Reformation Sunday
Mark 8: 22-26
October 29, 2000
The Presbyterian church was conceived in a condition of liberty. Presbyterian ideas came to this country through the Puritan migration and found their way to Long Island and to Setauket by 1660, when our congregation began community worship. It was not until 1706 that the first Presbytery was organized in Philadelphia to facilitate mission work. Ten years later, the first Synod was organized because the Presbyterian churches were growing so rapidly. The Synod was convened with a sermon, preached by a New Jersey pastor. The sermon was titled "Open the Doors of the Church as Wide as Christ Opens the Gates of Heaven." The Synod was gathered to unite the diverse types of Presbyterians into effective missionary endeavors. But the next chapter in our early Presbyterian history was characterized by the first battle-royal for control of the denomination.
The issue was this: would clergy and lay members be held to strict adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), as the new Scotch-Irish immigrants demanded, or would freedom of conscience characterize the Presbyterian faith, as the older New England Presbyterians hoped? A compromise measure was adopted in 1729 called The Formula of Agreement. It adopted Westminster as a faithful expression of the faith of the church, but allowed for any minister or member to dissent from any article for reasons of individual conscience. Only the "essential and necessary" doctrines would be enforced, and what was "essential and necessary" would be determined by the local ordaining body. It was up to the local ordaining body to determine whether the candidate was within the tradition or fell far enough afield to warrant refusal of ordination.
This position allowed the Presbyterian Church to become one of the leading denominations in mission and social witness during the last two and a half centuries. Our witness began with the War of Independence which was called, by some, the Presbyterian Rebellion. And over the next two hundred years, the Presbyterian Church worked for the abolition of slavery, for women's suffrage, the 8 hour work day, to end child labor, and for civil rights. This history of social witness, of course, also gave us missions to convert "the Indians" and prohibition, stances which we later changed because we had the latitude within our democratic structure to do so. Our commitment to freedom of conscience and democratic change established us as a leading institution in the nation. During the first decades of the 20th century, when this freedom of conscience and democracy was challenged by a growing fundamentalist movement which attempted to define specific doctrines as "essential and necessary," the General Assembly (our highest governing body) in 1929 re-affirmed that no doctrine itself could be categorically determined as "essential and necessary." But here I stand today, on this Reformation Sunday, to warn you that our freedom of conscience and commitment to democratic change is in grave peril within the Presbyterian Church (USA). According to the General Assembly's affirmation in 1929, freedom of conscience is a central characteristic of what it means to be Presbyterian. But there are forces within the Presbyterian church that are attempting to write freedom of conscience out of existence. At this very moment, there is an active attempt to silence our church's historic witness on social and economic justice issues by strategically defunding certain denominational programs, purging oppositional voices through judicial power, and rewriting the Book of Order to ensure conformity to one particular understanding of God and the Church and a literal interpretation of Scripture. Neither of these emphases have ever, ever been characteristic of the Presbyterian Church. Last week Martha and Richard Porter, members of our Presbytery, and I attended a symposium on the future of the church. The forum was brought together by the publication of a new book called A Moment to Decide: The Crisis in Mainstream Presbyterianism. The book outlines the history, politics, and leadership of the key elements of the so-called "renewal" movements in the church. The book's authors, and the Presbyterian pastors and laity who are supporting its circulation, believe that we are in a struggle for the heart and soul of the Presbyterian Church much like the Southern Baptists were in the 1980s. At the symposium we heard from a former pastor of the Southern Baptist Convention who spoke out of his pain at the loss of his church where conscience was abridged and conformity enforced. Just last week, President Jimmy Carter announced that he and Rosalyn are quitting the Southern Baptist Convention because its current statements on such issues as the refusal of ordination to women and the cheerful submission of wives to husbands "violates the basic premises of [his] Christian Faith." And yesterday's New York Times religion journal examines the fallout of what has been a brutal struggle between Texas moderates and the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention. We also heard last week from The Rev. Robert Bohl, former moderator of the PC(USA), who spoke of his deep love for our church, its prophetic history, its witness for Christ in a changing world, and of his refusal to leave it in times of controversy. Since his time as moderator, he has been warning that groups like the Presbyterian Coalition and The Presbyterian Lay Committee are committed to taking over the church, have published their strategy, and will never enter into common mission with those it considers its enemies. For saying things like this, he has been blamed for creating the divisions he is warning about, a clear case of shooting the messenger. He read us a letter he received earlier this year that read "Dear Rev. Bohl, I hope God will strike you dead with lightning and that you burn in hell because you are destroying the church that I love." (1) The viewpoint of these so-called "renewal movements," which are incredibly well-funded by a few private donors, is that viewpoints other than their own are illegitimate - "alien ideologies within the church" they call them; and worse, they believe these different viewpoints are deserving of condemnation, persecution, and prosecution. For example, the Presbyterian Coalition (you should hear echoes of the Christian Coalition) has provided the legal and financial support for the prosecution of four individuals and churches in our Synod on the issue of Amendment B. Amendment B was added to our Book of Order in 1997 as strategy for eliminating gay and lesbian church officers. But that is not the real issue. At stake is whether sessions, such as ours, are required to ask of all candidates for church office whether they are in a "state of sin" and specifically to pursue a person's sexual orientation, sexual practices, whether and why they have been divorced and whether they are currently co-habitating. There is an amendment before the Presbyteries this year to prohibit pastors from conducting same-sex holy unions. Until now the performance of holy unions has been considered a matter of conscience for each individual pastor, and the decision of what was appropriate use of church buildings a matter for a church's session to decide. If this amendment is ratified by a majority of Presbyteries, our denomination will, for the first time, have proscribed the conduct of pastoral care and questions of conscience that properly belong to the local church. Did you know that there are currently 475 congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA) that still don't ordain women? These are churches that chose to join the newly created denomination in 1983, and who promised, with time, to bring themselves into compliance with what is a confessional belief of the church. That was 17 years ago. There is an amendment before the Presbyteries this year to effectively end the monitoring of these churches that was set in place to ensure that they would come into compliance with the confessions of the Presbyterian Church (USA). And I'll simply mention that the Presbyterian Coalition has made extremely irresponsible claims such as a calling Presbyterian Women, the church's official women's ministry, as a demonic stronghold. Cornelia Lebens came up to me on Tuesday and said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that she was shocked to discover that for the past 30 years she had been participating in demonic activities -- right here in our church's parlor. It appears that the outlook of some members of our Presbyterian community is that certain people should not be welcome around the common table we call church. And they are using their place at the table to bar others from being there. The historic idea that we are, as a reformed church, reformed and ever reforming, is being sacrificed so that the Presbyterian Church might become a "conformed" church that is ever conforming! There is absolutely no sense that "more light and more truth may break forth from God's Word" as our Pilgrim ancestors believed. There is absolutely no sense that we, like the blind man in our gospel story this morning, are people who need to be touched more than one time by God's grace. Will we permit one baptized member of the Presbyterian Church to say to another that they do not belong in God's church or at God's table? Rabbi Edwin Friedman has written what I think is an apt parable for us on this Reformation Sunday, which I would like to share with you. It is called "The Friendly Forest".| Once upon a time in the Friendly Forest there lived a lamb who loved to graze and frolic about. One day a tiger came to the forest and said to the animals, "I would like to live among you." They were delighted. For, unlike some of the other forests, they had no tiger in their woods. The lamb, however, had some apprehensions, which, being a lamb, she sheepishly expressed to her friends. But, said they, "Do not worry, we will talk to the tiger and explain that one of the conditions for living in this forest is that you must also let the other animals live in the forest. So the lamb went about her life as usual. But it was not long before the tiger began to growl and make threatening gestures and menacing motions. Each time the frightened lamb went to her friends and said, "It is very uncomfortable for me here in the forest." But her friends reassured her, "Do not worry; that's just the way tigers behave." Every day, as she went about her life, the lamb tried to remember this advice, hoping that the tiger would find someone else to growl at. And it is probably correct to say that the tiger did not really spend all or even most of its time stalking the lamb. Still, the lamb found it increasingly difficult to remove the tiger from her thoughts. Sometimes she would just catch it out of the corner of her eye, but that seemed enough to disconcert her for the day, even if the cat was asleep. Soon the lamb found that she was actually looking for the tiger. Sometimes days or even weeks went by between its intrusive actions, yet, somehow, the tiger had succeeded in always being there. Eventually the tiger's existence became a part of the lamb's existence. When she tried to explain this to her friends, however, they pointed out that no harm had really befallen her and that perhaps she was just being too sensitive. So the lamb again tried to put the tiger out of her mind. "Why," she said to herself, "should I let my relationship with just one member of the forest ruin my relationships with all the others?" But every now and then, usually when she was least prepared, the tiger would give her another start. Finally the lamb could not take it anymore. She decided that, much as she loved the forest and her friends, more than she had ever loved any other forest or friends, the cost was too great. So she went to the other animals in the woods and said good-bye. Her friends would not hear of it. "This is silly," they said. "Nothing has happened. You're still in one piece. You must remember that a tiger is a tiger," they repeated. "Surely this is the nicest forest in the world. We really like you very much. We would be very sad if you left." (Though it must be admitted that several of the animals were wondering what the lamb might be doing to contribute to the tiger's aggressiveness.) Then, said two of the animals in the Friendly Forest, "Surely this whole thing can be worked out. We're all reasonable here. Stay calm. There is probably just some misunderstanding that can easily be resolved if we all sit down together and communicate." The lamb, however, had several misgivings about such a meeting. First of all, if her friends had explained away the tiger's behavior by saying it was simply a tiger's nature to behave that way, why did they now think that as a result of communication the tiger would be able to change that nature? Second, thought the lamb, such meetings, well intentioned as they might be, usually try to resolve problems through compromise. Now, while the tiger might agree to growl less, and indeed might succeed in reducing some of its aggressive behavior, what would she, the lamb, be expected to give up in return? Be more accepting of the tiger's growling? There was something wrong, thought the lamb, with the notion that an agreement is equal if the invasive creature agrees to be less invasive and the invaded one agrees to tolerate some invasiveness. She tried to explain this to her friends but, being reasonable animals, they assured her that the important thing was to keep communicating. Perhaps the tiger didn't understand the ways of a lamb. "Don't be so sheepish," they said. "Speak up strongly when it does these things." Though one of the less subtle animals in the forest, more uncouth in expression and unconcerned about just who remained, was overheard to remark, "I never heard of anything so ridiculous. If you want a lamb and a tiger to live in the same forest, you don't try to make them communicate. You cage the bloody tiger." |
© 2000 The Rev. Jeffrey A. Geary