FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

 

Annual Meeting Sunday

May 5, 2002

 

LIFE TOGETHER

 

Scripture:  Romans 12

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Last August, we launched this church year and agreed to focus on the theme “A Community of Grace,” which is taken from our Statement of Purpose printed on the front of the bulletin.  For our Rally Day sermon eight months ago, I chose the text from Romans, Chapter 12, hoping that it could provide us with a framework for our worship, work and witness in this local congregation, and would guide us in our ministry and mission throughout this city, nation and world.

 

Today, as we ordain and install a new class of elders and prepare for our Annual Meeting, I want to revisit those familiar words written long ago by the Apostle Paul, because I believe they remind each of us and all of us, as a Community of Grace, how we can share our “Life Together” in the Lord.

 

I.

 

When Paul sent this letter from Corinth sometime around 60-80 A.D., Claudius was emperor and Rome was the greatest city in the world.  The congregation in that metropolis had been started by Jewish Christians, but before long, they were joined by an even larger number of Gentile converts.  And we know, because the Book of Acts tells us so (Acts 18:2), that Claudius had already begun to persecute those early believers as they sought to follow and to be faithful to Jesus Christ.

 

So Paul was writing this epistle to encourage them to hold on and to stick together, not only to withstand the adversity of the emperor, but also to deal with their own diversity and some dissensions that had flared up among them, including arguments about Jewish food rituals (Romans 14) and disagreements concerning Christian doctrine (Romans 16:17-20).

 

That is the brief background to this letter, which leads us to the 12th chapter of Romans, wherein Paul begins with a note of humility:  For by the grace given to me, I bid everyone among you not to think more highly of yourselves than you ought to, but rather to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has given to you (Romans 12:3).

 

My friends: can you imagine the difference it would make if we could take those words to heart and live by them?  For even though we claim to follow Jesus Christ, who emptied himself and took the form of a servant…who humbled himself and died on a cross (Philippians 2:7-8), far too often we Christians become absorbed with our own self-importance and enamored with our opinions and convictions about so many things.

 

Years ago, when I was a student in seminary, I read a novel about a preacher who fell victim to his own ego and desire for success.  I have long forgotten the title or the name of the author, but I do remember one line which described this tall steeple pulpiteer that sent chills up and down my spine.  The author wrote that the preacher “had fallen in love with the lilt of his own voice.”

 

It can happen to pastors, you know, who start off seeking to serve God and others in the church, but somehow develop a possessive attitude about “my congregation,” “my staff,” “my ministry” and wind up expecting others to serve them.

 

Sad to say, it can also happen to people in the pews, who get so caught up with their own point of view that it’s difficult to even have a conversation with them.  Such was the case with an American woman who visited Bloomsbury Chapel in London during her summer vacation.  After the worship service was over, she came down the aisle to meet the minister.  With a condescending air, she said, “So nice to be here.  And tell me, how many members do you have in this little English church?  Back home in Texas, our Baptist congregation has more than 6,000 on the rolls.”  The minister thought for a moment and then replied with a sweet smile, “Why madam, didn’t you know?  Here in England, we don’t count our members.  We weigh them,” which was his not-so-subtle way of saying that in the church, quality and depth of faith were more important to him than quantity and playing the numbers game.

 

C.S. Lewis once said that “pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than someone else…It is the comparison that makes you proud – the pleasure of being above all the rest”  (From “Mere Christianity,” by C.S. Lewis).  And that is just the opposite of what the Apostle Paul was trying to tell the Romans and all of us today.  For by the grace given to me, I bid every one among you not to think more highly of yourselves than you ought to, but rather to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has given to you.

 

I hope and pray that will always be so here in this congregation, where the quality of our life together will be marked by humility and measured by faith, knowing that none of us is perfect, that every one of us has fallen short of the glory of God, and that we have been redeemed by the grace and love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

II.

 

Now if humility is one theme that flows throughout this 12th chapter of Romans, then the other theme is unity.  Beginning with each individual Christian, saying first that grace is given to you and to me, Paul makes a transition to address the entire community, reminding them that the different gifts of grace have been given to us… For as in one body, we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ…and members one of another (Romans 12:4-6).

 

This profound description of how individual Christians, called to a life of humility, are bound to one another as a community of faith, inspired Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young theologian and pastor living under the oppression of Nazi Germany, to write his classic book entitled “Life Together.”

 

Using the image of the body Christ, Bonhoeffer encouraged his fellow believers, who belonged to a secret seminary of 25 students, to grow in their faith through the study of scripture, the discipline of prayer and the practice of meditation and solitude…alone.  But he also taught them to worship with one another, to bear each other’s burdens and to live in a community…together.  And it was that balance – between personal faith and corporate life – that sustained those young candidates for ministry and bound them together in unity during the darkest days of the 20th century.

 

All these years later, as the sun is still rising at the dawn of the 21st century, you and I in this congregation and in our Presbyterian denomination are called to live our lives together in the same way.  The world around is suffering in the midst of violence, and we Christians need to make our witness and work toward the promise of peace and reconciliation, especially in the Middle East.  Millions of people on this planet are facing the deadly realities of poverty and oppression, and we Christians need to reach out to them with the resources God has given to us and with the hope of freedom.  There are men and women and little children all across this city who are lost and lonely and feel forgotten and forsaken, and we Christians need to let them know that Jesus Christ loves them and that we embrace them with open hearts and open arms in this church at the corner of 16th and Peachtree.  But in order for all of that to happen with any degree of authenticity, we, as the Body of Christ, need to be bound together in unity.

 

That’s what the Presbyterian author Kathleen Norris discovered as she left New York City, moved to South Dakota and decided to join a small rural church in her new hometown.  Listen to how she described it:

 

         “Before the service, the new members gathered with some of the elders.  One was a man I’d never liked much.  I’ll call him Ed.  He’d always seemed ill tempered to me, and also a terrible gossip, epitomizing the small mindedness that can make small-town life such a trial.  The minister had asked him to formally greet the new members.  Standing awkwardly before our small group, Ed cleared his throat and mumbled, “I’d like to welcome you to the body of Christ.”  The minister’s mouth dropped open, as did mine – neither of us had ever heard words remotely like this come from Ed’s mouth.  Like distant thunder, the words made me more alert, attuned to further disruptions in the atmosphere.  What had I gotten myself into?  I was astonished to realize, as that service began, that while I may never like Ed very much, I had just been commanded to love him.  My own small mind had just been jolted, and the world seemed larger, opened in a new way.

         Ed’s words, those few, simple words of welcome, had power.  Like the sacrament of baptism, they seemed to have made an indelible mark on my soul.  And they had real import for me during the service.  As I went forward on shaky legs to the front of the church, to join the others who were becoming members that day, my eye happened to catch the disbelieving and most unwelcoming expression on the face of a younger woman, an extremely conservative member of the congregation.  Absurdly, my mind jumped to that classic Western movie line: “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.”  I felt a twinge for her, for both of us, as I didn’t want to be there, doing this, any more than she wanted me to be invading her sacred turf with my doubts, my suspect Christianity, so unlike her own.  I nearly turned around.  But I couldn’t because I had just been welcomed into the body of Christ.”

 

                   (“Amazing Grace” by Kathleen Norris,

                     Riverhead Books, New York, 1998, pages 142-143)

 

 Now we know from reading Paul’s letter to the Romans that the people in that congregation didn’t all look alike, or think alike or act alike.  They were a diverse bunch with different opinions about doctrine and theology, and when they got to fussing with each other about who was right and who was wrong, Paul wrote them this long letter and told them that the bottom line was unity – the kind of unity that can only come from a faith centered in Jesus Christ.

 

CONCLUSION

 

And that is the way God wants it to be today within our Presbyterian denomination and for each of us and all of us in this Christian congregation.

 

We have been called to be and to become the body of Christ and a community of grace right here and right now in this place.  So as elders and pastors and staff leaders and ministers – all the members of this church – let us live our lives together in humility and in unity, seeking to fulfill the ministry which God has given to us.  Let our love be genuine, let us hold fast to that which is good, let us be aglow with the Spirit, let us contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality, live in harmony and above all else, LET US SERVE THE LORD! (Romans 12)

 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

 

 

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