Psalm
33:18-22; 1 Peter 1:3-9
Reformation
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Do you love a good quote? One in which the words fit together
creatively and allow you to not only comprehend a vast topic better, but to somehow
also step right into its worldview? I was
delighted to recently read such a gem.
It wasn’t surprising to me that it came from the renown preacher Charles
Spurgeon, who pastored the New Park Street Chapel in London for 38 years back
in the 19th century. If you’ve been to London, you may have heard
about or seen this church by its later name of Metropolitan Tabernacle. Pulling the big biblical concepts of faith, hope and love succinctly together, Spurgeon artfully poured out these
image-evoking words –
"Faith
goes up the stairs that love has made and looks out of the windows which hope
has opened."
This instantly
reminded me to regard faith as a verb.
It’s not just some thing we
should clutch while sitting on some bottom step of our belief in Jesus
Christ. Faith instead prompts us see
and step trustfully forward as we follow the steps of our loving Savior. This alone leads us up and out of the
stifling view of the sin saturating our lives and this world. Taking
this action lifts our spirits so we can see the amazing, wide open views of
God’s redeeming grace. These steps
lead to holy hope!
All of us
have had and will continue to experience times when it’s hard to take that
first step with the Gospel. As just
one example, I admit this past week’s back to back national news stories about
yet more murder in public schools caused me to feel more than a bit paralyzed in
my walk of faith. But rather than
getting stuck at the bottom of the stairs of total despondency, as sin always
invites us to do, I again chose to go up the stairs that God’s love has made so
I could look out an open window to the living hope I have in the redeeming
power of Jesus Christ. I’m able to do so
because I respect the examples of all who have gone before me with biblical faith. Like a priceless inheritance, they have all
passed down their hope. I believe it greatly strengthens us personally
and communally when we take time to receive what they have bestowed upon our
generations.
Travel up
the steps with me to the window where our most ancient biblical ancestors stood. We find Noah there, marveling at the freshly
plucked olive leaf in a dove’s beak. His
great hope came true in that moment, knowing that the sin devastating waters
had receded. Seven days later, he looked
out again and saw all the dry land.
Then God propped the window open forever, offering a covenant promise
with the words, “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even
though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never
again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” (Genesis 1:21).
Travel up
the steps with me to the window where the people of Israel stood. God’s promises
to Abraham first opened this window. It
was opened again and again by his offspring Isaac and Jacob. Their hope was in the holy bequest of a
physical, Promised Land. But we recall
that at the end of the Book of Genesis, it was hard to see the House of Israel
let alone the stairs given their view of great suffering from within the land
of Egypt. So when God called upon Moses
next, we proclaim hallelujah to how he repeatedly went up the stairs built on
God’s compassionate love and saw a great sea of hope open before him!
Travel up
the steps with me to the window where the first disciples of Jesus stood. After all their amazing adventures, not to
mention all of their stumbling on the steps drunk with fear and betrayal, what is
it they were blessed to see beyond that upper room? An empty cross near an empty tomb! The great hope of total forgiveness of sin
for all God’s children came fully and miraculously in view. So too the great worldview of the darkness
and death dispersing light of their Lord!
Travel with me
to Wittenburg, Germany, on October 31, 1517. Let’s run up the steps to the window where
Martin Luther looked out. He began on
the bottom step of deep grievances against the corruptions of the church he was
a clergy member of. He then ascended
into hope of a great reformation to the glory of God alone, focused on the hope
of faith alone, Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone. This hope energized his walk to the door
of the appropriately named All Saints Church where he posted his expression of it
in ninety-five ways. Windows then
opened all over the world! And so also
stood the likes of John Calvin and John Knox.
The powerful view of the Protestant Reformers eventually reached America
and, by God’s grace, Fairmount Presbyterian Church is in its 266th
year of existence.
Travel again
with me to Germany, this time in the mid-1940’s. There existed ministers at that time declaring
such implausible things as “Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the
German people to enter the Church of Christ.”[i] But,
hallelujah, there were many pastors and theologians who fully refuted and
plotted against such decrees. Together,
they identified themselves as the Confessing Church movement, and one of our PC
(USA) constitutional documents, the Barmen Declaration, was authored by
them. One outstanding leader of this
movement, the Rev. Dietrich Boenhoffer, spent two years in prison before being martyred
on April 9, 1945. Tragically, this was
just one month before Germany surrendered.
In his book Papers and Letters
from Prison, he wrote about the need to offer forgiveness from the bottom
of our hearts. And he also talked about
his stair-climbing in the house that Christ’s love built and his holy view from
the upstairs window in this way -- “The
Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping
and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for
Christ, to exist for others.”
For today, let’s visit just one more
historic window of hope. The stairs were
in Syracuse, NY. Climbing them was a
woman whose first career was that of a medical photography for the Mayo
Clinic. This is not what led to her
photo and story being in the “Close-Up” feature of the November 12, 1956
edition of LIFE Magazine. Following
this first career, she studied at Syracuse University and then discerned a holy
calling to be a Christian Educator at an East Genesee, NY church. From there she earned a Bachelor of Divinity
degree from Union Theological Seminary in NY, where, not incidentally, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer once taught. This led to
her flourishing as the Christian Education director of First Presbyterian
Church in Allentown, PA.
With the encouragement of the pastor
of her home church and many others, she then climbed the stairs to look out the
window and see herself in a pioneering new light. This is what led to the captions, quotes and
photos in LIFE magazine. In a borrowed
clergy robe, on October 24, 1956, the Rev. Margaret Towner became the first
woman to be ordained as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament in our
Presbyterian denomination. Discrimination
by males continued, she says, in ways “polite but heavy.” With faith, love and hope, however, she
regarded all of these as “stepping stones” and preached words in reply like
this – “It is my vision that someday we will realize full equality as human
beings called by God to the ministry of Word and Sacrament based upon our
talent and ability, regardless of what gender one happens to be. It is my vision that the day soon will come
when we will not be debating ordination of women, nor rejecting the use of
inclusive language. Let us get on with being the Whole People of God.”
You and I, together, have inherited
the holy hope viewed from all these windows and so very many more. Having received this priceless gift, we are
not content to let any circumstances cause us or others to get stuck at the
bottom of the stairs of despondency. We
are instead inspired to live into hope by going forward as good stewards, opening
all kinds of doors to God’s great house … especially the ones here at FPC. We do so trusting that people we know and
people we’ve yet to know will have the experience of faith going up the stairs that love has made and looking out of the windows which
hope has opened.
How’s your climbing going? What hope are you seeing? How are you actively helping others to inherit
the view? In Jesus’ name, I invite you
to prayerfully reflect upon and answer these questions with faith, love and
hope and to God’s glory alone. Amen.
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