“The Social Nature of Personal Religion”

Sermon by

Dr. William P. Wood

First Presbyterian Church Charlotte, North Carolina

July 28, 2002

Text: “Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters”’ (Exodus 3:7).

This past week The Wall Street Journal carried an article by Charles Colson, entitled “Evangelizing for Evil in Our Prisons.” In this article Colson emphasizes a point that has become obvious over the past several years, namely, that the American prison system has become a ripe target for Islamic terrorists who wish to recruit disgruntled prisoners to their cause. Jose Padilla, arrested several weeks ago for plotting to build a “dirty bomb” is a graduate of American’s prison system. Richard Reid, the so-called “shoe bomber” was converted to the radical view of Islam in a British prison.

Now, Charles Colson knows something about what goes on in prison. He was one of Richard Nixon’s closest advisors. In the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal thirty years ago, he was convicted for his role in that scandal and sent to prison. For the past twenty-six years he has been engaged in one of the most effective prison ministries in this country.

Colson points out that there are two million people in America’s prisons and jails today and that two thirds of them are nonwhite. Many feel oppressed by the white power structure and the sentencing disparities, which too often fall most harshly on minorities. Colson goes on to point out that if Christians do not become more concerned and involved in our justice system, our prisons will become more and more breeding grounds for Islamic radicals.

I.

One of the great tensions in the Christian faith concerns the Christian emphasis on individuals and its concern for the society in which they live. Through the years there have been those who argued that the Christian faith was a personal, individual faith. Dr. James Henley Thornwell, a distinguished Presbyterian minister and theologian from South Carolina argued in the years before the War Between the States for the “spirituality of the church.” For Thornwell the church needed to remove itself from societal issues and focus only on the needs of individuals. In the early years of the Twentieth Century Walther Rauschenbusch, a Lutheran minister in New York City, wrote a book entitled A Theology of the Social Gospel, in which he argued that the gospel of Jesus Christ was a gospel that was rooted in Christ’s love for people in all the stations of their lives. Rauschenbusch based his writings not only on his experience in “hell’s kitchen” in New York City but also on his study of the teachings of Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament.

Over the next two weeks we will examine these two important dimensions of our faith. Next week we will focus on the subject “The Personal Nature of Social Religion.” This morning we look at “The Social Nature of Personal Religion.”

II.

In the first place the personal nature of social religion is rooted in the witness of Scripture and in the command of Christ. In the passage we read this morning, Moses is called by God in the Sinai Wilderness to deliver his people from bondage. That is the foundation of the Old Testament. It began with the conviction that God heard the cries of his people who were oppressed by the Egyptians and delivered them from bondage to freedom. Everything that Israel came to believe about God as the creator and sustainer of the world was rooted in Israel’s belief that God had delivered his people from slavery and led them to the Promised Land.

That note, sounded in the book of Exodus, continues to resonate throughout the Old and New Testament. Amos, the great prophet of the Eighth Century B.C., warned his people that God was not impressed with sacrifices and rituals but demanded that “justice roll down waters and righteousness like an ever rolling stream” (Amos 5:24).

As for the ministry of Jesus, surely none would argue that Jesus did not care for the condition of people’s lives. The Parable of the Good Samaritan paints in a vivid way Jesus’

First Presbyterian Church Page 2 July 28, 2002 concern about people in need and his great Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 places before all his followers his strong insistence on the care of the “least of these.”

Through the ages the Christian community has learned that it is very difficult to separate a person’s spiritual needs from that person’s physical needs. The great Christian missionary movement of the Nineteenth Century began with missionaries who were determined to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. They cared about the lives of individuals. But then, look what happened. They could not bring the gospel to the individual without the Bible, so they became the translators of the world. The Bible has been translated today into over one thousand languages. But soon they encountered another problem. Most of the people with whom they came into contact could not read. So they became teachers and started schools. But then they were faced with this question: What is the use of educating people who are to die needlessly because they lack medicine and sanitation? So they built hospitals. But what about the hunger and poverty that afflicted so many? Was there not also a need for engineers, agriculturists, and economists?

The lesson of this is clear, isn’t it? Whenever anyone anywhere starts to care for people, it becomes clear to think about the social situation as well.

III.

Then, too, the social nature of personal religion is at the heart of the Presbyterian or Reformed faith. The notion of the “spirituality of the church,” wherever its source, is not consistent with the witness of the Reformed faith. John Calvin, the great reformer of the Sixteenth Century, was greatly involved in the life of the city of Geneva. He founded the first public schools and the first university in that city. He worked hard to get people off welfare. He encouraged the merchants of the city in their work and sought to help the emerging middle class. Calvin has been called by some historians “the father of democratic capitalism.”

That heritage thrived in other cultures as well. In Scotland the Covenanters vowed to fight rather than allow the government to impose a foreign polity on the church. In Mecklenburg County the early citizens of this community signed The Mecklenburg Declaration of 1775 protesting the imposition of the British Government on their freedoms. In Nazi Germany, Presbyterians opposed the policies of National Socialism. In South Africa, Presbyterians oppose the rule of “apartheid.”

One of the “Great Ends of the Church” that is a part of our Book of Order is the “promotion of social righteousness.” It reminds all of us that the command of Christ is a broad command that touches every aspect of human life.

Two recent incidents brought this aspect of our church’s mind to me. One happened several months ago. It was a Saturday afternoon. There had been a children’s Easter egg hunt here in the morning. Everyone had gone home and we were in the process of closing the building when we noted a small plastic grocery bag in the lobby of the new building. It contained some personal items and obviously belonged to someone in the building. As we looked around, we

First Presbyterian Church Page 3 July 28, 2002 saw the person to whom the bag belonged. At first I thought it was a child. In fact it was a young women who could not have been over four feet high. She was from Puerto Rico, spoke only broken English, and was on her way to some family she had in Baltimore. She needed money for the bus. I gave her what I had. But I remember watching her walk down the sidewalk on her way to the bus station. She seemed so small and so vulnerable.

The second incident that brought this to my mind was a letter we received from a member of the television congregation. It was from a man in the poultry business. He said that he had watched our worship service on television. He wrote that God had blessed him and he wanted to give something in return. He knew that our church had a ministry to homeless and other poor families through the Loaves and Fishes program. So he wrote that he would provide us with as many chickens as we wanted for as long as we wanted them. In many ways that letter strikes me as being very basic to the mission of the church. That is what it means to be the church: being at the intersection of a great resource and a great need.

After all, if we say that we want to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with people, and we really don’t care whether these people are hungry or fed, clothed or naked, sick or well, then tell me what kind of gospel is it that we are proclaiming?

Each and every one of these programs of this church is the response of Christians to the dictum of Christ that “the son of man came to serve and not to be served” and in the words of Jesus that “the greatest of you will be the servant.”

IV.

Then, finally, social nature of personal religion is critical to the church, because in the final analysis it is in this arena that the integrity of our faith either stands or falls. Sometimes we say that the mission of the church is to give people a sustaining faith in God and the saving power of Jesus Christ. Certainly none of us would argue with that. But if our faith in God does not lead us into the world of human suffering, then who can but doubt whether Christ has really taken hold of our life or not.

Karl Marx once said, “Philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, but the point is not to interpret it but to change it.” That applies to preachers as well. Too often we try to explain the world, harmonizing its evil with our faith in God, concocting clever interpretations so that we say that its outrageous wrongs are but the shadows cast by ultimate good. But now we are being called to something else: Christ’s way. He did not try to explain the world. He tried to change it. When he wanted a person to believe in God, he did not argue with that person. He loved that person, served that person, lifted that person out of trouble, and forever changed that person’s view of God. Around that personal service Christ lifted a banner, which we ignore at great risk to our souls.

These are times when we are being called to “practical Christianity:” feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, and visiting those in our jails and prisons.

First Presbyterian Church Page 4 July 28, 2002 When William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, died, a great funeral service was held for him at Westminster Abbey. The Queen of England was present along with some of the poorest people in the city of London. As his casket was being rolled out of the Abbey, a poor destitute woman stood up and said, “He cared for the likes of us.”

Christianity is more than that. But it is never less than that either. We pray, “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done.” God grant us grace to live our lives in accordance with that prayer.

Amen

First Presbyterian Church Page 5 July 28, 2002