FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
305 EAST MAIN STREET
DURHAM, NC 27701
PHONE: (919) 682-5511
“Still Presbyterian After All These Years”
A sermon by Joseph S. Harvard
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time:
October 30, 2011
Josh. 3:7–17; Ps. 107:1–7, 33–37; 1 Thess. 2:9–13; Matt. 23:1–12
Gracious God, it is humbling to think that you care about us, that you
not only give us the gift of life, but you call us into the community of
faith. You call us the Body of Christ. You ask us to serve you in the
world. It is a daunting task. We need guidance and direction. We ask
that you would speak to our lives from these ancient words that
hearing, we may believe and believing, we may follow in the way of
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I have been a Presbyterian all my life. That is an affirmation, not a confession. I
was baptized as an infant like Philip and Ian will be baptized shortly. I am deeply
grateful for this heritage. On Reformation Sunday, it seems appropriate to reflect
together on what it means to be Presbyterian as we baptize two new young men
into the Presbyterian Church and receive some new members.
In thinking about the sermon, I landed on the title, “Still Presbyterian After All
These Years.” I checked it out with my theological advisor, Carlisle Harvard, and
she said, “You know where you got the title, don’t you?” I said, “Yeah, I think I
remember.” She said, “It was a song, popular in the late 1970s, called, “Still Crazy
After All These Years.” It still seems to fit the occasion.
Let me begin with a word about our Clerk of Session. We have a new Clerk of
Session. On Monday night, the Session elected Jean Cary as our new clerk. We are
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grateful for her willingness to serve this congregation in that capacity. The clerk
serves a very important purpose in the leadership of the congregation. She replaces
an excellent clerk, Jane Wettach, who has served as clerk for the last two years and
did an excellent job and to whom we are also deeply grateful.
Many of you may know that Jane was not raised a Presbyterian. She grew up in the
Roman Catholic Church, and she joined FPC after she and Paul Baldasare were
married. When she became an officer, she attended orientation for new officers. I
remember asking Jane one night after class how it was going being a Presbyterian.
She paused for a moment in her thoughtful way and said, “Joe, I like being a
member of this congregation, and I am still getting used to being a Presbyterian.”
Denominations, including our own, have gone through several identity shifts.
Presbyterians originated in Scotland as a part of the Protestant Reformation which
began on October 31, 1517, in Germany and France 494 years ago tomorrow. An
Augustinian monk nailed 95 theses to the church door in Wittenburg, Germany.
John Calvin was a prominent scholar in France who was impressed with Luther’s
concerns about the church, his view of what the church should be, and so he
became a follower. John Knox studied under Calvin in Geneva. He was from
Scotland, and he brought the Reformation to the church in Scotland from Geneva.
Denominations have helped to preserve ethnic identity. Scots were Presbyterians,
English were Episcopalians, Germans were Lutheran. The melting pot came along
and dissolved European ethnicity. Denominations took on a social and economic
function. In the 1950s, Vance Packard wrote about it in his book called The Status
Seekers. Your denomination was supposed to point out your level in society, as
Packard suggested. The Episcopalians owned the factory, the Presbyterians ran it,
and the Baptists worked there. Now, that’s a characterization, too. But some
sociologists are now calling this a post-denominational age, and in the United
States, we are more concerned about what’s going on in the life of a congregation,
which was Jane Wettach’s point.
People choose churches for many reasons. Some look for the church they grew up
in. Some look for music or architecture or education. Many of you have said it is
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the mission of the life of this congregation that was appealing to you. Some have
even said preaching, probably not as many as have mentioned parking.
One thing we all know is that the church is changing. There are emerging
churches. There are non-denominational churches. I believe God is in the process
of doing a new thing in the church. There is a lot of anxiety over the changes. The
question, it seems to me, is: are able to trust God? Just as God said to Joshua as
they were getting ready to go across the Jordan River into the Promised Land, “I
will be with you. I am doing a new thing.” Are we willing to trust God, who has
been present in the life of this community for almost 140 years, and for the
Protestant church for 494 years? Often, we’ve strayed: we’ve supported things that
were not in God’s will, like slavery and discrimination. But God has continued to
raise up women and men to call us back to what God is doing.
There is a group of Presbyterians ministers who are now meeting around the
country. The title of the group is “Next Church.” What is the next church going to
be like? There is an affirmation there—there will be a next church, and it will be
God’s doing. As we like to say in the Reformed tradition: “We are Reformed and
always being reformed.” God is in the process of showing us new ways to work
towards God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
I also believe that as we go forward, it is important to hold on to those things that
we’ve learned in the past that have strengthened us. This is the reason that it is still
good to be a Presbyterian after all these years.
What Luther was saying was that the church has gone astray. This kind of protest
did not start with Luther. If you were listening to Matthew’s Gospel as I read it a
minute ago, Jesus was also protesting the excesses of the religious leaders, the way
they were in it for the show, but not for the practice of the faith. It is a scathing
critique.
Protesting has been a part of our tradition. It reminds me of the movement going
on right now called Occupy Wall Street. We’re not sure what this protest is about,
but it’s people rising up to say the growing disparity between those who have so
much and those who have so little needs to be called out. They don’t have a plan to
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solve it, but they’re saying this is not right. We need to find a way to live more
equitably in this society, or as Jesus put it, “The Greatest among you will be your
servants.” Jesus called us, in the midst of these protests against the abuses of the
leaders in his day, to be servant leaders. Protest is not simply for the sake of
protest. The purpose is to call us back to the role of God’s servant people. Jesus
didn’t just talk about it. He practiced what he taught. After this teaching, he will go
out and give up his life for the reconciliation and the saving of the world.
John Buchanan, the Pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, says it well
when he reminds us:
There has been from the very beginning, thankfully, a reforming impulse
within Christianity. Beginning with Jesus himself, it has to do with humility
and service instead of authority and power. It has to do with love and
generosity instead of prestige and privilege. There is a sense in which the
story of the church is the story of this reforming impulse emerging time and
time again to call the church back to its best and original self. (John
Buchanan, “The Reforming Impulse,” 2008)
John Calvin and the Reformers not only gave us a notion of what religious
integrity should look like but also what political authority should look like. It was
not the notion that authority originates at the top, that God appoints people to be
king or ruler or emperor or head, but God empowers ordinary people to lead God’s
people. Presbyterian is taken from the Greek word presbýteros (πρεσβύτερος)
which means elder, one who leads in the community, one who leads with humility
and not out of arrogance. The notion of religious and civil authority that grew out
of the Reformation became the inspiration for the political liberation movement
from the American Revolution to the present: many revolutions and reformations
and changes take place this very day, all around the world.
Another assumption—a major assumption is that we are not the final authorities.
Final authority is not in our hands, thanks be to God! God alone is ultimate—not
even our best ideas about God are the final word, or our best leaders or best
institutions. God alone is ultimate—everything else is open to Reformation. I am
still a Presbyterian because our tradition teaches us that the truth of God, the truth
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that guides us, is larger than any of our own understanding or anybody else’s
version of the truth. This is what Paul Tillich called “The Spirit of Protestantism.”
Ultimately, the truth belongs to God.
The belief that God is in charge, not just of the church, the God who came in Jesus
Christ as his servant and lived among us sends us out into the world to be servants
of God’s love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John
3:16).
That is why the mission of the church, the work we do on behalf of others, is
central to our lives. Almost every day in the life of this church, people come to the
door: the back door, the front door, the glass doors, asking for help. Something has
happened in their lives that they need a lift. We try our best to help them find that
help. We do that day in and day out in your name. We do it not looking down on
them but realizing that all of us are in need of love and support and help. That is
what it means to be servants of the living God, who came in Jesus Christ that we
might have life and have it more abundantly.
Christian faith is not about us. It is about the world that God loves so much that he
sent Christ to save it. So we must focus on the marketplace, the economy, the
educational system. John Calvin wanted to reform, not only the church, but the
society. So we get involved in things like politics and public policy, education for
our children. The way children are treated is important, and so is the way refugees
are treated and welcomed or not welcomed. So Presbyterians, down through the
centuries, have focused on the world and issues that are complex and controversial.
A famous Scottish preacher, George McCloud, reminded us in a very important
statement: “Jesus did not die in a church between two candlesticks, but he died on
a cross between two thieves.” That is what his life and death was about, and that is
what we should be about.
I am still Presbyterian after all these years because it has challenged me to follow
in the way of Jesus Christ who came not to be served but to serve. Thanks be to
God!
© FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 2011
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