The Achilles' Heel Of The Church
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
For Sundays In Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany
Have you ever noticed how prevalent is the number 3 in religious history? The children of Israel wander without water for three days under their leader Moses upon their freedom from bondage to the Egyptians. The nation later interprets the event to mean one should go no more than three days without reading the Torah.
One Gospel writer depicts a rooster crowing three times, once for every denial of Christ by Peter. And we all know the Christian assertion that Christ rose on the third day. Symbols of three abound. Jewish rabbis usually had an inner circle of three, so Jesus, in like manner, had Peter, James, and John.
Small wonder, then, that major Christian concepts also seem to be bunched in threes. "Faith, hope, and love, these three abide," uttered Paul. And what would Christianity be without the doctrine of the Trinity -- Parent, Child, and Holy Spirit?
The text for today lifts before its readers the conviction of James that the early church had three significant characteristics: healing, praying, and rescuing. The first two characteristics can be rather easily understood. The early church was a healing church. When a Jew was physically ill, it was to the rabbi that he or she went. The early Church in like manner used anointing as a means of healing the sick. An early church code even required that each congregation had to appoint at least one widow to take care of women who were sick.1 The early church was well acquainted with physical sickness. It did not view sickness as a punishment for sin, but an ever-present part of life. The corporate life of the Christian community was concerned with every aspect of living. Small wonder, then, that later Christians took the lead in establishing hospitals to meet emergent human needs in the name of Christ. Today there is hardly a major American city that does not have a hospital with a Christian or denominational name in its title. While some local congregations participate more than others in various efforts to effect healing (physical, ritual, or symbolic), every Christian hospital is an extension of the Church's healing ministry.
The second ingredient of the big three, praying, is also rather easily understood by contemporary Christians. We, like the text, recognize that praying and singing go together. Sometimes the circumstances are desperate and at other times the circumstances for prayer may be quite normal, if not buoyant. There really is no great tension between James' teaching and our own faith in modern medicine and psychiatry. The psychological effects of sin are well known. It has been clearly established that a sense of being forgiven for real or imagined sins is closely related to a sense of health.
The final ingredient in the big three bears examination. It often becomes the Achilles' heel of the Church: Turn around people who have wandered from the truth, thus covering over a multitude of sins. This is the most potentially volatile of the big three. Healing and praying haven't laid down the potential land mines of excess as has the last characteristic. Save for a few devout Christian Scientists and members of fringe cult groups, we have gotten the medical, psychological, physical, and spiritual aspects of life in manageable shape. We have peace between the churches and the hospitals. We have not only peace but a wholesome alliance between the best of our Christian traditions and the spiritual claims of Eastern religions. Meditation and yoga are now practiced in church gymnasia by brown-bagging business people during lunch hours. From preachers who view the scriptures as "Gospel Medicine,"2 to the readers of Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, whose Living Buddha, Living Christ3 outsells most other religious works, especially among Christians, we had made our peace with healing and spirituality.
The issue of wanderers from the truth and what to do about them has always been the Achilles' heel of the Church. From the Spanish Inquisition to the literal destruction of the Southern Baptist Convention in the previous generation, proponents of a litmus test of beliefs have sabotaged genuine Christians everywhere. The words of James are powerful words. They are also dangerous words.
Rather boldly, James asserts that Christian truth is something from which a person can wander. Truth in all its dimensions, intellectual, philosophical, abstract, and moral, is not a given within the Christian community. It is something from which the community can wander.
This in itself is a major statement. In his quest for discipline in the church, James acknowledges that humans are not by nature compassionate and truthful. Backsliding is a problem. Those who have confessed faith in Jesus Christ and wish to be compassionate people do not necessarily live their lives in accordance with what they have said they believe. Consequently, someone has to go after them and bring them back from the error of their ways. If not someone in the church, then who?
Many Christians even today are actively involved with care of the physically sick and in prayer for those in need. Who will go beyond those important characteristics of the faith and become active in efforts to bring back those who wander from the truth?
James is not encouraging Christians to condemn others. Nor is he asking didactic, autocratic smart alecs to become watchdogs over other people's beliefs. Singling out people who believe differently and categorizing and labeling them does harm. Efforts to pronounce others as wanderers from the truth can become mean, ugly, and vengeful.
James is on to something here. Living in a church community is more than honoring the freedom and independence of others. Living in a church community is more than going after funds for the budget and rescuing the property from decay and neglect. Living in a church community is also going after those who have wandered from the truth.
The late Reverend C. L. Franklin, former pastor of Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church and father of singer Aretha Franklin, stated a profound truth about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. In a direct way the parable is an indictment of the father in the story. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is the last of three parables Jesus tells about things that were lost. First he tells of lost sheep. Secondly he tells of lost money. Thirdly he tells of a lost child.4
In the story of the lost sheep, a shepherd went back over his steps and searched in every valley until he had regained the lost sheep. In the story of the lost coin, a woman swept under every bed and behind every door and in every corner until she had found her lost coin. But in the story of the lost son, no one went out to look for him.
The meaning is obvious. People will consult every lawyer they can find and retrace every step in the process to recover lost property (sheep). People will turn the house upside down or work two shifts in order to try and regain lost money. But few people will lift a finger to try to regain wandering children, or husbands, or wives, or even lost Christian friends. When people err, we tend to leave them alone.
When people think they know it all, err from the truth, and try to impose their will and their way on us, we don't call them on the telephone anymore. When people wander away from the truth, we tend to wait on them to "come to themselves" before making a move toward them. If they never "come to their senses," we just leave them alone in the name of "tolerance." Then, if they come around on their own, we run down the road like some silly clown, with our robes flying in the breeze, ready to throw them a party and serve prime rib like the father in the parable of the Prodigal.
Now, we should never practice a kind of "in your face" Christianity that disturbs the love ethic so poignantly evidenced in the life of Jesus the Christ. On the other hand, the Church can be victimized by its vacillations and compromised by its compromises. The work of reclaiming human beings who err must be part and parcel of the priorities of our churches.
Bringing back individuals who seem to be wandering from the truth is not an easy task in today's world. Yet those who live under the Lordship of God have a responsibility to be concerned about the beliefs and lifestyles of their fellow human beings. Participation in a covenant community requires a personal commitment to others who are part of that same covenant. This is not to say that Christians form a "one-size fits all" type of fellowship. Interpretation is always a prime factor in any recognition of truth. Yet life in a covenant community calls on Christians to learn what is central to its relationships and the understandings of life that make the covenant people who they are. Robin Lovin, I think, is correct: "Unless we have ... some sense of mission in our institution ... we probably will not have much of a moral life, even though we may not be guilty of many moral mistakes."5 Healing and praying come naturally with our territory. Turning around people who have wandered from the truth has been our Achilles' heel. Thank you, James, for reminding us.
____________
1. William Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976), pp. 129-130.
2. Gospel Medicine is the exact title of the work by Barbara Brown Taylor (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1995), one of our most published and gifted preachers. She rightly summons Old and New Testament stories as ways to mend spirits and strengthen human weaknesses.
3. The two best-selling works of Thich Nhat Hanh are Peace Is Every Step (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), and Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995). Nhat Hanh adapts ancient Buddhist teachings to modern problems and seeks to make connections with Jesus in a manner I would call soft universalism.
4. C. L. Franklin, Give Me This Mountain, ed. by Jeff Todd Titon (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 55-57.
5. Robin Lovin, Christian Ethics: An Essential Guide (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), p. 60.
One Gospel writer depicts a rooster crowing three times, once for every denial of Christ by Peter. And we all know the Christian assertion that Christ rose on the third day. Symbols of three abound. Jewish rabbis usually had an inner circle of three, so Jesus, in like manner, had Peter, James, and John.
Small wonder, then, that major Christian concepts also seem to be bunched in threes. "Faith, hope, and love, these three abide," uttered Paul. And what would Christianity be without the doctrine of the Trinity -- Parent, Child, and Holy Spirit?
The text for today lifts before its readers the conviction of James that the early church had three significant characteristics: healing, praying, and rescuing. The first two characteristics can be rather easily understood. The early church was a healing church. When a Jew was physically ill, it was to the rabbi that he or she went. The early Church in like manner used anointing as a means of healing the sick. An early church code even required that each congregation had to appoint at least one widow to take care of women who were sick.1 The early church was well acquainted with physical sickness. It did not view sickness as a punishment for sin, but an ever-present part of life. The corporate life of the Christian community was concerned with every aspect of living. Small wonder, then, that later Christians took the lead in establishing hospitals to meet emergent human needs in the name of Christ. Today there is hardly a major American city that does not have a hospital with a Christian or denominational name in its title. While some local congregations participate more than others in various efforts to effect healing (physical, ritual, or symbolic), every Christian hospital is an extension of the Church's healing ministry.
The second ingredient of the big three, praying, is also rather easily understood by contemporary Christians. We, like the text, recognize that praying and singing go together. Sometimes the circumstances are desperate and at other times the circumstances for prayer may be quite normal, if not buoyant. There really is no great tension between James' teaching and our own faith in modern medicine and psychiatry. The psychological effects of sin are well known. It has been clearly established that a sense of being forgiven for real or imagined sins is closely related to a sense of health.
The final ingredient in the big three bears examination. It often becomes the Achilles' heel of the Church: Turn around people who have wandered from the truth, thus covering over a multitude of sins. This is the most potentially volatile of the big three. Healing and praying haven't laid down the potential land mines of excess as has the last characteristic. Save for a few devout Christian Scientists and members of fringe cult groups, we have gotten the medical, psychological, physical, and spiritual aspects of life in manageable shape. We have peace between the churches and the hospitals. We have not only peace but a wholesome alliance between the best of our Christian traditions and the spiritual claims of Eastern religions. Meditation and yoga are now practiced in church gymnasia by brown-bagging business people during lunch hours. From preachers who view the scriptures as "Gospel Medicine,"2 to the readers of Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, whose Living Buddha, Living Christ3 outsells most other religious works, especially among Christians, we had made our peace with healing and spirituality.
The issue of wanderers from the truth and what to do about them has always been the Achilles' heel of the Church. From the Spanish Inquisition to the literal destruction of the Southern Baptist Convention in the previous generation, proponents of a litmus test of beliefs have sabotaged genuine Christians everywhere. The words of James are powerful words. They are also dangerous words.
Rather boldly, James asserts that Christian truth is something from which a person can wander. Truth in all its dimensions, intellectual, philosophical, abstract, and moral, is not a given within the Christian community. It is something from which the community can wander.
This in itself is a major statement. In his quest for discipline in the church, James acknowledges that humans are not by nature compassionate and truthful. Backsliding is a problem. Those who have confessed faith in Jesus Christ and wish to be compassionate people do not necessarily live their lives in accordance with what they have said they believe. Consequently, someone has to go after them and bring them back from the error of their ways. If not someone in the church, then who?
Many Christians even today are actively involved with care of the physically sick and in prayer for those in need. Who will go beyond those important characteristics of the faith and become active in efforts to bring back those who wander from the truth?
James is not encouraging Christians to condemn others. Nor is he asking didactic, autocratic smart alecs to become watchdogs over other people's beliefs. Singling out people who believe differently and categorizing and labeling them does harm. Efforts to pronounce others as wanderers from the truth can become mean, ugly, and vengeful.
James is on to something here. Living in a church community is more than honoring the freedom and independence of others. Living in a church community is more than going after funds for the budget and rescuing the property from decay and neglect. Living in a church community is also going after those who have wandered from the truth.
The late Reverend C. L. Franklin, former pastor of Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church and father of singer Aretha Franklin, stated a profound truth about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. In a direct way the parable is an indictment of the father in the story. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is the last of three parables Jesus tells about things that were lost. First he tells of lost sheep. Secondly he tells of lost money. Thirdly he tells of a lost child.4
In the story of the lost sheep, a shepherd went back over his steps and searched in every valley until he had regained the lost sheep. In the story of the lost coin, a woman swept under every bed and behind every door and in every corner until she had found her lost coin. But in the story of the lost son, no one went out to look for him.
The meaning is obvious. People will consult every lawyer they can find and retrace every step in the process to recover lost property (sheep). People will turn the house upside down or work two shifts in order to try and regain lost money. But few people will lift a finger to try to regain wandering children, or husbands, or wives, or even lost Christian friends. When people err, we tend to leave them alone.
When people think they know it all, err from the truth, and try to impose their will and their way on us, we don't call them on the telephone anymore. When people wander away from the truth, we tend to wait on them to "come to themselves" before making a move toward them. If they never "come to their senses," we just leave them alone in the name of "tolerance." Then, if they come around on their own, we run down the road like some silly clown, with our robes flying in the breeze, ready to throw them a party and serve prime rib like the father in the parable of the Prodigal.
Now, we should never practice a kind of "in your face" Christianity that disturbs the love ethic so poignantly evidenced in the life of Jesus the Christ. On the other hand, the Church can be victimized by its vacillations and compromised by its compromises. The work of reclaiming human beings who err must be part and parcel of the priorities of our churches.
Bringing back individuals who seem to be wandering from the truth is not an easy task in today's world. Yet those who live under the Lordship of God have a responsibility to be concerned about the beliefs and lifestyles of their fellow human beings. Participation in a covenant community requires a personal commitment to others who are part of that same covenant. This is not to say that Christians form a "one-size fits all" type of fellowship. Interpretation is always a prime factor in any recognition of truth. Yet life in a covenant community calls on Christians to learn what is central to its relationships and the understandings of life that make the covenant people who they are. Robin Lovin, I think, is correct: "Unless we have ... some sense of mission in our institution ... we probably will not have much of a moral life, even though we may not be guilty of many moral mistakes."5 Healing and praying come naturally with our territory. Turning around people who have wandered from the truth has been our Achilles' heel. Thank you, James, for reminding us.
____________
1. William Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976), pp. 129-130.
2. Gospel Medicine is the exact title of the work by Barbara Brown Taylor (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1995), one of our most published and gifted preachers. She rightly summons Old and New Testament stories as ways to mend spirits and strengthen human weaknesses.
3. The two best-selling works of Thich Nhat Hanh are Peace Is Every Step (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), and Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995). Nhat Hanh adapts ancient Buddhist teachings to modern problems and seeks to make connections with Jesus in a manner I would call soft universalism.
4. C. L. Franklin, Give Me This Mountain, ed. by Jeff Todd Titon (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 55-57.
5. Robin Lovin, Christian Ethics: An Essential Guide (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), p. 60.
