DO YOU HAVE TO BELONG TO THE CHURCH TO BE A CHRISTIAN?

October 25, 1992

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Philippians 2:1-5
Matthew 16:13-18
"...you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church..."
~Matthew 16:18 (NRSV)

Charles Ives said that "there must be a part of the soul all
made of tunes." TI think about that on occasion because there are
a lot of tunes playing around in my Subconscious just beneath the
surface, and occasionally, frequently actually, one comes to the
top out of nowhere, and I find myself listening to it, or humming
it. One of the tunes that does that for me is "There's a Church
in the Wildwood." Do you know it?

I won't sing it, but here are the words:

"There's a church in the valley .by the wildwood,
No lovelier place in the dale:

No spot is so dear to my childhood

As the little brown church in the vale."

The second verse:

"How sweet on a bright sabbath morning
To list! to the clear ringing bell
Its tones so sweetly are calling, ©
O come to the church in the vale."

The refrain is the best part. The men sing:
"O come - come - come - come,"

while the women sing:

"Come to the church in the wildwood, come to the
church in the dale. No place is so dear to my
childhood as the little brown church in the vale."

I have never sung that hymn in church. I asked Dr. Simmons
what he thought and he said he thought we ought not to ruin that
record. It's in that place all made of tunes, I think, because
my father loved it. He sang it a lot. He may even have sung it

to me. And I have been wondering why he loved that hymn so. One
thing I know for sure is that he never went to a "little brown

church in a vale." I knew his churches and they weren't little
brown churches.

They were the Fifth Avenue Methodist Church — not Fifth
Avenue, New York City. This is Fifth Avenue in Altoona, Pennsyl-
vania, about four blocks from what was in his childhocd, the
largest railroad freight yard in the world, the Pennsylvania.
Railroad's staging area for all freight going west over the
Alleghenies, which is to say it was dirty, noisy, rough. Church-
es in industrial towns are not often pretty. The exterior was
black, the stone encrusted with decades of the soot and ash which
fell constantly on the town. Inside, it was not what one would
call breathtaking or beautiful. It was turn-of-the-century

Methodist, pretty dull, pretty sentimental, and like the rest of
the city, dirty.

So, why did he love that hymn? What that hymn is about I
think - that nostalgic, sentimental image of a little, rural,
wooden church sweetly calling children - what that is about is a
universal disaffection with the reality of the church. He went
dutifully, but not without complaining. Church was not his
favorite place to be. From the way he sang, "Come, come, come to
the church in the wildwood," you would have thought that he would
have been wild about it. The truth is, he started looking at his
watch the minute we sat down and if it-went on too long, let us
and everyone around us know his impatience with deep sighs, until
finally he got out his big railroad pocket watch and wound it, a
loud, penetrating sound, which signaled even the preacher that it
was time for this train to pull into the station and stop.

The truth is that he wasn't wild about the institutional
expression of the Christian religion - the church. He would have
had a one-word answer to the question I have posed. "Do you have
to belong to the church to be a Christian?" "No."

My dad's condition, I have subsequently learned, is wide-
spread and deep historically. He has lots of company. The
condition has a name. It is called "The Scandal of Particulari-
ty." And it goes to the heart of Christian religion.

Almost everybody, goes the argument, likes the general idea
of God and love. Everybody likes noble principles. Christiani-
ty, however, is not about noble principles. It is about a Pales-
tinian Jew by the name of Jesus. There are, in fact, no abstrac-
tions, no broad concepts, not even any noble principles in the
Bible. The Bible presents striking particularities: a people, a
history, a law, a birth, a life, a death - and then a people
again, a church. That's what the Bible is about.

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Duke University Chaplain, William Willimon, writes:

"Many approve of both the idea of following Christ
and the concept of the church. But they are
horrified by the squalid particulars."

Author Annie Dillard, who grew.up in a Presbyterian Church,
pulled back from the whole process and recently joined the Roman
Catholic Church, wrote an-essay in a colléction, Modern American

Writers on the New Testament (Incarnation). piltard—wrate:

pity that so hard on the heels of Christ
the Christians. There is no breather. The
dxsciples turn into the early Christians between
ne rushed verse and another. What a dismaying
pity... They set out almost immediately to take
over the world, and they pretty much did it. They
conquered emperors, raised armies, lined their
pockets with real money, did evil things large and
small, in every century including this one. They
are smug and busy, just like us, and who could
elieve in them?" [p. 36]

it of an embar-
television religion,

The tru is the church has always been
rassment. That is the tremendous appeal
I think. You can ve Jesus without e church. You can have
your salvation without al Sy nuisance of stewardship and
pledges and the latest parking lot argument and the boiler mal-
functioning. It's a good deal actually: never have to leave
your arm chair, can hear what you want to hear, push mute when
you don't want to hear and then, if you feel like it, send ina
check.

The truth is the church is never quite what it ought to be
and no one knows that better than church people. As a matter of
fact, after the anti-institutionalism of the past few decades I
think there is more self-righteous religious smugness outside the
church than there is inside. Time was then church people looked
down their noses at non-church people. Today, however, the
person on the outside is inclined to say, "I may not be perfect,
but at least I'm not a hypocritical church member."

In 1869 the first Vatican Council said "Extra ecclesiam
nulla salus." "There is no salvation outside the church." John
Calvin said it too and believed it. He might define church
differently, but he believed it. Willimon says that church
people, more than anyone else, know that is patent nonsense;
that when the church says that, the church is saying.more than it
knows. We Presbyterians are quite happy, actually, to leave the
matter of salvation in the hands of our God who we know and trust
to be gracious, just, forgiving, and loving.

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So our Reformation position is that of course there is
salvation outside the church. That's not really the question I
posed. "Do you have to belong to the church to be a Christian?"
And to answer that let's look briefly at what Scripture says
about church.

In the Gospels, very little. We heard the critical text
this morning. Jesus says to Peter: "You are a rock and on this
rock I'll build-a church." The word church is "ekklesia" in
Greek. It means "those who are called out." It is used only
three times in the Gospels, all three in Matthew. Biblical
scholars have been eying it suspiciously for centuries. Matthew
is clearly Peter's friend. The account is written perhaps fifty
years after the fact, during the period of the church's organiza-
tion, that is to say. So maybe Matthew just sticks that in there
to enhance his friend's position. And when you know the church
as intimately as a minister does, you do wonder on occasion if
this could possibly be what Jesus meant.

I believe that Jesus said it or something very close to it.
I believe he called Peter a rock and I like to recall that the
rock Peter was, was pretty rough, pretty crumbly at times; that a
church built on him has to acknowledge that he wasn't exactly
consistently strong and faithful: he was thoroughly human. What
I believe absolutely is that Jesus gathered a company of men and
women. There is no arguing that a company gathered around hin,
followed him for three years as he walked around Galilee, helped
him teach and heal, and in the process of following bonded to one
another in a unique way. I am thoroughly convinced that Jesus
invited men and women to become followers. I see no evidence at
all that he ever asked anybody to believe things about him as a
prerequisite to following. I conclude on the basis of the evi-
dence I read that men and women became believers while they were
followers, some more thoroughly than others, some with intellec-
tual sophistication, many with simple child-like trust, and that
what they believed about him was not as important as their fol-
lowing, their belonging to the company of the committed.

So I think my question makes no sense. Church is what a
Christian is. A Christian is a follower of Jesus who belongs to
the community, the company of followers.

When the title of this sermon was published in the Newslet-
ter, I heard from a good friend and supporter of this church, who
is not an official member for reasons of theology. He wrote,
"I'm interested in your topic. I'm even more interested in this -
'Do you have to be a Christian to be a member of the church?'"
And the New Testament answer is simply that the church is the
company of those who want to follow Jesus - that a Christian is a
follower - a friend who in company with the other followers of
Jesus, is trying to live in faithfulness to hin.

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Can't I do that alone? cCantt I be an individual follower,
doing my own thing? Why do I have to get mixed-up with other
people? The reason is that other people seem to be the point of
the whole exercise. The human community seems to be why God sent
a son to live among us in the first place. It was not, that is
to say, to make individuals feel good about where they are going
to spend eternity so much as it was to recreate the human race,
to establish a colony of heaven in human history, a visible
reminder of the creator's plan for the whole project to love
peace and practice justice.

To believe in Jesus - to turn to Jesus - to follow Jesus -
is, simply, to reconnect with the human race. To know Jesus
Christ as Lord and Savior is to know your neighbor as your broth-
er or sister. And it is church - the company - which is the visi-
bie reminder, and the place where that reality is acted out every
week, week in and week out; a community gathering in love and
forgiveness and for an hour at least - in God's praise and adora-
tion - becoming what God intends for the whole creation. JI can't
resist my favorite Mark Twain vignette. People were always
asking him why he didn't belong to a church. Twain said if
heaven was like the Methodist Church down the block, he was glad
he wasn't going there. The Church catholic - universal - the
Church which transcends Roman - Presbyterian - Lutheran - Baptist
~ is the visible Sign of God's reconciliation, a picture of the
human family forgiven, recreated, redeemed and now poised to go
into the world and save it from itself.

Of course, it's a scandal. Show me an institution that
isn't on occasion. Ethicist James Gustavson has written that
"the church is not only a divine community, it is also a human,
natural, political community." [Treasures in Earthen Vessels]

Or as one wag put it, the church is like Noah's Ark in the middle
of the flood. The smell inside is so awful you might leave
except for what's going on outside.

So, I am a churchman, not because the church is perfect, but
because I'm trying to follow Jesus. And in the same way I have
come to terms with his particularity, his humanness, the word
made flesh and dwelling among us, so I must accommodate to the.
institutionality of his church.

tT am a churchman in spite of my own life-long lover's quar-
rel with the church because I really do believe the world desper-
ately needs the church and that there is a sense in which the
church and the faith it: represents is the world's only hope. I
do believe the danger is always idolatry, making a god out of
something ~- ideology, for instance, or race, for instance, or
affluence, or security. I believe that history teaches a very
clear lesson that civilizations have within them the seeds of
their own ultimate destruction apart from some lovingly critical
and hopefully redemptive presence like the church. I believe our
culture, if left to its own devices, would simply destroy itself.

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Apart from religious faith I see little reason to assume that the
culture will generate the energy and impetus to become less
materialistic, less greedy, less narcissistic, less violent, and
more compassionate, just, tough and resilient. Professor James
Fowler, in a book on values put it this way.

"When we prepare our young for the good life, this
is the advice our culture gives. 'Be sure to
major in something marketable. Get a background
that combines business and computer technology.
Keep your resume always ready. If you are going
to the top you must be within striking distance by
the time you are thirty-five. You don't have time
to dilly-dally. Don't stay with one company too
long. Loyalty can be counter-productive if you
want to get ahead. You don't have time for volun-
teer activity.

The church, on the other hand, Fowler says, is a counter-
culture and asks a very different set of questions.

"What seem to be your gifts? What kinds of things
do you do well? What kinds of activities give you
a sense of worthiness? What kinds of things do
you feel that you and God can do with your life
that will make a difference for good in our
world?" [Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian, p.
143]

I think in all seriousness, those questions are our only
hope, and that apart from a church to keep asking them, our
culture is headed for self-destruction.

I am a churchman because I can't do it alone. Oh, I can
survive and take care of myself. I can even do pretty well. But
I certainly can't do much by myself to fix the world, to become
part of the solution instead of part of the problem, to heal the
sick, and bind up wounds, by myself. And I don't know how to be
a light in the city or in any darkness by myself. But when I am
with the church, I am first of all, one brief voice, ina magnif-
icent chorus of voices which has been Singing God's praise for
thousands of years. My poor praying and singing and believing
join that wonderful song of praise. And when I say the creed,
my voice joins an affirmation that has been made every day -
every hour of every day for 2,000 years. And when I bring my
poor faith to God - my sacrifice on the altar - my money in the
plate - something incredible happens. I become a healer of the
Sick. I house the homeless, and clothe the naked. My little
light joins a beacon of light which shines in every darkness.

Io am a churchman and I will give my heart, and more of my

resources than I will give to anything else, because I believe
that Jesus Christ is the hope of the world, not as a philosophic

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abstraction. But I believe in the body - the organism - the
community which lives and loves and serves and is the hope of the
world's salvation and reconciliation and peace.

Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope and became a
household name, but did you see the pictures of those two Roman
Catholic brothers the night Dantrell Davis was shot, doing what
they do every night at Cabrini Green, walking between the build-
ings, and when there is gunfire between gangs, walking toward it,
offering their own lives in the place of children like Dantrell
Davis and the 120 others who have died. That's what church is.

"The body they may kill.... God's truth abideth still,"
Martin Luther wrote, and the Church has done that too: Dietrich
Bonhoeffer and Confessing Church in Germany, standing up, alone,
to the Third Reich; Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered at mass in
his cathedral in El Salvador; Martin Luther King, Jr., our mar-
tyr, whose inspiration and spiritual home was always the church.
That's what church can be.

And I believe the world's peace does come ~- as it came in an
unobtrusive birth in a remote Judean town called Bethlehem. I
believe the world's and the city's peace begins when children
from Cabrini Green come to this church and learn to read and
learn that they are not alone - that there are human beings in
this culture - this world - this city - who care deeply for them
and love them and know their names.

I believe that churches are a light in the city. I don't
think that's a marketing slogan. I think it's the truth.

And so I presume to invite you - if you are not a part of
the company of followers of Jesus - join us. or join up where
you live.

And I presume to invite you, if you are a part of the compa-
ny, to renew your commitment, your love and loyalty. ‘

And I presume to invite you to bring what you have, give
what you have; your faith, your hope, your determination, your
yearning for peace for yourself and for the world. I invite you
to bring your resources, the gifts you have been given and to lay
them on the altar. I presume to invite you to commit, to give,
to follow the one who promised,

"On a rock like this I will build my church, and
the gates of hell will not prevail against it."

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