Sunday, October 31, 1999

The Reverend Dale Ostrander

"A Place for Us"

Psalm 107:1-9, 33-37, 43; Micah 3:5-12Matthew 23:1-12

What brought you here to Christ Congregational Church in the first place? What were you looking for? And what did you find here that led you to decide to make this your spiritual home? Perhaps it was in part the programs for children and youth; our fine music; most certainly the excellent preaching!! But I believe that for most there was something deeper in the very character and nature of the ministry, the programs, and in our life together here. This is a place of affirmation and inclusiveness where your uniqueness is accepted and appreciated, where individual conscience is respected, and where you are free to experience and know God in your own special way. This is not a scary place. It’s a place of Grace, not Law.

I believe also that this is what draws many persons from other denominations to the UCC.

I served for a time on the Potomac Association’s Church and Ministry Committee, which nurtures and determines the fitness for ministry of seminarians who wish to be in-care and prepare for ordination in the United Church of Christ. More often than not these individuals have also come from other denominations and backgrounds.

At a recent Deacon’s retreat here we went around the circle telling our faith journey stories. Jim remarked to me afterwards that he hadn’t been aware that so many had come from earlier fundamentalistic or rigidly evangelical backgrounds. I was one of those.

In the Adult Class here on Sunday mornings we’ve been reading and discussing the book, Stealing Jesus, by Bruce Bawer. In his book Bawer distinguishes between legalistic and non-legalistic Protestantism, using the terms Church of Law and Church of Love. It’s a fascinating and a very readable history of the Protestant Church movement in this country, with a special focus on the growth of fundamentalism and, more recently, the rise of the Religious Right. His point is that modern legalistic Christianity has stolen Jesus and linked his name and his church to ideas, beliefs and attitudes that have little or nothing to do with love. Jesus’ name, he says, is being affiliated with political movements that isolate, inhibit, and breed hate and conflict between human beings. He says that this really began to take shape in America in the late 19th Century, on the one hand in fearful reaction to the aftermath of the Civil War and the divisions over the issue of slavery, and on the other hand to the threat many felt as a result of the theories of Charles Darwin, as well as fresh biblical scholarship and Higher Criticism that was occurring. He goes on to say that more recently people are being drawn into the arms of fundamentalism in reaction to spreading secularism and the complexities and pressures of modern American life. We know that theories of evolution are still scaring people, as evidenced in Kansas. The fear, apparently, is that without Creationism, life would seem meaningless.

At the same time, Bawer faults our own mainline Protestant churches for their hesitancy to speak of Jesus and of spiritual things, and not merely reflect the prevailing culture. A friend of mine confided recently that she had to ask herself why she found herself hesitating in response to a resume that came across her desk from a woman who indicated that among other things she was a Christian.

In a recent column, Richard Cohen wrote that the national pulpit has been left to the religious right - political and theological reactionaries attempting to impose their notions on others. In that regard he agrees with Minnesota Governor, Jesse Ventura’s assessment of church folk.

Actually, Bawer acknowledges that within Christianity it’s been a two-millennium-long struggle between the Church of Law and the Church of Love.

The words of scripture this morning from Matthew speak to this. While there’s some question as to how much these denunciations of the Pharisees were actually the words of Jesus, and how much they were Matthew’s own, we know that Jesus was critical of the Pharisees at times. The criticism here is that they do not practice what they preach. Their piety is showy, and they loved the places of honor at feasts, and the best seats in the synagogue. At the same time as they were caught up in form and self-righteousness, they were laying the heavy burdens of the law on the shoulders of the people. In verse 13 he says, "You lock people out of the kingdom of heaven." In other words, you prevent them from going in because you make it so difficult. For Jesus, the holiness codes of his time were not to impede God’s compassion. The love of God and neighbor transcended, indeed fulfilled, the laws.

Today is Reformation Sunday, when we remember and give thanks for our Protestant heritage and the reformers whose ideas have so significantly shaped our life in both church and society. We take ourselves back to a time when the Roman Church asserted that God’s grace could only be conveyed through the sacraments, and the pardoning of sins through the priest. But a further modification of this was developing - granting the remission of penalties for sin through a system of indulgences, which could be bought - guaranteeing a reduced sentence in purgatory, where the mass of Christians would go first for a period of purification. This system, of course, opened the way for much profiteering. Persons could also make pilgrimages and make contributions to build a church, a road a bridge, etc. This also would help buy relief in purgatory. And it was perceived that the chief way to live and fulfill the precepts of the Gospel was to faithfully live the monastic life. It was in the midst of a time of growing nationalism, intellectual ferment, social and economic unrest, as well as this ecclesiastical abuse with its emphasis on works, that the Reformation occurred.

Martin Luther, son of a peasant miner, feeling a deep sense of sinfulness and anxiety about his own salvation - a feeling intensified by the death of a friend and his own narrow escape from lightening, broke off his law career and entered the monastery of Augustinian hermits. He was ordained to the priesthood, studied and became a professor at the University at Wittenberg. He had the reputation of being a man of piety and devotion and monastic zeal. Yet in spite of all this seriousness and discipline, he found no peace in his soul. His sense of sinfulness continued to overwhelm him. And he despaired over the possibility of pleasing what he perceived to be this wrathful God. Listen to his words: "Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. Far from loving that righteous God who punished sinners, I actually loathed him. I was a good monk, and kept my orders so strictly that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monastic discipline, I was that monk....And yet my conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite enough. You left that out of your confession."

Some of us know that experience from our own backgrounds, living with an anxiety and fear that robbed us of joy and produced dread.

But Luther had a conversion experience. Reading the Pauline scriptural emphasis on justification by faith, he formulated his doctrine of justification by faith, not by good works or observance of the Law. Once he grasped this and made it his own, trusting in God’s grace, he felt his anxieties fall away. He then felt compelled to speak up against the abuses of the church, and on October 31, 1517, 482 years ago today, posted on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg the 95 theses. Luther thought the Pope would see the light, but this did not occur. Instead he was ordered to restrict his criticism. He refused and went on to question also the exclusive Papal right to interpret the Scriptures, thus opening Bible reading and study to the laity. He emphasized that we are not justified by works, we are bound instead by this experience of God’s love to bring our life into conformity to the will of God, and be helpful to our neighbor.

Luther was condemned, banned and forced into retirement. Incidentally, he later married a former nun.

That’s an important part of our church history. But the Reformation had it’s own dark sides as well. Revolutionary changes were underway, but Luther did not see his movement as requiring change in the social order. He even had the princes of that territory put down a peasant revolt, resulting in great bloodshed. As the Reformation movement spread, the reformers themselves fought over issues of doctrine like the Lord’s Supper, infant baptism and the Trinity, imposing new forms and creeds, banning opposition and divergence, imprisoning some and banishing others from their cities.

In England, a group that did not think the Church of England was sufficiently reformed and sought to purify it by purging what they thought were remnants of Roman practice, came to be called the "Puritans." Another important event occurred in 1620 when a most active Puritan minority crossed the Atlantic and established Plymouth Colony, thus planting Congregationalism in New England.

In looking at our own church history as Protestants, it’s important to remind ourselves that, not unlike the church of the middle ages, our ancestral reformers also exhibited the tendency to insist on doctrinal specifics and particular forms of worship and civic life, and attempted to control by fear in their own intense longing for personal purity and wish to establish the perfect community. And over time others have continued to establish new faith communities and sects, not unlike those they left, laying yet greater claim to the "truth" of the Gospel. We see how this can divide and cause enmity, and continues in our own time, rather than celebrating the body of Christ as a wonderful and richly varied organism. I read the other day that there are even acrimonious divisions among the millennium-oriented evangelicals over the exact sequence of events when the world ends soon, as they’re expecting it to do. In my childhood I worried about not being taken up in the period of the "Rapture." Now I’m concerned about the cars left without drivers when those folks are suddenly taken up!

And we’re not even speaking here about attitudes toward other religions. Did you see the article in the paper this week about the Southern Baptists’ expanded effort to target Hindus for conversion during their holiest week, Divali? Last month it was the Jews during their holy days. This effort is to get the 40,000 So. Baptist churches to pray for the conversion of the more than 900 million people seen to be "lost in the hopeless darkness of Hinduism." I was really humbled by the response of the president of the Hindu temple in Fairfax, Va. He said, "I would not want to convert you to be a Hindu, I would want you to live a good life."

The theologian, Paul Tillich, claimed that the Reformation goes on. He reminded us that Protestantism is not identical with any of its historical forms. He spoke of the "Protestant Principle" as active in all periods of history as that divine and human protest against any absolute claim for a relative reality, even if such a claim is made by a Protestant church. The fresh truth of the Word of God is breaking forth in new ways - becoming flesh in new living ways, and is rediscovered time and again in the life of the church. This principle is that there cannot be a sacred and absolute system, ecclesiastical or political. And while this prophetic spirit found expression in the Reformation, the shortcoming was that it did not sufficiently describe the place of love and justice. The result was a paternalistic feudalism in the Lutheran countries, and a puritanism stressing law, not love in the Calvinistic countries. Tillich too asks where are the Protestants today who embody and represent that principle and that spirit of love and justice?

Well, this brings me back to the original questions. What brought you to this place? What have you found in this place that has led you to make it your spiritual home? Like in the Psalm this morning recalling Israel’s history, some, perhaps many, of us wandered earlier in our lives in desert places, having difficulty finding our way to a place we could inhabit and be at home. Yearning for community, God has answered our longing. Hungry and thirsty we have been fed and brought to this place, a place filled with good things, where we can live, and sow, and plant, and yield fruit. God’s love has found us and we have found here something that had been missing - an experience and a vision which like Luther’s has altered our lives. This is a place of Grace, not Law!

What many have sought out and have found here is a strong feeling of fellowship and caring community; a place where we meet God, because it’s a place where the message of love is read and spoken and consciously tried to be lived out. This is a place where we can be honest with ourselves and each other, share our stories and our burdens. It’s a place for questioners and seekers, where we come to learn, knowing that there is always more to learn of God’s living Word for us in our own time. This is a place where our differences and our differing gifts are affirmed; a place where we can be equipped for service and can find the courage and energy for the living of these days. And, I believe that that prophetic spirit of Protestantism can also be found here, because this is a Church of Love, not Law!

So, we have been blessed with a holy and gracious home in this place, where diversity is honored, love is shared, lives are strengthened, and the good news of Jesus Christ is celebrated. We are grateful today for the legacy of our forefathers and mothers and those who dreamed of such a church here and built it into a reality. And, we’re called to be faithful in our own time so that future generations might also be touched by the power and grace of God through the ministry of this church. That will mean being good stewards of this place, serving and building for now and for those who will follow us in time. In the months ahead we will be called upon to give our support - our money and ourselves, not really as an obligation, but in gratutude for the joy of this special community and the covenantal relationship we have found here with God and with one another; out of a deep appreciation for this ministry and belief in our mission, so that the gospel of Jesus Christ can continue to live and thrive in this place. Amen.

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