Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-26
Freed and Led by the Spirit
James Sledge June
9, 2019 – Pentecost
When
I entered seminary at age 35, it took me a semester to adjust to the huge
amount of reading. A lot of it was simply something to get through, but some
had a profound impact on me. I vividly remember reading Resident Aliens. This seminal, 1989 work by Stanley Hauerwas and
Will Willimon of Duke Divinity School explored what it means to be Christian in
rapidly changing world. Let me read just a bit of the books provocative
opening.
Somewhere
between 1960 and 1980, an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh,
new world began. We do not mean to be overly dramatic. Although there are many
who have not yet heard the news, it is nevertheless true. A tired old world has
ended, and an exciting new one is awaiting recognition…
When
and how did we change? Although it may sound trivial, one of us is tempted to
date the shift sometime on a Sunday evening in 1963. Then, in Greenville, South
Carolina, in defiance of the state’s time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theater
opened on Sunday. Seven of us—regular attenders of the Methodist Youth
Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church—made a pact to enter the front door of the
church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the
Fox.
That evening has
come to represent a watershed in the history of Christendom, South Carolina
style. On that night, Greenville, South Carolina—the last pocket of resistance
to secularity in the Western world—served notice it would no longer be a prop
for the church. There would be no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head to
head with the church over who would provide the world view for the young. That
night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.[1]
As
Christendom faded, church more and more became optional. A numerical decline set
in that continues to this day. It seems that many were at church only because
it was required or expected. Realizing this was no longer so, people left. So were
they ever really followers of Jesus? And what about the church congregations
that nurtured such believers?
What
does it mean to be Christian, to be church? There was a time, not so many years
ago, when people spoke of Presbyterians as “the Republican party at prayer.” That
referred to a very different Republican party, one with strong liberal and
progressive wings. Regardless, such a label describes an identity rooted less
in following Jesus and more in an easy, comfortable compatibility with
mainstream, middle-class America.
At
the height of Christendom, American-style, people were assumed to be Christian,
and Christianity was often a generalized belief in Jesus mixed with morality,
citizenship, and patriotism. “American Civil Religion,” as it has been called,
was a necessarily vague faith that claimed Jesus and belief in God without too
many details or particulars, permitting it to be compatible with a culture that
subjugated women and people of color, while it happily blessed patriotism,
capitalism, consumerism, and war.
But
now, thanks to a changed world that no longer subsidizes and props up the
church, we’ve been freed from the constraints of that old civil religion and
its Faustian bargain with culture. We have been given the opportunity to
discover who we are on our own, no longer wedded to a culture that expects us
to water down and domesticate the gospel.
Such freedom has proved disorienting,
and many would love to go back. I’ve lost track of all the times retired
colleagues told me how glad they are not to be serving a church nowadays. No
doubt, things were easier, but I don’t want to go back. I want us to figure out
what it means to be Jesus’ church. Not an American church, not a white, middle-class
church, but a church that follows Jesus and calls all manner of people to the
new life he brings.
In a few moments, we will ordain and install
those elders and deacons Jesus calls to lead us. They will take their ordination
vows, answering nine separate questions which are arranged in order of
theological importance. The first, foundational question asks, “Do you trust in
Jesus Christ your Savior, acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the Church,
and through him believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?”
The
second asks, “Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be,
by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the
Church universal, and God’s word to you?” These two questions frame everything
that follows. Those called to lead the Church are to do so by going where Jesus
calls, a Jesus revealed by the Holy Spirit speaking through the witness of
Scripture. They are to be guided, not by what they want, or what the majority
wants. They are called to lead us in doing what Jesus wants.
We
are called to be the body of Christ, and that happens when we are a Spirit
filled community, when the Spirit opens us to the call of Jesus. Our Scripture
readings on this day of Pentecost echo a refrain that repeats over and over in
the New Testament. It is when we are in Christ, when the Spirit guides us and
lets us hear Jesus, that we become the Church.
The
collapse of Christendom has ushered in a freedom to be the Church that has not previously
existed in any of our lifetimes. That freedom is frightening and disorienting
because what church has been no longer works, and what we are called to be is
an uncertain journey into a dimly glimpsed future. But Jesus has always called
disciples to follow him toward a dimly seen future, toward the kingdom of God, God’s
coming new day seen in Jesus.
That
journey cannot happen without guidance from outside ourselves, without the
gifts and the animation of the Spirit. And over the last couple of years, I
have seen in our leaders an amazing attentiveness to the Spirit and to Jesus’
call. I’ve seen them make bold decisions I never anticipated when we first
began the Renew process.
And
so it is most appropriate that we ordain and install new elders and deacons on
this day. Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Spirit that propelled the
first disciples on their journey into the unknown. Without the Spirit’s
presence on those we ordain and install today, and on us as a congregation, the
ongoing work of the Renew process might well be just another institutional
exercise in rearranging deck chairs. But filled with the Spirit, led by the Spirit
to go where Jesus calls, we will be drawn more deeply into the grace,
wholeness, and renewal offered to us in Jesus. And we will reach out to gather
in others who are longing to experience grace, wholeness, and renewal as God’s
beloved.
[1]
Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1989), 15-16.
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