The State of the Church:
A Penitential Self-Examination
By Jerry Andrews
This address was adapted from Andrews's plenary presentation
at the Presbyterian Coalition Gathering, Nov. 2005 in Orlando,
FL
The occasional, almost annual, State of the
Church address I give to the Presbyterian Coalition, usually
cites our and their foibles, the recent silliness in and
sometimes humorous events among us, even if they be harmful and
in need of attention and correction. It celebrates what small
late triumphs can be seen in our common life. It describes us to
us so that we recognize our commitments and actions more clearly
and amend them intentionally. These speeches are meant to be
taken seriously, even if delightfully. This State of the Church
address is to be taken seriously, even if painfully. It is a
penitential self- examination, designed to help the whole
denominational fellowship see itself more clearly and, if in
agreement, repent more fully that our renewal and reformation
may continue more completely.
A quote from Augustine may suffice as I
begin here. Describing his exhaustion from the interminable
debates with the Pelagians and their Stoic, therefore pagan,
soteriology-one in which the individual is self-sufficient with
the graces natural to humanity-he openly doubts that he can
persuade them of their, and his, desperate need of a Savior.
They think they are without need, he infers they are without
passion so he states-they are cold.
Give me a man that loves. He experiences
what I speak. Give me one that yearns, one that hungers, one
that is traveling in this wilderness and thirsts and pants for
the springs of his eternal home; give me such a person and he
knows what I speak. But if I speak to the cold man, he will
never understand. (my translation).
Lord, help me, help us, to know our need,
and not be the cold one.
Thinking theologically about the Church
requires holding at once two realities-our life is lived within
the eternal and perfect life of God and our life is lived in the
midst of our fallen generation.
The first reality is a gift given by God to
the Church. The Spirit baptizes us into the Son who, in unending
and uninterrupted union with the Father, assures us of our
eternal union with the life and love of God. We dwell in the
midst of perfect peace, unity and purity.
The second reality is a necessary part of
God giving the Church as a gift to the world. The alienation of
the world from God and the alienation within the world is the
environment in which the Church lives out and announces the
reconciliation of God in Christ. That alienation is experienced
within the Church. We dwell in the midst of an imperfect peace,
unity and purity.
The painful simultaneous acknowledgment of
these two realities prevents schizophrenia-living alternately in
one reality while momentarily ignoring the pull and truth of the
other, then living in the other reality ignoring the first. We
might acknowledge the blessedness of our life in God while
suppressing the knowledge of our current alienations and thus
leave unaltered because unattended the wretchedness of our world
and selves; or forgetting our life in God, we might affirm our
sinful state and thus accede to its easy acceptance as though it
is inevitable and unamendable. The former degenerates into
detachment, the latter despair. Neither acknowledgment without
the other tends toward sane and faithful living.
Reaffirming the faith of the Church – that
its life is in union with the life and love of God – is a glad
acknowledgment of the first reality. The Church has received a
great gift from God. It is cause for wonder and worship.
Affirming the truth of the alienation
within the world and within the Church – the second reality – by
self-examination is a painful but necessary acknowledgment for a
Church that fully desires to be a gift to the world. It is
cause for repentance and reformation.
Toward a repentance prompted by the Word
and Spirit that leads toward reformation that in turn leads
toward a more faithful Church effectively offered to the world,
the following self-examination is offered to and by the
Church. For the sake of our witness in an alienated world to
the reconciliation of God, and that we may more fully experience
the peace, unity and purity of our life in God, may we have the
wisdom, courage and grace now to acknowledge our own need and
repent of our sin.
Of what sin shall we repent?
First, let us repent of neglecting
repentance. We have seldom offered repentance. Difficult as
repentance is, the nature of our own particular sin and
circumstance lately has made it more difficult. We are a divided
fellowship. Many are in separate and combative
parties. Offering repentance as the Church before the whole
Church necessarily is either confessing the particular sins of
our own party thus making ourselves and our causes vulnerable
which, in an environment of diminished trust, requires near
heroism or foolishness, or we confess the sin of the other party
and thus reduce our repentance to the appearance of mere
accusation. Further, in this division few sins seem to be
shared or shared equally among the parties so that a repentance
offered by those not in parties also sounds like the choosing of
sides or merely cursing a pox on both houses and thus adding to,
rather than repenting of, the sin of the Church. We also find
it difficult to be specific when repenting, yet the confession
of something other than real sin offered after sincere and
sustained self-examination is not helpful or worthy of a Church
that trusts its Savior to forgive and cleanse us of all
unrighteousness. First, let us repent of our continued
unwillingness to repent.
Second, let us repent of neglecting the
Word. The Spirit uses the Word to prompt our self-examination,
repentance and reform, yet we have valued other words more. The
voices of the world and our own voices have been heard more
frequently and given more deference than the one Word of God
which we are called to hear and obey. The Church must strive to
still within itself any voice but God's own. To aid our
self-examination, repentance and reform, some voices to which
undue authority has been given and because of which our
experience of peace, unity and purity is diminished, are here
identified.
1. "The meaning of God's Word is uncertain
because its interpretation is debated.” The Church no longer
reads and hears the Word together with a desire or hope for
common understanding and commitment. Agreement is rare,
consensus hard in our fellowship. This, in varying degrees, may
have always been true in our history, but now it is accompanied
by an easy concession to the impossibility of shared
meaning. The voice says, "You have your interpretation and I
have mine. Let us agree to disagree. Prolonged attempts at
newly formed consensus regarding the knowledge of God's Word
will 00 fruitless." There is resignation and defeatism in this
voice. Our sin in listening to this voice is faithlessness which
produces laziness.
The Spirit of God, promised by the Son,
which leads us into all truth, is at work in the Church no less
in our own than in previous generations. The Scriptures can be
read together and heard aright together in all times and
places. Diminished expectations of the work of the sovereign
God in our common life within this generation is the result of
hearing this voice say that the human must triumph over the
divine-our circumstances over God's intentions. The voice says
our private and partisan interpretations are irreducible and
immalleable because intractable, and intractable because we
are. This voice does not trust the Word of God to break through
our presuppositions, perspectives and prejudices to reach and
amend the human heart and mind and persuade the Church of what
is good, right and true. This is a denial of the doctrine of
illumination-the promised work of the Spirit to lead us together
into all truth. Thus this is a faithless voice; it does not
trust. And it is a voice that urges laziness.
Occasional and temporal ambiguity is not
merely admitted by this voice, it is desired. It argues that
the fragmented and partial readings by the varied parts of the
Church are to remain unattended, even celebrated. The rigor
required to give God's Word serious and sustained reading
together and then submit that reading to the whole Church around
the world and through the ages is rejected as too hard and thus
left undone. This is an especial laziness in a fellowship that
once showed intellectual gifts serviceable to other
fellowships. Our faith in the efficacy of the Spirit's work and
our resolve to work toward agreement in faith and practice is
weak. The faithless and lazy voice that celebrates the finality
of fragmented meaning is to be rejected by every fellowship, and
especially so by a Church that is self-consciously
confessional. The peace, unity and purity of the Church is
diminished by our faithlessness and laziness; it is enhanced by
sustained and shared hearing of the Word.
2. "The world sets the agenda for the
Church." This second voice attempts to persuade the Church that
its mission and its relevance is established and measured by its
conformity to the world's expectations and definitions of the
usefulness of the Church. It confuses the object of the
Church's mission for its commissioner. The Word, not the world,
is the God-given instructor and corrector of the Church. When
the Church and the world are at cross purposes, the Church is
not therefore and thereby to be transformed. The continued
conformity of the Church is to be oriented toward the image of
Christ alone. While this other voice beckons us to hear the
world as instructive, the Word invites us to see Christ more
clearly and mature into Him. While the Church appropriately
becomes familiar with the world it must remember that the world
is foreign. The Church is alien to the world in part for the
sake of the world-that the Church can bring to the world the
saving knowledge of the Savior. Instead, this voice insists
that the state of the world's knowledge now being greater than
in previous generations it can and should judge the Word because
of the Word's distant origins. “Written long ago and far away,
the Word is not relevant,” it sneers. “It does not speak to or
of us,” it says with a pretended sophistication. “Surely it is
not God who has spoken, but mere mortals out of their unenviable
infancy. We know so much more now; listen to the world,” it
seduces. Listening to the hissing of this voice is rejecting not
only the Word written but the Word Incarnate. It is rejecting
both Gift and Giver. It is the sin of ingratitude produced by
an arrogance. The Word, given in part to enable the Church to
fulfill its calling of bringing the world to its Living Savior,
has been exchanged in our common life for the words of a world
without the Savior. The Word, given to authoritatively direct
our mission and keep us on it with minimal distraction from
competing urgencies and agendas, has been judged by the Church
to be inferior to our own reading of the world's needs and
desires. Our contentions and ineffectiveness are among the
effects of the loss of our humility before the Word. The peace,
unity and purity of the Church is diminished by our ingratitude
and arrogance; it is enhanced by a renewed deference to all the
Word teaches us to be and do.
3. "I have a sovereign right to my own
conscience. This third voice misquotes. The Church believes
and teaches that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Thus, the
conscience has a Lord and is not itself sovereign. The
conscience is to obey its sovereign Lord, Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, insofar as Christ's will for the Church is set
forth in Scripture, it is to be obeyed. The Scripture is public
and communal; it is not the possession of anyone of us or anyone
party among us. The Scripture instructs the conscience of the
Church. Thus, the conscience of the Church because instructed
by the Scriptures has an entitlement to act, and in acting,
though it too may err, does not infringe on the rights of our
individual consciences. Put otherwise, the Church has a right
to exercise its conscience. Placing the individual above and
beyond the communal, hallowing the thoughts and freedom of
action of the member or officer more so than recognizing the
right of the Church to exercise its own discerning conscience
and will has made discipline in the Church rare and of little
effect. Discipline too is a gift of God to the Church and a
gift of the Church to all her parts. This third voice though
reasons for the autonomous individual apart from the Church's
ministrations. It has led to the sin of pride in each of us and
the sin of cowardice in the Church. Afraid to ask of her
members and officers what the Church must ask for the sake of
each of us and for its own sake, and the unwillingness on the
part of each of us to give to the collective conscience and will
of the Church what we demand for ourselves, we prevent the Word
from its full, healing and unifying work in our common
lives. The neglect of discipline is a neglect of the ministry
of the Word. Our peace, unity and purity is diminished by our
pride and cowardice; it is enhanced when we exercise and abide
by the discipline of the Church.
Third, let us repent of neglecting to love
one another. By our Savior's testimony our love for each other
is derivative of and reflective of His own love for us. It is
to be of the same quality. It is not. Our love for each other
is half-hearted when present and sometimes it seems wholly
absent. Love for neighbor is part of our mission in the world,
and love for each other is the means by which the world
recognizes that we have been sent-a mission which suffers
greatly by our foolishly striving to love ourselves more than we
love each other. The world's poor and the least are neglected
because of our self preoccupations. The unsaved do not hear us
proclaim the gospel because of our words against each
other. The world's peace is at risk because of our
strife. Among us, apathy masquerades as tolerance and the
vocabulary of love has become an instrument of division. We
have not loved as we have been commanded. Let us repent of our
failure to love more. We are in need of God's help lest we
become like those of whom Augustine despaired- thinking our
neighbor self-sufficient we become without passion and cold.
Lord, we confess our lack of repentance,
our faithlessness and laziness, our ingratitude and arrogance,
our pride and cowardice, our lovelessness. We repent.
Rev. Jerry Andrews, Ph. D. is
pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Glen Ellyn, IL
and co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition.
