selected long ago pertain to the present distress? The texts are from the prophet Hosea and the Gospel of John.
The prophet Hosea addressed the northern kingdom of Israel, which suffered because the nation was at war with Assyria—and would soon collapse. Like the streets of New Orleans this past week, virtual lawlessness left the streets of the towns of Israel in chaos. The prophet reminded them of God’s blessings in the past. God treated Israel as a son. But the more God called to them, the more they refused to listen. Still they could not undo the goodness of God. “Ephraim has encompassed me with lies . . . but I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.”
Do I hear a message from God to us here? Calamity revealed what was in the heart of many people of Israel and New Orleans. Looting and violence came from the heart of some while heroic virtue came from the heart of others. The example of great testing of character that confronted the people of New Orleans reminds me that this is what times of great testing do. Testing shows what’s in us. Adversity does not make us do bad things.
This is a time of testing. The testing you are facing may have little to do with what’s happening in Louisiana. When you and I face times of testing, rather than these hard times shaping us, they expose us. During good times we coast along with our genial personalities unchallenged. We are borne along by custom, familiar circumstances, kindly friends, and the like.
But then distress hits, and what we’re used to changes suddenly. Familiar circumstances are gone, and we find ourselves in a strangely hostile world. What we’re really like comes pouring out. And we may be surprised at ourselves. “I didn’t know I was like that!” And others are shocked.
This was what happened in Israel. The calamity of Assyria’s armies pounding pitilessly on them brought about anarchy. Rather than turning to care for one another, to defend themselves in a harmonious summoning of all their resources as our Minutemen did during America’s Revolutionary War, Israel erupted in discord. The prophet Hosea addressed the reason for all this chaos—their hearts were untamed. They had forsaken the good ways of God.
In our New Testament reading Jesus pleads for unity among His followers. This has something to do with my sermon title. I asked the question in my sermon title, “Are we catholics?” All of us Protestants caught the idea that I was playing a word-game because, after all, I’m speaking to Protestants. My question has to do with our unity in Christ.
As many of us know the word catholic, spelled with a small “c,” means universal—the whole thing. Spelled with a capital “C” it refers to the Roman Catholic Church which is only part of the whole thing. I am asking if we belong to the One Church, the universal one, the one that is bigger than the small circle of folk with whom I share a lot of ideas and customs—the Church even bigger than the Roman Catholic Church.
For there to be any kind of unity in any body there has to be profound cooperation among its members. How hard it is to maintain deep cooperation. What gets in the way of cooperation? It is when what I want collides with what you want; then comes the explosion!
It takes largeness of character to cooperate. Small character is ever out to get its own way. Small character presses hard at pressure points, stirring up strife. Look closely at what Jesus taught His disciples and you see how He was teaching the ways of largeness of heart. No body is the boss. Take the place of least distinction at the table, not the place at the head table.
Read what the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches he founded. How often the ethical part of his message urged Christians to submit to each other. That’s really hard. Particularly with some people. Submit to him?!!! To her???!!! Largeness of heart comes to us with painful effort.
I have been preparing a series of lectures to give next weekend to the Commissioned Lay Pastors class at Geneva Center. My task is to give a picture of Church history to these folk who will serve the smaller churches in our presbytery as Lay pastors. I want them to see how they are participating in something much larger than the small environment that will occupy so much of their attention. The review of the story of the Church has allowed me to see again how from the very first the character of leading personalities formed the character of the Church.
To be candid, the story of the Church is filled with neurotics and megalomaniacs. It is filled with people we call saints who were contentious and sometimes downright evil. We repeat the story of their lives in such a way that we remember only their finer points or their contributions. Many of the saints helped to fragment the Church.
The actual heroes more often than not sat and still sit in the pews rather than standing in the pulpits. The humble carpenters, farmers, school teachers, doctors, nurses, and home-makers who teach their children to love God and to be humble with others are the saints who have held the Church to some semblance of unity.
But all of us suffer from unchallenged weaknesses that keep the harmony of the Church in hostage. Do you realize how fundamental to attaining Jesus’ longing for the Church is our inclination to submit to one another? We little realize how pivotal to the development of high character is the ability to say and mean it, “you first, me last.” Listening is far more vital than talking. Aggressive behavior stirs up the mud in the depths of our hearts—even if we’re right and the other is wrong.
Now we actually may think of Church unity as a bad thing. We worry about gathering around a lowest common denominator of hollow words. The word “ecumenical” is a heretical word to many fervent Protestants. But it is a good word that Jesus would have praised. Unity is possible only when we live in submission to each other. Mutual submission requires profound character.
A verse that has kept running through my mind in the past week is “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.” How we need to protect our hearts, to guard against the infection of diseased, selfish reflexes. The prophet Jeremiah exploded with vexation as he witnessed the results of diseased hearts among his people. He wrote, “The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” You and I are apt to say, “How pessimistic. Jeremiah overstated the case.” He didn’t overstate the case.
Watch what happens when severe tests come our way. How do you respond when the props of ordinary pleasantness are knocked from under you? How do you handle disagreement and disappointment?
In ordinary times, when things are good and we face nothing more than the pleasant daily routine we learn to cope with small annoyances. We can put up with the stray disappointment. When we’re not tempted greatly to do wrong, we can endure.
But given the right circumstances how very many of us show that inside we have the capacity for even great evil. Look at the exhibit of fallen preachers and other up-standing citizens who have sunk not just to adultery but grand theft and to murder to satisfy a lust that came to burn inside of them. Jeremiah was right about our hearts. I am capable of incredibly evil deeds.
Jesus told us it is not what comes into us that defiles us but what comes out of us. We can do something about what’s in us because God has given to us His Holy Spirit to dwell within us. We need to stress this far more than we do. “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.”
The glue that holds us together is the Holy Spirit. Our common purpose to worship and glorify God together points us toward fulfilling our togetherness.
Sunday mornings are very important to this goal. And especially mornings such as this when we take the Lord’s Supper. Perhaps I should repeat the instruction the Apostle Paul gave more regularly when we take this sacred feast. “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let each one examine himself and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.”
What is an unworthy manner? For one thing it is lingering with unconfessed sin which we have no intention to stop. All of us sin often, but many of our sins are reflexes arising from our untamed hearts. But there is deliberate sin—deliberate hostility, deliberate holding on to grudges, deliberate habits of life we know are dishonest or evil in other ways. If you and I keep a squeaky clean outward appearance while tolerating ways we’d be ashamed of, we’re taking the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy way and that is profaning Jesus.
So we are to examine ourselves. I don’t examine you or you me, but we examine ourselves. Paul wrote in this Communion passage, “If we would judge ourselves we would not be judged.” The prayer of confession we offer together is to help us, but self-examination must go deeper than that. We know things about ourselves nobody else knows. Some of these things may be simply weaknesses.
But some of these things may be terribly wrong, but because others don’t know about them we don’t feel pangs of conscience. We can cauterize our consciences but they never die. What weaknesses of body and mind may be traced to evil we cling to about which others know nothing—not even our own spouses or best friends.
“Keep your heart with all diligence; out of it are the issues of life.” One of the great tests of how issues of life are for us is our ability to love each other with a pure heart, fervently in the Church. Strife is an index of lurking evil. Harmony and mutual submission are indices of depth of character. What joy we feel when we have harmony. What misery we feel when we don’t! And how we distress our Savior when we insist on the ways that bring misery to us and disharmony to the church.
Are we catholics? I hope so! That is, I hope the faith we cherish and live by binds one to the other as we are bound by gratitude to the Lord Jesus. When we work at living together in unity of heart and mind we are preparing ourselves to face testing. How good it is to be fortified by the faith we share, and know we share it, because we share it in deed and word—as well as in definition. I pray we may more and more strengthen each other so we are strong in the strength God supplies to those whose hearts belong to Him in deed.
Let us pray: O Lord, by Your Holy Spirit, grant to us purity of heart, depths of high character that will keep us bound to each other as we are bound by gratitude to You—who out of great love have saved us from death and hell and granted to us the gift of eternal life. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at September 4, 2005 09:30 AM