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"Beyond
the Cult of Personality" September
28, 2003 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Will you join me in prayer? Lord, just as we are and waiting not to
rid our souls of one dark blot, To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot, O
Lamb of God, we come. Amen. I want to begin sharing something very, very important with
you that I just learned this last week. It
has to do with Rustoleum. You know,
there's a lot of different colors that you can paint things with Rustoleum.
And why would we do that? Well,
if you've got like a rusty old something-or-other and you want to brighten it
up, well, this is a way of both coloring it and protecting it.
You know, they have a lot of new colors of Rustoleum. Some of us have maybe fallen behind in our awareness of how
many different colors there are. They
have a color called "Stone." You
can spray-paint something to look like it's made out of stone.
They have a "Leather" colored Rustoleum.
And now--now this is really amazing--they have a new color:
"Rust." Now why
would you want to take your rusty old whatever-it-is and spray-paint it
"rust" colored? Then I thought, "No, no, no, that's probably not how the
market analysis goes on this one at all."
No. This is for all of us
who have that perfect spot, maybe in our front yard or our side yard, where we
would just love to sort of celebrate our rural heritage as American and you want
to get a really funky old, rusty piece of farm machinery, a piece of farm
equipment, and set it right there in the midst of your begonias, or whatever
they are, and they grow around it. And
here's the shockeroo: If you're
like me, you've gone out and you've seen how much rusty old pieces of farm
machinery go for these days and you realize, "You know what?
I can buy a shiny new piece of farm equipment for cheaper than those at
the antique stores." But, I mean, you don't want your neighbors to know that you
couldn't afford a rusty old piece, so you go and buy your shiny new piece of
farm equipment--it might be your back hoe, or your hay baler or whatever--and
you paint it with Rustoleum "Rust"!
This is an answer to prayer, actually.
But! Here's the bad news:
Now, we spray-paint our secretly-new thing we want to look weatherbeaten
and careworn. If you spray it twice
a year, you're going to continue to make it look old and the Rustoleum is going
to prevent it from ever taking on that character that you are pretending.
Do you understand? Now, we're not going to talk much more about farm equipment
in this message because this is the third in a series of sermons where we're
looking at the subject of being a Christian, and a Protestant, and a
Presbyterian. And you've heard me
say in previous messages there is that wider circle of all Christians and we
share--all Christians share--certain things.
We have certain things in common. Now
within that there is the smaller circle of Protestants.
And Protestants have all of those things that are distinct about
Christians, but have certain things that are unique just to Protestants alone.
Now this morning we're going to focus on what it means to be a
Presbyterian. What does it mean to
be that part of Christianity and that part of Protestantism that has certain
Presbyterian distinctives? And as I do discuss this with you, as we confront it
together, I would ask us to ponder would it be possible to sort of spray-paint
"Presbyterian" over something in such a way as to prevent it from
actually being really that? That
would not be a good thing. It would
not be a good thing if the Presbyterian denomination at the present time decided
that it wanted to prefer appearance over reality.
You know, "We're going to maintain the facade of being Presbyterian
in such a way that we prevent ourselves from ever actually being that." Now, here's what we're going to do.
(And this is going to make this a uniquely controversial message this
morning.) You know I hate getting
controversial with you, but . . . Because
I want to take as a test case discussions about the ordination of gays and
lesbians to positions of leadership in Presbyterian churches and here's what I
want you to notice: I'm not going
to take a position on whether that's a right thing or that's a wrong thing.
I'm taking a position of, "How should Presbyterians be making up our
minds about a question like that?" Do
you understand? So, if you're very,
very anxious to hear me say, "Ordaining gays and lesbians in Presbyterian
churches would be wrong," well, you're going to be disappointed because
that's not my point. And if you're
very interested to hear me to say, "Ordaining gays and lesbians would be
right," you're going to be disappointed, also.
That's why one thing about a message like this is I'm going to disappoint
everybody! And that's because instead we'll say, "Do we even know
how Presbyterians make decisions any more?" Because that is one of the unique things about being a
Presbyterian Church. That is one of
the places where we are not like everyone who is a Christian and we're not like
everyone who is a Protestant, even. There
is a Presbyterian stance on this. We're
going to be talking a lot about Presbyterians and I'm going to be commending
Presbyterianism to you, so let me also just say that
I don't want you to think of me as saying "Presbyterians are the
only Protestants that are any good," or "Presbyterians are the only
Christians that are any good," because that's not the point here either.
Let's just go ahead and say there are some things preferable
in some of the other denominations. If
you want to belong to a church where the congregation sings with gusto, lots and
lots--well, you probably want to be a Baptist, because Baptists--they sing way
better than we do! No doubt about
it. If you want to be part of a
church where any time there's a problem with a minister that problem can be
solved swiftly, and effectively, and efficiently, with sort of a minimum of
commotion, you want to be a Methodist. Because,
honestly, I mean, the bishop in a Methodist church can solve it in one phonecall!
Here we are, we have been without a permanent Senior Pastor for over a
year and we're not even done with the process yet.
Well, this is not the swiftest way to handle things like this.
Let's just be honest. There
are certain "goods" that we find in other churches.
If you want to belong to a church where people on Sunday morning get all
worked up and all emotional, then you probably want to go to the Assembly of God
church. You don't have to learn a
new way to church--I mean, it's right next door here, isn't it?
Please hear me: I'm not
saying we're the best at absolutely everything.
But Presbyterians historically have specialized in a few
particular areas, and we want to look at those this morning.
And one of those is the will of God.
Our concern is with knowing the will of God and doing the will of God.
And nobody over the centuries, nobody has been as firm about knowing the
will of God and wanting to do the will of God as Presbyterians have. And we have a particular stance toward that, and we want to
look at Scripture because Scripture is our authority on this.
We want to know, "What does the Bible say about the will of
God?" and then once we know what the Bible says about the will of God, then
we want to do what the Bible tells us to do because it is God's will.
So that's our stand. Instead of looking at what was printed in the bulletin, I
want you to look with me at our passage that we looked at last week.
Turn to Mark chapter 7. We're
going to look at what we looked at last week, then we're going to go a little
further. We had to sort of cut things short in our Scripture passage
last week. So we're going to look
at Mark chapter 7, and we're going to go all the way down to verse 13.
This is a passage that has a distilled essence of what it means to be a
Presbyterian Protestant Christian. Mark
7, verse 1: Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes
who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his
disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.
(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly
wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not
eat anything from the market unless they wash it, and there are many other
traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)
So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples
not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled
hands?" He said to them,
"Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines. You abandon the commandment of God and hold to your human
tradition." Then he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the
commandment of God in order to meet your tradition! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and,
'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.'
But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you
might have had from me is Corban' (that is, an offering to God)--then you no
longer permit doing anything for father or mother, thus making void the word of
God through your tradition that you have handed on.
And you do many things like this." Now from verse 9 on down, this is the rest of the passage
that we didn't have time to look at last week.
Jesus is giving an example of what the typical Pharisee did.
In verse 8 He talked about "you abandon the commandment of God for
human tradition." Verse 13: "You
made void the word of God through your tradition." And so He gives an example.
And that is, the commandments make clear that we are to honor our
parents, we are to do right by our parents.
I mean, there's no mystery there. But
He says now anything that would go to support your aging parents, you say "Corban"
and then you withhold it. We don't have any idea what that means because "Corban"
is transliterated from the Hebrew. That's the official Hebrew word means "a gift offered to
God." And so what they were
saying is, "Oh, I'm sorry, mom," or "I'm sorry, dad, but this
field right here that might go to be used to support you, I'm dedicating it to
God." And therefore it's sort of withheld, kind of like--I don't
know if you remember this, but it was in the news a lot long ago in the sixties.
One of our famous rock bands of the day--they owned some property (I
think it was up in northern California). They
were turning it into a hippie commune (and if you don't know what a hippie
commune is, we'll save that for another time).
But they were turning it into a hippie commune.
They didn't want to pay taxes on it, so they deeded it--do you know what
they did? Do you remember this?
I know all you accountants remember this story:
They deeded the property to God, saying, "See, I don't have to pay
taxes on this, and me and my hippie friends can live here, and live off the land
like we want to, but we're not obligated to pay any taxes because I'm not the
owner any more. I've given this to
God." Well, it didn't work. .
. But that's an example of this
kind of thing where you're using a show of being religious in order to get out
of your obligations. You're making
a great show of how faithful and how obedient you are in your faith and then
you're turning around and you're misusing that to get out of the plainest of the
commandments that your faith represents to you. So, He's saying, "You're using Jewish tradition in order
to get away from the Jewishly-understood commandments of God."
Now Presbyterians--this is a passage that down through the decades,
passages like this have been very, very near and dear to our hearts because we
want to know what God's will is so that we can get about doing it.
And what we've determined is that there's one source for knowing the will
of God, and that one source is Scripture. If
you want to know what God's will is, look in the Bible.
That's where it is. And we
have repudiated any, you know, additional sources.
We have said, you know, looking at passages like this, "The only
thing that counts is the command of God, the Word of God.
That's our one source for knowing what God's will is.
We do not recognize any other sources right along with that."
Now, that's different than some other denominations within
the circle of Christianity, so I want us to understand using as our test-case
who we ordain into leadership positions within the church.
I want us to use coming to that test-case to illustrate that how another
denomination would decide this question might be very, very, very different from
how Presbyterians would decide. And
I say this because we know that not only the Presbyterians have been sort of
wrestling with this for a variety of reasons.
And incidentally, it's also very complicated and the reason that I'm not
going to take a stand "yes" or "no" on this is we need to
look at an awful lot of material before I would feel that it is time for us to
agree on a particular position. But on the question of, "How do Presbyterians decide
things like that?"--that's not that complicated. If we think it's complicated, it's because we have forgotten
that we do have some distinctives. We
do have some things about us: We
take the Bible as our single source, and we read it, and we see that one of the
rivals to the Word of God, to the command of God, can be religious tradition.
And it's possible for religious tradition (as we've been saying last
week) it's possible for religious tradition to sort of build up to the point
where you can't see the Word of God any more.
And so Presbyterians have historically just been ruthless.
We're not interested in anything else other than just what the Bible
says. That's our background. That's
our history. If you say, "Wait a minute! This doesn't sound like the Presbyterians I know."
Well, then that means that we're not that clear about what our heritage
is. If we were clear on our
heritage, we would know Presbyterians have always just said: "What do we care about?" "The will of God." "Where do we find the will of God?" "In the Bible." If we're
confused, it's because we think that all Protestants are all the same on this
one. And we do know that Methodists
have been struggling with the question of the ordination of homosexuals.
Lutherans, lots of Christian denominations, have been struggling with
this. But, see, we bring a unique
perspective to this. We bring a
perspective that says the Bible alone is our source of authority. What alternatives are there? Well, Roman Catholicism has as its official stance the idea
that the Bible is an authority, and Church tradition is also an authority.
And any time that the Roman Catholics want to make up their mind on
something controversial, they want to consult Scripture and they also want to
look at Church tradition. Now, you go, "I mean, how can they do that?
We've got warnings in Scripture about tradition interfering with our
receiving the Word of God." And
it's very simple. If you think that
the problem in Mark chapter 7 is Jewish tradition--if you say, "Oh,
that's right. The scribes and the
Pharisees, they had this uniquely Jewish problem of these Jewish traditions that
sort of grew up and interfered with their receiving the Old Covenant
Scriptures." Then they say,
"Oh, but Christian church rituals, those aren't like long-ago Jewish
traditions." And Presbyterians have a one-word answer to that:
Baloney! Tradition is
tradition. Human traditions are
traditions. And it is not the case
that church traditions are somehow or other better than synagogue traditions.
Do you understand? In our
view, a tradition that comes between you and God's Word needs to get swept away.
As a matter of fact, here's an important little historical
ant . . . it not an antidote, it's an anecdote. (There aren't that many historical antidotes, but there are a
lot of really interesting historical anecdotes!)
And one of them is when the first Queen Elizabeth of England (we have a
nice Queen Elizabeth now, but this is the earlier, the first Queen Elizabeth of
England) was confused about the Protestant denominations in her day and she
asked to have them explained to her. And
so they wanted to explain, you know, "You know, your majesty, our church,
the Church of England, this . . . and the Lutherans . . . and the Calvinists . .
." And then after all that she
said, "Hmm. I perceive that
the Calvinists are somewhat more reformed than the others."
And that word "Reformed" has stuck ever since.
Presbyterians are Calvinists who come from Scotland.
In the non-English speaking part of the world, the Reformed
churches--Dutch Reformed, if you're familiar with that.
You know, Reformed Church in America.
Those are all our cousin-churches. They're
all Calvinistic. And they call
themselves "Reformed" after that comment of Queen Elizabeth a long
time ago. What was she talking about when she said that?
Well, here's the deal. In
the Episcopal Church (which is to say, the Church of England) at the time of the
Reformation, and in the Lutheran Church, there was a stance of wanting to get
rid of the Roman Catholic traditions they had accumulated through the centuries
of the Middle Ages and so this is what they did.
They said, "OK, we know we've got the mass--we grew up seeing it
celebrated. Let's look in the Bible
and let's look at the Roman Catholic mass and let's take out of the mass
everything that we find the Bible saying, 'You can't do that.' "
Do you understand? So you
sort of leave the medieval way of doing things intact and then you just look and
you say, "OK, the Bible says you can't do this . . . and the Bible says you
can't do that . . ." Which means if you see today an Episcopal service, if you see
today a Lutheran service, you think, "Those seem kind of Catholic!"
Well, there's a reason why. At
the time of the Reformation, they reformed their service by saying, "What
does the Bible tell us we can't do? We'll
take out what the Bible tells us we can't do and we'll leave the rest." Presbyterians did something nobody else was doing at the
time. They said, "Let's erase
everything. And let's look at the
Bible and let's only put in our worship services what the Bible tells us we
should put in." Do you see the
difference in the standard? One is,
"Let's take out anything the Bible tells us we have to take out."
The other is, "Let's erase everything, and let's only put back in .
. ."--it's a much stricter standard. When
Presbyterians historically have read the Bible, we have read it with a much
stricter standard on ourselves than any of the other denominations.
And when I was in seminary, the way that this was illustrated
to me by a professor (I love this!) the professor said, "It's like in two
households there's that drawer right below the kitchen telephone.
You pull out that drawer and it's a mess.
It's a jumble. It's a
nightmare. You can't possibly find anything in there.
The Episcopalian and the Lutheran way of fixing things is to say, 'OK
now, what do we need to take out? OK,
let's see . . . let's take out this eraser right here . . . and this paper clip
right there.' The Presbyterian
style is take out everything, dump it on the floor, put the drawer back, and
say, 'OK now, what goes back in?' " Do you understand? That's
our strict stance toward finding God's will in Scripture and doing it.
And it's a stance that believes that tradition does not help.
Roman Catholics had Church tradition.
Episcopalians don't have exactly the same thing, but the official
Episcopalian stance is Scripture and reason.
And those of you that grew up Methodist, you know about the Methodist
"quadrilateral." Methodists
have four different authorities: Scripture,
tradition, reason, and experience. Now,
in the face of this, you say if you have four different authorities to make up
your mind as a Methodist, you need to look at what Scripture says, but then what
tradition says, but then what experience says and then what reason says.
I mean, that's a very, very complicated process.
Do you know what? For
Presbyterians it's a heck of a lot more simple!
If we remembered what it was to be a Presbyterian, we've got one source
of insight into what God is asking us to do. Now, the Bible can be complex at times, amen?
The Bible can be--I'm not saying that the Bible is always, always
immediately easy to understand. But
it surely does simplify things when you can say, "Now I might not always
understand it, but I do know this is my one source of authority.
This is my one way to decide what God wants me to do."
That's the Presbyterian stance on this. Now, other churches can be looking at the question of whether
to ordain avowed, practicing gays and lesbians to positions of authority or not.
And I have a wonderful quote for you because I know this illustrates what
Presbyterians would see as not the answer, but as part of the problem.
This is from Gene Robinson--V. Eugene Robinson, the man whose ordination
as an Episcopal Bishop was confirmed recently in our area just a month ago, or
something like that. This is
something that Gene Robinson said on the subject, quote:
"Just simply to say that it goes against tradition, and the teaching
of the church, and Scripture, does not necessarily make it wrong."
Let me read it again, because you're going to think that you mis-heard,
but, no, you heard it right. This
is what he said: "Just simply
to say that it goes against tradition, and the teaching of the church, and
Scripture, does not necessarily make it wrong." Well, Presbyterians would say, "To say that it goes
against tradition?"--Absolutely. We
agree with you a hundred percent. "To
say that it goes against the teaching of the church?"--That's right.
I mean, there's a lot of things that have been the teaching of the church
that weren't necessarily wrong, they were just . . .
And "To say it goes against Scripture"--That's where
Presbyterians would have to say, "I'm sorry."
Whether you can say that and remain an Episcopalian, you
know, I'm happy to let the Episcopal Church decide. I'm happy to let the Episcopalians decide can a person still
be a Bishop and say, "OK, now, yes, it may go against tradition, it may go
against the teaching of the church, it may go against Scripture, but that
doesn't make it wrong necessarily." Um,
you know, I'm happy to let the Episcopal Church police itself on that. But there's no way for a person to say,
"Just because it goes against Scripture doesn't necessarily make it
wrong" and remain a Presbyterian, because all of our eggs are in
that one basket. Do you understand
what I'm saying? And I'm not saying
that we have to read Scripture in one way on this one or another way on this
one. I'm just saying we do have to
read Scripture and we have to make up our minds based on what the Bible says
because that's our authority. That's
our authority. Now if you're a Methodist, you've got Scripture, and
tradition, and reason, and experience. You've
got a lot of wiggle-room, I think, on this one.
But the only wiggle-room on this one that Presbyterians are going to find
is with respect to saying, "Scripture is unclear."
That would be the only place you would have any wiggle-room.
We don't have lots of different sources of authority to balance.
We've just got one concern:
Is this the will of God or is it not the will of God?
And we've just got one source for deciding:
the Bible. And the way that
we read the Bible is not by looking at something and saying, "OK, well
anything that the Bible forbids, we're going to take that out, but the rest of
it we're going to leave alone." No.
We've been historically the radical Bible crowd who said, "Let's
throw everything out and only put back what the Bible says you can put
back." Now, I apologize for having to end on a very, very clear
note. I'm sorry.
But, as I understand what it means to be a Presbyterian, understanding
our heritage, the only way that I think we can begin ordaining gays and lesbians
(avowed, practicing, non-celibate gays and lesbians) to church office would be
if the Bible commanded that we do that. And, you know, I don't see the Bible as commanding that.
And I'm not yet saying, "So let's take a position as a church on
this." I'm just saying, "If that's really the Presbyterian way
of approaching this, then we're going to be as a denomination at a fork in the
road where we're going to have to decide, OK, are we going to continue to be
Presbyterians and decide the way that Presbyterians have continued to decide?
Or are we going to say, "No, because we think that a new stance on
this one is so important, it's important enough that we're just going to leave
our tradition in the dust." Let's pray. Dear
Heavenly Father, we thank you that we're a part of that family of faith that
really just cares about one thing, and that is knowing and doing your will.
And, Lord, we thank you that though your Word can sometimes be confusing,
that we don't have any other source of authority for our lives.
Lord, we thank you that we look to your Word. Lord, we ask that you would make your Word clear.
And it's in the strong name of Jesus that we pray.
Amen. Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Interim Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:00
a.m. worship service on September 28, 2003.] |
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