FOURTH CHURCH PULPIT
| June 17, 2001

THE GREAT REVERSAL
John M. Buchanan .

“Grace is one grand theological word that has not been spoiled ... people ‘say grace’
before meals, acknowledging daily bread as a gift from God. We are grateful for
kindness, gratified by good news, congratulated when successful, gracious in hosting
friends. When service pleases us we leave a gratuity. In each of these there is a pang of
childlike delight in the undeserved.

A composer may add grace notes to the score, not essential, they are gratuitous and add a
flourish whose presence would be missed. When I attempt a Beethoven sonata I play ita
few times without the grace notes. The sonata carries along, but oh what a difference it
makes when I am able to add in the grace notes, which season the piece like savory
spices.

Philip Yancy
What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
126 East Chestnut Street, Chicago, IL 60611-2094
(312) 787-4570

THE GREAT REVERSAL
June 17, 2001

JOHN M. BUCHANAN, PASTOR
FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Luke 7:36-50
Galatians 2:15-21

“Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.”

Luke 7:47 (NRSV)

The 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) met in Louisville last week
and managed once again to make the front page of the newspaper. The prominent headline in

yesterday’s Chicago Tribune read “Presbyterians Call for Ordination of Gays,” which is not
exactly what happened.

What the General Assembly did was move in the direction of removing the restriction from
ordaining—a restriction just four years old.

Since 1997, the constitution of the Presbyterian church has contained an amendment to its
historic standards for ordination to ministry and to the offices of Elder and Deacon in local
congregations, which prohibits the ordination of anyone who is either not living faithfully in a
heterosexual marriage or chastity in singleness. For good measure, the amendment includes
anyone who does not repent of any behavior our Book of Confessions calls sin.

Some think that’s the way it ought to be; others of us think that it does not reflect the example
and teaching of Jesus Christ, the head of the church. The Session of this church has taken that
position and it is my personal position.

The effect of the Assembly’s decision, if ratified by a majority of our presbyteries, will be to
return to “governing body discretion’”—i.e., return to local churches, their nominating
committees and congregations—the right to choose officers on the basis of their conscience and
sense of the leading of the Holy Spirit; and to presbyteries, that same right to ordain and install
ministers.

It will not force a congregation to ordain any person it does not choose to ordain, nor will it
prevent a congregation from ordaining, nor will it mandate inquiry into private sexual behavior.

Some argue that the Bible is clear about this matter and that the action of the General Assembly
moves the church away from the Bible.

The fact is there are only six places in the Bible where same-sex behavior is mentioned, and there -
is no scholarly consensus about what those passages refer to and mean.

In fact, a majority of the biblical scholars at our Presbyterian seminaries have signed a statement

indicating their conclusion that the six passages should not be used to support the prohibition of
ordination.

We Presbyterians have never been fundamentalists. We believe that every individual text in the
Bible is to be interpreted in light of the whole Bible. And so we conclude, for instance, that when
the Bible says, “‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” that mandate must be understood in

light of other Biblical mandates, such as “forgive your enemies, do good to those who persecute
you, do not answer evil with evil.”

The overture the General Assembly approved simply removes the prohibition from our
constitution and allows each congregation to make its own determination about leadership. I have

always favored that. I think it is basic Presbyterianism to respect differences of opinion and a
diversity of positions.

The matter will be sent to the 173 presbyteries for their vote. In the past, a similar effort was not
approved by a majority of our presbyteries. We hope and pray for a different outcome this time.

In the meantime, I want you to know that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), of which Fourth
Presbyterian Church is a vital part, is a wonderful church, including more than 11,000
congregations, who are going about their business this morning, teaching their children,
baptizing infants, nurturing their young people, caring for one another, growing in faith, and
generously supporting mission in their own communities and the mission of Jesus Christ
throughout the world through the agencies of the Presbyterian church.

The high point of the meeting of the General Assembly, for me, is always the opening worship
service. Typically there are about 10,000 Presbyterians in attendance, with a large choir made up
of all the choirs from the churches in the presbytery where the meeting is held. The worship
includes leaders of all ages, from children to older people, wonderful hymn singing, great music.
In the middle, a very moving event happens: the Presbyterian church recognizes retiring
missionaries—this year six couples who had been working in mission and ministry overseas in
the name of the church and in the name of Jesus Christ for forty years. It was a great moment.
And then the church recognizes and commissions new mission workers: full-time missionaries,
part-time and volunteer mission workers of all ages, including from this congregation, Dr.
Shannon O’Connor, a new physician from Northwestern Medical School and a member of this
church who, with her husband, Jeremy Smith, will be a volunteer in medical mission in Malawi
this year; Bob and Dalia Baker, who are serving in Tirana, Albania; Rebecca Steward, who
worked with the Bakers for a while; Jack and Joy Houston, in Guatemala. Presbyterian mission
workers were commissioned to serve in an AIDS hospice in Africa, schools in India, hospitals in
Kenya, churches and colleges in Egypt, Syria, and South America. It is a great moment and a
reminder that, in spite of the controversies swirling about us, the Presbyterian tradition and the
Presbyterian church is alive and well and faithfully at work in the world in the name of its Lord,
Jesus Christ.

Dear God, we pray for your church this morning, holy, catholic, apostolic, in every part of the
world, so richly diverse in character and personality, yet one church in your love and in the
grace of your Son, Jesus Christ.

And we pray particularly for our church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Bless it. Keep it in

your care in these difficult and fragile times. Bless its mission in the world, its ministers and
members, its worship and witness.

Give it a new vision of your kingdom and its place in it.

And, O God, bless us here, in this place, that we may be a faithful church in all we do and say
and that your saving love for the world may be clear and pure and gracious in our own life
together, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Philip Yancey, in his book What’s So Amazing about Grace? tells the story of a Chicago social
worker who was working with prostitutes. A young woman was talking with the social worker,
telling the reasons she became involved in prostitution—the money, the lifestyle, the near-
impossibility of walking away, the living with a permanent sense of shame and guilt. She even
told the social worker about hiring out her daughter. The case worker wrote:

I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. . . . [| had no idea what to say to this woman.
At last I asked if she had ever thought about going to a church for help. I will never forget
the look of pure naive shock that crossed her face. “Church,” she cried. “Why would I go
there? I already feel terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”

And Phil Yancey reflects: “Women much like the prostitute fled toward Christ, not away from
him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she was to see Jesus as a refuge. Has
the church lost that gift?” (p. 11).

The incident to which Yancey refers is found in Luke 7, our first lesson today. Jesus had been
invited to dine in the home of Simon the Pharisee. Dinner was served in an open area, clearly
visible from the street, the guests reclining, leaning near the table. Servants of the host
customarily poured cool water over the guests’ feet as the event began. It was a common social
ritual. Simon had not done it, however, at least for Jesus. So in the middle of the meal, a woman
walks in——‘‘a sinner.” What kind of “sinner” she is, is suggested by what happens next. She’s
carrying a flask of perfume, which she breaks and pours over his feet. Then she lets down her
hair—a gesture of intimacy—and dries his feet. Simon, the host, is appalled. If Jesus knew what
- kind of woman this is—who she really was—he wouldn’t be allowing her to touch him, he said,
in a stage whisper audible to ail.

So Jesus told the story about two debtors, one who owes a large amount of money, the other a
small amount. The creditor forgave both. “Which will love the creditor more?” Jesus asked.
“Why,” Simon responded, “the one who was forgiven the most.” And so Jesus said, “Her sins,
which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.”

That’s what Jesus did—a radical and simple graciousness, acceptance and love that paid no
attention to the rigid moral standards of the culture and religion and that reached out to all
people, to everyone. He loved and accepted everyone, didn’t seem to care about deviations from
conventional social custom. He loved everyone the same, it seemed: Simon, the respectable
Pharisee, and the prostitute off the street. No one had ever seen anything quite like it before. He

got a reputation—‘the friend of sinners” they called him. Wouldn’t it be wonderful and faithful if
his church earned and deserved the same reputation?

Now, fast-forward twenty-five years. After the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection
appearance, his followers concentrated in Jerusalem, all of them Jews, and began to tell the story
wherever they went. It never occurred to them that they were anything but Jews who believed
that Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah, had come. One of them, a Pharisee by the name of
Saul, who had been a fierce opponent of the early Christians, was converted, believed, and
became a proponent, an advocate, a missionary with the same energy and zeal that had formerly
characterized his opposition. His method was to visit a town or city, go to the synagogue, tell the
story of Jesus and the story of his own conversion. He did it successfully, apparently. Many
believed, and inside those synagogues, those faith communities, were men and women and their
families who constituted a new kind of religious group, followers of Jesus—not yet called
Christians or a church, but getting close.

And then Saul, who is now calling himself Paul, ran out of synagogues. Up in Galatia, there were
not very many Jews. So he told the story wherever he could. In the town square, in the
marketplace, in public places and street corners where new ideas were proclaimed and discussed.
Once he even did it in Athens, on Mars Hill, where the disciples of Aristotle and Plato gathered
daily to talk.

He was successful in the Gentile cities of Galatia, but there was a big issue beginning to emerge.
Back in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the new movement, where Jesus’ friends Peter and John,
and James, his own brother, were in charge, word arrived that Paul had moved out and away
from the synagogues and was baptizing Gentiles—something that had never occurred to those
first Jewish believers.

So they had a big meeting—a kind of General Assembly. Paul was summoned and made his case
that what God had done in Jesus was for all people. And after a while, everybody agreed, shook
hands, and Paul went back to work among the Gentiles.

But then the folk down in Jerusalem had second thoughts. Paul’s making it too easy. Here we

are, abiding by all the rules and laws and dietary-restrictions, keeping feast days, circumcising
our male babies—and Paul seems to have forgotten who he is, who Jesus was, after all. So they
sent teams of teachers to the cities where Paul had been, to talk to the new Gentile believers. And.
this is what the Jerusalem teachers said: “If you really want to be a follower of Jesus, there are
some things you need to do that Paul neglected to tell you. You need to become Jewish: keep the
law, follow the dietary restrictions, observe the feast days, and your men must be circumcised.”

Paul was livid. He decided to write a letter to his Galatian friends. It is an angry letter. It does not
contain the conventional gracious beginning of his other letters. It does contain harsh, even crude
language. But it also contains the basic gospel message of God’s unconditional love in J esus
Christ, God’s love that no one can earn, no matter how many religious rules, laws, customs are

followed, God’s grace, which comes as a gift—to everyone—Jews and Greeks, male and female,
slave and free, sinner and righteous.

Paul used the language of the legal system: “We are justified not by works of the law,” he said,
“but through faith in Jesus Christ.” “No one,” he said, “will be justified by the works of the law.”

Now, “it is a long way from Galatia to Galveston,” one commentator quipped. It does not occur
to us to follow the law of Moses, to keep kosher, in order to be Christians. But is it not true that
we are inclined to think that we are faithful Christians to the degree that we follow the rules and
do things for God or believe certain ideas about God?

Two thousand years after Jesus, and after Paul wrote his letter, the Christian church is still
arguing about what you have to do, or refrain from doing, in order to be faithful. The issue for
the Galatian churches of the first century was how two communities—Jewish believers and
Gentile believers—could live together in the church, each respecting the particularities and
peculiarities of the other. It is still the issue.

Our issues, for better or worse, are not dietary restrictions and feast days but sexual behavior and
authority. One group within our church has decided, on the basis of its reading of Scripture, that
gay and lesbian people are not fit to be ordained officers. The other group, on the basis of its
reading of Scripture, concludes that it is wrong to exclude persons on the basis of sexual
orientation and practice alone. And the abiding question is whether or not there is room in the
church for that diversity of opinion and conviction. One side says no: “Our answer is the only
answer and if you can’t come to the same conclusion we have, you can’t be a leader in this
church.” To some of us, that sounds a lot like the zealots who traveled to Galatia to make sure
the early church was pure and morally correct.

It also sounds to me like it misses the point of Paul’s argument and Jesus’ radically inclusive
love. We are all sinners. Prostitute and Pharisee, new Gentile Christians and traditional followers
of the law—and we all get in the kingdom, not because we deserve to be there or have earned the
right to be there, but because he has invited us to be there. It’s not our goodness or merit or
deserving or good works. It’s grace—his grace, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Religion has a notorious way of forgetting that, has a way of setting up moral and theological
barriers or boundaries and then categorizing people on the basis of how they live. Jesus didn’t do
that. Paul argued against it. We can’t seem to resist it, however.

The problem is that grace is contrary to common sense. Common sense tells us that everything
must be paid for, that there is no such thing as a free lunch, that we are constantly being
evaluated and judged by God. Soo =

The great theologian Karl Barth, wrote, “We don’t like hearing that we are saved by grace. We

do not appreciate that God does not owe us anything, that we are bound to live by God’s
goodness alone” (Deliverance to the Captives).

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a prescription for making us deserving of God’s love. It is,
rather, the startling news that God loves us; that in Jesus Christ, God has laid down life itself for
us; that what God wants most of us is that we should know that, understand it, receive it, and
then live in joyful gratitude all our days.

In Karen Blixen’s wonderful short story—made into an equally wonderful movie—‘‘Babette’s
Feast,” a community of grim, rigidly moral pietists is living on a small island off the coast of
Denmark. They live a rough, mean life; their daily diet is a gruel of boiled cod fish and dry
bread. And then Babette arrives and prepares to give the little community a banquet, extravagant
beyond their wildest imagination—the best food, best wine, best desserts—simply because
Babette wants to give it. Af the banquet, grim, rigid moralism begins to melt, old wounds begin
to be healed, old divisions begin to be closed, slights and insults are forgiven. At the end, one of
the small group, a retired general, says:

We have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human
foolishness and shortsightedness, we imagine divine grace to be finite. But the moment
comes when our eyes are opened, and we see, and we realize that grace is infinite. Grace,
my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and
acknowledge it in gratitude.

There was no applauding or cheering in Louisville when the vote was taken. There were tears in
the eyes of people whose church has been holding them at arm’s length, and their friends, their
brothers and sisters, their parents. None of us gets in because we deserve it or have earned our
way in. We are in because of God’s grace—perfectly revealed in that man Jesus and his
accepting, gracious, unconditional love.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Amen.

Prayers of the People
By Donna Gray, Interim Associate Pastor for Children and Family Ministry

Warm, loving God, you father us all and embrace us in your great family of heaven and earth.
We are proud to belong and to find in it this dignity that no one can take away. You have called
us sons and daughters and adopted us as your children.

You have planted us in families. You have sheltered us under parents or guardians. You have
nurtured us in family love. Like a good gardener, you have cared for our growth. This morning
we give you thanks for the love and meaning we find in our families. Today we thank you for
fathers, fathers who are mothers and fathers, and mothers who are fathers and mothers. We thank
you for guardians who step in when there is no father or mother. We pray for those who are
lonely because the family circle has been broken. We cannot place a value on the care given us
by our parents. We realize not all children have that care. May they find a place in your family, a
family full of variety, and at its best it is a family that is loving and nurturing.

Be with us on these summerlike days that surround us with long hours of sunlight and warmth.

During the summer months when we have time to travel, grant us safety on the highways and in

the air. When we have time to sit leisurely on a deck, balcony, or beach, grant us rest without a
sense of guilt.

Hear our prayer for others. We pray for the new moderator of the General Assembly, Dr. Jack
Rogers. Give him wisdom and insight as he serves the church this year.

We pray for the generation to which we belong, those with whom we share a common fund of
memory and common standard of behavior.

We pray for those newly married. May they build homes where there is free welcome. At work
or leisure, let them enjoy each other, forgive each other, and embrace each other.

We pray for those in hospitals, hoping for health.

We pray for those needing comfort for their sorrow.

Father, help your children everywhere to grow up and to grow together. As we follow the
example of Jesus, may we become wiser—and not only wiser but also more loving. Through our

life in your family, may we learn unselfishness and be ready to make sacrifices for your sake.

Hear us as we pray together, Our Father...