The Nicene Nature of the Church: Part I, The One Church
The Appomattox Court House Presbyterian Church Pulpit
Guest Minister: Rev. Robert P. Mills
The Lord's Day, April 30, 2006
Psalm 133:1-3
1 Corinthians 12:12-20
Less than a quarter century after Jesus' resurrection and ascension into heaven, only two or three years after Paul's founding visit, the church at Corinth was deeply divided. Responding to reports that the congregation he'd helped establish was at risk of being torn apart from within, the apostle Paul wrote the letter we now know as I Corinthians. In this letter, more than any of his others, Paul talks about the nature of the Church.
Fast forward nearly three hundred years. Christianity now has spread throughout the Roman Empire. For the last several decades, the church has suffered through intense persecution. Now, a new emperor has legalized the Christian faith. But there are serious divisions within congregations and among church leaders. Hoping to stabilize both church and state, the new Roman emperor, Constantine, summons church leaders to an ecumenical council. They gather at Nicea, where they address the most divisive theological issue of their era: Jesus' nature as fully human and fully God: God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.
Having expressed in the language of their day what the Bible reveals about Jesus' nature, the bishops also used contemporary terms to summarize biblical teachings about the nature of the Church. In what we now call the Nicene Creed, which we'll recite together following the sermon, these early Christian pastor-theologians recognized and confessed that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
Despite what some of today's critics of Christian orthodoxy mistakenly suggest, the Nicene Creed said nothing new about Jesus or the Church. It promoted no new doctrines, either in christology or in ecclesiology. Rather, the Nicene Creed consolidated and articulated in the language of its day key biblical teachings on foundational articles of Christian faith and life.
In this series of sermons, we'll explore the Nicene nature of the Church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. We'll look at these facets of the Church's nature through the lens of Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth.
This morning, we'll begin by noting several parallels between the church in ancient Corinth and churches in postmodern America. In the central portion of the sermon we'll explore Paul's image of the Church as one body with many members. Then we'll contrast Paul's teachings with two mistaken understandings of ecclesiastical unity before ending with a look at what it means to confess the oneness of the Church today.
May God guide our hearts and our minds and our lives as this morning we consider what it means to confess, with Paul and with Christians throughout the ages, that the Church is one.
The Church In Corinth
The city of Corinth, at the time of Paul's letter, was a vital, vibrant commercial center. Historically Greek in orientation and outlook, in Paul's day Corinth was a Roman colony. It's strategic location drew merchants and craftsmen from throughout the Roman Empire.
Those who came to Corinth brought their religions with them. The result was a level of religious diversity that far exceeds what most of us can even imagine. As one commentator colorfully observes, "St. Paul knew more about the theory and practice of a religiously and ideologically plural world than do all the seminary and religion faculties of California." [Robert W. Jenson, "The God Wars," Either/Or: The Gospel or Neopaganism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 25.]
Accompanying this aggressive religious pluralism was a distorted sense of personal morality. In fact, the ancient Greek author Aristophanes coined the verb korinthiazo, literally, "to act like a Corinthian." As your pastor noted in his sermon last Sunday, what this meant was "to engage in sexual immorality." [Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 2.] It was to Corinth, aptly described as "at once the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world" [Fee, Corinthians, p. 3.] that God led Paul to plant a Christian congregation.
Many specific problems festered after Paul left town. But (again as Cameron noted in his sermon last Sunday) underlying and percolating through them all were divisions in the congregation, a sense of factionalism, a reduction of the life of the church to politics based personal preferences and charismatic personalities. The result is deftly sketched by Anthony Thiselton, who writes:
"To the degree to which Corinthian Christians imbibed secular Corinthian culture with an emphasis on peer groups and local value systems, the church had indeed become embroiled in
a postmodern pragmatism of the market with its related devaluation of truth, tradition, rationality, and universals." [Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Raids: Eerdmans, 2000), p. 33.]
That's a mouthful, but it highlights an uncomfortable truth that will occupy us not only this morning but for the next three sermons in this series: the truth that the church in ancient Corinth has many parallels with many congregations in postmodern America. And although it would take more time than we have this morning to explore those parallels in detail, I do want to touch on three key similarities from Thiselton's description.
The Church Today
First, Thiselton notes, the "Corinthian Christians imbibed secular culture
and local value systems." A tragic number American Christians and congregations have done the same. And as with individuals and alcohol, the results of the imbibing vary widely.
Within the postmodern Protestant mainline - meaning Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans as well as Presbyterians - becoming intoxicated with secular culture has sometimes resulted in abandoning the Great Commission and reimagining the mission of the Church.
Some local and denominational leaders have exchanged going into all the world and making disciples for the socialist ideal of making everyone a servant of the state. Others actively advocate ignoring Jesus' insistence that he is the only way to the Father and embracing a vague religious pluralism, one that claims that all religions are equally valid paths to "God," whatever that word might mean. Whether these or other cultural courses are pursued, intoxicated efforts to replace God's revelation with local values and secular customs will always, always result in chaos in the Church.
Second, Thiselton says that the church in Corinth had "become embroiled in
a postmodern pragmatism of the market." Pragmatism is a danger to which postmodern evangelicals, especially those of my generation, the Baby Boomers, seem particularly prone.
We Boomers want to go with what works. We want to keep the Great Commission, after all, that's how we grow our market share. But we also want to keep it comfortable for ourselves and others. So evangelical pragmatists have replaced Bible studies with marriage seminars and expository sermons with pop psychology. And, like the ancient Corinthians, we too find our congregations divided because we have failed to keep the main thing the main thing.
Third, as a result of imbibing secular culture and embracing pragmatism, the Corinthian Christians had devalued "truth, tradition, rationality, and universals." I'd love to spend an afternoon with you detailing the damages done to today's congregations by their willing degradation of truth and tradition, rationality and universals. But I'll have to leave that list for your later consideration.
The solution to many of the self-inflicted problems facing congregations today is the same as the solution to the problems plaguing the first-century Corinthian Christians. Again quoting Thiselton, "the value system is corrected not by reformulating an ecclesial polity, but by placing the community as a whole under the criterion and identity of the cross of Christ." [Thiselton, p.33.]
To address the divisions threatening the Corinthian congregation, Paul did not suggest that they hold a meeting to revise their constitution. He didn't dictate a new process for picking next year's nominating committee. He didn't suggest restructuring boards and agencies to become more inclusive of competing ideologies.
Instead, Paul reminded the Corinthian Christians of who they were and whose they were. He reassured them that they were a community of the faithful who had been redeemed by the atoning work of Christ on the cross. He told them, one more time, what they had known as long as they had been believers: that the Church is the body of Christ.
The Church As The Body Of Christ
Paul describes the Church as the body of Christ more than 20 times in his letters. In his early letters, including I Corinthians and Romans, he most often uses this image to refer to a local congregation. In his later writings, notably Ephesians and Colossians, he regularly uses the term "the body" as an explicit description of the Church universal, the Church as it comprises all Christians at all times and in all places.
Here we'll consider three points Paul makes in our New Testament lesson for this morning, I Corinthians 12:12-20: first, that the Church is the body of Christ; second, that the body has many members; and third, that the body is one.
1. The Church is the body of Christ
"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" (I Cor. 12:12-13).
The image of the Church as one body draws together several strands of thought that would have been familiar to Paul's first readers.
First, the notion that the whole universe was a single cosmic body was common in Paul's day. The idea can be traced back to Plato. It was developed by Stoic philosophers, who taught that each element in the universe was part of the universe just as each member of the human body - the eye, the ear, the arm - is part of the one body.
Another common application of the image of the body was to the Greek city-state, part of Corinth's cultural heritage. In the city-state, the members of the community had responsibility for each other as individuals as well as for the body as a whole. So, no matter their religious or cultural background, every member of the Church in Corinth could relate to the image of the Church as the body of Christ.
Second, and more important to Paul than Greek philosophy, was the Old Testament concept of a "corporate personality." In Hebrew thought, the many members of a body could be included within the one who was their head. For example, all humanity could be thought of as having Adam as its head. Similarly, the nation of Israel could be described as having Abraham as its head. Drawing on this familiar Jewish concept in Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15, Paul uses the analogy of all people being "in Adam" by natural birth and all believers being "in Christ" as a result of having been born again.
Third, the idea of union between Christ and his people is rooted in Jesus' own teaching. In Matthew 25, Jesus' disciples asked, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?" He answered, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did to me" (Matt. 25:37, 40).
And, while talking with his disciples in Mark 9, Jesus "took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, 'Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me'" (Mark 9:36-37).
All whom Christ has called into relationship with him are one with him. Because you and I are one with Christ, we also are one with all who are one with him. The Church is the body of Christ. This leads to Paul's second point:
2. The body has many members
"For the body does not consist of one member but of many" (I Cor. 12:14).
As we all know from personal experience, our physical bodies have many different members: eyes, hands, feet; heart, lungs, liver; bones, muscles, skin. Each part of the body has its own unique function. If one member's function is flawed or fails, the whole body suffers.
To be sure, the functions of the members are diverse. For example, the bones and the heart play very different roles within the human body. But both are essential. And it's their contribution to the body, not their individual characteristics, that gives them their value.
Think about the bones and the heart. Bones not linked together are just a pile of oddly shaped calcium. Even properly connected, bones by themselves aren't a body; just a skeleton. Similarly, a heart without a circulatory system of arteries, vessels and capillaries is just a pump. In the Church as in a human body, individual members not properly related within a body are simply a collection of competing items, functions, and forces.
This leads to Paul's third observation:
3. The body is one
"As it is, there are many parts, yet one body" (I Cor. 12:20).
As John Leith acknowledges, the oneness of the Church "is easier to confess than conceptualize." That is, it's easier to say "I believe the Church is one" than it is to explain why and how that is so.
Leith continues, "The unity of the church is a mark of its existence, but it is a unity that is first of all established in the hearing of the word of God in faith and in obedience and in love.
Attempts to achieve unity on any basis other than hearing the word of God in Jesus Christ have led to disunity and to schism." [John Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 241.]
Leith's words offer you and me both comfort and challenge. The comfort is that the oneness of the Church is God's work not ours; the oneness of the Church is a fact here and now, not a future fantasy. Because the Church is the body of Christ and because Christ is not divided, you and I can take comfort in the fact the we are truly and eternally united with every other member of the body of Christ, no matter how deeply divided our congregations and denominations may appear. "There are many parts, yet one body."
The challenge is the reminder that we recognize the oneness of the Church only when we hear God's word in faith, obedience, and love. Only by devoting ourselves to learning, loving, and living out God's self-revelation can we avoid the temptation that troubles us as much today is it did the first-century Christians in Corinth, the temptation to ground the oneness of the Church in something or someone other than Jesus Christ.
Flawed Understandings Of Christian Unity
Unfortunately, this challenge has not always been met successfully. As a result, now circulating throughout our congregations and denominations are some notions of the oneness of the Church that are deeply flawed. Here we'll examine two of these misunderstandings.
1. The oneness of the Church is based on divergent beliefs about God
Several years ago, a group of Presbyterians formed an organization called "Unity in Diversity." Their guiding principle was that incompatible beliefs about Jesus, the Bible, and holy living are the foundation of our denomination's unity. At first glance, the assertion that mutually exclusive notions about the Christian faith is the basis of our unity seems kind of silly. On closer examination, it turns out to be utterly absurd.
This group turned Paul's teachings on the Church upside down. Paul begins with the recognition that the Church is one body, the body of Christ, then proceeds to observe that the body has many members. These members share the same beliefs but perform different functions.
In contrast, this Presbyterian group, and its ideological successors, begin with the untenable premise that Christian unity is the result of incompatible beliefs about God and his will for our lives. I've not heard much about "Unity in Diversity" in recent years, perhaps because they were building on the wrong foundation.
2. The oneness of the Church is all up to us
A second misbelief about Christian unity is that the oneness of the Church is ultimately a human achievement. For those of you who follow Presbyterian politics, this is the approach adopted by the current theological task force on the peace, unity and purity of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
In their preliminary report, specifically addressing the unity of the church, the task force pontificates, "Christians cannot even entertain the notion of severing their ties with sisters and brothers in Christ without also placing themselves in severe jeopardy of being severed from Christ himself." [The full text of the interim report is available online at http://www.pcusa.org/peaceunitypurity/resources/prelimreport.pdf.]
Taken at face value, and coming as it does in the middle of a report designed to be a litmus test of institutional loyalty, the task force boldly threatens that even to consider moving your membership from one humanly constructed ecclesiastical institution to another is to jeopardize your salvation; that even to think about changing churches is to risk spending all eternity separated from the love of the Triune God.
To put the threat in practical terms, the task force effectively argues that if a family from this congregation were to move to a town with no nearby PCUSA congregation and therefore join a Methodist or Baptist church, every member of that family, by the simple act of joining a non-Presbyterian congregation, would thereby put his or her salvation "in severe jeopardy" as the result of "severing their ties with sisters and brothers in Christ."
The arrogance of that assessment is astonishing. First of all, it's a works righteousness view of salvation, an unbiblical insistence that we, not God, are responsible for our own salvation. Moreover it assumes that the oneness of the Church is entirely the result of human effort, denying God any role in sustaining the body of Christ.
That's hardly what Scripture, the ecumenical creeds, and our denomination's own confessions teach about God's role in our salvation and the oneness of the Church.
The One Church
I want to conclude by considering the implications of the oneness of the Church for this congregation at this moment in its life. Please listen carefully to what I am saying, and even more carefully to what I'm not saying.
Because the oneness of the Church is a God-given reality, any apparent disunity is fundamentally a matter of perspective. To put it another way, divisions may take place within congregations or denominations without dividing the body of Christ. The Church, the body of Christ, is one. Nothing you or I can do can change that fact.
Individuals and families may transfer their membership from one congregation or denomination to another without destroying the oneness of the body of Christ or putting their own salvation at risk. Congregations may split right down the middle and split again without dividing the body of Christ. Denominations may be born, denominations may divide, denominations may even die, all without altering the fundamental reality recognized by Paul and the authors of the Nicene Creed: the Church is one.
Again, please hear what I am saying and especially what I'm not saying. I am not saying it's always a good thing when a congregation splits. I'm not saying this congregation should do so. I'm not saying it's an unalloyed good when new denominations are born or old ones die.
I am saying that when such things happen in the future as they've happened in the past, these divisions and deaths will have no impact on the oneness of the Church. None at all. I'm saying that because nothing we can do can change what God has done in making the Church one.
The Church is one. That is a crucial biblical truth for this congregation to remember. Hold onto all the teachings of the Bible with all the strength God has given you. Hold fast to the truths you have learned.
Don't be bullied or bamboozled by those with powerful-sounding titles or academic degrees who demand that you discard what Scripture and the creeds say about the Church. Don't exchange God's self-revelation for human misinformation. Don't confuse the Church either with bricks and mortar or with organizational flowcharts and institutional hierarchies.
Scripture is clear and consistent. There is one body (I Cor. 12; Rom. 12:3-8); there is one shepherd and one flock (John 10:16); there are no distinctions of race, social status, or sex (Gal. 3:27-28).
Perhaps the most emphatic passage on this point comes from Paul's letter to the Ephesians where he writes, "There is one body and one Spirit - just as you were called to one hope when you were called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Eph. 4:4-6 NIV).
The word Paul has for us today is the same word he had for the first century Corinthians: The Church is the body of Christ. The body has many members. The body is one.
May God grant us the faith and the courage to hold onto and live into these truths in the weeks and months ahead.
Amen
|
|
