Sermon: "I Will Build My Church"

Delivered October 28, 2007, Reformation Sunday, by Rev. John Schmidt.

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What a wonderful reflection to begin our service where we celebrate our history as a Christian church. I would like to read to you from the Book of Matthew, Chapter 16 and I am going to begin at the 13th verse. It's a very familiar passage for many of us where Peter is confessing his faith in Jesus Christ and I am going to be focusing particularly on Verse 18 in today's message.

Matthew, Chapter 16 beginning at Verse 13:

"When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ."

Let's pray: Holy Father, we thank you for this your word and pray now that as we understand; as we listen as I speak that all of this might be pleasing in your sight. For we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

I want to particularly focus on Verse 18 where Jesus says, "I will build my church." There is so much in this passage. There are a number of sermons here. I want to focus just on that phrase and particularly view this in terms of the fact that it is Reformation Sunday and we celebrate the history of the church. Jesus says, "I will build my church", but what did Jesus have in mind when he said this? And then, the second question that we have to ask is, are we then that kind of church? In other words, what is essential to Jesus' definition of what it means to be the church, his church? The church we meet in the New Testament is vastly different than the church that is prevalent today in western society. Where do parking lots fit in to Jesus' definition of a church? How about air-conditioners, pulpits, pipe organs, pianos, percussion, even seminary-trained pastors? All good things, but what is essential and what is merely what we have inherited? However good or however bad it is part of our inheritance, it is part of what we live within, but it is not the core of who we are.

Nearly 2000 years of history have shaped the church that we are a part of today; some of it's good and some of it's bad and today we remember that. On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther posted his 39 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg. Following that amazing moment things changed in the church all over Europe. When Martin Luther posted those truths, those reflections, those indictments he had against the errors in the Roman Catholic Church; when he did that, a fire spread throughout Europe that changed everything, even what we have inherited today in the church. Core to it was the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith and the doctrine that the authority of the scripture was a higher authority than the authority of the church. Those basic things changed everything. Only 20 years later John Calvin, a French-Swiss theologian further refined the reformers new way of thinking about the nature of God and of God's relationship with humanity in what became known as reformed theology and this theology proved to be the driving force of the entire reformation and we today are a reformed church centuries later.

2,000 years of history shaped who we are today and some of that history is bad and so I would like to think about that for a moment. 1600 years ago the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. It was good in many ways. It ended persecution. But it also began the life of the institutional church; a church where people started joining, not because they had faith in Jesus Christ, but because they wanted to be accepted and successful in their society and church became part of being successful and accepted in society. And so that started to confuse the nature of the church; some good things, some bad things. It is harder to find any good in this one: 900 years ago the Crusades where in the name of Christ people decided that killing people was a legitimate way to spread the kingdom of God; killing people to re-conquer the Holy Land, killing and torturing people who were from other faiths, Christianity at the end of a sword; we are still paying for that. All over the world in our conversations with Jewish and Moslem people, this moment in the history of the Christian Church always has to be dealt with again.

500 years ago: the Spanish Inquisition. Protestants, Jews, Moslems were imprisoned. They were sent to slave on galley ships. They were tortured. They were strangled. They were burned alive; all in the name of Christ. 150 years ago many churches all over the world, but particularly in our country supported slavery. 80 years ago churches in Germany supporting the Third Reich. 50 years ago churches supported segregation. In each case even though we were unfaithful as a church, the church represented Christ to the rest of the world and the world had a right to look at the church and say, "Do we see reality here? Do we see the Kingdom of God here?" Gandhi said that he had no problem with Christ; it was Christians he could not stand. And so even now as we reach out to friends and neighbors, as we relate to Jews and Moslems, this is part of our history. We can't deny it. We can't ignore it. We are hard pressed to explain it, but the crucial thing that we have got to recognize is it is not somebody else's problem. In other words, we have the capacity within us right now to be a church that is no better than that. It might not be the same kind of sin, it might not be as bloody, it might not be against the same people, but we have the same brokeness, we have the same selfishness inside of us and it's only by the incredible grace and triumph of God that we could ever be different.

And so, since we are really not that different, I would like to spend a few moments right now here in the middle of the sermon to pray again a prayer of confession. And after I spend a few moments laying our historic and present sin before God, after we have done that for a moment, we are going to hear from the choir again a Kyrie Eleison, which means Lord have mercy. This kind of vocal response, choir response has been part of the life of the church from almost its very start. And so, as we bring ourselves before God we will end that time with a refrain that the church has used for over 1000 years as they confess their sin and brokeness before God. So let's pray:

Gracious Father, you have called the church to be a new community in Christ, to be salt and light for a painful and unjust world and yet far too often we the church have been part of the problem using violence, coercion, and terror in your name instead of patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and love. Instead of courage in the face of injustice we have often capitulated, accepting the justification and selfish answers of those in power, putting our own interest ahead of the interest of the poor, the oppressed, the widow and the orphan. And now it is our turn, our generation, our time to be faithful and yet within us is the same capacity for unfaithfulness, for selfishness and fear that has shaped every other generation of your church. Have mercy O Lord. Draw us out of our weakness, out of our sin by the power of your spirit. In all that we are, in all that we do or say, may we be a sweet offering to you, pleasing to you in every respect. Lord hear our prayer.

But the history of the church isn't all a history of failure, we have been imperfect, but Christians and the church have many many times over been a faithful expression of God's kingdom on earth. When Jesus said, "I will build my church" he was talking about the church being an advanced outpost for the realm of God, for the kingdom of God. An advanced outpost for the rule of God in this world. That is what the good news was, repent and believe the gospel that the kingdom of heaven has come and is now among you. And so the church then is the assembly of those who are called out of this world by Christ to be his people. Ecclesia; that's a word commonly used in the Septuagint to translate a Hebrew word, which usually just meant assembly. And so, it was a word that was used when Israel was called together before God for solemn moments of hearing the word of God, of responding to what God has said, assemblies that had to do with the festivals that marked the year of their worship. It had to do with people being called out to gather in God's name, to be God's people, to do God's will; that was the basic meaning behind the Hebrew word that is translated with the word Ecclesia.

But it had another meaning too, a meaning that was used in Greek society, because there the word that we translate church usually referred to the town meeting of free citizens of the city. The people who met together to wrestle with the problems of the city and to make decisions regarding the internal and external policies of that city, so that group that had a civic impact that was the word Ecclesia. This was part of the background of the word. It's really notable to notice that the word synagogue is never used for the gathering of the disciples. It is not normally used for the church. They deliberately used a different word. The word synagogue had the idea of assembly, but solely this sense of religious assembly, for religious purposes, the word church somehow carried more meaning. It had the religious component, but it also had the component of being the rule, being the infusion of a society upon the world. And so there is this combination of religious life and impact on the world around us that is in that word that Jesus used to name us church.

So this is what is essential for the church. The church is group called together by God for his purposes in the world, to worship and instruct, to make disciples, but to also be a world-changing outpost of God's new kingdom, to be salt and light. Now we have had some successes in doing that across the years as a church. There was the open generosity of the early church for the needy that we see in the Book of Acts. Later in the life of the church there was faithfulness as Christian people reached out and saved the lives of young infants that were set out on the streets to die by people in Roman society, and raised them as their own. The strength of Christians as they faced persecution, facing death in the Roman arena rather than to denounce Jesus. There are amazing individuals in our history. In that period Polycarp, a man of God right before he was martyred in a stadium was urged by an official; he was probably 80 or more years old at this point. He was urged by an official swear to Caesar and I will set you at liberty, just reproach Christ and this is what Polycarp answered him, "86 years I have served him and he never did me any injury. How then can I blaspheme my king and my savior" and so Polycarp faced being burned at the stake.

St. Francis; years later gave up his great personal wealth and served the poor for the rest of his life. Martin Luther confronting the corruption of the institutional church putting his life at risk. Wilburforce who spent his whole political career confronting slavery in England; a person that orphans and chimney sweeps respected because of his efforts on their behalf. Wilburforce who was a spoiled, rich kid before he was converted and became a Christian; a man who at the end of his life, people trying to sum it all up said this about him, "In him we see the abiding eloquence of a Christian life." There is the model of countless missionaries going to West Africa; missionaries who packed their belongings in coffins, because it was so likely that when they went to West Africa they were going to die there. Yet despite the fact that they knew they were going to die, they went anyway.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, standing up against Nazi power and dying in prison because of it. Martin Luther King confronting racism, being assassinated. Mother Teresa serving the poorest of the world's poor and becoming a model to all of us. Great saints; and these are only the well known ones. There are others that we could mention and there are others that no one has ever even written about, because the real beauty of the church hasn't been in the famous people, but it has been in the lives of countless unknown individuals who lived out the essential life of what it meant to be a Christian and being the church of Christ, to proclaim it, to disciple, to live it and now it's our turn.

All of us will write the next chapter for the church and so what kind of church will it be? Is it going to be a weak and ineffective gathering of people that sold out to the values of the culture around it? A church that ends up being part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, a church like we have seen at some times in our history? Or is the church going to be a group called together for God by his purposes to worship, to make disciples and to be a world-changing outpost of God's new kingdom with God-sized plans? Will we be a place where God can send out individuals in teams anywhere in the world to stand up for what is right, to love and care for the sickest and neediest people in our world, to share the good news that the world is under new management? Repent and believe the good news: the old world is passing away, a new king has come. What will the next chapter be; what kind of church will we be? There is great great grace available. God can do what we can never do for him. A world-changing church begins with God-sized plans for us as individuals. A world-changing church begins with us. And so the question we need to ask ourselves on this Reformation Sunday is not just look back at the problems of the past or the victories of the past, we have one pressing question for us. Are we going to settle for anything less than God's best plans for us?

Let's pray: Lord, we believe that we don't need to settle for anything less than your best plans, God-sized plans for our individual lives and then for us together as a church, not just as a local church here at Central, but as a church nationally and internationally, interdenominationally, a church that names the name of Jesus Christ and impacts this world and so God we pray, we pray for the grace and mercy to forgive us where we are, we pray for the grace and mercy to change us to what you want us to be. We thank you that it's your work, your kingdom, your history that we are living out today and we give you praise in Jesus name. Amen.

© 2007, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org