Wednesday, February 16, 2011

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