Where Do You Draw the Line?

Now, I don't want to give the impression that every principle, value, or tradition that is changed in the church is changed because it was an evil or sinful value. Rather what I want to imply is more along the lines of what our Gospel lesson teaches us about the Will or Plan that God has for humanity. God works in new and amazing ways in every age, place and people. That is to say, the ways in which God encounters us is specific to our own location in history and in geography. Because of this we will respond to God in different ways. We will develop different values, principles and traditions. As we saw in all of our readings today, God most assuredly has a plan for God's people. This plan as God's Chosen people is made quite clear when God saved the twelve tribes of Israel from a famine through Joseph located in Egypt. In our Gospel lesson we see a special moment in history. In our lesson we see God's plan changing right before our very eyes. In the beginning of the story Jesus seems quite strange to us. In fact he doesn"t even seem like the Jesus we have all come to know and love. Jesus is ignoring a woman crying out for help just because she is a different nationality. Jesus even calls her a dog and unworthy of God's promise. The woman persists in her cries for justice and catches Jesus in a logical trap. I imagine Jesus was quite amused that this woman had changed the mind of God with her faith. Some might even argue that this woman changed all of Christian history by opening up God's promise of a chosen people to the entire world. God's preferential care for the poor, the sick, the marginalized no longer was limited to the Abrahamic covenant but through Christ it was opened to all peoples.

I was privileged to be given a sermon that was preached way back in June of this year to a group of elite Presbyterian officials and seminary students. The statistics I learned from that sermon were amazing. Amazing in the scale and also how they somewhat, not entirely, but somewhat reflect what has been going on in our wonderfully loving church. We have all heard about the devastating news of the decline of the Presbyterian Church as a whole; the declining membership records, the great schism of our internal theological differences, budget cuts, an apparent shortage of clergy...the list goes on. What has changed? How do we deal with the news of our own demise? Who are we...really?

Traditionally, the Presbyterian Church has lived in the limelight of being a "mainline Christian" denomination. Being a mainline church used to mean something in American back in the middle part of the 20^th century. In that light the Presbyterian Church established its own set of principles. Presbyterians were highly educated, we were rich, we were political, we were striving for reforming social justice, and more than anything, we were white. There were principles behind each of these points of pride for our denomination. We never questioned why the denomination-loved intellect it was just the way things were. We never questioned why the denomination drew in rich individuals or why those individuals were mostly if not all white it was just the way things have always been. The world around us has changed and the power and clout that the Presbyterian Church once held in our society has been lost.

"[T]he nexus of political power in America, and the religious infrastructure that supports it, has shifted from the Northeast"s old mainline to the new South. Through the new South, parts of the Midwest and the new West the composite identity of the voters who turned the last election was anti-intellectual, anti-elitist, lower class (though still subservient to the agenda of the ruling class), suburban, and evangelical in a distinctly non-mainline sense. Presbyterians of the well-educated, moneyed, moderate old sort, along with our Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Methodist and Lutheran mainline compatriots are adjusting with difficulty to this new day."

But what does this mean for us? How are we to adjust to this new society that has grown around us as if over night? We can go back to our Gospel lesson for today and find ourselves in a similar position as Jesus. Our principles of Presbyterianism must be radically changed to conform to the new direction that God is calling our church. No longer can we find comfort in the sameness of education, wealth, and race. We must return to what the Gospel calls us to be and that is God's Love and Justice in the world, the ecclesia, the church that God is changing us into. Now this new call for the church is not new at all. We as a church even have it in our Book of Order but it has been our principles that have lead us astray. Chapter 3 of the Book of Order reads in part, "[the mission of the church is] healing, and reconciling and binding up wounds; ministering to the needs of the poor, the sick, the lonely and the powerless; engaging in the struggle to free people from sin, fear, oppression, hunger and injustice; giving itself and its substance to the service of those who suffer; sharing with Christ in establishing His just, peaceable and loving rule in the world. The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of loosing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and giver of life, sharing the Gospel and doing those deeds in the world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ" (G 03.0400).

Even at the risk of loosing its life" Are we willing to go forward helping the oppressed, the poor, the sick, and the marginalized even if it means we have to close the doors of this church? The principle we must come back to in the church is the same principle that Jesus learned on the road in our story today. God is open to all peoples and God will help the poor, the sick, and the marginalized over and above those whom already live in comfort and wealth. We must put aside our comfort, our wealth, and our very selves for those whom God has called us to help. We must open our doors to those who are different than ourselves. To those who are black, poor, gay, Latino and Latina, lesbian, sick, lonely, transgendered, and especially those who are powerless in our society, we must risk our very lives and our very institution to help them as God has called us to do. We have been called out of our isolation and into the world of diversity, which God has wonderfully made for all of creation. In as much the church has already confessed this to be God's call as such I will end with a gender and discrimination inclusive quote from the Confession of 1967. This is taken from: Part II The Ministry of Reconciliation, Section A The Mission of the Church, Point 4 Reconciliation in Society.

"In each time and place, there are particular problems and crises through which God calls the church to act. The church, guided by the Spirit, humbled by its own complicity and instructed by all attainable knowledge, seeks to discern the will of God and learn how to obey in these concrete situations...

a. God has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family. In [God's] reconciling love, [God] overcomes the barriers between brothers [and sisters] and breaks down every form of discrimination...real or imaginary. The church is called to bring all peoples to receive and uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment, housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the exercise of political rights. Therefore, the church labors for the abolition of all...discrimination and ministers to those injured by it. Congregations, individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize their [brothers and sisters], however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which they profess."

Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, now and forevermore. Amen!