Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Lent -- It's to die for!

Lent – “It’s to die for!”
Usually I hear that phrase “It’s to die for!” in connection with obscenely delicious chocolate or some other mouth-watering culinary creation.  Sometimes, usually late at night, I forage around in the refrigerator for just such a bite.  But as we enter into this season of Lent on March 9th, we truly are entering into a season “to die for.”

To die for what?  you might wonder.  What’s all this death business about anyway? 

Traditionally, the period of Lent served as the time for people to prepare to be baptized.  After seven weeks of study and prayer, on Easter Sunday, they died to their old selves as they were immersed in the baptismal waters.  And then they were born anew through Christ’s resurrection as they emerged from the waters.  As our Book of Order puts it,

In Baptism, we participate in Jesus’ death and resurrection. In Baptism, we die to what separates us from God and are raised to newness of life in Christ.

Which leads me to the question – what do you need to die to in your life?  What aspects of your life do you need to shed, to lose so that you can more fully embrace the Christian life? 

This dying isn’t necessarily a one-time thing. As the Apostle Paul exclaimed, “I die everyday!” (1 Cor. 15:31).  

Thinking back to chocolate and my refrigerator, Lent is a time of special meals.  We will begin our Lenten observance somewhat differently this year as a congregation.  We will gather on Ash Wednesday, on March 9th at 6:00 p.m. for a simple (yet delicious!) meal of soup, salad and sandwiches in Fellowship Hall.  After we break bread together, we will head up into the sanctuary for our Ash Wednesday service – a service in which ashes will be etched on our foreheads as a reminder of our own mortality and our need to die to this world as we look forward to embracing the hope and new light of resurrection.

Six weeks later, we’ll come together on Maundy Thursday for another meal as we remember the Last Supper and our Lord’s washing of the disciples’ feet.  After that meal, we will again head upstairs for our Tenebrae service in which we witness to the death of our Lord on the cross.

And then on Easter Sunday, we will share in an Easter breakfast which will be followed by a service of joy as we celebrate the new life of Christ in resurrection – and our new life as well. 

All these meals will be tasty. The fellowship will be warm.   The services will be moving. But above all, I know that we have a Savior who is just to die for. 

 Peace and grace,
 Pastor Pat

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Sermon Series on the Lord's Prayer

Have you ever had the experience of driving down the same road so often that you get to a point where you don’t notice your surroundings?  I think this may be the case with the Lord’s Prayer.  We say it so often that we’re often on “auto pilot” as we go through the verses.   Zoom, we cruise past “thy kingdom come” and “give us this day our daily bread,” and we hardly take in the words that pass through our lips.  What did we just pray about?
From January 23rd thru March 6th

I will be sharing a sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer
during worship at BRPC.   I invite you to take part in this special series either in person or thru video (see links on our “worship” page).   Each Sunday we’ll also feature a special skit in which God makes an appearance!   Catch these videos as they catch us praying the Lord’s Prayer at home, over meals, behind the wheel, at work and at a party! 
 As we move thru these six weeks, I want to encourage you to spend time meditating on the Lord’s Prayer.   You may use it as a personal devotion, as your grace before meals, or any other way that is meaningful to you.   As you do, I pray that you will experience anew the depth, scope and richness of God’s grace which is conveyed thru the prayer.
Here is the schedule of the sermon series:
Jan. 30:     Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy Name
Feb. 6th:    Thy Kingdom Come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven
Feb. 13th:  Give us this day our daily bread
Feb. 20th:  Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
Feb. 27:    And Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
March 6th:  For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever.   Amen
Peace and grace!
Pastor Pat

A Valentine's Day Question

Happy Valentine's Day! (+1!)   I've been doing a survey to find the most loved scripture about LOVE!  If you haven't had a chance to respond, click on the link below and make your choices.  You're limited to ONLY 5!  Peace and grace!  Pastor Pat

(Results to come in this space!)

1. Being a Presbyterian -- What's in a Denomination Anyway?

          
     You’re walking along in the supermarket.  You pass the aisles with pasta, soups, frozen foods, washing machine detergent and fabric softener – until you reach that section of personal care products, and toothpaste in particular.   You see Colgate, Crest, Arm & Hammer, Aquafresh and other brands.   My sense is that when it comes to toothpaste, most folks pick one brand and stick with it. 
            We often do the same thing when it comes to buying cars, shopping at a pharmacy or supermarket, or picking a sports team to follow.  And before the explosion of cable news and the internet, people usually had their own preference of network news anchors – you either watched Dan, Tom or Peter.

          And then we have religious denominations. In the latest edition of the Handbook of Denominations in the United States, there are 203 individual Christian denominations listed.  These include 31 types of Baptists, 12 groups of Methodists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Catholics,  and 9 different Presbyterian denominations of which the Presbyterian Church U.S. A. is the largest.

            It used to be that once people picked a denomination, they stayed there.  But folks are increasingly mobile these days in terms of which church they attend.

            I don’t know if everyone in church here today considers themselves Presbyterian.  We may have some visitors who have another denominational background or have no particular church tie at this time and are exploring faith traditions.

            Those who consider themselves Presbyterian may have come to the denomination by a number of different routes.  For many of our youth, and adult members too, we may be Presbyterian simply because our parents were Presbyterian.  It’s what we grew up with.

            Some of us may be Presbyterian because we live close to the church.  It just makes sense to go to Blue Ridge because it’s just a few blocks away.

            Others may have joined our church and become Presbyterian because when they visited one day, they were so struck by the warmth and friendliness that they decided Blue Ridge would be their church home – and well, if that meant being Presbyterian, then that was just fine.

            Still others may be Presbyterian because they have a good friend, significant other or spouse who is Presbyterian.  So they have become Presbyterian because of that relationship.               

And finally, there are those who are Presbyterian because they embrace the beliefs and ways that Presbyterians do things.  They joined Blue Ridge because they were intentional about wanting to be a part of a Presbyterian community.

            We have just begun our year-long commemoration of Blue Ridge’s 60th anniversary in this place.   Celebrating this event made me wonder if we fully appreciate the meaning of being Presbyterian.  I also was drawn to this question because when I surveyed the congregation back in August about what you hoped to hear addressed in sermons, many raised questions about our Presbyterian heritage.  And so beginning this Sunday, we are embarking on a seven week sermon series on What it means to be Presbyterian.  

My first question, and the topic for us today is the very basic question of “What’s in a denomination anyway?”   

To get a handle on this, we need to take a look at how Presbyterians got started.  We’re going to address this much more next week, but I want to give you the cliff notes version this week.

            As Becky’s youth message pointed out, there were no denominations in the first thousand years of the church.   There was just one church.   It wasn’t until the year 1054 when there was the Great Schism – when the church split between the Greek speaking Eastern Orthodox and the Latin speaking west.  That split was triggered by a disagreement over the understanding of the Trinity and left us with a western church based in Rome and the Eastern church based in then Constantinople. 

            Our heritage as Presbyterians follows the western church.   Things ran along for another 500 years until Luther sparked the Reformation in 1517 by posting those 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenbery Germany.    The rallying cry of the Reformation was “sola scriptura” – only scripture.
    
Luther and his followers were concerned with certain practices by the Catholic Church of the time.  Luther sought to eliminate any practices of the Catholic Church which the Bible condemned.  

Calvin followed Luther and he and others went a step further.  They sought to reform the church by eliminating all practices that the Bible didn’t require.   So if it wasn’t in the Bible, it shouldn’t be a practice of the church.   Queen Elizabeth of England referred to the churches under Calvin and others as “The churches more reformed.”  And so Calvin and the followers were dubbed “Reformed.”   

As Calvin sought to organize the church on Biblical witness, he looked to passages such as Acts 14, where we read “After they -- the Apostles -- had appointed the elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe.”   

Rather than creating a hierarchical system of church government as in the Catholic church – which Calvin didn’t see in scripture – he based the church structure on a representative form of government in which the people of the church elected elders – teaching elders, which are ministers of the Word and Sacrament, and ruling elders, which are the elders that comprise our session.  The Greek word for elder is “presbuteros” from which we derive the word Presbyter.  So while Calvin is known for being Reformed in his theology, the system of  church government that he developed became know as Presbyterian.

As the reformation spread to Britain, there was a conflict between England and Scotland.  The Church of England decided to keep an episcopal form of government with bishops, but the Church of Scotland, following the reformers, adopted this new “Presbyterian” form of government.   When members of the Church of Scotland emigrated to the United States, they were just referred to as Presbyterians.

So what’s in a denomination anyway?  For us as Presbyterians, it’s two key things:

            First, our denomination guides us in our beliefs as Christians.  As Presbyterians, we worship the Triune God and celebrate the Lordship of Jesus Christ as we read in Colossians. 

“He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

We rely first on the Bible and second on our Book of Confessions.  And as Presbyterians, we place special emphasis on the following:

·        The sovereignty of God
·        The authority of Scripture
·        The grace of God
·        The fact that we are elected, or chosen by God
·        The Priesthood of all Believers
·        The reality of sin in our lives
·        The call for obedience to God

We will explore all of these beliefs in the weeks to come and see how they shape our faith.

The second thing our denomination does is guide us in how we operate – how we make decisions and otherwise live together.   We follow a representative form of government in which we trust groups of people to make decisions instead of single individuals.  This is represented by the session in the local church, then the Presbytery at the next level, then the synod, and then the General Assembly at the national level of our church.
 One way to think of our denomination is as if it’s a tour bus company.  Our faith is like a journey that we take.  We all have the same goal, the same destination.  We could try to get there on our own, but we’re called to live in community and to travel together.  As we go, we have a guide, but we are also guided by one another.  And along the way, we’ll learn and share with each other, comfort and encourage each other,  as together we follow Jesus Christ. 

Over the next six weeks, our bus will make several stops.  Next Sunday, week 2, we’ll travel further into the Reformation.  We’ll find that what really ignited Martin Luther wasn’t just the corruption in the Catholic church, but something far more serious which we still confront today.

In week 3, we’ll delve into what the Bible means to Presbyterians.  How do we undersatnd the Bible and interpret it – especially when it seems to say conflicting things?

 As your bus driver, I’ll update you on our route as we continue along.  My prayer is that whether you’ve been a Presbyterian for a month or a lifetime, this journey over the next six weeks will strengthen your faith and give you a greater undersatnding of what we do in worship and in all other aspects of our life together.  

“Have you not know, have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.”    Through this gift of our denomination, let us discover anew our gracious, almighty God.
    

2. Being Presbyterian -- Reformation Roots

          It’s 2 o’clock in the morning sometime in the year 1517 and Martin Luther’s stomach was eating him alive.    He had just gotten up – at 2 a.m. -- to BEGIN his prayer regimen for the day, and he was gripped with intense anxiety because he didn’t know if he was going to heaven or hell.  

Luther’s father had wanted his son to study law but Luther was so obsessed with this feeling of spiritual limbo that he decided to enter the monastery and become a monk.   Maybe this would ease his mind.
Luther’s predicament wasn’t unusual in the early 1500s.  This anxiety about one’s fate was widespread in Europe.   And the key source of this anxiety was the  Roman Catholic Church which had embraced the message in Ecclesiastes 9:1:  “No one knows whether he is worthy of God’s love or hate.”   So the church taught that people needed to “do their best” to become holy, but the question was, who knew if their best was enough?
Dietrich Kolde wrote Mirror of a Christian Man  in 1470.  It was the most popular Catholic catechism of the day.    Kolde wrote about the people’s lack of certitude about salvation.  “There are three things I know to be true that frequently make my heart heavy.  The first troubles my spirit, because I will have to die.  The second troubles my heart more, because I do not know when.  The third troubles me above all.  I do not know where I will go.” 
The church began selling “indulgences” – payments which supposedly helped people account for their sins and become more holy and worthy of salvation.  One Catholic Priest named Tetzel was particularly prominent in carrying this out.   He preached in town squares and cathedrals, regularly saying “Do you not hear the voices of your dead parents and other people, screaming and saying ‘Have pity on me . . . We are suffering severe punishments and pain, from which you could rescue us with a few alms, if only you would.”   And he used a jingle:   “As soon as the coin into the box rings, a soul from purgatory to heaven springs.” 
So people would purchase these indulgences, or another option was to buy relics.  Frederick the Wise of Wittenberg amassed and displayed a collection of 19,000 relics including:
·        A piece of the burning bush
·        Milk from Mary
·        Piece of Jesus’ crib – all acquired at great cost.
·        The relics were worth 1,900,000 days of indulgences.   
Before I continue, I want to pause to say a word about our Catholic friends.  There’s no question that the Catholic church was mired in deep corruption in the 16th century.  And there remain significant differences in our theology and practice today.  But I want to just note that when we speak of the Reformation, we really need to speak of reformations,  plural.  Because while the protestants sought renewal – so too did Catholics.  And those Catholic movements had a great impact on refocusing the church away from the abuses of the 16th century.
That said, the days of corruption was the environment in which Luther began his study of theology.   But Luther was not driven per se by the corruption of the Catholic Church.  He was not a part of some Consumer Protection Agency or citizen watchdog group against ecclesial abuse.

No, Luther was gripped by this basic theological question:  How can I know, if my salvation depends significantly on what I do,  whether I’m saved or damned?  And that is the question that triggered the Reformation.   As Luther wrote, “I tortured myself with prayers, fasting,  vigils, and freezing;  the frost alone might have killed me.” 

And then, Luther read Romans 1:17.      For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”  

This verse, for Luther, was a revelation as to the nature of God and God’s approach to salvation.  Salvation didn’t rest in what we did, but rather in God’s grace.

For me a more straight forward rendering of this point is found in Paul’s letter Ephesians 2:8  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

In the words the Reformation historian Carl Lindberg, “Luther’s conversion experience set medieval piety on its head.  He came to see that salvation is no longer the goal of life but rather its foundation.”

            Now Jesus told a number of parables that highlight the grace of God.  One is the prodigal son in which God unconditionally welcomes home the one who had gone and spent the family inheritance.   

In a second parable, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who hires people to work in his fields.  It’s as if someone in Blue Springs drove their pick up to the old Shell station on 63rd street in Raytown where folks looking for day labor would congregate.  And the owner says:  Look, if you go work in my fields for the day, I’ll give you $100.  And the laborers agree to go.    

At noon the landowner needed more laborers and went and hired them.  Then at 3:00 p.m. he needed yet more and so hired more.  And finally at 5:00 p.m. he needed more and hired still more.  Then it came time to pay the workers.   The landowner paid those who started at 5 p.m. the SAME  $100 and then he paid the workers who started at 3 and noon.  When it came the turn for those who started at 8 a.m., they were full of anticipation, thinking they would certainly receive more than the originally agreed $100.   But when they received $100 also, they were enraged.  How is it that those who started at 5 p.m. were paid the same as us?  It wasn’t fair. 

WE wouldn’t operate that way.  But God’s ways are not our ways.  God doesn’t dispense grace according to what WE do.  It’s not based upon our merit.   It is only granted by God in God’s loving freedom.

 John Calvin was another giant from the Reformation – and is particularly embraced by the Presbyterian tradition.  He was only 8 years old when Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg – so Calvin was a 2nd generation reformer.   
Calvin, generally speaking, made two big marks on the Reformation.  While he didn’t do the original thinking like Luther, Calvin took all the main strands of reformed theology and organized them in what remains arguably  the most significant writing of the Reformation --  “The Institutes of Christian Religion.”  He first published the Institutes when he was 26, but he would rework and expand them across his lifetime.  Calvin’s second main contribution was to implement many of the Reformation ideas in the city of Geneva Switzerland.

In his “Institutes of Christian Religion,” Calvin affirmed justification by grace through faith.   Related to this, Calvin went on to write about another doctrine which if you’re Presbyterian, people will often ask you about.   And that is . . . , right, Predestination.  

In writing about Predestination Calvin was addressing that theological uncertainty and anxiety that Luther faced.   And depending on where you lived, people who followed Reformed ideas faced persecution.    So Calvin meant to assure people by this doctrine of predestination. 

At its basic level, Predestination, which is also known as “election,”  means that before we do anything,  God knows us, God saves us, and God calls us to service.    The Bible is full of stories of God choosing people, from Abraham to the people of Israel.  And in John 15:16,  Jesus says:  “You did not choose me, I chose you.”  At a time when people had doubts about their salvation, or they were suffering persecution, this doctrine was meant to be an assurance of God’s love and role in their lives. 

Now Calvin took this doctrine one step further in what is referred to as “double Predestination.”  This is the idea that God knows, saves and calls SOME people – but then God eternally damns other people before they are born.   Scholars believe Calvin took this added step because he believed in an all-powerful God and he couldn’t otherwise fathom why some people would reject God in their lives. 

This is one of the reasons I’m a Presbyterian.  Not because of double-Predestination, but because of the Presbyterian motto that we are “Reformed and always reforming.”  That is to say, we are always seeking to respond to the living God and to live a living faith.    There may those who still embrace double Predestination.  But as a denomination, we rejected this idea officially in 1903 when we made an amendment to the Westminster Confession of Faith in our Book of Confessions.   This Confession from the 1640s upholds Calvin’s view on double Predestination.  But in 1903 a section was added that affirms “In the Gospel God declares his love for the world and his desire that all men are saved.” 

 There have been many reformed theologians, since the start of the Reformation itself, who have rejected double Predestination.    Probably the most significant reformed theologian of the 20th Century, Karl Barth, rejected Calvin’s stance, saying that while he agrees that there are “yeses and nos” to be sorted out, God embraces all people through Jesus Christ as is written in Ephesians 1:3-4:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.

Where Luther and Calvin stand firmly together is on our original question:  what is the source of our salvation – and the answer to that remains that we are only justified -- made right with God -- by God’s grace.  Our own strivings, as much as the idea may bug us, has nothing to do with it.

Does this mean there’s no place for good works?   No, doing good works is as important as ever.   But rather than doing good works IN ORDER THAT we can saved,  we instead do good works BECAUSE we are already saved in Jesus Christ.    This can be a HUGE shift in how we think about our life and how we live our life.

In Calvin’s day, his adopted city of Geneva became a center point in Europe for those who were poor and in need.    Janet, Elyse and I were in Geneva last summer before Janet was teaching in the Netherlands.  There I saw this engraving on a side of building that chronicled Geneva’s response to the poor.  Then, in a walking tour, a guide told us about this building.  Notice the top story that’s a bit recessed.   People in Geneva routinely build an extra story on top in order to house the poor and the homeless.

We have many opportunities through this congregation to serve the needy in our community.  And we will soon be embarking on our stewardship campaign in which we’ll be asking for the congregation’s financial support for all of the ministries of the church.   This is not a chance for you to buy a ticket to heaven or to otherwise score points with God.   Instead, it’s an opportunity for you to respond to the almighty God who already knew you, already saved you, and now calls you to serve.

3. Being Presbyterian -- Presbyterians and the Bible

When’s the last time that you played a game of hide and seek?   Have you ever played with a child and they had difficulty finding you?   When they can’t find you on their own -- what do you do?  You cough.  You whistle.  If you’re standing behind the drapes, you move the fabric, stick out your foot or a hand.  You do something to give them clues.   And through these clues, they find you.
God operates in a similar way, if you will.  On our own, we won’t find God.  But God acts to make God’s-self known to us.  As in all things, God takes the initiative.  God wants to be found. 
As Christians, we understand that God is revealed three ways.  First, as Larry read in the opening of the gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . .  And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”  Jesus Christ is the ultimate form of God’s revelation.
God’s second way of revealing God’s-self to us is through Scripture.  As we heard in Second Timothy,    All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”   The Holy Scriptures show us God as God acts in the lives of the people of Israel and then in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The third way that God reveals God’s self to us is through the proclamation of the church.
Because the incarnation of Jesus Christ is made known to us in the pages of scripture, and the proclamation of the church is rooted in scripture, scripture plays a vital role in God’s self-disclosure to us.
If you have a Bible with you today, I want to invite you to open it up.  Feel the pages.   You are dipping into the Holy Scriptures.   The prayers, the stories, the songs, the commands, the laments.  Scriptures that God has given us dating back more than 2,500 years.     

             The Bible Society of the United Kingdom estimates that between 1816 and 2007 approximately 7.5 billion Bibles were printed in 450 languages.  But along with this popularity of the Bible are three challenges.  First, for many, much of the Bible may be unfamiliar to us.   In a national survey in 1997 12% of those surveyed said that they believed Joan of Ark was Noah’s wife.   Then you may have heard a few weeks ago about the recent Pew Center Religion Survey in which they found that many people weren’t familiar with some of the key stories of the Bibles.  Agnostics and atheists scored higher than Presbyterians and other Christians in terms of their knowledge.

Calvin calls us to dedicate ourselves to scripture.   “It is impossible,” Calvin writes, “for anyone to gain an atom of sound doctrine without being a disciple of scripture.  We take the first step towards true knowledge when we reverently take hold of the testimony God has graciously given about himself.” 

A second challenge or question is what authority, as Presbyterians, do we give to scripture?  How much weight do we give it?  You’re reminded of the Presbyterian view of scripture every time we ordain a deacon, elder or minister of Word and sacrament.  They are asked: 

“Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?” 

So to turn that question into a statement: 

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you.”

Notice two things about our view of authority of Scripture – it is dependent upon the Holy Spirit and it centers on Christ.  This helps us with another question that you may be asked from time to time:  Do we, as Presbyterians, believe in the Bible?    In a word, No.  

As Stephen Plunkett, a Presbyterian pastor in Texas remarked, “We don’t worship the words that are printed on the page;  we worship the God who is revealed by the power of the Holy Spirit through the words on the page.” 

Theologian Shirley Guthrie notes that “We would completely miss the point of what the disciples and Paul want to tell us, and do them no honor, if we believe in them.  They ask us to place our hope and confidence not in them but in the God to whose speaking and acting they point, the God made known above all in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

This brings us to perhaps the most controversial question regarding the authority of scripture – are the scriptures the inerrant Word of God?  Are we meant to follow each word literally?      And is the Bible solely the product of God, or did humans have a hand in it?  

There is a diversity of viewpoints on this in the Presbyterian Church.  From the 1700s up to 1920s,  the Presbyterian Church generally accepted that the Bible was the inerrant word of God.   One could understand the Bible by reading it literally.  This view was the dominant one until the 1920s. 

Then in the 1930s to the 1960s, under the influence of Karl Barth and Emile Brunner,  a new era of biblical interpretation arrived in which the Bible was seen as the witness to Christ as the Word of God.    Jack Rogers describes it this way:  “Because the Bible, like John the Baptist, points away from itself to Christ, the issue of possible mistakes in the Bible is irrelevant.  By actions of the Holy Spirit, through preaching, the Bible becomes the word of God to persons of faith.”

In the 70s and 80s we entered a third era of Biblical interpretation which stressed the importance of the ancient context of the texts and the contemporary context of the persons reading the text.   So matters of injustice and equality affected interpretation of scripture. 

Presbyterians have continued to interpret the Bible from these different perspectives.    And from my perspective, this diversity in interpretation can be a strength of the church. 
For myself, I don’t follow a purely literal reading of scripture.  I believe we need to interpret the text.   Otherwise, as sinners, we would all need to follow through with Jesus’ directions in  Matt. 5:29-30 literally  “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away . . . and if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away . .”

Rather, I believe we’re called to interpret scripture as Jesus did for those he met on the road to Emmaus, and whenever he re-interpreted texts from the Hebrew Bible when he said  “You have heard it said . . . but I say . . .”

  But interpreting is a challenge.  To guide the church, in 1982, selected the following seven guides drawn from the concensus of our Confessions.    In using these guidelines require that all 7 be held together so that they provide a balanced approach to interpretation.  As I read them, you’ll hear each of the three interpretation schools in these guidelines – the more literal approach, the focus on Christ, and the focus on the context of the scripture and the reader. 

“1.  Recognize that Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, is the center of Scripture. 
2.  Let the focus be on the plain text of scripture, on the grammatical and historical context, rather than on allegory or subjective fantasy.
3.  Depend upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit in interpreting and applying God’s message.
4.  Be guided by the doctrinal consensus of the church, which is the rule of the faith.
5.  Let all interpretations be in accord with the rule of love, the twofold commandment to love God and to love our neighbor.
6.  Remember that interpretation of the Bible requires earnest study in order to establish  the best text and to interpret the influence of the historical and cultural context in which the divine message has come.
7.  Seek to interpret a particular passage of the Bible in light of the whole Bible.”    

If we engage scripture, it will change our life.   In our reading from 2nd Kings,  King Josiah is in the temple, and in a remarkable story, Holy Scriptures that had been lost are found in the temple. And it is from this scroll that he launches reforms that have a great impact on society.  The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord, keeping his commandments, his decrees, and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. All the people joined in the covenant.

How place does scripture have in your life today? 

Last night I was putting my daughter to bed.  We didn’t play hide and seek.  But as she was getting ready, I realized that she was singing a song under her breath.  It’s a familiar song – maybe you’ll join me.

“Jesus loves me yes I know.  For the Bible tells me so.  Little to ones to him belong.  They are weak but he is strong.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  The Bible tells me so.” 4.  Being Presbyterian --
I Have a Confession

I took our dog Biscuit to the Bark Park yesterday and it reminded me of the day I saw the whole thing.   It was a beautiful day, just like yesterday,  and I was at a bark park in Topeka with our dog Biscuit. I was talking with this guy Dwayne while Biscuit and Dwayne’s dog were playing.  Another guy had come into the bark park with his pitbull.  After a few minutes, the pit took off after Dwayne’s dog, clamped its jaws down on the dogs ear, and wouldn’t let go.   The pitbull’s owner ran over, apologizing effusively and yelling at his dog.  It took him about 10 minutes to release the dog. 
I saw Dwayne a week later back at the bark park and in a weird twist, he told me how the owner of the pitbull had filed a civil complaint against him, alleging that Dwayne’s dog had attacked his pitbull.   I couldn’t believe it.  I was the only other person there so I told Dwayne that I’d be happy to attend his hearing.  Two months later, I went to court.  Without my testimony, it would be just be one dog owner’s word against another.     
Have you ever been in the situation where you needed to stand up and say what you believed?  Maybe you’ve had your own courtroom experience.  Maybe you faced a situation at work and needed to speak up about something.  Perhaps you’ve been present when someone was being picked on unfairly.    So you may remember times when you stepped forward and spoke out.  Or you may think of times when something needed to be said, but you remained silent.  I can think of times like that in my life.
I think there is something inherent in Christianity about speaking up for what you believe.  We are called by God to testify, to witness to our belief in Christ and our commitment to God.  We can do that through our actions, by where and with whom we stand.  But at some point, we need to do that through spoken profession.  Jesus asks Peter:  “But who do you say that I am?”
What’s true for us as individuals is equally, if not more true, for us collecetively.   But who do we say Jesus is?
 As a Presbyterian, I have a confession.  Actually, I – or we -- have nine Confessions.  These are statements included in our Book of Confessions of what the church has affirmed at different times and places.  Presbyterians didn’t write all of those statements, but we affirm them and believe they have something to say for us and the church universal.
Two of the confessions, the Nicene Creed and the Apostle’s Creed, come from the ancient church.  Four are from the 15th and 16th centuries – the Scots Confession (Scotland), the Heidelberg Catechism (portion of Germany), the Second Helvetic Confession (present day Switzerland) and the Westminster Confession (England). 
Three are from the 20th Century – the Barmen Declaration (Germany), the Confession of 1967 and the Brief Statement of Faith from 1983 (both U.S.).   That gives us nine Confessions that we recognize.  The Westminster Confession is also presented in two catechisms – or question and answer forms.  One is short and one is long.  They are creatively called “The Shorter Catechism” and “The Longer Catechism.”  When we add them, our total confessional statements rises to 11.
Confessions don’t pop out of thin air.  Churches don’t write them just because they feel like it.  Just like I didn’t go the courthouse to testify for Dwayne because I didn’t have anything better to do.   Instead, churches, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,  write confessions at times of danger to the church, at times of confusion, or at times of opportunity.      In making these confessions, the church typically seeks to declare 1.  Who they are.  2.  What they believe.  And 3.  What they resolve to do.
The very first confession in our Book of Confessions, the Nicene Creed, is the only confession that is accepted by all three branches of Christendom – Protestant, Catholic and Easternn Orthodox.   It was written in the 4th century because there was confusion in the church about the nature of Christ and the role of the Holy Spirit.   Was Jesus only human, only divine or both?   The Creed affirms that Christ is fully human and fully divine and also affirms the Holy Spirit as part of the triune God.  We will read a portion of this confession as our affirmation of faith today.

The Heidelberg Confession   was written in 1562.  It was spurred  in part by the disagreement between Lutherans and Reformed Christians about what REALLY is going on in the Lord’s Supper.  We’ll talk about that in two weeks.   Like the short and long Catechisms from the Westminster Confession, the Heidelberg Confession is in the teaching format of questions and answers. 
I could have used this two weeks ago when we talked about how we are saved by God’s grace alone and not works.  Question 86 asks:  Since we are redeemed from our sin … by grace through Christ without any merit of our own, why must we do good works?
According to the Catechism, we do good works QUOTE so that with our whole life we may (1)  show ourselves grateful to God for his goodness,  (2) that he may be glorified through us;  (3) that we ourselves may be assured of our faith by its fruits, and (4) by our reverent behavior we may win our neighbors to Christ. 
What a wonderful expression of our faith.  For me, this is an example of how our confessions can help us explore further the meaning of scripture and how to live the Christian life.
The Barmen Declaration was written in Germany in 1934 as Hitler and the Nazis swept into power and co-opted the church.  The Declaration in part says:  In view of the errors of the “German Christians” of the present Reich Church government which are devastating the church . . .  we confess the following evangelical truths . . . Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”

In the midst of that darkening crisis, the German Evangelical church professed that we owe our allegiance to Christ, not Hitler.  The church took a stand.

In the 1960s the United States faced a great deal of upheaval around issues of racism, sexuality, poverty and war.   Beginning in 1958, the United Presbyterian Church in the United States, began seven years of work on a confession whose overarching theme was reconciliation.  The confession was anchored on the passage from 2 Corinthians 5:19 – “In Christ God was reconciling the world to God’s self.”  
Our last confessional statement is the Brief Statement of Faith which was written on the occasion of the reunion of the Northern and Southern Presbyterian churches which had split at the beginning of the Civil War.  While this short confession touches on a number of our reformed beliefs, it’s the first to affirm the equal role of women in ministry.
Our Confessional history is rich and central to our faith.  But while most pastors have studied all of these confessions, I would guess that most members in the church have not.   Some folks have told me that they struggle with these confessions because they speak out of bygone eras, in out-moded language, express at times pretty severe judgments, and may contradict each other.   
And yet, as I mentioned the other week, all our deacons and elders are asked:   “Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?”  (G-14.0405) 
How can we answer that question with integrity?  And even if we’re not being ordained as a deacon or elder, how do we make sense of these confessions?
A few thoughts. 
First, the session and I have the responsibility for the spiritual nurture of the congregation.  We will do more to educate newly nominated officers, sitting officers, and the entire congregation on what our confessions say.  So if you’re considering serving as an elder or deacon – and I hope you will – don’t start sweating.  Know that you will receive support in learning a bit about the confessions.  And I expect that it will be a blessing for your faith.
Second, while there are differences among the confessions, there is also a core of agreement – such as to the nature of Christ, the Trinity, the sovereignty of God, the central role of scripture, our understanding of the sacraments and preaching and more.   
Where there are differences, we are to give more weight to the more contemporary confessions – and we can always look to the Bible for guidance.  Live with tension.
Do we have to follow the  Confessions?  Yes and no.  Yes, because we believe that the confessions, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,  are the witness of the church to God – which need need to hear.  Even though the Confessions are from another time and place, they still have  something to say to us.
But we’re not locked into the confessions.  That’s because the Confessions, while important witnesses to our faith, are fallible and secondary to scripture.  As the Westminster confession says outright:  “All synods or councils since the apostles’ times . . .  may err, and many have erred;  therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both.”
And further, we’re not locked into any one Confession because our God is a living God who continues to speak through the church.  So it’s said that our Book of Confessions doesn’t have a back cover – we are open to God’s fresh word for today.
          An example of this openness to a new word is the present proposal before our denomination to add the Belhar Confession to our Book of Confessions.  The Belhar Confession was written by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church or the QUOTE UNQUOTE “colored church” in South Africa during the very height of apartheid in the 1980s.  If adopted, this will be the first confession in our book of Confessions originating from a non-western country, and the first from the southern hemisphere.   
In the accompanying letter with the original Confession, the colored church said:  “We are aware that such an act of confession is not lightly undertaken, but only if it is considered that the heart of the gospel is so threatened as to be at stake.  In our judgment, the present church and political situation in our country and particularly within the Dutch Reformed Church family calls for such a decision.  Accordingly, we make this confession not as a contribution to a theological debate nor as a new summary of our beliefs, but as a cry from the heart.”
          I close this sermon with an excerpt from the Belhar Confession.
We believe that this unity of the people of God must be manifested and be active in a variety of ways: in that we love one another; that we experience, practice and pursue community with one another; that we are obligated to give ourselves willingly and joyfully to be of benefit and blessing to one another; that we share one faith, have one calling, are of one soul and one mind; have one God and Father, are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, eat of one bread and drink of one cup, confess one name, are obedient to one Lord, work for one cause, and share one hope; together come to know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ; together are built up to the stature of Christ, to the new humanity; together know and bear one another's burdens, thereby fulfilling the law of Christ that we need one another and upbuild one another, admonishing and comforting one another; that we suffer with one another for the sake of righteousness; pray together; together serve God in this world; and together fight against all which may threaten or hinder this unity.”               Amen