You’ve probably heard the old quip
that the church is a lot like Noah’s Ark, it stinks but it’s still the best
thing afloat. That’s actually a very
healthy way to look at the church. If
you expect a church to be perfect you’ll be sorely disappointed. If you expect church people to somehow behave
better than other people you’ll again be disappointed.
In the Augsburg Confession, the
theological constitution of the Lutheran movement, Article 7 describes the
church as, “The assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in
its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the
Gospel.” Then Article 8 immediately
follows saying that in this life the church also includes many false
Christians, hypocrites and open sinners.
I won’t speak for other church denominations, but Lutherans have always
noted that the church is not a perfect place.
The church has always been a place
where people have agreed and disagreed.
It is composed of people who like each other and who do not like each
other. The church is united by one
common bond – people who know they need God’s grace; and remember, grace means
unmerited favor.
Over the door to this sanctuary is a
sign that reads, “Sinners only. This is
a Space of Grace.” It’s a playful saying
on one hand. I’ve heard members of
Weight Watchers joke about it when they come in for their weekly meetings. On the other hand it is deadly serious. If you recognize that you are a sinful being
who is broken and needs to receive unmerited favor from God, then you are
welcome here. Hopefully you will find
God’s grace here. Witnessing to that is
certainly my job. However, if a person
comes in here thinking, “I’m a basically good person. Okay, maybe I’m not perfect, who is after
all? But I do good things and I know
that God loves me because of that.” well, there isn’t much here for such a
person. I certainly don’t have anything
to offer. A person who believes that he
or she does good things and therefore is certain that God loves him or her
because of that is not a Christian at all.
That person is a secular humanist, for that is the core belief of
secular humanism. In my opinion that is also
the core belief of our society today.
It is the recognition of the common
need of unmerited favor from God that unites us. That is the strong bond of the church.
In 2009 the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America, of which we are a part, adopted a statement on human
sexuality. The statement was immensely
controversial and caused some churches to leave the ELCA. There was press coverage about the whole
thing telling the stance the church had adopted and the changes it was
making. But that coverage completely
missed the point. The truth doesn’t make
for a compelling news story so the truth was left out. What the document really said is that there
are a number of issues about human sexuality about which we cannot reach an
agreement. We are all reading the same
scriptures. We are all worshipping the
same God. But we are coming to very
different conclusions. Yet we have
decided that even though there is no hope of us ever agreeing on these things,
we are not going to let these differences divide us. Our common bond of needing God’s grace is
greater than any other human issue that can ever arise. Therefore we will respect each other and the
faith-filled conclusions others have reached.
Again, that truth does not make
for great headlines, but that is the truth of how the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America operates. It’s a messy
place. It’s a broken and imperfect church,
but I think that is a truly faithful understanding of what it means to be the
church.
Church is also not a place we go on
Sunday mornings or a tradition that you do every week when you come here and
daydream while I preach. Church is
everywhere and at all times.
Martin Luther had an idea he called
the priesthood of all believers. It is
not that he saw that every person should become a priest and lead worship and
preach sermons. (Although I’d gladly let
you preach and then I could sit back and daydream for a while.) The priesthood of all believers is that God
calls all people to meaningful work in his kingdom in everything they do in
daily life. Martin Luther is often
quoted as saying that if you make shoes, then make shoes to the Lord. But it is more than just what you do for a
living. It is everything from being a
neighbor to rearing children to being a contributing part of the community.
The idea of the protestant work ethic is
rooted in this sort of thinking. The
idea is that if you can work and contribute to society then you should. It doesn’t matter if you just received a
multi-million dollar inheritance and never have to work another day in your
life. If you can work and contribute
then you need to work and contribute.
All people are called to make a meaningful contribution to God’s
kingdom.
The priesthood of all believers means
that when you are at work you make sure the things you do are in keeping with
the principles of faith in Christ. If
you are the stereotypical sleazy used car salesman then you need to stop being
sleazy and start making honest deals.
The priesthood of all believers does
not mean that you overtly evangelize everywhere you go, but that you do show the
life of Christ in your life.
My mind goes back several months to
Judy Sax’s funeral. As I put thoughts
together for a sermon for her funeral I was struck by the way elementary school
teachers have a big impact on the lives of their students. They teach their students far more than
reading and history and math. The real
teaching is something much deeper, and hard to quantify. In any number of households these days the
elementary school teacher spends more time with a child during that school year
than that child spends with his or her parents.
(Assuming you don’t count the time that the kid is asleep!) The deep lessons the teacher is teaching are
things like: how to be a human, how to be an adult, how to handle adversity,
how to discipline and maintain order, and how to handle success. Kids learn and absorb lessons every moment of
every day.
Judy Sax would never have been allowed
to preach the gospel from the front of her classroom. But I think she did strongly witness to what
it meant to be a Christian. She was
embodying the priesthood of all believers.
Whether you are a pastor or a teacher
or a factory worker or a secretary or a janitor or retired or a student or
whatever, you are a priest in God’s church.
You have important work to do.
Church council is planning to redo the
time and talent sheets, which are long overdue for updating. I’m sure we’ll ask all the usual things, but
this is one thing I want to add. I want
to add a question of what do you do for a living, or if you are retired, what
did you do for a living. We will collect
all those things – all those ways in which we contribute to God’s kingdom. Then during the Prayer of the Church, where we
have different petitions about different things, each week we’ll have a
petition about a particular job or occupation.
We need to pray about what we do, for God is there too. And we need to pray for each other’s careers
and vocations. We are all joined by our
need for God’s grace, whether we agree with one another or not and whether we
even like each other or not. And with
that common joining we all have a part in God’s kingdom.
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