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CONTENTS
--Housing --People Christian Education --PYC
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Preached by O. Benjamin Sparks, Pastor Second Presbyterian Church Richmond, Virginia January 22, 2006
GOD’S AUTHORIZING POWER
Deuteronomy 18:15 – 20; I Corinthians 8:1 – 13; Mark 1:21 – 28
There is a story told about Dr. James Clark who was pastor of this church from 1960 – 65. He filled this sanctuary Sunday after Sunday with his Scottish-accented erudition and the power of the spoken word. He had retired from Princeton Theological Seminary where he taught preaching, and served under a five year contract with this congregation. The topic of his sermon one Sunday was drinking – should we or shouldn’t we? What was the individual Christian’s responsibility at cocktail parties in the West End – much less at public functions? Hard as it is to fathom now, this was an issue in the church. In those days we who were at Union Seminary could be expelled for drinking, and were warned that any minister who accepted a drink in public would ruin his effectiveness with a congregation. As I heard it, when Dr. Clark finished preaching on this controversial topic (of course the sermon drew an even larger attendance than usual) those who came into the sanctuary believing that it was okay to take a drink, left with their Presbyterian opinions confirmed over against too-pious, teetotaling Baptists. Yet those who believed that Christians should not drink also departed in the smug comfort of their convictions. I tell that neither to mock nor discredit a fearless and eloquent preacher who stood tall during those years on the issue of integration – no easy vocation forty years ago in this Capital of the Confederacy. Rather it opens a window on the passage from Corinthians. Perhaps Dr. Clark’s sermon rested on Paul’s admonition to put love first in a similar debate over the eating of idol meat in Corinth. Love builds up. Knowledge combined with power puffs up – always has, always will. I also tell this story as an invitation to reflect upon the awesome power of God’s holy word, read and preached over the centuries, and of the responsibility of preachers (and in the Presbyterian church of elders, and of the laity) for preserving its true witness – so that God can speak a reforming, a challenging, and an ordering word through holy scripture and the work of preaching. God speaks through Moses to comfort Israel, to let them know that there will always be a prophet – like Moses – to speak God’s truth to God’s people. (1) That assures them that they will not be forsaken, and that they will be held accountable. They have been chosen not for privilege, but for responsibility, and a word from God through the prophet will challenge them. An elder reads one of the scripture lessons in our worship not because we are being inclusive, kind, or like to share responsibility. No, their presence week after week in this pulpit signals that the Session of this church, together with the ministers, takes responsibility for the right preaching and right hearing of God’s word. One of the principal reasons we Presbyterians insist upon the study of scripture by children and adults, is not to insure that you thereby have some fast track to the pearly gates, or for your individual spiritual growth alone, or even to equip you for witnessing. No, biblically well educated lay people act as a check on demagogic power in the pulpit. This is the church’s book, not the preacher’s book – and God has authorized a word of power that derives from faithful study, faithful preaching, and faithful hearing of Holy Scripture. Why? Because we are a faith community that exists – not for ourselves – but for God. We did not create ourselves, and when we baptized Logan (2) a few minutes ago, we took him into the holy universal church – something each of us has been called into by the power of God’s Spirit in our lives, whether we have had an identifiable religious experience, or whether, baptized as infants or believers, we have been nourished into trusting God with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength. The readings from Mark and Corinthians support what God declares in Deuteronomy – that the word comes to renew and hold accountable those of us God has chosen to belong to him. (3) Paul requires the most contentious congregation of which we have a record in the New Testament to abide by the ‘love principle.’ He demands that the spiritually powerful take into account the effect of their behavior on those who are spiritually weak, for whom also Christ died. And why does he demand that: because the very presence of Jesus Christ, crucified, reminds us that God chose what was weak to shame the strong, and what was foolish in the eyes of the world to shame those puffed up with powerful knowledge. And Paul is telling us, among ourselves, to live with humility – and concern for and sympathy toward the weak – not always catering to the strong. We are not our own. And Jesus, marching with his new recruits into the synagogue in Capernaum in the power of the Holy Spirit, is confronted by the evil that has taken up residence there. The demons ‘unmask’ him, accurately. He casts them out. Thus he inaugurates a ministry of reclaiming a people for the purposes God intended – not to keep order, but to disrupt, if necessary, any order – even a religious order – that no longer manifests the love, mercy, and healing power entrusted to them by the living God. Always, throughout the history of God’s people, the word comes to remind us that our existence, our faith, our joy in the gospel, our building up of the church, our worship, our mission – especially our mission – is not about us, but about God. Last week, when Alex Evans met with the youth and adults who are going to Malawi, he began his short presentation with five points. The first was this: this trip not about you. This trip is about God. That catches exactly the purpose of any “mission trip” undertaken by the likes of us who have been so richly blessed, whether to Gautier, Mississippi, or to Ghana, Guatemala or Malawi. It’s not about what we can do for those others – those unfortunate ones – but about what God can do for the holy universal church within us, in the partnership, in the relationship. It’s not about what we can give, but what we will receive. For we, who are so all fired blessed materially, and who are so confident of our strength, are spiritually hungry. I have long believed and have said before that the reason we are called, driven, or even desire to make these journeys into places of desperation and need, is that we are spiritually famished. I make that claim – not from any special psychological insight I possess, or out of any long hard study of Christian missions, but because the word of God itself testifies that a community of faith is sustained – not by the heaping up of comfort and privilege, or of claiming righteousness for ourselves, but by the intersections between human need and human confidence – in the power of the Holy Spirit. God chose what was weak in the world to shame the strong. Not understanding that reality is the curse of decadent, liberal Christianity from which the mainline church is slowly beginning to recover. God’s word, kept alive; God’s Spirit urging us and moving in and among us; God’s people brought up short by testimonies of faith from those who have nothing but God. If we think we’re going to help someone, or preach to someone, or lift up the struggling without being brought to our own knees in helplessness, then God help us. And God does. God helps us not regret the changed status of liberal, mainline Christianity in the public square, but to rejoice in it. This whole notion of God’s authorizing power through the word of scripture faithfully heard and preached – and reforming the church – was confirmed by an editorial written by an evangelical last week and published in a secular newspaper. (4) The article is critical of evangelical preaching at the beginning of the war against Iraq, and does not even touch upon Pat Robertson’s and Jerry Falwell’s nonsensical sayings. The editorial describes the way God can be used (or mis-used, as in this case) for purposes that are not only unscriptural – but give Christianity a bad name, and besmirch its reputation throughout the world. Charles Marsh, a self described evangelical who teaches at the University of Virginia, took several days to reread the war sermons delivered by this nation’s most famous evangelical ministers during the lead up to the war in Iraq – from the fall of 2002 to the spring of 2003. Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president’s war plans, even when doing so, according to Marsh, required them to recast Christian doctrine, especially Christianity’s ‘just war’ doctrine. Some preached that God is a warrior God, some that “we should support this war in any way possible,” some that this war opened up an evangelical opportunity to preach the gospel in the Middle East, some that this war is the beginning of the last days. That was particularly popular with the “left-behind” Christians. And some preached that we should support our president because he is a Christian brother. Dr. Marsh’s concern is the Faustian bargain made by the most powerful has discredited Christian witness throughout the world. The position of those ministers – at a time when evangelicalism has enjoyed more success and power than at any time in American history – has come under scrutiny and drawn criticism because the Christian community’s primary mission must be “to hunger for righteousness, to pursue peace, to forbear revenge, to love enemies, in other words, to be marked by the Cross.” (5) Please be clear, I do use this story in this pulpit from a position of strength. We Presbyterians know all there is to know about Faustian bargains – having promoted the American Revolution from Presbyterian pulpits, and supported the Federal government and the Confederacy with firebrand preaching. I do not deplore what Dr. Marsh catalogues from a position of strength, but of weakness. And I also deplore it because I rejoice in the power of this holy word – God’s authorizing power – to condemn, to illumine, to lift up, to break down – all human schemes that would distort God’s purposes though the chosen people, or apart from them.
That word above all earthly powers, No thanks to them abideth The Spirit and the gifts are ours, though Him who with us sideth.
Martin Luther’s words are remembering, especially now when the abuse of political and religious power is rife among us, and all sorts of unholy schemes are justified because of the changed nature of our enemies, or because God is believed to be on America’s side. Yet we do have enemies; they are not an illusion. But the human race has been down the same road that Marsh illumines many times, linking religion to power, justifying war in the name of God – from Mars to (sadly) Jesus. We have always failed at our attempts to play God, and sooner or later, are brought to our knees. For God chose what was weak in the world to shame the strong. The word of God endures forever. God’s faithfulness never fails.
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