All Saints’ Sunday, November 5, 2017 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The Church in the City

“Always Reforming”
A Sermon Series Marking the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 34:1–10
Matthew 23:37–39
Revelation 21:1–6a

Eternal God, in every age you have summoned men and women to serve you and, in serving, to reflect your truth and glory. As they enjoy the company of heaven, inspire us by their example to answer your summons as they did and so come ever closer to Jesus Christ our Lord.

Book of Common Order

Today is the very last Sunday in our seven-week series that marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Over these past six weeks we have considered some of our particularly Reformed theological tenets—the sovereignty of God, the priesthood of all believers, total depravity, God’s grace, the importance of our response to that grace, and, last week—we focused on our invitation to always be reforming, adapting, and changing in order to stay up with our constantly on-the-move, dynamic, Spirit of God.

Given all of that, I imagine some of you are surprised to see that our last topic is the Church in the city. You would be right to be surprised. It is unusual to talk about the church’s responsibility to the city as something foundational for Reformed theology. It is not one of our essential tenets that all church officers promise to uphold. But here is why I have chosen to end our series in this way: First, know that I am using the word “city” as a kind of theological shorthand. I do mean we are to care for the literal city that surrounds us. But I am also using the word city as a symbol for the common life of the people. So when you hear me say “city,” think both things. Second, I chose to end our series this way because it is similar to the way John Calvin ended both his great treatise The Institutes of the Christian Faith and his first catechism (written for children).

As Princeton seminary professor Stacy Johnson has written, “Whereas we assume a work in Christian theology to conclude with the doctrine of the resurrection, Calvin brought his major theological work to an end with reflections not on the world to come, but on our political responsibility for this world. He ended [both the Institutes and the children’s catechism] with a chapter on the power and role of civil government” (William Stacy Johnson, John Calvin: Reformer for the 21st Century, p. 109). Perhaps Calvin was an early community organizer, given his focus on working in the world as it is while being inspired and guided by God’s vision of the world as it should be.

Indeed, if we go back to the 1500s, we will find Calvin in the church in Geneva deeply involved in the public political sphere, in the sphere of the city. Church theologian Joe Small says “[the] church in Geneva provided refugee relief and resettlement, saw jobs for the unemployed, encouraged public education, and worked to provide health care for all. As the leader of the Geneva church Calvin spoke out against unfair business practices and public policies that ignored the needs of the poor. Nothing that contributed to the welfare of the city seemed insignificant. Calvin even called for a more economical cooking system for the poor and prodded the municipal counsel to construct a sanitary sewer system throughout the city” (quoted by David Renwick, National Presbyterian Church, February 2014). Talk about being concerned and invested in our political responsibility for this world.

But why, we might ask, was Calvin so concerned with politics, the forces that governed the common life of the people? His concern was driven primarily by his Christian faith. Calvin’s reason for bringing the political realm into the world of theology and religious duty was due to his firm belief in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. All of life, according to Calvin (and according to Scripture) was lived under the reign of Christ. Both rulers and their subjects were accountable to God. Calvin strongly believed that “Religious beliefs have public consequences” (Johnson, p. 109).

Frankly, Calvin’s viewpoint is not all that different from what we, as a faith community, have been engaged in for the last two years as we have focused on Session’s priority of deepening our discipleship. Whatever it is that we talk about, think about, feel, and trust as we immerse ourselves in God’s larger story found in Scripture and felt in prayer—whether that happens in this sanctuary or in an adult education Academy class or in the children’s chapel time—that encounter with God and God’s story is to have an impact on our daily life. A focus on deepening our discipleship implies that what happens on Sunday morning or afternoon is to affect the decisions we are making on Wednesday morning and afternoon.

It is an acknowledgement of what Calvin emphasized; we do not live in two separate realms—the religious realm, what happens within the walls of the church, and the political realm, what happens outside the walls of the church. All of life is lived under the reign of God. Religious beliefs have public consequences. Thus, according to Calvin, we, as Christians, are called to pursue social, political and economic reform that works for the common good of all people because that work gives God glory (Johnson, p. 109).

Another way to talk about our Christian responsibility to live out our faith in ways that challenge and change unjust systems and institutions is to speak of it as “the promotion of social righteousness.” In part two of the PCUSA’s foundational document, the Book of Order, we audaciously claim that the Church has six great ends:

1. The proclamation of the Gospel for the salvation of humankind.
2. The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God.
3. The preservation of the truth.
4. The maintenance of divine worship.
5. The promotion of social righteousness.
6. The exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world.

These six great ends are to guide all of our ministry and our mission. Our collective Christian concern for the common life, the common good, of all people flows directly from Scripture, into this fifth great end of the promotion of social righteousness, into what we do as the people of Fourth Church.

And as I have said before, it is because of this call to be a part of promoting social righteousness that the realm of politics cannot stay out of this pulpit or out of our worship and educational life. Remember Calvin—all of life is lived under the reign of God. Religious beliefs have public consequences. We live out our discipleship into the world. But before some of you begin to squirm, let me offer what one of my pastor friends offered his congregation when he preached on politics and the pulpit.

David Renwick is the pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. and when he preached a couple of years ago about the church’s role in promoting social righteousness, he talked with his congregation about the need to get rid of the clutter around that topic. Here is how he put it:

[The] clutter is what I would call “the curse of political partisanship” as it affects the church. Now it may or may not be a curse in other spheres as well, [side note—he preached this before our last election so my guess is he would see it as a curse in every sphere these days] but when it comes to the church what I want to say is this: that this call to social righteousness has got nothing to do with our political party affiliation. It has nothing to do with whether we are Republican or Democrat or Independent. All too easily—and incorrectly, as soon as the words “social” and “righteousness” are put together some of us may move into a [partisan] understanding of the phrase! What I want to say is Just don’t do that! Just don’t do that!

This is not about what party you belong to. This is not just something for those who are in one party or another. It is for all Christians no matter what our political affiliation. Or, let me put it like this: as Christians with different political perspectives we may (and almost certainly will) disagree on how we implement various strategies to promote social righteousness. That is quite legitimate. We are all different and we bring all kinds of perspectives to bear on methods of implementation. But, while we may disagree on the strategies, we have no right to disagree on the principle. It is there in Jesus. It is there in the prophets. It is there in our heritage. (February 2014)

Indeed, as David preached, our call to be active in the literal and figurative realm of the city is there in Jesus, in the prophets, in our heritage. Religious beliefs have public consequences. We heard the result of those consequences in our Scripture lesson from Matthew. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” Jesus wept as he prepared to enter the city for the last time, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Jesus saw the city of Jerusalem as a city that held such hope, such possibility, for being a people who reflected, embodied, the realm of God, the kingdom of heaven. And yet, because Jesus was involved in the life of the city, in the political realm, by not only feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and showing mercy for the poor, but also by actively challenging the power of the leaders and the systems that kept people hungry, sick, and poor, those in charge decided he had to be executed. As our friend Walter Brueggemann has written, “Jesus scared too many important people.”

We know this at a gut level don’t we. For while we do believe because of Jesus, the prophets, and our Reformed heritage that our religious beliefs are to have public consequences, we also realize that moving from only focusing on charity or philanthropy to challenging the very reasons that charity or philanthropy is needed can be dangerous work. Important people can become angry. And some have indeed died because of the work. And yet, our Reformed theology and ethics understand that because the human world (or, using our theological shorthand—because the city) is the good creation of God, its cultural environment and social institutions can be transformed by the purposes of God. Furthermore, our cultural environment and social institutions are in need of being transformed by the purposes of God (“Session 5,” The Great Ends of the Church, p. 22).

Reflecting on this theme of the church and the city and our call to promote social righteousness, Brueggemann writes this: “The church in this truth-telling vocation is not preoccupied with itself, even with its survival. It is clear that the church is not to be an escape from the reality of the city. It is rather summoned by the Gospel to be a major player in the city, that even the city may reflect on the rule of the God of Israel who is also our Lord and Savior. Jesus has wept over the city, [as we see in our Matthew text] but is ready, soon enough, to laugh an Easter laugh over the city, filled with joy and hope when the city becomes a genuine neighborhood [as we see in the new Jerusalem to which the prophet John testifies in the poetry of Revelation].” And here is where Walter would look us in the eyes if he were in our pulpit today: “We may be the ones who can turn the weeping of Jesus to the joy of an urban Easter of new life. [But that will require] that we think and live ourselves differently in the place where God has put us.” That will require our active affirmation that our religious beliefs need to have public consequences. That will require that we say yes to our heritage’s claim that one of our very reasons for being church is for the promotion of social righteousness.

In 1965, after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did an interview with Alex Haley in which he spoke candidly about mistakes he felt he had made in leading the civil rights movement. He offered that the most pervasive mistake he had made was in believing that because their cause of civil rights was just, the black leaders of the movement could be sure that the white ministers of the South, once their Christian consciences were challenged, would rise to their aid and take the cause of civil rights to the white power structures. But that did not happen. When direct appeals were made to white ministers, most of them folded their hands—and some even took stands against it, leaving Dr. King disillusioned and feeling chastened—using his words.

Mr. Haley then responded to Dr. King’s answer this way, “[The white ministers’] stated reason for refusing to help was that it was not the proper role of the church to ‘intervene in secular affairs.’ Do you disagree with this view?” he asked. “Most emphatically” Dr. King responded. “The church once changed society. It was the thermostat of society. [Think Calvin and Geneva.] But today,” he reflected, “I feel that too much of the church is merely a thermometer, which measures rather than molds popular opinion.”

In 2017, we—as part of the Church Reformed, always being reformed by the Spirit of God—are being called anew to function again as a thermostat rather than function only as a thermometer. This implies that while we are still called to do the kind of outreach and philanthropy that is still so desperately needed for all who are hungry, sick, imprisoned, and poor, we are also being called anew to be a people who actively seek to turn up the heat on all leaders and on all systems that have grown comfortable with people staying hungry, sick, imprisoned, and poor. We are being called anew to dig deeply into our own life of faith, into our own discipleship, and ask what kind of public consequences need to flow from our religious beliefs. How can we function as a thermostat for the kingdom of God, for the world as it should be, rather than a thermometer for the way things are, for the world as it is? This is the work we have been created to do.

The church, our church, is called to care for the city, both literally and figuratively. Our religious beliefs are to have public consequence. This may not be an essential tenet of our faith, but it is essential action that grows out of our faith, an essential action that comes directly from our decision to try and follow Jesus—the one who has wept over the brokenness of the city and the one who is waiting to laugh. Amen.