Christ United Presbyterian Church
February 9, 2014
Sermon: “Not to Abolish, But to Fulfill”
A
Teaching
Matthew 5:13-20
“17‘Do not think that I have come to
abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to
fulfill. 18For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass
away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law
until all is accomplished.”
Some people call our
denomination “too liberal.” I’m not sure
I know what that expression means. On
the other hand, I don’t know how many of you know what this church
believes. Some people may have an “anything goes” attitude about our church,
and it may surprise some of you to learn that we have some very clear
statements about who we are and what we believe.
To be a member of our church
requires four things of you:
1.
a profession of
faith in Christ;
2.
baptism;
3.
voluntary
submission to the government of this church [that means both the congregation
and the denomination];
4.
participation in
the church’s work and worship.
“Participation.” Interesting word. The responsibilities of membership in this
church don’t end when you become a member.
They are just beginning. They
include but aren’t limited to:
1.
proclaiming the good news in word and deed,
2.
lifting one another up in prayer, mutual concern, and active
support,
3.
studying Scripture and the issues of Christian faith and
life,
4.
supporting the ministry of the church through the giving of
money, time, and talents,
5.
demonstrating a new quality of life within and through the
church,
6.
living responsibly in the personal, family, vocational,
political, cultural, and social relationships of life,
7.
working in the world for peace, justice, freedom, and human
fulfillment, and
8.
considering ways in which one’s participation in the worship
and service of the church may be increased and made more meaningful.
That’s
not all of them; just some of them. By
now you may be asking yourself “Where is he getting this stuff from?” Or
perhaps: “What kind of sermon is this?”
This
“stuff” comes from the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA). This past week I began a new confirmation
class, and every time I do that I realize that a great many of us don’t really
know what it means to be a member of this church. So I thought I’d talk a little about that this
morning. Some of you may not like what
you hear! Hopefully more of you will
feel pride in the realization of who we are and what we believe.
We
are a church that states our beliefs in statements known as confessions or
creeds. We have a Book of Confessions
containing 11 statements of faith spanning the 21 century history of
Christianity. Why do we have 11
statements? Wouldn’t just one suffice.
Maybe. But through them we place ourselves firmly in the 2100 years of the
Christian faith and tradition. Each was written by people living in particular
circumstances, and sometimes the statements reflect the social and political
biases of their time. All of them are
the result of prayer and deep reflection seeking to proclaim the universal
truth of the Gospel in their particular time and place. They affirm a shared faith tradition and they
are always subject to the authority of Jesus Christ “as the scriptures bear
witness to Him.”
All of them affirm the
mystery of the Holy Trinity and the incarnation of God’s Word in the person of
Jesus Christ. All of them affirm the
power of God’s grace, the power of our faith, and the authority of scripture as
our final arbiter as revealed to us in the traditionally accepted and adopted
books of the Old and New Testament.
Many critics of our church
say that we have turned away from the authority of scripture. Clearly that is not the case. And so there is no concern that I’m coloring
the level of authority which we grant to Scripture, let me read a direct quote
from the Confession of 1967:
“The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ,
the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and
authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and
obeyed as the word of God written. The Scriptures are not a witness among
others, but the witness without parallel.
The church has received the books of the Old and New
Testaments as prophetic and apostolic testimony in which it hears the word of
God and by which its faith and obedience are nourished and regulated.
The New Testament is the recorded testimony of
apostles to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and the sending of
the Holy Spirit to the Church. The Old Testament bears witness to God’s
faithfulness in his covenant with Israel and points the way to the fulfillment
of his purpose in Christ. The Old Testament is indispensable to understanding
the New, and is not itself fully understood without the New.”
“God’s word is spoken to his church today where the
Scriptures are faithfully preached and attentively read in
dependence on the illumination of the Holy Spirit and
with readiness to receive their truth and direction.”
When Jesus speaks of
fulfilling the law and the prophets he is referring to the Hebrew Scriptures
that we call the Old Testament. That’s
an unfortunate turn of phrase because some people equate “old” with “out-dated”
or even “irrelevant,” but Christ Himself tells us of the eternal nature of
those Scriptures and that we must
understand Him in light of God’s revealed laws and prophecies from the Hebrew
Scripture.
We don’t claim to fully
understand Scripture. We acknowledge our need to study and reflect on Scripture
so that we may always seek out God’s truth for our lives.
The Confession of 1967 also
contains one of the most misunderstood and controversial statements of how we
try to understand Scripture. It says:
“The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its
witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ.”
As people who are products of
the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, we “interpret” everything that we
read and hear through minds that have been shaped by learning, culture,
politics and history. That’s not some
far out liberal statement. It’s a simple
statement of fact. It’s an acknowledgment
that we are human, relatively incapable of separating our perceptions from the
world that has shaped them. The Creed
concludes that paragraph by stating this commitment:
“As God has spoken his word in diverse cultural
situations, the church is confident that he will continue to speak through the
Scriptures in a changing world and in every form of human culture.”
We worship and glorify a
living God, One who has never left us, and we believe that the Word of God as
revealed in the Scriptures are fully relevant to us today. We seek the truth of Scripture recognizing
that many human hands that been involved in passing it on to us. We try to understand the vision of those who
have passed it on not so that we can discredit the authenticity or the authority
of Scripture but so that we can better understand what Word God is speaking to
us today through the pages of Scripture. We believe:
“The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the
witness without parallel.”
Taking quite seriously the
words of Jesus, we continue to search and ponder the words of all of our
Scripture.
“18For truly I tell you, until heaven and
earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass
from the law until all is accomplished.”
We are not a “too liberal”
denomination. We are not an “anything
goes” church. We are a church that
proclaims the authority of Scripture, the glory of God and the grace, love and
mercy shown to us through the life, the love and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
the Word of God incarnate. And we are a
church that proclaims loudly and for all to hear what we believe. There are words that summarize the hope of
our faith, but we must always remember that behind that hope are very clear
statements of all that we are and believe as Presbyterians.
The last and most recent
confessional statement in our Book of Confessions is called “A Brief Statement
of Faith.” It summarizes the hope of our
faith in these words:
“Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child,
like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still.
With believers in every time and place, we rejoice
that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord.”
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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