Let us pray that that is true!

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Christopher Ray
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1 What is So Special About Being Presbyterian? + Sunday, January 21, 2001 Kirkin o the Tartans ++ Peachtree Presbyterian Church 3434 Roswell Rd NW, Atlanta, GA 30305, 404/ Dr. Victor D. Pentz Senior Pastor + Today is my first experience with Peachtree Presbyterian Church s annual Kirkin o the Tartans. It reminds me of the story about the Englishman on a train from Scotland to London. As he rode along, he was absorbed in reading the newspaper. A Scotsman across the aisle said, Gud mor-r-rnin! but the Englishman kept reading. The cheery Scotsman would not be denied a conversation with his fellow passenger, so he said, Bonnie countr-r-r-ryside, isn t it? The Englishman did not acknowledge the question. Finally, the Scot said, Weel, tell me, how d ye lak Scotland? At last, the Englishman pulled down his newspaper and responded, I hate Scotland! It is cold, damp, and there are so many Presbyterians! The Scot said, Weel, go to hell: it s war-rrm, it s dr-r-ry, and ther-r-re are no Pr-rresbyter-r-rians! Let us pray that that is true! We ask, What is so special about being Presbyterian? One phrase from the Scripture is always associated with our denomination: Let all things be done decently and in order. That phrase, found in 1 Corinthians 14:26-33 is the John 3:16" of our Presbyterian denomination. I would like us to look at that phrase within the context of Paul s first letter to the Church of Corinth. Paul found this church the most troublesome of all churches. In this letter, he is responding to a particular difficulty in the life of that church. What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two or at the most three should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged.

2 The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. At verse 39, Paul says: Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. Or, as it is translated in the King James Version: Let all things be done decently and in order. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Would you join me in a moment of prayer? Lord, we pray that You would come to us now and allow your Holy Spirit to illumine your Word, so that it might be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, to the glory of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. What is so special about being Presbyterian? If you have been around Presbyterian churches very long, you must know of our fondness for three-point sermons. This morning I will answer that question by pointing out the three distinctive qualities of Presbyterians. As Presbyterians, we are defined by: 1. Our love of organization 2. Our loyalty to the Church 3. Our emphasis on the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Presbyterians love organizations; in fact, we all but invented the committee meeting! One of my Presbyterian pastor friends tells a story of driving across his city on a Wednesday night to attend his presbytery s annual review of church records. Every year, Presbyterians get together to make sure the proceedings of our monthly session meetings and our congregational meetings have been properly recorded in a way that is decent and in order. My friend finally reached the corner where the church was located and found himself in a huge traffic jam. There were two other churches on the corners of that intersection. On one corner, the Baptists were having a Wednesday night prayer meeting and Bible study. On the other corner, the charismatic chapel was holding a revival. He said, We Presbyterians were getting together to read Minutes. We love organization. 1 Corinthians 14:40 says, Let all things be done decently and in order. Paul wrote those words to a church that was characterized by indecency and disorder. Things were out of control in Corinth. During worship services people in the congregation would stand and attempt to wrest control of the service from the church leaders. Sermons were interrupted by spontaneous outbursts of ecstatic utterances from the crowd. At Sunday communion services, rich members of the congregation refused to partake of the food provided; they brought their own take out! When Paul heard about this, he said, Listen, people, God is not a God of confusion, but a God of peace. Therefore, -2-

3 let all things be done decently and in order. Our Presbyterian founder John Calvin based his entire theology on the ideal of order. In the beginning, God created a world of beauty and order. Then Satan came along and sowed seeds of disorder, until God sent his Son Jesus Christ to restore order in the world. As Christians and Presbyterians, we glorify God by living lives of order. Presbyterians tend to be solid, orderly people. Yet we are sometimes criticized for being so insistent on order that we suppress the spontaneous movement of the Holy Spirit. I would like to suggest instead that Presbyterians are Pentecostals in the best sense of the word. On the Day of Pentecost, there was a whoosh and a crackle as the Spirit descended with wind and fire! There are two ways to ignite a gallon of gasoline. One way is to put the gasoline in a tub and throw a match into it. Boom! This is what occurred on the Day of Pentecost. But, there is another way to ignite a gallon of gasoline: by pouring it into the tank of an automobile. The gasoline will allow that automobile to be driven down the road and over hills and toward a destination. That is how the Holy Spirit tends to work in a Presbyterian church. The Bible reveals that after the dramatic descent on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit began the more orderly action of organizing churches. When the Apostle Paul went to a town, his mission was not simply to proclaim the gospel and move on. He proclaimed the gospel, but he also stayed around to organize elders and deacons, to establish rules for the instruction of neophytes in the faith in the essentials of Christianity, to provide for the care of widows and orphans, and to set guidelines for the training of leaders. The Holy Spirit does not descend simply to create enthusiasm. Wherever the Holy Spirit is truly present, there is order; there is a method for doing the work of the Church of Jesus Christ. Having said that, we Presbyterians sometimes go overboard in our emphasis on structure and order. This tendency makes us the target of many jokes. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes the following about one of his characters: He brought with him his tiny Irish wife; a tight, hard, little woman as humorless as a chicken. She had a dour, Presbyterian mind that beat the brains out of anything fun to do. A Baptist friend once told me he had biblical evidence that Presbyterians would get to heaven before anybody else. I asked where the Bible said that. He replied, It says right here: the dead in Christ shall rise first. We believe that where Christ is Lord, there is order. Along with our love for order and organization, Presbyterians believe in loyalty to the church. For us, believing must lead to belonging. Which of these women is more engaged in the work of the kingdom of God: a woman sitting at home alone reading her Bible and praying, or a woman sitting at a table down at the church, surrounded by committee members and styrofoam cups, working to balance the Christian education budget? -3-

4 Some would say the first woman was engaged in deeply spiritual work, while the second woman was occupied with worldly busy work. But Presbyterians would certainly disagree with that assessment. We know that we must be in prayer daily before God and engage in the study of His Word, but we believe that we must also give ourselves away in service to Christ within his body. Why? Because in the Scriptures the gift of the Holy Spirit, and all of God s gifts and promises are bestowed not upon the individual, but upon the collective community of faith. I ran a scan on my computer Bible program for the word saint and made a remarkable discovery. You will not find the word saint in all of the Bible, but you will find the word saints sixty-nine times, beginning in 2 Samuel: The Lord guards the feet of his saints. Revelation says, The white gown of the Bride of Christ will be the righteousness of the saints. Saints do not act in isolation. God brings us together through His Holy Spirit. If I am to be all God desires me to be, you have a role to play in my life. If you are to be all that God desires you to be, I have a role to play in your life. We need one another within the Body of Christ. If as Presbyterians, we are plural and not individual, another of our Presbyterian tenets is that as a church, we are connectional and not congregational. My favorite analogy for this concept is the post office. If our Buckhead post office was a stand-alone operation, what would happen when you mailed a letter? It wouldn t go anywhere, would it? The value of the post office lies in its connection to other post offices around the United States and around the world. It is the same with the Body of Christ. When God looks down, he doesn t read the signs out in front of the churches. We are one as His body. The interconnectedness of the Presbyterian family was deeply felt in this congregation when Dr. Harrington became tragically ill and died two years ago. I ll never forget sitting in my office in Houston when I received an from our denominational headquarters. It spoke of Dr. Harrington s condition and asked for each of the churches in the United States to be in prayer for the Peachtree congregation, for Dr. Harrington, for Sara, Vicki, and Susi, and for the entire family. The Presbyterian family united in prayer for one of its member churches in need. This family connection is not exercised only for pastors as beloved and well known as Dr. Harrington. It happens every single day within the Presbyterian family. It was also understood at the time Dr. Harrington died that another pastor from another Presbyterian church somewhere in the United States would leave his church to come and stand in this pulpit. Now that I have come from Houston to this pulpit, the Houston congregation is searching for a pastor, who will come from another Presbyterian church to serve in the Houston pulpit. When that search is completed, another church will search for a pastor in a kind of celestial game of Musical Pulpits. We are connected. We are united in one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God the Father of all, Who is above all and through all and in all. We Presbyterians believe in our organization; we believe in our loyalty to -4-

5 the Church of Jesus Christ; and third, we believe in the emphasis of the lordship of Jesus Christ. Have you ever heard someone from another denomination say, Presbyterians are really worldly! Why are you so worldly? In a sense, it is true. Presbyterians have no religious rules that keep us from full engagement in the world. I grew up in a church whose goal was to keep Christians out of the world. The Church was understood to be a kind of lifeboat that we cling to while we wait for the Second Coming of Jesus. John Calvin had a different understanding of salvation. He said that when we are saved and become new creatures in Christ, God places us back in the Garden of Eden. We become the new Adam and the new Eve. All the things that were available to Adam and Eve as new creatures in a fresh, new world are now available to us as the people of God. God says, Enjoy my world every good thing is for you. This engagement with God s wondrous world is my favorite part of being a Presbyterian. You will find Presbyterians up to their eyebrows in every type of cultural, social, educational, and artistic enterprise known to humankind. For example, Presbyterians have always been great fans of education. Here s a riddle: why won t Presbyterians make it to heaven? Because on the way to heaven, there is a fork in the road with two signs one says Heaven and the other says Seminar on Heaven. All the Presbyterians will choose to attend the seminar. Presbyterians have also been very successful in business and economics. Do you recall a German sociologist named Max Weber? Karl Marx once said that the way you earn your living predetermines your religious viewpoint. Max Weber said the exact opposite. He said your religious life will predetermine your economic pattern. He went on to say that Presbyterianism led to the development of capitalism in Europe and the United States, because Presbyterianism places a high value on the business virtues of thrift and discipline. A good example is the Scots-Irish who came to this nation and settled in South Carolina. When they came, they were dirt poor, literally living in shacks and sleeping on the ground. They refused to take handouts from others. They built their own churches and their own schools. Even when they became wealthy, they continued to live simple, frugal lives. Their thrift enabled them to amass great fortunes, which they used to aid the economic development of the United States. Max Weber called this a worldly monasticism : Presbyterians work hard, not for our personal gratification, but in order to give glory to God. That is the heart of the practice of the Presbyterian lifestyle in the world. Presbyterians have been active in education, economics and even in sports. In a scene from the greatest movie ever made, Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddel, a Presbyterian missionary, is walking on the green hills above Edinburgh, Scotland. His sister, Jenny, is deeply concerned that he is putting his mission to China on hold to train for the Olympics. Eric says, Jenny, I know God made me for China, but He also made me fast. I feel God s pleasure when I run! -5-

6 In your work and in your world, do you also have moments when you feel God s pleasure? These are the moments when you have nailed it. You have done it right! The ink is fresh on the contract that you had a part in bringing about. Or you are teaching and the lightbulb of insight comes on over the head of every student in your class. Or you have argued your case well before the jury. Or you have tracked down that pesky virus in the company computer and everyone can go back online. The pleasure you feel is God s pleasure, if you have done it for Him. Even the most menial task can be done for the glory of God. As Eric Liddel s father said, Aye, you can peel a spud to the glory of God providing you peel it to perfection. That s Presbyterian theology. I want to close with one of the most amazing conversations I have ever had. I was visiting my brother on the West Coast a couple of years ago and was having my little, red, mid-life crisis sports car washed. The young man at the car wash was wiping off my newly-washed car. He turned around and said, Hi, I m Tony Hernandez. What s your name? I told him. He then asked what I did for a living. I thought, Oh, no, when you tell people you re a minister, anything can happen. I said, I m pastor of a church. He asked, What denomination? I told him Presbyterian. He said, No! Me, too! and I thought that was interesting. He continued to dry my car and said, We Presbyterians believe in predestination, don t we? I said, Well, some of us do. He asked, How do you understand Romans 8:28 where it says Those whom He foreknew, he predestined? I thought, Whoa! I said, Well, I don t understand it to be double predestination. I don t believe that God has predestined some people to go to hell and some people to go to heaven. Romans 8:28 is primarily about the security of the believer in Christ. That was okay for him. He kept going. He said, Our Presbyterian eschatology is amillennial. I thought, Am I on Candid Camera? He said, The great thing about being amillennial is that we believe that Jesus Christ is already Lord. The Fundamentalists believe that one day Jesus will come back and be made Lord, but we believe Jesus when he said all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. We are already in the kingdom spiritually, and some day we will be in the kingdom physically. I said, I know that; I know that. He asked if there were a big vault above the pulpit in my church. Is there a lot of empty space above your head when you are preaching so that people can look up into that empty space? I said, Yeah. He said, Yes! Yes! I asked why that was so good. He said, Because that s where Christ is, and only Christ should be the center of worship. We are here with Christ at the center of our sanctuary, the center of our worship, the center of our work, the center of our business, the center of our leisure, the center of our sports, the center of our lives. I have stayed in touch with Tony. He is now attending seminary to become a Presbyterian minister. Glory be to God! Would you join me in prayer? -6-

7 Our gracious God, we are thankful that You are a God of order, and at the same time, a loving Father who extends your arms to us. Lord Christ, we pray that you would come down from the stained glass window this morning to walk these aisles and that you would truly become the center of our lives, in our work, in our families, and in our schooling, in those moments of fear and doubt that awaken us in the middle of the night. Lord, we pray that you would bring order to our chaos, community to our loneliness, and your pleasure to the tasks of our daily lives as we put Christ at the center of all. It is in his name that we pray. Amen. -7-

Sunday, April 8 Sunday, May 27

Sunday, April 8 Sunday, May 27 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled