DO YOU HAVE TO GO TO CHURCH John M. Buchanan

TO BE A CHRISTIAN? Broad Street Presbyterian Church
Matthew 16:13-18 Columbus, Ohio
June 16, 1984

If you had been observing the traffic in and out of Broad Street Presby—
terian Church on Wednesday, May 15 and the next several days you would have
seen something peculiar. On that Wednesday, as on every Wednesday, the
building began to come to life between six and seven with the arrival of
custodians and cooks, followed by the church staff and the CMACAO Head Start
staff, and then the children of Head Start, and between 8:30 and 9:00 the
beginning of a long parade of people coming to the church for one reason or
another; to meet in one of the rooms, to talk to a minister about getting
married, to sell the business office a new brand of floor wax, to tune the
organ. On this day, however, some of the people leaving the church have
orchids in their hands ~ small boxed orchids. You can tell that the ones with
the orchids don’t ordinarily have orchids. They are clients of COMPASS; they
have come to the church to see the Caseworker Margaret Watson.

How they got the orchids is another story - and [’d like you to know it
because it’s a good example of what the church is. in fact, I wish you could
remember the story whenever you get to the part in the Apostles’ Creed that
goes, "I believe in the holy catholic Church." Mostly we think about the
Roman Catholic Church when we get to that part of the creed, and sometimes we
have changed the language to "Christian Church," and sometimes some of us have
simply clammed up at that phrase rather than affirm anything close to loyalty
fo the Catholic Church; but I'd like you not to do that - if you can’t resist
dealing with it, to remember that catholic means universal and the Roman
Church is surely ai significant part of the holy catholic Church, as are the
churches of the Reformed, Presbyterian tradition, and the Lutheran, Baptist,
Methodist, and Episcopal traditions. But that’s a lot even to think as you’re
reciting “I believe in the holy catholic Church"...so remember the COMPASS
clients coming through the door with the orchids.

How they came to have those orchids happened like this. Broad Street's
caseworker, among other helpful skills, has an uncanny way of bringing
together community resources and human need. That's the language you use on
resumes and grant applications. Translated into practical terms it means that
Margaret stops at Krogers on her way fo work every morning and by prior
arrangement with the story manager loads her car up with day-old bread and
sometimes doughnuts and other interesting items. Indeed, I have been driving
down Broad Street and have been passed on the inside by a Chevrolet Caprice,
seemingly driverless, filled to the roof with bread. The bread ends up in the

food pantry mostly. Aithough if breakfast has been on the light side,
Margaret’s arrival in the morning always brings with it interesting
possibilities. On May 15 the store offered the orchids and with the sound

instincts with which God has blessed her, Margaret said "yes" and so for
several days people who came to Broad Street Presbyterian Church because they
were evicted from their apartment, or their utilities were shut off, or there
was no food for their children, or their spouse had abandoned them and there
was no place to go - got a warm welcome, some concrete assistance, some good
advice, and an orchid. If the orchid was the only thing they got the church
would be guilty of gross insensitivity to human need and societal injustice.
If the assistance and advice was all they got, the church would be simply
another welfare agency. If they got nothing but a promise that ai task force

is studyin, systematic injustice and working for positive social change, the
church would be guilty of depersonalizing poverty in the same way the culture
is expert eat depersonalizing all its injustices. Here, in this instance, all
three happened. Help was delivered, societal change is discussed and pressed
here, and the individual was affirmed, human dignity reappeared in an unlikely
symbol of grace - an orchid. That’s what church is — at its best.

The text this morning is critical. I chose it for my senior thesis in
divinity school. I labored with the Greek and learned that the word "church"
— “ekklesia — those “called out" - in the gospels, all three in Matthew, once
in Chapter 16 and twice in Chapter 18. I learned that Biblical scholars have
alwavs pondered the possibility that Jesus didn’t say it at all: that
Matthew, clearly FPeter’s friend and advocate, wrote it in after the fact,
after the church was a going concern, to enhance his friend Peter’s role in
the church. I waded through all the arguments and have been mulling them over
and over in my mind ever since, Mostly because when you know the church as
intimately as e minister does, you do on occasion wonder if this is what Jesus
meant.

My conclusions about the text are these:

.. Jesus said it. Even if he didn’t use an Aramaic word which is
accurately translated "ekklesia" in Greek, which is translated "church" in
English, he meant the reference to a company, a group, an organic human
fellowship which would become an institution.

...Jesus renamed Simon - Peter - the Greek for which is indeed Petros -
"rock." And on that reck - he did build the “ekklesia.” The rock, I love to
remember, wee no polished diamond, no sharp flint, no granite slab - rather a
rough boulder, with very crumbly edges.

i conclude that Jesus, in fact, formed a company of followers — who became
believers. They were, in Elton Trueblood’s memorial image. "The company of
the committed.” They followed him as he walked through Galilee. The life
they lived together was shaped and formed by the experience of the being with
him. They learned from him; they listened as he talked; they watched as he
related to, healed, and helped other people. Their own relationships with
each other began to refiect thepower of his influence. 1 conelude that Jesus
was intentional about it; that he purposefully melded those people into a
eadre of disciples with a task to deo. The twelve and the larger company of
follwers were to reflect the Good News he announced - the news of God’s reign.
They were, in and of themselves, an outpost of the kingdom of God. In their
relationships, their corporate life, God was King; not Caesar, not Herod, not
Caiphas, not the law of Moses, not status - society. God alone. And, I
conclude, he intended for them to be the agents of the kingdom; to pursuade
others to join it, to participate in God’s reign. They were a missionary
society.

Do you have to go to church te be a Christian? Church is what a Christian
is. The question makes no sense. Followers of Jesus were part of the com-

pany. That’s what a follower did - joined up with the followers. Jesus did
not use the word “Christian.” Jesus did not ask people to believe things
about himself. What he did was say “follow me." Join the company. Of course

you have to go to church fo be a Christian...that’s what a Christian is.

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Now let’s defuse the issue. People who elect not to go to church are not
bad people. God doesn’t love those who have no church less. And surely,
electing to play golf instead of attending worship is not to chose eternal
hell over the bliss of heaven. When the church has said that, and it often
has, and often does, and is always tempted to, it is terribly unfaithful to

its task and its Lord. We believe in a God whose love is eternal. To
announce to the world that the only way to be saved by that love is to join a
church - is presumptuous and self serving and akin to the institutional

hypocrisy which hounded Jesus to his death. The question is not, "Do you have
to go to church in order to get to heaven?" Mark Twain, by the way, remarked
that if that were the case, and the only people in heaven were the local
Methodists, he was glad he didn’t have to spend eternaity there. The question
is — does being a Christian mean Church — and I am saying it dees in the same
way that being a Republican or Democrat means moving from intellectual
abstractions to pulling an appropriate lever every four years, writing a check
to the party treasurer, and perhaps attending a meeting on occasion. Your
Republicanism is an irrelevant abstraction until it causes you to do something.

The American tradition about church and church going is fascinating. Ina
new book, What Do You Need From Your Church? Alban Institute scholar Celia
Allison Hahn observes that most Americans seem to have a stereotyped image of
the Colonial Era as one of great piety and church going. Actually, there were
far more taverns and wayside inns in Colonial America than churches. "Fewer
than one in ten Americans were affiliated with any religious institutions."
(see Christian Century, 2/27/85, p. 211, Russell Hale, “The Unchurched: Who
They Are and Why They Stay Away’) Many people came here to get away from
State supported churches and coerced religion. The freedom to live in a
secular state: the freedom not to be religious is one of the fundamental
American traditions. Historians say it is also the reason why the American
churches are so vigorous and healthy. In any event, it is not surprising that
when Americans are asked, as they were in a 1978 Gallup Poll, "Do you have to

go to church to be religious?" 88% of _the population says no. At the same
time 70% of the population claim affiliation with a church or synagogue and
40% attend weekly. Ms. Hahn comments: "It seems to be part of (American)

tradition: (1) to believe in God, (2) to say that one doesn’t need to go to
church, (3) to go anyway." (Ibid., p. 211)

A common pattern in this country is the following life-sequence: baptism
and Sunday School attendance through junior high school or confirmation,
gradual withdrawal from church through high school and into college and young
aduit years, concurrently with a general alienation and separation from adult

institutions, tastes, style, and customs. The result is the loss of a decade /

of spiritual growth during which time the person has grown dramatically
intellectually, politically, socially, and relationally. Ms. Hahn char-
acterized it like this: "...there personal faith , like cut flowers, stops
growing. Their religion is like a dried flower pressed in a Bible and often
seems like nothing more than a desire for peaceful feelings, a vague longing
to be connected with something that transcends the self and a sense of
obligation to be decent to their fellows - all positive stirrings, but hardly
the vigorous pliant that could flourish in a nurturing religious community...
The memories of childish religious sentiments are not strong enough stuff to
equip adult saints for their work of ministry." (p. 214)

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The incredible success and popularity of television religion I think is
partially attributable to the fact that vou can have it without coming to
terms with the church, the company of the committed. You can enjoy it, feel
good about it - and not bump into the eccentricities, hypocricies, and human
particularities of Olid St. John’s by the gas station.

Theologically, however, the church is an item of faith for us. We acknow-
ledge in the Apostles’ Creed that, historically, to be a follower of Jesus was
to be part of his people. That is what he was about: bringing people into
the new fellowship and in the complexity of their corporate life, showing
something of God’s reign on earth.

We believe in the church, not because it’s perfect. God knows, it isn’t!
In fact, we’re the only institution in society that requires its constituents
to acknowledge their imperfection as they become members. I believe in the
church because [I believe Jesus Christ called it into being and because I
believe he is present in the church in real and tangible ways. I believe it
was and is built on the rock of human faith, Peter’s and yours and mine. And
I believe that the gates of hell, the power of death, all earthly authority —
will not prevail ultimately over it.

I affirm that after an arduous week as a4 compissioner to the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, because along with a vision of the
church’s humanness and complicity in human frailty, sin, and plain foolish- ©
ness, the national gathering of Presbyterians is a reminder that we are very
durable: that in one form or another God’s people have had a way of prevail-
ing over the power of the world from Pharoh to the Babylonian emperors; from
Persian tyrants to the Caesars; the church has endured dark ages, barbarism,
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung.

I affirm my belief in the church after witnessing our part of it grapple
once again with what it means to be Christians together, to follow Jesus in
this complex world of curs. The Assembly looked at and spoke to some diffi-
cult issues. It declared that abortion is not an acceptable method of birth
control, but reaffirmed its position that the rights of women to elect an
abortion during the first part of pregnancy whould be protected. It instruc-
ted itself to divest its holdings in four corporations whom are involved in
South Africa, as an expression of its moral revulsion at the sin of apartheid.
It heard a quietly eloquent attorney from Tucson, the son of an FBI agent and
State Prosecuting Attorney, testify that the government is breaking its own
laws with respect to the deportation of refugees from Central America, and
that for the church not to oppose, to simply watch it happen is to risk the
kind of moral neutrality which has been disastrous for the human race in the
past. And so the Assembly allocated $100,000 for legal costs to clarify the
issue of sanctuary for those refugees in court. Those are not comfortable
issues. They are very important issues. Our corner of the church is willing
to try to follow Jesus faithfully with respect to these issues, even when we
disagree with one another about their resolution. That has been cur tradition
Since the days of the Reformation and the American Revolution when Presby—
terians were strongly supportive of the radical ideas of freedom and justice
for all. I believe in the church - not that it is always right; but because
Jesus Christ calls it to be faithful, and because it tries, always, to allow
God to reign over the critical issues on the sgenda in our nation and our
world today.

Do you have to go to church to be a Christian? If the question were, "Do

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you have to go to church to be saved by God’s grace and love?" the answer
would be "no." Or "Do you have to go to church to live a good life?" the
answer would be “of course not." But I don’t know how else to be a Christian.
I don’t know how to follow Jesus. apart from the others. I don’t know how to
think theologically apart from the 1985 years of thinking and struggling that
precede me. J don’t know. how te worship the creator God without the others to
heip me sing and pray and give and obey. I wouldn’t know where to begin
without a sense of the company, the family of faith, the body of believers.

I don’t know where else the story of Jesus will be told to the next gene-
ration. I don’t know where else human life will be so honored that issues of
human rights and human justice are never neglected nor forgotten. I don’t
know where else the life of forgiveness, grace, and love is taken seriously.
And I truly don’t know where else you can go when your life is falling apart
and receive, among other things, an orchid. Amen.