"What's Right With The Church"
Christianity as the alternative menu for our time
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 3, 2004
Text: Matthew 16:15-20
A few weeks ago, a very good friend of mine invited me to a restaurant that I'd never been to before. He said, “Andrew, you are really going to enjoy this meal.” And so I went with great expectations. I opened the menu and it was filled with gastronomic delights of the most magnificent proportions. I looked at him and said, “You have chosen well.”
As I looked at all the wonderful food on the menu, I glanced to the side and saw that there was what was called an alternative menu. It was everything that was low: low-calorie, low-sodium, low-fat and that ubiquitous low-carb that I always translate to mean low-taste.
I weighed it against the other menu, I must admit. I wasn't sure quite what to do, so I looked at my waistline, took my pulse and then I read the words under the heading for the alternative menu: “for those who care about their heart.” Well, what could I do? I ordered from the alternative menu and I enjoyed it. It was nice, light fare and I felt good about myself when I left and drove down to McDonald's and got some French fries. (All the time my friend was thinking that I am the most righteous man, and if only he could be like me he would be a better man. I'm now telling the truth.)
Without denigrating the spiritual search of humanity today and without in any way trivializing what I believe on the part of many people is a genuine search for truth, I think the search for religion and spirituality in our world is akin to an alternative menu. In its quest for spirituality, I think the world wants to have something different. But in its search for something different it has created an entirely new menu altogether.
Now, I am not referring to established religions. I am not talking Judaism, Islam or others, I am talking about what I call a “cultural menu of religiosity,” a cultural menu for seekers who want to have something different. The irony of all ironies, as far as I'm concerned, is that rather than being an alternative menu, this desire that people have for spirituality is now fed in such a way that it has become the established menu. It has become the mainstream menu. People are buying books all over the place to feed themselves from this menu.
They are purchasing books like Chicken Soup For The Soul or The Prayer Of Jabez or one that I find particularly offensive, Solving the Mystery of the Miracle Money. Or they're buying fiction like the Da Vinci Code, and thinking it's historically correct. All of these books try to paint a picture for people of an alternate view of religion, another attitude that they can choose from a menu.
We see celebrities endorsing this new menu. In their desire to be esoteric and different from the norm, they are devoting themselves to sometimes obscure religious movements, because they do not want to accept anything established or traditional. They are on the cutting edge of this new menu, the ingredients of which are a dash of paganism, maybe a smattering of mysticism, a soupçon of eroticism and maybe, just to add a little touch sprinkled on top of it all, a bit of superstition. And from all these ingredients and different movements that are weaving their way through the world, people are creating a religion and a faith of their own making.
All of this is a manifestation of what I call our “designer culture,” a culture that has to be different, where individuals have to stand out, where individuals have to assert themselves and their own right and privilege to make up a faith as they go, something that is unique for themselves. But often, the dark side of the search is that it is ultimately designed to provide a structure for the hedonism of the world.
Very often one of these new movements might be designed to make us feel good about the world, replete with its materialism. But sometimes there is a dark underside to this, when it turns into the occult.
Well, my friends, there is a menu out there and it is a large, growing and esoteric menu from which people can pick their own spiritual journey. But very often, one item that is left off this menu, of course, is the Christian faith. Under the guise of secularism, we look at such a religion and it is seen as being part of an old order, an old world, a time when there was a consensus about what God was like, but that consensus is now diminished. It is no longer acceptable. And, let's be honest with ourselves, when we as Christians look at the world, we can see that things that we were formerly responsible for have now dissipated into the ether.
Once upon a time in the Western culture Christian faith was the mother of art. If you wanted good art, you went to the church. We were the guardians of science, but now you go to a laboratory. We were the healers of the sick, but now you go to the hospitals (no longer with the names of saints over the doors, in many cases.) We were the ones who provided education. The whole notion of universitas is a Christian notion and understanding, but that now has become a secular idea. We're looking at all of this and we're saying, “Look at what we have lost!” We no longer appear to be part of the menu of the world and we ask ourselves the question: “If we're not on the menu, are we of any use?” Is there anything that we have to contribute if we are no longer the guardians of culture? The cultural menu has become something entirely different.
I think back to 1966 and the words of John Lennon that seemed to sum up a generation: "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. ... We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity.” Although he apologized and took some of it back in a later interview in Chicago, Lennon nevertheless expressed what has been a sentiment around for 40 years - the sense that Christianity will some day disappear.
You can even see just the edge, just the signs of that way of thinking in the minds of many people who make the policies of the land. You can see that over the debate, and I wrote about this in the Church News, about the whole concept of sanctuary. For 2,000 years the church has given sanctuary to people who it sees are in need, but now that is being called into question and challenged. All of that is a symbol, a sign that we don't seem to be on the menu. And then when we are on the menu, it is usually because someone is criticizing our faith as it has affected the history of the world.
Now, I would be the first the agree that the history of the Christian church is replete with all manner of anomalies and problems, that we have in many ways subjugated women and aboriginal and native people. We haven't always been tolerant. We have sometimes allied ourselves with all manner of philosophies and ideologies that have usurped the Christian gospel. I would be the first to recognize that. I would be the first to say that we have divided ourselves, and on Worldwide Communion Sunday it is the time for us to say, “Honestly, yes, oh Lord, we have at times broken up your body.”
It's like two little boys who met each other and one said: “I was wondering if you would like to come to my church.”
And the other little boy said: “No, that's fine, I already belong to another abomination.”
You look at the divided church and you can see why people would say, “Look at this old order. It is dying, decaying and divided.” But isn't there another view? I think there is. I think there is a need to ask ourselves this salient question: “What is right with the church?”
I believe that in many ways the church is now the alternative menu for society, as it really was during the earliest times. As the early church arose from the ashes of the cross to the glory of the Resurrection, so in many ways the church of Jesus Christ today finds itself in that position where it is the alternative menu, where it is another voice not necessarily adhered to by the dominant culture.
When we are at our strongest and when the Christian church is at its most bold, it acts without fear. If you go to our text this morning, Peter and Jesus are having this great encounter. Jesus challenges Peter, who responds by making a declaration that Jesus is his Lord and the Messiah.
Then, there is this wonderful phrase, it only appears once in all of the gospels, one word, it is the word ecclesia: ”And against this ecclesia, this church the gates of Hades, the gates of the place of death will not prevail.” The word ecclesia appears again in Acts, in Revelation and in the Epistles, but only once among all of the words of Jesus himself, and he reserves it for Peter. He reminds Peter that the gates of hell will not be brought against the church. Why? Because the church as an institution will not change or decay? No. Is he saying that the hegemony of the Christian consensus will always be there? No. The gates of hell will not bring down the church because the church is simply, purely, the body of Christ. And because Christ himself died and went to the place of the dead and was raised from the place of the dead, therefore the gates of hell will not ever prevail against his body. Jesus understood that in giving that message to Peter at that moment, it was a message for all time. It was a message of hope and encouragement to new Christians and to those Christians who were being persecuted in the first and second centuries. It was a message that if they would keep their faith in Christ and in Christ alone, not in the culture, not in the culture's assent to what Christianity believes, but to Christ himself, then in fact the church will not decline. It is that confidence, not in ourselves and our institutions, but in the person of Christ that makes the church its greatest. And when it is at its greatest, it feeds the world.
When Jesus reinstated Peter at the very end of John's Gospel, he said to Peter, “I want you to do one thing. I want you to feed my sheep.” The food that Jesus wanted him to feed the sheep with was nothing more or less than his very gospel, his very ministry, his very being.
I once read of a farmer who went to a church convention when there were all these papers being presented about how to deal with the problem of people not coming to church and not attending church meetings. The farmer said, “I can't understand why we're doing this. I never go to a meeting of farmers to figure out how we're going to get the cows to come to the trough. We simply provide them with the best of feed.”
Ours is not the job of worrying about whether the world gives assent to the gospel. Our job is to give the world the gospel. We have it in two forms: We have it in word and we have it in sacrament. We have it in word in that the purpose and ministry of the church is purely and simply at its foundation to present Christ and him crucified. As it says in Latin, the “crux probat omnia” - the cross is the test of everything. It's not as if the church has to justify itself to the spirit of the age or the world. It just presents it like a menu and says, “Come and believe it.”
The word of the church must go forth. There must be worship through which it is proclaimed. There must be study through which it is nurtured and understood. And the great passion of my life is that men and women in society see this smorgasbord and understand that there is only one thing that will feed them.
There's a wonderful quote: “Jesus did not ask Peter to feed the giraffes, he asked him to feed the sheep.” He doesn't want great, logical arguments, high above the heads of ordinary people, he wants a word that speaks to people and says if you're hungry, if you are spiritually searching, if you are in need of forgiveness, then here is Christ and here is what he has done for you.
Art Belanger, our Director of Property, has just come back from a couple of weeks in England and Wales. While on a hillside in Wales, he saw something that he'd never seen before. There were two flocks of sheep, one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom. As he watched the flock at the bottom worked its way up to the grazing lands where the original flock was established. Then a ram came from each flock and the two started to butt heads. They did this for about five minutes (I now understand why the Welsh are such good rugby players), until finally the ram who had brought the flock up from the road took a step back, turned and made its way back down the hill. So the original sheep that were on the pastures survived and the others were pushed away. Art said it was a terrifying thing to see.
My friends, as the sheep of the world we are so often banging our heads against the culture, we're banging our heads against hedonism. We live in a sadly divided and very violent world, and if the menu of Christ's gospel of reconciliation, love, forgiveness and hope is not proclaimed, then we are starving the sheep.
The church is also at its strongest when it not only proclaims the Gospel but when it embodies and enacts it through the Sacrament. Against the individualistic search of the new mysticism we provide the table of the Lord. We say, “Do not come on your own, but come together.” This is not something you can do privately, it is a public affirmation of faith, because it is a public enactment of the gospel of Christ. It is a sign that backs up the proclamation of the Word. The two go together.
In a world that is hungry for fellowship, in a world that is hungry to be nurtured, in a world that is hungry for forgiveness, the table of the Lord says that if you are hungry, come. The role of the church is to provide the table, but sometimes, unfortunately, the world comes also with a hunger right here in its stomach.
A couple of weeks ago I was walking along Dunvegan onto St. Clair when a man came up to me with two plastic bags in his hands. He looked at me and asked, “Are you one of the guys who works in there?”
I said, “Yeah, I'm one of the guys who works in there.”
He looked at me and said, “Thank you. I never knew what you did in there and I didn't care much. I really didn't. But now, when I needed you, you were there.”
He had just come from our food bank.
When I look at the hungry state of the world and I look at our brothers and sisters throughout the world who are giving to people who are starving, when I look at what our United Church is doing to provide for people in the Caribbean who are starving, I realize that this is when our church is at its best, when we are at our best and when we are right is when we proclaim Christ, not a cultural idea, but the actual Christ. When we present a table, not just a mysticism, but an actual embodiment of what God has done on our behalf. And when we see people who are hungry and we give them food, we are right and our menu is delicious. And the church is right when we listen to the words of Jesus to Peter: “Feed my sheep.” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.