Hilton Head Island, SC – June 17, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Ephesians 4:1-7; 4:11-16
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. – Ephesians 4:4-6 (RSV)
Periodically I preach a sermon like the one you are about to hear. Not too long ago I addressed this topic. If it were a musical composition, it might be called Variations on a Theme. The older I get, the more concerned I become about the general direction of the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ. I’m not thinking mainly about particular congregations or denominations or clusters of denominations, but about the entire Church in the broadest sense. However, I will admit it is specific issues which have prompted my concerns for this morning.
I decided to preach this particular sermon when Lois and I were in the United Kingdom in early May. Several experiences there alarmed me. They are heightened by an article I subsequently read in Christian Century, the opening sentences of which are included on the cover of this morning’s bulletin. Philip Jenkins teaches religious history at Baylor University. His piece was called Aussie Christians, but he began it by saying that the nations which have a British background seem to be losing their Christian foundations faster than other nations of the world. He cited an academic report from last year which listed nine countries in which it was postulated religion may disappear altogether by 2100. Four of them have been members of the British Empire: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland.
Let me say that I find it ludicrous to believe that religion could become entirely defunct in any nation anywhere on earth, ever, let alone by 2100. Religion is like dandelions; you cannot kill it, even if you might want to do so. However, Dr. Jenkins reveals some trends in Australia which indeed suggest that Christianity is rapidly eroding there. Aussies have become a largely secularized nationality. A very small percentage of folks Down Under ever attend church. He even cites government decisions which have deliberately undermined religious underpinnings.
More disturbing, and more evident to me personally, is the ecclesiastical decline which has occurred in Britain. When I was a student assistant minister at a Church of Scotland congregation fifty years ago, the Church of Scotland was far more vibrant and robust than it is now. The Scottish Church, in virtually all its manifestations and denominations, appears to be slowly dying. The Sunday after we returned from Britain, I reported that we attended the Glenburn Parish Church in Paisley, Scotland, where I had served as a student assistant pastor. There were perhaps eight people in attendance who were there fifty years ago when I was there. Some of the members of the then-youth fellowship are now older members of the praise choir. (The existence of a praise choir, by the way, did not bring cheer to this old codger.) There were only about 40 or 50 in attendance. Back in the day, there would have been perhaps 250 or 300.
In Edinburgh we visited Bill and Jenette Clinkenbeard. Bill was a seminary classmate in Chicago. He moved to Scotland, and spent nearly all his ministry in an Edinburgh church. He told us that during his 30+ years in the Presbytery of Edinburgh, perhaps 35 congregations had closed. That represents at least one church per year passing into oblivion. We saw several church buildings which had been purchased by construction companies, in which they stored their materials. In the 1960s St. George’s West was one of the premier congregations in all of Scotland. In very recent years it went defunct, and the building now is owned by a Baptist congregation. It was very painful and depressing to me to hear all these things.
In England we met the vicar and lay vicar of St. Mary’s Church of England in the village of Shipton-under-Wychwood. Our friend Trudy Yates has been an active member there for over 20 years. Both these ordained women were very gifted church leaders. Between them, they serve five village congregations in their section of the Cotswolds. St. Mary’s has an average attendance each Sunday of 50 to 75. This is in a town of perhaps 1000 to 1500 people with only one other very small church. The other four congregations served by the two vicars have from 5 to 30 or so in attendance each Sunday. And, as in The Chapel Without Walls, most of those who attend those churches are in their 70s, 80s, or 90s. When Trudy led us on a tour of each of the five churches, we met a lady who had just been named the warden of that congregation, which is an Anglican administrative office for lay members. She told us she had just turned 90. She was lovely lady. But she was 90.
In the USA, younger people increasingly are unaffiliated with any religion, compared to 50 years ago. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, one in four Americans aged 18-24 say they have no religion. And yet 55% said they had had a religious affiliation during their youth. From childhood to young adulthood, 8% of Catholics dropped out, 5% of mainline Protestants, and 1% of white evangelicals and black Christians. The group with the biggest increase from childhood to young adulthood were the unaffiliated, who grew from 11% to 25%. And of course there is the general decline in both membership and attendance in most American churches, including Roman Catholic. But to that I have referred I previous sermons.
In the first century, when the earliest Christians began their evangelization of the pagan Greco-Roman world, they had an enthusiasm and zeal which may have been unsurpassed at any point in subsequent history. They felt revolutionized by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and they were determined to share their faith with anyone who would give them even a tepid hearing. The apostle Paul was the most instrumental of that first wave of evangelists.
In his letters to various Christians throughout the Mediterranean world, Paul talked about many things which concerned him. Most of what Paul wrote had to do with what he considered proper beliefs and conduct. But on occasion he described what he thought the Church, or in other words, institutional Christianity (such as it was), should be.
Some scholars doubt that Paul wrote the Letter to the Ephesians. We shall not enter into that debate, and assume that he did, whether or not in fact he did. Anyway, in the letter the author has an extended summary of what he thought the Church of Jesus Christ ought to be. Above all, it ought to have unity, he insisted. By stating that so strongly, we may deduce Paul (or whoever) felt the Church was not properly unified. In 21st century terminology, the writer declared that the Church needed to get its act together.
And how could that happen? It would occur, Paul said, when all Christians perceived there was “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (4:5-6). Regardless of what you may think about these words, you must agree that he beautifully and poetically expressed his sentiments. However, as he later said, we need a mature faith, lest we “be tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness and deceitful wiles” (4:14). Proper doctrines, Paul forcefully hinted, were those which he taught and proclaimed. Other notions were unacceptable.
The Church has never been doctrinally or theologically or even ecclesiastically unified. There have always been numerous factions within the Church. Some were willing to allow the legitimacy of the others, but usually they tried to insist that they alone represented the one true faith. For the first ten centuries of the Church’s existence, Roman Catholicism was the largest branch of Christendom. It still is today, by a very large margin. In the 11th century, Eastern Orthodoxy emerged, although it eventually evolved into the smallest of the three major Christian branches. Since the 16th century, Protestantism has become the middle-sized of the three main branches. However it has literally hundreds of manifestations, whereas there is only one kind of Roman Catholicism and perhaps fifteen or twenty national Orthodox denominations: Greek, Russian, Serbian, Syrian, and so on.
Ecclesiastically, the unity which both Jesus and Paul extolled has sadly never come into being. No doubt that division is a factor for why currently many people have rejected Christianity altogether. If “the Church,” broadly defined, can’t get its act together, why should outsiders join the act? Or why should insiders stay in the act? But there are numerous other factors which add to the decline of organized – or relatively disorganized – religion. Excessive individualism in society, religious hypocrisy, faulty clergy, too much attention paid to raising money, theological triumphalism, and unvarnished jealousy have all damaged the mission of the Church.
In nearly five decades as an ordained minister, I have observed what I think is a very unhealthy trend in local congregations. For half of that time, in general the clergy of the various congregations in the communities in which I lived got along quite well with one another, despite their theological and ecclesiastical differences. Every community I lived in had a strong clergy association. We met together at least monthly. Hilton Head Island clergy did that as well, up until about fifteen years ago. Since then, there has been no active clergy group at all.
Now, too many clergy see themselves as ecclesiastical entrepreneurs in competition with all other clergy and churches. Bigger churches try to build empires, and smaller churches struggle simply to survive. But far too few clergy, and perhaps laity as well, see themselves as being involved in a common enterprise, namely, trying to solidify the kingdom of God on earth. Too many churches do not see themselves in league with one another in the mission of Jesus Christ. Instead, they perceive they are in an undeclared war with one another for the allegiance of everyone who is not a contributing member of their own particular congregation. The focus has shifted from the Church-As-All-of-Us to the Church-As-Our-Particular-Congregation or the Church-As-Our-Particular-Denomination.
Let me explain in more detail what I mean by this. Megachurches have helped close the doors of thousands of small churches. That certainly was not their intention, but it has been the result, nonetheless. Far more people join megachurches from a small church than from no church. They may have gone from a small church to no church to the huge church, but relatively few who are essentially pagans gravitate into a megachurch from no church background at all.
However, larger Christian groups also do the same things as the megachurches. For a long time the Roman Catholic Church would welcome clergy from the Anglican Communion, including American Episcopalians, into their ranks as clergy, even if they were married and had children. If they renounced Anglicanism, and accepted Catholicism, they could become Catholic priests. However, this applied only to Anglicans or Episcopalians, and to no one else. My mother’s cousin in Canada came to see contemporary Anglicanism as far too liberal, and he left to become a Roman Catholic priest, with no fewer than four sons. With all the troubles facing the Church of England, the Pope has very publicly gone on record to welcome any unhappy Anglican priests into the Roman fold. That, in my opinion, is dirty pool. Furthermore, such enticements can propel discerning waverers in any denomination or congregation out of the fold, just because they consider it inappropriate ecclesiastical behavior, which I certainly believe it is. But the sad reality is that if somebody in one denomination behaves badly, it may cause people in other denominations to give up their own churches in a generalized despair or disgust.
It may seem very peculiar that a minister who was an ordained functionary of a particular denomination for over forty years should express any of these concerns. After all, The Chapel Without Walls is not affiliated with any denomination, nor is it likely ever to do so. But the real issue here is not whether there is a denominational affiliation, but whether there is a perceived and proclaimed affiliation with The Church, the ecumenical Church of Jesus Christ. Denominations ultimately don’t matter in the kingdom of God, but institutional Christianity most assuredly does matter. Spirituality shall not be the primary builder of the kingdom; only organized Christianity, as feeble and flawed as it may be, and is, can accomplish that lofty goal. As important as the good intentions of millions of individuals may be, it is the collective effort of all Christians working together which primarily results in the success of God’s kingdom. God doesn’t do any of this by Himself; He relies mainly, and perhaps solely, on us.
The most unbending of Christian fundamentalists help build God’s kingdom. So do the most wishy-washy of Christian liberals, as well as Roman Catholics and the Orthodox and mainline Protestants and members of house churches and people of no churches. In addition, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, other religious groups, agnostics, and atheists, all of them in their own ways, contribute to God’s kingdom. Jesus welcomed a mostly motley crew into his fellowship, and so should we.
But we must not allow the institutional Church to slip into a state of pernicious anemia. If that happens, the kingdom is severely threatened. The kingdom of God is bigger than and more important than the Church, but the Church is the biggest construction contractor in the kingdom of God. Jesus never said to any individual, “It is just you and I against the world.” What he said instead was, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:20). The kingdom is and must be a corporate enterprise; it cannot be either a dual partnership or a sole proprietorship.
In my mind, I have unfortunately too often compared The Chapel Without Walls to other congregations I have served as pastor. Every congregation is unique, and it behooves the clergy always to remember that. However, this congregation is uniquely unique. (English majors: don’t fall into a grammatical catatonic state. You know what I mean.) It deliberately operates on a much lower scale than most churches, and it does not seek to pigeon-hole anybody into a particular ecclesiastical enclosure. That’s part of why we are called The Chapel Without Walls. We are not like most other churches, nor shall we ever be. We need to remember that, but I especially need to keep it constantly in mind.
People who are affiliated with this congregation are as much part of The Church of Jesus Christ as are those who attend St. Peter’s in Rome or St. Basil’s in Moscow or St. Paul’s in London or St. Cuthbert’s in Edinburgh or the Riverside Church in New York or the Saddleback Church in California. Anybody in any church is related to everybody in every other church. We are all in this together. And Paul was right: “There is one body and one Spirit, …one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.” And if that’s true, then the kingdom shall continue as long as the earth continues, despite the sometimes gloomy musings of codger parsons. Have faith, dear hearts; have faith.