Hilton Head Island, SC – June 18, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
II Timothy 4:1-5; I Kings 19:9-18
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the people of Israel have forsaken they covenant, thrown down thy altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword, and I, I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” – I Kings 19:14
More than half a century ago, the church historian and theologian H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a book called Christ and Culture. It became a classic for explaining how Christianity has related to culture through its twenty centuries of existence.
Prof. Niebuhr, who taught at Yale Divinity School, suggested that there are three ways that Christianity has perceived its relationship to the larger culture in which it found itself at various times and in various places. For its first few centuries, it was Christ vs. Culture. That is, the Christian religion found itself pitted against the Roman Empire. Christianity opposed Rome and Rome opposed Christianity, and each was trying to defeat the other.
Eventually Rome adopted Christianity as the religion of the empire. Then it was, to use Niebuhr’s terminology, Christ of Culture. That suggested that Christianity and the Roman Empire, which evolved into the Byzantine Empire, were seen as one and the same.
By the time of the Protestant Reformation and beyond, some Christians preferred to revert to the Christ vs. Culture model. The Radical Reformation (the Amish, Mennonites, Brethren, and other such groups) withdrew from the larger culture, and formed their own closed enclaves. In this country, Amish and Mennonite communities may still be observed in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa, among other places.
For the most part, however, American Christianity evolved into what Prof. Niebuhr described as Christ above Culture. By that he meant that Christianity perceived itself to be different from culture yet also influenced by culture. Religion and society are not one and the same, in the Christ of Culture model, but each influences the other in an essentially non-adversarial style.
Toward the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is an open question as to whether religion is losing or gaining influence in America. One fact is undeniable: Most mainline Protestant denominations have been slowly but steadily losing members for the past half century. For the past several years, even the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination, has been slightly shrinking each year. Though the nation’s population has doubled since 1950, there are fewer people on the membership rolls of many denominations now than there were back then. In general, older people are still attending church, if they are physically able to do so, but younger people, those from twenty to sixty, are far less inclined to attend.
Is religion in retreat? Ecclesiastical statistics would appear to verify that. Attendance at worship is down in far more congregations of all varieties than it is up. The major exception to that pattern is the mega-churches, those with an attendance of two thousand or more people each Sunday. The fact of the matter is that many people from smaller churches have transferred their allegiance to the huge churches, which accounts for some of the large losses in the smaller congregations. Nonetheless, overall there are fewer people active in all of the American churches now than there were in past decades.
In the nineteenth century, especially late in that century, American Christianity felt itself to be in ascendancy. That was the time when congregations and denominations sent thousands of missionaries throughout the world. Our three hymns this morning allude to various aspects of nineteenth and early twentieth century American religion. The text for the first one, Christ for the world we sing, was a missionary hymn composed by Samuel Wolcott. He was a Congregationalist minister who served as a missionary in Syria for two years. Because of illness, he returned to the US, where he was a pastor in Providence, Chicago, and Cleveland. His hymn is a call to bring Christianity to the world, turning the world into an essentially Christian culture.
Rise up, O men of God is a hymn text written by William Pierson Merrill, whose last pastorate was the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. It is one of the great historic Presbyterian congregations in this country. He had been asked to write the words to a new hymn. It happened that he had just read an article called “The Church of the Strong Men.” It inspired him to write Rise up, O men of God. The hymn is written with males of our species specifically in mind, although it became a rouser for everyone, men and women, for several decades. Political correctness has removed this hymn from many mainline hymnals over the past 20+ years. But it promotes the idea of a muscular Christianity which must rise above culture to turn culture into the kingdom of God, where brotherhood transcends petty differences. Short hymn; tall order.
Julia Ward Howe was part of a group of Union citizens reviewing a long line of Federal troops at Upton, Hill, Virginia, several months after the Civil War began. The men of a Wisconsin regiment were singing a song as they marched past: “John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave/ His soul is marching on.” A minister who was part of the review suggested to Mrs. Howe that she write different words to that tune. The group returned that evening to Washington, DC. Early the next morning, November 18, 1861, before the sun had risen, Mrs. Howe awoke and quickly dashed off five stanzas. Her verses became known ever after as The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The poem was printed on the front cover of The Atlantic Monthly in February of 1862, and soon became immortal.
The Battle Hymn is a pointed example of Christ vs. Culture. Without directly stating it, it strongly hints that during the Civil War, Christianity of a proper type was on the side of the Union against the godless culture of the slave-owning Confederacy. Despite all that, the University of Georgia liked the tune so much that they made it their fight song. So maybe that is an example of Christ Above Culture.
Everyone who is totally secularized may feel put upon by religion. However, they never imagine that religion might feel itself put upon by the world. Religious people, on the other hand, often feel like the world is against them, and they are in a long, slow, losing battle with secularity and godlessness. The prophet Elijah in the Old Testament was just such a person.
Elijah lived more than eight centuries before Jesus. He felt called by God to rail against the idolatry of the king and queen of the northern kingdom of Israel, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Elijah thought Ahab was a really bad hombre, but Elijah considered his wife Jezebel to be something else altogether. She was not even a Jew. She was a Gentile Canaanite woman. In our time she would be known as a Lebanese, but in her time she might have been called a Phoenician. Any woman in our time who is a very shady lady might be called a Jezebel after this Jezebel.
Elijah found himself pitted against four hundred and fifty of the prophets of Baal, the god of the Canaanites. In a great contest on Mt. Carmel, he defeated the fetid functionaries of Baal, and ordered them all killed. It is not a nice story, and I do not recommend that you read it to your grandchildren. The king and queen were so enraged with Elijah that they threatened to have him immediately liquidated. Learning of their plot, Elijah fled far to the south, ending up at Mt. Horeb, also known as Mt. Sinai. It is in the Sinai Desert, between Israel and Egypt. There he waited in a cave in silence, wondering what he should do next.
The narrative about this incident begins almost humorously. God makes His presence known to Elijah, and God innocently asks him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” If God is God, you’d think He knew what Elijah was doing there. He was there to save his skin; that’s what he was doing there. But, taking God’s question at face value, Elijah gives a very elevated and noble-sounding explanation for his behavior, as though God needed to hear any of it: “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thy altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away” (I Kings 19:10).
I love the primitive simplicity of the Hebrew Bible! It displays so much faith among some people who do not appear to have advanced very far in their elemental understanding of God. If God is omniscient, which I believe He is, God knew everything Elijah told Him. In fact, Elijah didn’t need to tell any of that to God at all. But to show Elijah that God was God, and that Elijah didn’t have a thing to worry about, God sent a huge wind blowing across the mountain, and then a great earthquake, and then a mighty fire. But God was not in the earthquake, wind, or fire, as the hymn says. Instead God was in a still, small voice of calm.
But here is even more primitive simplicity. We get another verbatim repeat of the beginning of the story. It’s exactly the same thing all over again, word for word! Somehow an editor at least twenty-five hundred years ago missed the duplication. Or maybe he intended it; I don’t know. But if it worked once, it will work twice: “What are you doing here, Elijah? “I have been very jealous for the Lord, etc., etc., etc., and I, even I only am left, and they seek my life to take it away.” In order to convince Elijah that he is safe, God tells him to do several things. And at the end of the instructions, God tells the frightened prophet, “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
Religious people worry too much about the status of religion. If religion isn’t doing well, that doesn’t mean God isn’t doing well. God always does well! God cannot be God and not do well! The definition of omnipotence is God. The definition of omniscience is God. The definition of omnipresence is God. If religious people just let God be God, they’d be a lot better off.
Religion is always too concerned about religion and too little concerned about God. God can take care of Himself, with or without religion. But religion is a vital link for most of us to become connected to God, so it isn’t surprising that we get nervous when religion seems to be in retreat. By most objective indices, American Christianity indeed is in retreat. However, that doesn’t mean God is in retreat. We need always to remember that. Should we forget, God may put us on the side of a mountain, and send a great wind, and then an earthquake, and then a fire. But God will be in none of the big, flashy stuff. Instead, He will approach us by means of a still small voice. “I’m here,” He will say. “I’m always here. Don’t fret. Trust. Have faith. Believe.”
The apostle Paul of Tarsus was a very religious chap. Many have argued, and persuasively, it was he more than Jesus of Nazareth, who originated the Christian religion. Having been present at its creation, Paul intended to do everything he could to guarantee that Christianity would live long after he himself had died. One of the ways he did this was to become the mentor to younger people who would bear the torch of Christianity long after he was gone. One of those was a young man named Timothy. Paul wrote two letters to Timothy which the Early Church saw fit to include in the New Testament.
At the end of the second of those letters. Paul was giving some last-minute advice to his younger colleague in Christ. He wrote, “Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season; convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and teaching” (II Tim. 4:2). That’s excellent advice for anyone who seeks to be a disciple of Jesus.
But then Paul went into The Typical Religious Person’s Fuss about Un-Religious People’s Irreligiosity. “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (II Tim. 4:3-4).
I’ll be candid with you. For most of my life I have been a Typical Religious Paid Professional. As such I have tended to get nervous about all those times in my life when it appeared as though religion was in retreat. It is dismaying. It is disheartening. It is depressing.
But then I tell myself, “Self, get a grip. In the Big Picture, it doesn’t matter if religion is in retreat. It will bounce back. It always does. It’s like kudzu or poison ivy; you can’t kill it. Besides,” I tell myself, “God is never in retreat; never. God will never leave Himself without a witness, whether that witness be Elijah or Isaiah or Jeremiah or John the Baptist or Jesus or Mary Magdalene or Peter or Paul or Timothy, or St. Francis of Assisi or St. Clare of Assisi.”
Religion too often overlooks the divinely tenacious staying power of God. God never quits. He watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me. Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Religion fusses too much about religion, and it remembers too little about God. God lives. God lives in eternity, and God lives in temporality. As it says in the final chorus of the Broadway musical Godspel, “Long live God, long live God, long live God, long live God!”
Ross Douthat is a politically conservative and religiously fairly conservative Catholic editorialist for The New York Times. Last Easter (April 16, 2017) he wrote a piece in the Sunday Times called “Save the Mainline.” He, the conscientious conservative said to the ethical and social liberals who refuse to go to church because they see all the evident and undeniable weaknesses and hypocrisies of Mainline Protestantism, “You say you’re spiritual but not religious because you associate ‘religion’ with hierarchies and dogmas and strict rules about sex. But the Protestant mainline has gone well out of its way to accommodate you on all these points. I appreciate that by staying away from church you’re vindicating my Catholic skepticism of that accommodation….Just go to church, guys. The mainline churches’ doors are open. They need you; America still needs them.” Then Ross Douthat ended his Easter editorial with an intriguing final sentence. “We’ll talk about the Church of Rome next Easter.” I can hardly wait.
Religion matters. It matters a lot. But it doesn’t matter ultimately. Only God matters ultimately. So, whether advancing or in retreat, religion will keep going, because God will not leave Himself without a witness. After all, only God is God, and that is all that really matters.