James L. Price, Jr. - "The Recovery of the Church" (October 13, 1963)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(orchestral music) | 0:40 | |
Preacher | Oh God, in token of our recognition | 1:09 |
that we receive everything from thee, | 1:12 | |
and as a part of our dedication of self to thee, | 1:15 | |
we now present these offerings for thy use | 1:20 | |
and pray thy blessings upon them in the using | 1:23 | |
and upon us in the giving | 1:27 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen. | 1:29 | |
(mumbles) | 1:35 | |
Will you think with me about the church | 2:04 | |
and our relation to it? | 2:07 | |
If this question interests you at all, | 2:10 | |
you may wonder what it means. | 2:13 | |
Just to mention the church raises a bewildering variety | 2:16 | |
of images and responses among us. | 2:20 | |
Perhaps it is clear that the church | 2:25 | |
means something more than | 2:28 | |
the church downtown or in suburbia, | 2:31 | |
which may have our name on its roles, | 2:34 | |
but it is also clear that this something more is ambiguous. | 2:39 | |
Churches yes, we've firsthand knowledge of some of these, | 2:45 | |
but the church. | 2:52 | |
What on earth is that or more pointedly, | 2:54 | |
where on earth does one find it? | 2:58 | |
I must be allowed to back away from this latter question, | 3:03 | |
if by one means, whose church is the church? | 3:08 | |
But the former question is more promising, | 3:14 | |
the more promising of the two, | 3:17 | |
what essentially is the church | 3:20 | |
to which we can relate ourselves? | 3:23 | |
We shall need to answer this one, | 3:26 | |
at least in a tentative way | 3:29 | |
before we can take a single step together. | 3:32 | |
By the church, I mean that | 3:37 | |
visible community of persons were so ever found | 3:40 | |
confessing Jesus Christ to be Lord | 3:45 | |
under the glory of God, the father. | 3:48 | |
At the outset, | 3:52 | |
we would stress that the church is visible | 3:53 | |
in its contemporaneity. | 3:57 | |
Of course, we can speak of the church | 4:00 | |
as including all those generations of men | 4:01 | |
who have died in this faith, | 4:04 | |
and we can sing of mystical sweet communion | 4:07 | |
with those whose rest is one, | 4:11 | |
but we are not concerned with the invisible church. | 4:14 | |
In this sense, | 4:18 | |
for the living cannot relate themselves | 4:21 | |
in any responsible way to the dead, | 4:23 | |
but there is another reason for emphasizing | 4:28 | |
the visibility of the church. | 4:31 | |
We do not wish to refer | 4:34 | |
to some ideal church or of the church, | 4:36 | |
neither to some platonic essence, | 4:42 | |
nowhere visible or actual, | 4:45 | |
not to some indeterminate, indefinable number of saints | 4:48 | |
in the midst of sinners visible only to God. | 4:52 | |
The church is a concrete, not an abstract noun | 4:57 | |
referring to a community that is visible in history | 5:03 | |
at the present time. | 5:07 | |
Of course this church traces its lineage way back | 5:10 | |
to that particular community organized in Palestine, | 5:14 | |
the historical consequence | 5:19 | |
of Jesus' life, and death and resurrection. | 5:21 | |
But the church exists within history | 5:25 | |
as surely now as it did then, | 5:28 | |
wherever else, or whenever. | 5:32 | |
We may conceiver this existence. | 5:36 | |
Now the very fact that Jesus | 5:40 | |
is confessed to be the Lord of the church, | 5:42 | |
suggests something else essential to its character. | 5:45 | |
The church exists in response to his call, | 5:50 | |
the call of this man from Nazareth, | 5:54 | |
proclaiming the kingdom or the reign of God among men, | 5:57 | |
both as a present and as a future reality. | 6:02 | |
This Jesus left no book, no creed, | 6:07 | |
no chatter for organizing a society | 6:10 | |
and certainly not an institution, | 6:14 | |
but he deliberately called together a small group | 6:17 | |
of first of group. | 6:20 | |
He sent these persons forth to | 6:22 | |
witness to him into what he had done, | 6:25 | |
called on them to acknowledge his Lordship. | 6:28 | |
The common relation to Christ united these disciples, | 6:33 | |
a community in him existed | 6:38 | |
before they had attained full self understanding, | 6:41 | |
now found our group solidarity. | 6:46 | |
The church therefore was given in the fact of Christ | 6:50 | |
and his call. | 6:53 | |
This is why there has never survived | 6:55 | |
or any significant time, a churchless Christianity | 6:58 | |
consisting of some shifting consensus | 7:04 | |
of religious ideas or moral principles. | 7:07 | |
Now can we rightly conceive of the church | 7:12 | |
as the end product of the collective actions of men | 7:15 | |
voluntarily forming churches | 7:20 | |
later perhaps achieving a Federation of Churches, | 7:23 | |
and finally, in some conceivable time, | 7:27 | |
a super structure called the church. | 7:30 | |
Rather we confess the Christ convocation | 7:35 | |
brought into existence the congregation, | 7:39 | |
Ekklesia the church. | 7:43 | |
And the name became the proper designation | 7:45 | |
equally applicable to small groups of Christians | 7:49 | |
meeting in someone's home | 7:52 | |
as also for that totality of Christ confessors, | 7:55 | |
wheresoever they dispersed. | 7:59 | |
By such considerations as these | 8:02 | |
one is able to affirm the reality of the church | 8:04 | |
of Jesus Christ, | 8:07 | |
moreover to believe in its catholicity, | 8:09 | |
that is its unity and its universality. | 8:13 | |
Likewise one can believe that this church is holy, | 8:17 | |
certainly not because of the moral quality of its members, | 8:21 | |
but because of the churches calling | 8:26 | |
to proclaim the glory of God | 8:29 | |
in the gospel of Jesus Christ. | 8:32 | |
It is this church, which is precisely as visible among us | 8:35 | |
as any Christian man | 8:41 | |
for the actual church is given in the call of Christ to men | 8:44 | |
and in that faith response to him. | 8:49 | |
Now what may we say, | 8:53 | |
of the relation of modern men to this church? | 8:55 | |
It's obvious that there are many persons | 9:00 | |
attending public worship today, | 9:03 | |
ostensibly interested in Christianity, | 9:06 | |
who are indifferent to if not contemptuous of the church. | 9:09 | |
Of course there are many others | 9:16 | |
who seldom if ever enter the church buildings. | 9:19 | |
Some of these also are not unsympathetic to the convictions, | 9:23 | |
which distinguished their Christian friends. | 9:27 | |
I think especially of the sincere humanists | 9:31 | |
among the college educated in our community, | 9:34 | |
but among these, the church is often an offense. | 9:38 | |
The mention of the word brings a snare, | 9:43 | |
or evokes some surprisingly catty remark. | 9:46 | |
One easily learns the principle cause | 9:52 | |
for this contempt, this is gone, | 9:55 | |
which one encountered so frequently today. | 9:58 | |
It arises of course, from a very honest revulsion | 10:02 | |
against the evil in the church, | 10:06 | |
against the shame of organized Christianity. | 10:10 | |
Perhaps the disdain of some critics of the church | 10:16 | |
has in it elements of irrationality. | 10:19 | |
All churchmen of Todd with the same brush, | 10:22 | |
stereotypes abound of Methodist, Baptist, | 10:27 | |
cartoons of the minister persist, | 10:31 | |
church dogma is confused with dogmatism, | 10:35 | |
theologically illiterate men, otherwise educated, | 10:39 | |
mistake genuine Christian doctrines | 10:44 | |
for crude character tools | 10:47 | |
and then pontificate | 10:50 | |
as if they know what they're talking about. | 10:52 | |
But these reflections aside, | 10:56 | |
let us now acknowledge without any qualification, | 10:59 | |
without any reservation, | 11:02 | |
the existence of sin and corruption in the church. | 11:05 | |
In fact we must confess | 11:10 | |
that many of the churches critics | 11:12 | |
who are limited in their knowledge | 11:14 | |
are unaware of its actual sin and corruption. | 11:16 | |
There is no defense open to us by way of denial, | 11:21 | |
all attempts to abstract the congregation of the faithful | 11:26 | |
from the actual congregations which sicken the scornful | 11:31 | |
must be resisted. | 11:36 | |
To speak of the sinfulness of church members, | 11:38 | |
which somehow does not involve the church in sin | 11:41 | |
is nonsense, | 11:45 | |
if we affirm the visible historical character of the church. | 11:47 | |
The church then fails, has failed and is failing | 11:52 | |
in the failures of its members. | 11:57 | |
For all these critics, holy fail. | 12:02 | |
Do they realize that the church in its essential nature | 12:06 | |
must be a fellowship of sinners? | 12:10 | |
Do they really know that the gospel of Christ | 12:14 | |
offers men salvation by grace and not by works? | 12:17 | |
That repentant sinners receive forgiveness, | 12:23 | |
but never release from their sinful finitude? | 12:26 | |
It is easy for Christians to expect | 12:32 | |
too little of themselves, | 12:34 | |
but it's also easy for non-Christians to demand | 12:37 | |
too much of us, | 12:39 | |
indeed to demand the impossible. | 12:41 | |
To those who remain aloof from the church | 12:45 | |
because of its tragic failures, | 12:47 | |
our only plea can be, | 12:50 | |
join us in the effort to recover the glory of the church, | 12:53 | |
the glory that may be hidden in this shame. | 12:57 | |
Do not condemn us from the outside, | 13:02 | |
valuable as such exposures may be, | 13:05 | |
but criticism from within maybe more constructive | 13:09 | |
and possibly corrective. | 13:13 | |
Well not the very fact that you are sensitive | 13:16 | |
to the failures of the church, | 13:19 | |
helping overcoming its Pharisaical moralism, | 13:21 | |
its parochial horizons | 13:24 | |
in clarifying the essential Christian doctrines. | 13:27 | |
Your critical thought can help us | 13:32 | |
in purifying the worship of the church, | 13:35 | |
your own self dedication can lead the way. | 13:38 | |
Become comrades with us in Christianizing the church. | 13:42 | |
And we must also say to these non-Christians | 13:48 | |
by dwelling upon the sins of the church, | 13:53 | |
by being rightly suspicious of it's often covert corruption, | 13:57 | |
you may be blind to the fact | 14:02 | |
that the of the raison d'être church | 14:04 | |
is the proclamation of the gospel of Christ. | 14:07 | |
The sinful responses, which its members give to this gospel, | 14:11 | |
that infidelities to Christ, | 14:16 | |
comprised with one dimension of the church's existence. | 14:19 | |
The twin aspect of this congregation | 14:24 | |
is Christ convocation. | 14:28 | |
The church falters and fails, | 14:31 | |
we cannot deny it, | 14:34 | |
but it still ever reaches forward in its faith, | 14:36 | |
it's hope and it's love towards it's savior. | 14:39 | |
Acutely aware of its need | 14:44 | |
it knows that it must depend upon God's grace | 14:47 | |
and forgiveness every moment of life. | 14:49 | |
That it must submit to a common judgment, | 14:54 | |
pray for his transforming spirit | 14:57 | |
for the coming of his kingdom. | 15:00 | |
We must also appealed to these non-Christians, | 15:03 | |
join with us in order to receive as well as to give, | 15:07 | |
to learn of Christ as well as to instruct his brethren, | 15:13 | |
to be judged as well as to judge, | 15:18 | |
and so to confess your own sins, | 15:22 | |
but also to be transformed | 15:26 | |
by the saving power of his gospel, | 15:28 | |
by whose judgments the church must ever | 15:31 | |
and ever again be reformed. | 15:34 | |
The church is indeed the community of sinners, | 15:38 | |
which you see and declaw, | 15:41 | |
but it is also the community over which Christ | 15:44 | |
would exercise his Lordship. | 15:47 | |
Christ is the glory of the church, | 15:50 | |
and in him there is our hope. | 15:54 | |
But now what of us who call ourselves Christian? | 15:59 | |
How do we conceive our relation to the church? | 16:04 | |
Are we not within it irrevocably? | 16:09 | |
As we confess Christ as Lord, | 16:15 | |
there is much in the life of a university, | 16:19 | |
which effectively obscures this truth from us. | 16:21 | |
As students, we tend to think of the church | 16:26 | |
only as that local institution back home, or off campus, | 16:30 | |
who's inhibiting influences, we would like to slough off. | 16:35 | |
One grows accustomed to the idea that in a university | 16:40 | |
one becomes an individual | 16:46 | |
emancipated from one's heritage | 16:49 | |
and from the institutions which have formed | 16:52 | |
and previously shaped one's life.` | 16:54 | |
Here one wishes to become a free man, | 16:58 | |
a solitary soul, | 17:02 | |
a lovely critic and eclectic, | 17:04 | |
creating one's own private culture | 17:09 | |
by choosing what he likes from all cultures | 17:12 | |
within this frame of mind and mood, | 17:17 | |
the critics of the church have a field day. | 17:21 | |
It's something of a paradox | 17:25 | |
that while we aim to be independently objective | 17:27 | |
in viewing all social institutions, | 17:30 | |
we listen quite uncritically | 17:33 | |
and with a kind of raw amusement to the debunkers, | 17:37 | |
exposing the shame and the sham of the church. | 17:42 | |
We somehow imagine, | 17:47 | |
that we too stand over against the church, | 17:49 | |
that we too can fix the blame, | 17:55 | |
here or there | 17:58 | |
on anybody else but ourselves | 18:01 | |
or perhaps we all finding here, | 18:06 | |
the old concept of the invisible church useful. | 18:08 | |
The church becomes in effect our church | 18:13 | |
containing those people whom we, | 18:17 | |
at our present stage of enlightenment and detachment | 18:20 | |
would regard as all fit associates. | 18:24 | |
Christians can easily fall into these illusions | 18:28 | |
while in college. | 18:31 | |
I know from my own experience as a student and as a teacher. | 18:33 | |
But we must have faced up to illusion | 18:39 | |
and the sooner the better for us. | 18:42 | |
If we wish to be free men, | 18:46 | |
christian individualist, | 18:49 | |
the old and the new, church or group, | 18:52 | |
let us consider this fact about our existence. | 18:56 | |
There is no private relation to Jesus Christ, | 19:00 | |
to confess him is to be in his church. | 19:05 | |
To be sure each of us has to face from time to time, | 19:10 | |
the necessity of those personal decisions concerning him, | 19:13 | |
but his gospel comes to us in the witness of the church | 19:18 | |
and our faith must be confessed in its fellowship | 19:23 | |
and nurtured via. | 19:27 | |
According to the new Testament, | 19:30 | |
a Christian's existence is always a membership | 19:31 | |
in a family, | 19:35 | |
a household, | 19:37 | |
a colony, | 19:39 | |
a flock, | 19:40 | |
a chosen nation, | 19:42 | |
a race, | 19:43 | |
but never is it pictured of a life of detachment, | 19:45 | |
especially not where the heir is the Apostle's image | 19:51 | |
of the body of Christ, | 19:55 | |
bringing to our imaginations | 19:57 | |
such changing pictures of the church | 19:59 | |
as that place in which God's redemption of men | 20:02 | |
is wrought in Christ | 20:07 | |
as that realm in which his promise of eternal life is given | 20:09 | |
and received. | 20:14 | |
It is this image which reveals our interdependence upon | 20:17 | |
the one body that was broken | 20:22 | |
and the one food that nourishes our faith and hope, | 20:25 | |
as well as that independence, interdependence, | 20:29 | |
which all the gifts of the holy spirit inevitably establish. | 20:34 | |
If the institutional church repels you | 20:41 | |
and you imagine yourself belonging to some ideal church, | 20:45 | |
but to no specific church | 20:50 | |
ponder these incisive words of call bond. | 20:53 | |
According to the new Testament, | 20:59 | |
to believe in the church is to belong to one | 21:02 | |
and within it to confess the church universal | 21:07 | |
from then on one may be able to see what is good | 21:12 | |
in other churches. | 21:16 | |
What in them is faithful to the word of God | 21:18 | |
and learn from them and maybe transfer to another church. | 21:20 | |
But the important thing is never to separate the church | 21:27 | |
from the visible church. | 21:32 | |
Let us not hover over the clouds over every church, | 21:35 | |
identifying our lives with no church. | 21:40 | |
Concretely to believe in the church | 21:45 | |
is to accept concretely to live within a church. | 21:49 | |
Let us consider seriously then | 21:57 | |
our need as Christians for the supports afforded | 21:59 | |
by some particular company of | 22:03 | |
believing sinners like ourselves. | 22:05 | |
However in conclusion, let us not dwell upon our needs | 22:11 | |
to a participating in the life of a church, | 22:16 | |
and so to express our faith in the church, | 22:19 | |
but let us think for a moment of the needs of the church, | 22:24 | |
which we are called to serve | 22:28 | |
and which for the present we may be ignoring. | 22:31 | |
We following the way of one, | 22:36 | |
we must constantly remind ourselves | 22:38 | |
who came not so much to be served as to serve | 22:41 | |
in the way of the son of man | 22:47 | |
who plowed his life into his community | 22:49 | |
and gave it as a ransom price for many. | 22:53 | |
There is a sickness in the church today, | 22:57 | |
but I cannot believe it is a sickness unto death. | 23:01 | |
There are in fact many hopeful signs of recovery, | 23:06 | |
but we all blind to them or perhaps indifferent to them. | 23:10 | |
Christians all over the world | 23:15 | |
are reaching out to each other, | 23:17 | |
expressing shame and guilt over the brokenness, | 23:19 | |
the effectiveness of the church, | 23:22 | |
long praying, striving for the reunion of all churches, | 23:25 | |
not the achievement mind you, | 23:32 | |
but the realization of that unity which is ours in Christ. | 23:34 | |
When the Pope following his predecessor explicitly states | 23:40 | |
that it is the purpose of the ecumenical council, | 23:46 | |
now in session | 23:48 | |
to reform the Roman church | 23:50 | |
in order to carry out prerequisites | 23:53 | |
for the reunion of the church. | 23:55 | |
When he speaks of Protestants as separated brethren | 23:58 | |
and not as systematics and heretics, | 24:02 | |
there are indeed bright signals of hope, | 24:06 | |
but what of the churches we represent? | 24:10 | |
Are there signs within them of self-criticism, | 24:14 | |
honest hard self-criticism? | 24:19 | |
Signs of reformation, renewal, | 24:23 | |
fortunately some signs, | 24:27 | |
but signs that are needed to be strengthened and extended. | 24:30 | |
And the question presses in upon us, | 24:34 | |
are we helping with the solution | 24:38 | |
or becoming part of the problem? | 24:41 | |
Are we enabling men to see the glory? | 24:45 | |
The hidden glory, | 24:50 | |
as well as the shame of the church. | 24:53 | |
The recovery of the church is not a task | 24:57 | |
to be accomplished by ecclesiastical troubleshooters, | 24:59 | |
or reunion negotiators, | 25:03 | |
perhaps least of all by these. | 25:06 | |
It is an imperative facing each one of us, | 25:10 | |
every 20th century Christian, | 25:14 | |
the divisions among us | 25:18 | |
and our content to remain entrenched in them, | 25:20 | |
our halfhearted loyalties to the churches, | 25:24 | |
to which we have nominal attachment. | 25:27 | |
These things are a scandal to the world. | 25:31 | |
Men are exonerated to a degree | 25:34 | |
from even given heed to the call of Christ because of this. | 25:37 | |
Nothing less than his mission to the world is at stake. | 25:43 | |
To stand aloof from the physical church | 25:49 | |
is effectively to deny our Lord. | 25:53 | |
But to lose ourselves in the life and work of the body, | 25:58 | |
his body which is the church | 26:04 | |
is to enable others and ourselves | 26:07 | |
to find new life in him. | 26:12 | |
Let us pray. | 26:17 | |
Oh God, father of our Lord Jesus Christ | 26:26 | |
revive thy holy Catholic church | 26:33 | |
beginning with me. | 26:38 | |
The grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, | 26:44 | |
the love of God, | 26:46 | |
fellowship of his holy spirit be with us | 26:48 | |
and all of God's people everywhere this day and always, | 26:52 | |
Amen. | 26:58 | |
(orchestral music) | 27:04 |