Planks For A Church Platform

Sermon by James W. Crawford

September 15, 1996

Matthew 10:1-8

We have been inundated with political platforms in the last month or so. Most of us do not pay much attention to them. Ambrose Bierce in his Devil's Dictionary caught the essence of these documents, perhaps when he called them "a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles." You will recall Bob Dole told attendees to the Republican Convention he had not even read the Republican platform, and when he did, he repudiated one of its planks. In any case, as you and I move into a new program year together, I would like to offer three planks for a platform we can stand on this year. There is so much to do, so many challenges to meet in our world today. The three point platform I offer this morning might better be labeled, "splinters for the planks of a church platform." I take our lead from our Lord who in the passage we read just a moment or two ago sent his disciples out with a ringing charge: "The realm of heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, cast out demons." Now there is a platform, a platform that is not, as Henry Adams noted when he wrote of politics, the "systematic organization of hatreds." Hardly. From Matthew's evangelical platform, let me suggest some footnotes for our own common life this year.

I

In the first place, I hope we may gather together on a weekly basis in this room, and here with reverence and enthusiasm, humility and openness we may worship, as the Psalmist begs us, "in spirit and in truth." Here we gather to recognize and celebrate the One who, as Dr. Fosdick used to say, the One who gets us off our own hands, who puts into transcendent perspective the God who is both beyond us enfolding the universe and beside us embracing each of us.

Some of you in his room will remember Howard Thurman. For many years he served as chaplain at Boston University, but he was one of those unique individuals: a pastor to the world. Howard Thurman writes of this Divine presence we worship this way:

 Whenever the human mind has been uplifted; whenever I have frustrated the temptation to deny the truth within me, or to betray a value which to me is significant; whenever I have found the despair of my own heart and life groundless; whenever my resolutions to be a better man have stiffened in a real resistance against some from of disintegration; whenever I have been able to bring my life under some high and holy purpose that gives to it a greater wholeness and greater unity; whenever I have stood in the presence of innocence, purity, love and beauty and found my own mind chastened and my whole self challenged and cleansed; whenever for one swirling moment I have glimpsed the distinction between good and evil courses of conduct, caught sight of something better as I turned to embrace something worse; whenever these experiences or others like them have been mine, I have seen God, and felt God's presence near.

I like that, and would add just one thing. I believe the quality, the depth, the radiance, the transforming nature of the divine presence Howard Thurman testifies to is the God of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. God's presence bears a human face--Jesus the Nazarene--sent to us by that majestic enfolder of the universe, yet assuring us of the intimate presence of one who knows what it is like to be you and me, weeping with us, yearning for us, bearing with us through troubled and chaotic times--One who never lets us go. This God so far beyond us, yet so close to us, to this God we offer our loyalty; to this God we surrender; in this God we rejoice; with this God we join in pilgrimage along the way to a creation healed, restored, forgiven.

As this new year begins, then, I invite you to join us in worship and celebration, in song and in prayer to One whose gracious and saving presence we discern in the face--and the Cross--of Jesus Christ.

II

In the second place, I hope we can be true to the very highest in the broad religious tradition in which our church stands. Friends, I want us to be an open house. I want us to be hospitable not only to the broad world of Christian conviction, but to the broad scope of cultures, commitments and inclinations passing through our doors. Our confession to the universal gift of God's grace for the human condition affirmed on the back page of our bulletin each week, recognizing our high calling to be a reconciled body with many members, seeking with others of every race, ethnicity, creed, class, age, gender, physical or mental ability and sexual identity to journey toward the realm of God. This confession remains at the heart of our ministry and mission.

And I do not mind telling you it is a challenge. The building of barriers, the drawing of lines, the claims of sect or creed, culture or tribe batter us all about these days. The question of an all encompassing grace and affirmation lies before us even yet. Where lies this challenge of divisiveness and exclusion? How shall we address it? I want to illustrate the challenge with reference to a new text in the New Century Hymnal, the hymnal in the pews in front of you.

Now if you don't mind, I would appreciate your taking the hymnal out of the pew rack and opening to page 594, "O Beautiful for Spacious Skies..." on page 594. We are going to sing this hymn a little later this morning.

 For those of you who may be new to our congregation, I need tell you that I served as the chair of the committee which developed The New Century Hymnal for the United Church of Christ. The hymn text generating the most controversy is this hymn text for what we have all known as "America the Beautiful." It is new. It is changed. And of course the fierce and angry question: How dare you alter this virtually sacred text? How dare you mess with the poetry burned into the memory banks of loyal patriots and faithful church people? Worst of all, here is a text written by a Wellesley College alumna, Katherine Lee Bates, sung every year at graduation, and with a Wellesley woman in the White House, another as our representative to the United Nations and still another who runs the Crawford household, how could you mutilate such an august and favored text? Indeed, a shocked hymnal forum at the Wellesley Hills Congregational Church last winter and an irate letter from the President of Wellesley College indicated our altered text represented almost the ultimate in both treason and heresy.

Perhaps. But let me tell you a story. In 1994, as our hymnal committee sat around the table singing hymns to be included in this book, when our committee sang what is, indeed, a memorable text by Katherine Lee Bates, when our committee sang her text--a text referring to New England pilgrim feet beating what turned out to be a violent and imperial thoroughfare of freedom across the wilderness of this continent; a text praising heroes proved in liberating the land from its native inhabitants; a text limiting its understanding of America to a geographic entity called the United States--as we sang this text, a United Church of Christ member who happens to have been born in Latin America, a Latino, but an American citizen, said quietly, "This is not my America." An African American on our Committee echoed, "This is not my America." And I from New England, I from the Wellesley household, I who represented quintessentially the America Katherine Lee Bates describes in her poem, I sat stunned by these gentle but firm disclaimers representing a different experience of America, a different perception of our history, a larger understanding of our geography. And thus, in order to make this hymn more accessible for the diversity of Americans sitting in our United Church pews enabling them to sing their experience and to sing our national history with enthusiasm and verve, we asked one of the great hymn poets of our time, Sister Miriam Therese Winter--a saint in this or any other age--to recast the text so that more of us so-called Americans might feel at home in it. Those second, third, and fourth verses you see in your hymnal include the stories of Americans--immigrants and native Americans. Those verses remind us of blood and tears, the violence and oppression inherent in our history; they recognize the hope born of repentance.

Oh Friends, I know that recast text will set some of your teeth on edge. I know it. And for some of you this morning who may identify with another country or global hemisphere, this little plunge into hymnody may itself be too parochially oriented. But I believe it takes the right step in light of our mission to affirm the good news to everyone; it asserts that we want those of you who enter this place to be safe, to be affirmed, to feel and be convinced as you come through our open door that finally-- finally!--you have come home.

 III

And just once more: a third plank in our platform supports the continuing exercise of a Christian social conscience. When Jesus tells those disciples, as he did in our passage this morning, that the realm of heaven is near, he is talking about a new kind of community, a fresh way of treating one another, he is talking about the family of God and our care and concern for other people.

One of the sad conflicts in churches frequently goes on between those who say, "Look we just want our pastor to preach religion, to give us the gospel and hone in on our personal relationship to God." And the conflict goes on with those who say, "Let's get this church on the picket line, in the trenches, around the state house, into the streets." You see that conflict at church conference meetings when the evangelism committee reports and the social action people run for the drinking fountains, the corridors, the bathrooms. And vice versa, when the Social action committee reports the evangelism people charge for the coffee shop, the bookstore, the smokers' lounge.

What a shame! What a misconstrual of the Gospel! To be sure, we need the liberating, saving message of the compassionate and forgiving Gospel. But as John insists, if any of us says we love God, but hate our sister or our brother, we are liars; for those of us who do not love our brothers and sisters whom we have seen cannot love God whom we have not seen." Evangelism and social conscience represent two sides of the same coin. As our Congregational forebears affirmed in the Kansas City Statement of 1913, "We hold it to be the mission of the Church of Christ to proclaim the Gospel to all people, exalting the worship of the one true God, and laboring for the progress of knowledge, the promotion of justice, the reign of peace, and the realization of human solidarity." There is no division between proclaiming the Gospel and doing the works of love and justice. We are all evangelicals; we are all social servants. No more "evangelism committee" over here and "social action committee" over there. As the old church-school ditty goes, "We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord, and they'll know we are Christian by our love by our love and they'll know we are Christians by our love."

So then three planks in our platform, friends. Authentic, empowering, worship; an open, hospitable congregation; the fusing of faith and action. Surely there are scores of other planks. You have your own list. As we join again in common worship, work and witness this year, God grant we remember especially the charter offered by our Lord to his disciples at the beginning of their ministry together: "The realm of heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, cast out demons." What a great task. What a high privilege!