WE BELIEVE IN THE CHURCH

November 1, 1987, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service

John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Revelation 7:9-17
Matthew 5:11-16

“Upon this rock I will build ay church and the gates of hell shall not ~~
prevail against it. —-Matthew 16:18(KJV)

What. do you believe in, Christian?

I believe in God the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ,
his only son, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the resurrection, the forgiveness of sins,
the communion of saints and the life everlasting.

And I believe in the holy Catholic Church.

How did that get in there? Sandwiched in the middie of the oldest
Christian bill of particulars, The Apostles' Creed, in a series of
affirmations which nobody much disputes, is an assertion so radical; that
it really ought to choke us a bit everytime we say it. In a list of
theological verities which can become opaque, is a reality so mundane we
are sitting on its uncomfortable seats, smelling its odors, reposing
beneath its high-vaulted, Gothic and very tangible roof... Church, Holy
Catholic Church, Fourth Presbyterian Church, ~- old St. John's by the gas
station... right up there with God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

In the pre-ecumenicai age, some members of my family used to come to
a screeching halt in their corporate affirmation of the historic Christian
faith at the point of that “Holy Catholic" business. Oh, they knew that it
was catholic with a small “c" meaning universal, not Roman Catholic, but
just in case God was listening in they wanted to make very certain they got

their institutional affiliation correct ~ "that's the Presbyterian version
of the Holy Catholic Church, not St. Theresa's, thank you." And so they
would substitute "Christian" for "catholic" - which is o.k., but redundant

and it misses the point of catholicity. Or they would treat the word like

a "rest" in music and stand tight lipped while.others danced suggestively
with Rome.

meets

How did it get in there? [It got in there because from the very
beginning to believe in Jesus meant joining the company. It was not a
matter of agreeing to ideas about him, nor has it been an emotional
catharsis, nor, in the New Testament, at least, is it a matter of accepting
Jesus as personal Lord and Savior... It has, from day one, been a matter
of joining up. He said, “follow me: come along, join the company..."

It's in the creed because the faith is corporate and always has been. But,
in reality, if you want to get into a good argument, try telling a
Presbyterian that you have to be a church member to be a Christian.

Besides, today, almost everybody agrees that the church is in
trouble, that the mainline churches, the old Protestant establishments,
have declined in numbers and influence. Certainly, when it comes to the
ability to make news - which means selling newspapers, we can't hold a
candle toe the televangelists. Chicago scholar Dorothy Bass observed that
“in the 1950's Time and Newsweek carried a story about a mainline
denomination approximately every other week, while thirty years later
almost none appeared." [Teaching with Authority? The Changing Place of
Mainstream Protestantism in American Culture] The very day I read this
Time magazine arrived. And you know how you always turn to People and
Cinema and Sports before you plow into the World and the Nation? Well,
ministers always check the Religion department which is there periodically.
On October 19 this is what I found — as Time's presentation of the
religious news of the week.

The headline read —-"Falwell Throws in Towel — With PTL up for grabs,
wili prodigal Jim Bakker return?" The article, in Time's inimitable style,
reported that Jerry Falwell had quit as head of PTL and the possible return
of Bakker to the helm of the 172 million dollar empire.

Well - what does it mean when that's the religious news? As a life
long Time reader, let me say that part of what it means, sadly, is that
Time is capable of becoming the religious equivalent of the National
Enguirer- “if it titillates, enough to sell magazines - report it." What
it means is that mainline churches don't ordinarily make news that sells.
What it does not mean, I would submit, is that the churches, the church -—
is in trouble. And one of the reasons I can come to that conclusion is
that I mean it when I say I believe in the church.

There is a sense in which there has never been a time when the church
has not been in trouble. One of the things the memory of the Protestant
Reformation ought to suggest to us is that widespread dissatisfaction with
the institutional church is not exactly a new phenomenon.

Karl Heim once quipped that... "The church is like a ship on whose
deck festivities are still kept up and glorious music is heard, while deep
below the wateriine a leak has been sprung and masses of water are pouring
in, so that the vessel is settling hourly though pumps are manned day and
night."

Well maybe - and maybe not.

Another perspective is offered by Martin Marty... Dr. Marty
completed the first of a four volume work in Modern American Religion this

L/1/87

year. Dr. Marty subtitled Volume I, The Irony Of It All and in the
introduction observes that for centuries the decline of religion has been
confidently predicted. Modern, urban secular culture would be inhospitable
to religion... But ~ ironically, “instead of disappearing, religion,
prospered in selected ways. Instead of dissolving in the. face of Jostling
and erosion caused by American diversity, it relocated..

But, the church - the College of Cardinals - the General Assembly...
the Presbytyerian Women's group? Is that what Jesus meant? Jesus was a
Simple man, so the argument goes. His intent was to put people right with
God and teach them to be forgiving and kind with each other. So what does
the church — with its ritual and ceremony, its tradition and custom, its
creeds and its rules —- have to do with this remarkable life lived 2,000
years ago? ,

The church, of course, is not the only institution that suffers from
a gap between its purpose and its actual practice. I've belonged to more
than one PTA which seemed to exist for the purpose of raising money to send
representatives to meetings to learn how to raise money to send ;
representatives to meetings to learn how to raise money. ‘The church knows
it isn't perfect. The old saw about the church being full of hypocrites is
true, of course. But inside, we acknowledge it, confess it even. In fact,
we're the one institution that requires people to confess something less
than perfection.

Our real distress about the church has to do with particularity.
It's one thing to avow belief in the forgiveness of sin and—the communion
of saints, in the abstract. It's another thing to_do “that on Suriday.
morning surrounded by other people. C. S. Lewis! 1S classic Screwtape
Letters is a correspondence between a senior devil and his nephew" ‘about
fighting for the soul of a new Christian. Listet.to the devil - on the
church:

"One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not
misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out
through all time. All your (man) sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic
(building). When he goes inside, he sees the local’ grocer with a rather oily
expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book -
containing a liturgy neither of them understands.. When he gets to his»
pew and looks around him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom
he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those
neighbors. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like 'the
body of Christ' and the actual faces in the next pew." [p. 8-9]

The church is distressingly particular. And. there is a sense in
which we are always more comfortable with safe abstractions. The love and
compassion of Jesus is inspiring. But that man? Her? Wait a minute! (We
are inspired by the heroie strains of "The Church's One Foundation," but
the meeting to plan the menu for the officers brunch leaves us cold...

Why the church? Religion is personal isn't it? This whole matter of
my faith is an individual matter isn't it? Yes - and no. Of course it's
personal and individual. But there is a deeper sense in which it is
corporate and relational. American religion has always stressed the

wai ft fan

personal side of the equation. Revivalism ~ is the religious expression of
the American obsession with individualism, focusing entirely on the
feelings and beliefs of the individual and building a whole movement with a
life of it own, only peripherally related to the ongoing Christian
enterprise and divorced entirely from the past... Typically revivalism
dismissed all 2,000 years. of church history and proposed that it was
related directly to Jesus and the the Baptist and the disciples.

Everything else has been a mistake. Televised religion is its modern
reincarnation. You can participate, hear the Word, enjoy the music, get
yourself saved and become a partner in the redemption of the world without
leaving your easy chair except to get your checkbook... certainly without
encountering another person. ,

Well, we believe in the church... the church catholic, the church
triumphant, the church in ali times and places. And we believe in the
church here —- this church - this people, here and now. We believe - church
is as integral to Christian faith as is the rest of the creed.

It goes to the heart of our basic theology - our belief in. God. What
we know about God is the story of God and people. What we bet our life on
is not a list of philosophic assertions, but a love story which begins on
the edges of recorded history. "God creates people to keep him company,"
Black poet James Weldon Johnson said, “to be responsible, for God's sake,
for the creation." God calls Abraham and Sarah and promises them
descendants —lots of babies and people. God gets included with those
people. God hears the people cry in bondage and sets them free. God
enters into a covenant with them and promises to live with them
intimately... "I will be your God and you will be a people - my people."
That idea bound them together in a way no people before or after has been
bound together.

When we say we believe in the church, we are saying that we believe
God has always chosen people, has always made people into a community. We
are saying something about our belief in God when we say we believe in the
church.

We are saying that we believe Jesus intended a company, a new
community of God's people to be the vehicle through which God would
continue to live in his creation. We are saying that Jesus called men and
women into that community. We are saying that the church is nat an
arbitrary organization to which we belong because we like the preacher or
choir or architecture; but rather that the church is the way God gives us
to say yes to Jesus Christ - and to participate in, actually to be a part
of, the life of God in the world.

No one knows its imperfection better than church people. No one gets
angrier with the church than those who love it. No one is more embarrassed
by its occasional triviality, or more impatient with its timidity ~ than
those who love it and believe in it. We - who are the church - do not need
reminders of how large the gap is between our Lord's life and our life
together.

But we may need an occasional reminder that in ways that are often
intentionally quiet and discreet and modest — the church of Jesus Christ

LI/1/87

lives and is worthy of our belief... There was religious news last. week.
There were. things happening last week in the world of religion, far
different from the machinations of the PTL. The week Falwell and Bakker
were all the religion news Time could report —

..this single outpost of the church wrapped up an alternative school
during the teachers' strike for 100 children -

that. week, ~ this church - counseled and gave-food and found shelter
for a hundred or so throw-away lives no one else in our culture cares
about -

that week this outpost opened its arms to senior adults, to troubled
men and women — ;

...that week it put in motion plans to assist with the costly business
of finding solutions for Chicago's homeless -

that week it found a way to pay for more scholarships for promising
Cabrini-Green kids -

.it tutored, taught, listened to and held in its arms an astonishing
number of people for whom this church is the only reminder that their
lives matter at all -

that very week we brought a leading musician, a black author and
exquisite music to our city, put sculpture on display on Michigan
Avenue and of course, we learned and prayed and took care of one
another.

That's only a part of it. It goes on in thousands and thousands
of faithful churches in every town and city and rural crossroad in this
country.

And in the meantime others of us, in other outposts in Asia, Africa,
Central and South America - were healing, teaching, giving courage - and
standing for freedom and dignity against some very strong opposition.

So I believe in the church. And I believe God means for there to be
a church and Jesus calls us into a church, and I believe the gates of hell,
as Matthew put it, will not prevail against it.

But I believe in the church because I continue to learn that the best
faith in me is relational, does in fact push me into a world to be with
God's children, pushes me into a community which is there for me.

During a fine speech about corporate ethics last Thursday morning,
B. Kenneth West, head of Harris Bank Corp. said his dream for his

organization was “to facilitate community." It was a stunning thought: -
community - a value which claims the dream of this leading banker.

That's what we're about, I thought. That's what we are and what we
offer - community.

a

U/L/87

I was part of a special group of clergy privileged to spend time with
some government officials in Washington recently. We were in the White
House, seated around a table in the situation room of the National Security
Council. Two clocks on the wall reminded us of the critical intensity of
the place. One said —- Washington. The other said — Persian Gulf.

We were meeting with the deputy director, General Colin Powell and his
assistant, a young woman who happened to be a Presbyterian. General Powell
told us that his work commanding a NATO Army, and now managing the National
Security Council was not as difficult as helping the Episcopal Church in
which he is a member and officer, try to sell a few acres of property and
move a buiiding.

But then his staff assistant began her remarks. She said, “Before
I talk about the National Security Council, the Persian Gulf and Nicaragua,
i'd like you ministers to know that my husband died of cancer a year ago.
I could not have lived through that without my church. When I could not
believe, and there were plenty of days when I couldn't, the church believed
for me. When I felt utterly alone and abandoned, the church opened. its
arms and heid me up and enabled me to go on another day."

_ It was a remarkable testimony, made even more powerful by the place
in which it happened.

I believe in the church because of that. I believe in the church
because God has given me those moments too - to witness and to receive. I
believe because I have stood with several church members around the
hospital bed of one of us who was dying; as we broke bread and shared the
cup and held hands with her and prayed, she said - "Thank you all, I'll see
you again.” We knew we had been the church, as honestly as God ever gave
us the privilege of being.

I believe because I have received. 1 believe because the reality of
God has been given to me - not in the abstract — but by the church.

"The church," someone wrote recently, "is the community. through which
God says, 'I am here in the world with my grace.'" [Context, 10/1/87,
Michael Kurtz]

So we believe - in God the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ his only
Son, our Lord, in the Holy Spirit, in the forgiveness of sins, the
communion of saints, the life everlasting and the holy Catholic Church.
Amen.

MAL/387