10/26/58

Scripture: Philippians 3: 1-16

Text: Philippians 3: 13c,14; “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Some of us have grown up in churches wherein we thought, or heard, very little of Reformation Sunday. Others of us have been nurtured in churches wherein Reformation Day has always been well marked. Its principles have been oft-reviewed. We have heard of Martin Luther’s courage in his forthright dictum: “Here I stand.” And we may have been made aware of the systematic and dedicated efforts of Calvin and his followers. Perhaps we have had reviewed for us the dedicated efforts and the martyrdom of earlier non-conformists like John Huss. And we have sung Luther’s strong hymn, “A mighty fortress.”

It is a good thing for us to remember the critical points in our history, or the history of our spiritual ancestors. And it is a better thing if we remember that the Reformation is not ancient history, but that it is a continuing matter! As witnessing Christians, the importance of a well-read and understood and heeded Bible, the doctrines of justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers --- these are matters of continuing and growing significance for us.

In a sense, our religion has been handed from one generation to the next, ours included. And any religion so transmitted stands in danger of becoming too commonplace -- too much taken for granted. It must fire our lives, with contemporary importance and vitality, if it is to be any more than just a historical event.

The Reformation was not over when Luther tacked his theses for debate on the church door in 1577. It was hardly more than begun! It was not secured when Luther had evaded punishment by councils of ecclesiastics, and had secured a significant following.

For the consistent Protestant Christian, the Reformation is continually taking place. It is a movement, cleansing the church of error and corruption and the callousness of neglect, exalting the sovereignty of God over our lives, ministering to our neighbor, moving ahead in service. As one observer has remarked, “When Protestantism ceases to have the excitement of a continuing reform, it has become too ordinary.”

The continuing Reformation is necessary whenever we tend to specialize in works without faith. We have heard the familiar, and oft-quoted phrase from the letter of James, “Faith without works is dead.” [James 2: 17]. We also know of the exalted place Paul gave to faith, and we quote freely, “We are justified by faith.” [Galatians 2: 16]. But we do not find in the Bible any warrant for works without faith. This was one of the aspects of the church of his time that so deeply disturbed Luther. The church was so busy doing certain things that there was little attention to or pondering of, the faith that moves, or initiates or corrects or re-forms one’s acts. Indeed some of the acts had become error.

This is a point of danger for our Protestant religious life now in 1958. We easily succumb to the temptation of too much works without faith. We get so busy, without thinking why, that we are in peril of going off on wrong tangents.

It is one thing to have a busy, vacuous hope that “everything will turn out all right.” It is another matter to stand firmly and courageously for an entire life based on the belief that God’s way is right, whatever come. And that Jesus demonstrated the right, and mediated God’s way, to us in his own life and death.

In too much of our experience, we have more juke-box sentimentality than real faith in our religion. Some of the motion picture films labeled “religious” are drippy little stories of success and prosperity coming to those who love everybody. There is often more religion, whether labeled that way or not, required in the way people face deep realities, profound tragedies, and great opportunities of life. Great faith is not only a necessity for girding one in sorrow or danger. It is no less essential to steady and guide one in the culmination of great joy and the opening of exciting opportunity. One responsible speaker [John E. Burkhart] addressing students at a great western university [University of California] said that the current boom in religion is little more than spiritual aspirin. “It doesn’t cost much, doesn’t do much, won’t hurt much, and isn’t worth much.”

Well, that is not the whole truth. There are those who pour a heavy proportion of their time and resources and devotion into religious faith and expression. There are those who suffer, and continue ready to sacrifice and to suffer further, for their deep convictions about God’s way for them. But they are hardly the masses of folk!

We may think that the life of our own church, and our part in it, is dominated by a strong faith, until we look at some of the lacks in our church. Right now, our church lacks some of the space arrangement, and needs more of the dedicated time of people to do the best kind of Christian education job! The ministry of music always needs more people who will joyfully “sing unto the Lord” at worship and in preparation for worship. The whole church program needs increased undergirding of substance and dedicated service. More than “just a few” are needed for responsible leadership, for thoughtful study of the church program.

If we take it for granted that a strong enough faith dominates our Christian life, we may be shaken up a bit by looking at such a group as the Mormons. There are aspects of the Mormon faith that are theologically unacceptable to me and to most of us. And I would recommend to no one that he or she become a Mormon! But take a careful look at what happens in the church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, commonly called Mormon. There is a group of folk that out-organize the Romans or the more systematic of the Protestants, with its general boards and agencies, its territorial divisions and overseers, its devotion to a certain systematic scheme. Yet who runs the Mormon organization? Practically speaking, it is every single member of their church! The Mormon church is run by its lay persons, making a living at other-than-church vocations, yet each giving of his time and talent and substance and ability to the Mormon cause in a faith that this is right, and will triumph.

They accept self disciplines; they endure persecution; they tithe their time as well as their money, giving one tenth of each to their church. And hosts of them give 2 or 3 years of their lives at their own expense, to the missionary cause of their church, often while they are quite young, and before going on with the business, or profession which will be their vocation for livelihood. They work, in some voluntary capacity, in their church throughout their lives.

The rest of us are in churches that have great works too. But a lot of us have too much tendency to let the “hired help” do our work for us -- the secretary, the janitor, the preacher, the choir director, the organist, the denominational executive, the paid administrator, and so on. We’d rather give a little money to get someone else to work than to give a lot of both time and money to put our own faith into action.

We need a constant Reformation in our own lives. New tasks for individual Protestant Christians keep arising from the needs of our time. But only in a living, testifying, faith do we undertake the works, or even see the works, that need to be done!

Our faith is too common-place, too ordinary, if it specializes in works without worship.

This takes us directly into the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers -- where we place ourselves in the orbit of those who have experienced the glory of God, and assist others to come into that glory.

In the usual discussions and arguments of people over whether it is more difficult to be a faithful Roman Catholic, or a faithful Protestant Christian, many of our young folk willingly concede that it is more difficult to be a Roman Catholic. They assume that Catholics have to go to church; must go to confession; say the rosary; abstain from meat on Fridays; and so on.

But now and then the light dawns (as it should break more often) that the opposite is true. It is more difficult to make one’s self be in the place of worship on Sunday, to make of it an experience of finding God “high and lifted up” without any sense of compulsion other than your own conscience to enforce your presence.

We may say that we believe in the priesthood of all believers, and that each person has direct access to God without any church official telling him how to do it, or mediating it for him. But if we sleep late on Sunday morning and allow every outing, parade, ball game, and house-painting project to keep us from an appointment with God, do we not simply descend to works without worship?

And when we arrive at the house of worship, are our words for the worship of God, or for whispering about the next Turkey dinner, or the latest bits about our neighbors? Do we prepare ourselves for the service before it begins, and then follow its approach to God with our whole attention, and relate its revelation to our own needs? Do we pray only in memorized routine, or do we venture toward God in our own purposeful way and words? Our words lead to our own worship --- or away from it!

Our Protestantism becomes too common place, or ordinary, when it specializes in history without heritage. We read history and sometimes memorize dates and events of the past. We absorb heritage, take it unto ourselves and make it a part of us.

Picture Paul probing the reality of justification by faith in his letter to the Romans, declaring in court, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,” [Acts 26: 19] and finally suffering death at the hands of imperial agents. Picture John Huss burning at the stake for daring to give the Bible to the people in their own language, in the century before Luther and Calvin.

Picture Joan of Arc on trial before authorities demanding her execution. Picture Martin Luther declaring before the Council: “Here I stand.” Picture John Wesley preaching to crowds shut out of an established church. Picture the Pilgrims struggling, with the trust of their very lives, to plant responsible freedom on a new and dangerous shore. Think of Albert Schweitzer in his African hospital, and of scores of missionaries living, (some dangerously), the gospel among people who do not yet know God as revealed in Christ.

Back of all these and all other pictures of our own Christian heritage is the picture of our Christ, crucified to bring forth this family relationship between God and ourselves.

In appreciative understanding of this heritage, Paul exclaimed, “Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man, but God shows his love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” [Romans 5: 7-8].

With that picture before us, shall we let our witnessing faith become commonplace? Dare we let it be history without heritage? We are a part of it! We are in the truth that “God’s truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.”

The Reformation is not something that is past. It is the changing, growing church, full of knowledge of its heritage, full of dedication in the present and future. It is meeting each present crisis. It is what Paul meant when he said: “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

The spirit of Reformation is the struggle for new prizes, new gains in rightness.

Reformation deals with the reappraisal of ourselves, our churches, our civilization.

Among the simple principles of the Reformation in Luther’s and Calvin’s time and in the Pilgrims’ time are these: (1) a sincere belief that the church could change -- indeed ought to change -- and still be the church; (2) that the authority of the church is not in its past traditions but in the “upward calling of God in Christ Jesus;” and that (3) God’s last word in truth is yet to be spoken.

In true reformation, the church is straining forward for what lies ahead. The Bible is not a moldy record of the past, but a living Word for the present and for time to come.

We see this temper now, in a real effort to find contemporary setting for real worship in modern church architecture. Present day psychology is rediscovering the reality that the only genuine answer to human sin is the forgiveness of God.

Change is always disturbing, just as it was in the days of Abraham and Moses. But changes must be met in every time and area of life. And the soul needs continuing redemption.

But the changes made necessary by different conditions of life really are reappraisals of the approach to the changeless. For there is a “great rock” in a weary land in that God never changes. Time, and the times, are His. His upward calling to us in Christ Jesus is an unchanging word. And our faith in these verities holds us on a steady course even when storms toss our ship about on a pitiless ocean of unrest.

“The Church’s one Foundation if Jesus Christ her Lord.”

And the true church of Jesus Christ is a growing, advancing church, pressing forward to the upward calling of God.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, October 26, 1958

Wisconsin Rapids, October 28, 1962