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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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A New Kind of Culture |
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Second
Sunday after Trinity June
1, 2008 I want to talk about the Church for a while, possibly for several Sundays. That’s hard to do because most statements about the Church tend to be dry factual descriptions resembling a medical or police report, and don’t capture the essence of being the Church. The Bible avoids this problem by using symbolic language. It speaks of the Body of Christ, for example. And of course, the theologians attempt to explain that image by using more analytical, theological language and dry factual statements. This sermon will probably be more of the same, but I hope not. This circle of factual analysis and symbolic word pictures is necessary, even good, for we need a solid, factual, rational understanding of the Church. But that is not what I want to do. I want to try to convey the essence of the nature and being of the Church and to contrast it with the fallen cultures of the world around us. When Christians talk about the state of humanity we often get around to a very important point that is usually ignored by the politicians and social engineers; namely, the fallen condition of all people. You can call this condition darkness, ignorance, or any number of things, but it all comes down to one thing, sin. All people are sinners by nature and by choice. As sinners we have fallen away from the original righteousness we had at the beginning. We have inherited a natural tendency to do what pleases ourselves and gratifies our desires, without regard for the consequences our actions may bring to others or ourselves. The little child who wants a toy is likely to take it, even though it belongs to another and even though taking it causes hurt to the other child. Likewise, adults, though often in much more subtle and sophisticated ways, are often willing to take what we want, say what we want, do what we want, or in any other way gratify ourselves, even at the expense of others, even if God says plainly and clearly that our actions are wrong. This is sin, and we are born and conceived with this sinful tendency in us. The old-time theologians used to call this “Original Sin.” Original Sin does not mean the first sin ever committed. It refers to the origin of the sinful thoughts and actions we commit. So theologians used to talk about Original Sin and Actual Sin. Actual Sins are the sinful actions we do. Original Sin is the inward fallenness that is the origin, or source, of our Actual Sins. It should be evident to everyone that imperfect people cannot build a perfect culture. Every culture built by imperfect people will have imperfections built into it. If people were perfect a perfect culture would naturally occur. We wouldn’t have to devise it, it would just happen. The problem is not that we have a broken culture, which therefore breaks people. The problem is that people are broken and we break and pervert every culture we devise. Fallen, broken people create fallen, broken cultures. You may think this is a very cynical view of human nature, but I say it is the Biblical view. The Bible does not say that all people plunge into the deepest depths of sin. It does not say that all commit murder or theft in actuality. It does not say we are as bad as we can be. It does say we are all tainted with sin and we all give in to our sinful inclinations, probably a lot more than we realize. We may not commit murder, but Jesus seems to equate unjustified anger with murder (Mt. 5:21-22), and haven’t we all been angry without a cause? And haven’t we all done things in anger we know we should not have done? Throughout history many people have thought they could create a perfect culture if they could simply invent a perfect political system. Robespierre and Karl Marx are two names that come to mind. And many have joined their pursuit and adopted their ideas. Their ideas have become a part of pop culture through cinema, and, primarily, through music. Take, for example, John Lennon’s song, “Imagine.” “Imagine all the people living like they should,” I think he wrote. Just take away religion and nationalism and private property, and everything else people kill and die for, and you will have a perfect world. That is what his song implies. But people, being sinners, won’t live like they should. That’s the flaw in all utopian dreams. People will still fight and steal and slander and kill because even if you give everyone an abundance of all good things, some will still want more, and they will devise a way to enrich themselves by taking away from others. Thus, when God set out to build a better culture, He began at the true starting point. He began by building better people. He makes people new. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature,” ( 2 Cor. 5:17). “New” in this verse does not refer to a new man of the old kind. It means a completely new kind of person. So those who are in Christ are a new kind of creature. Christ did not leave Heaven and die on the Cross just to forgive our sins, and leave us still trapped in the old sinfulness that was such an overpowering part of our being. He did die to forgive us, but He also died to make us new. We are born again, through Christ, into a new and different kind of life and being. We are renewed and regenerated. We have been transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2). Specifically, God has begun to eradicate the love of sin and the selfishness and greed and hate that is in us, and to replace it with a love for God and others, and with a love for goodness, and a desire to really live together in community as God intends. He is purging out that part of us that wants to sin, and remaking us into a new person that wants to do only the righteous will of God. This is a process that continues in us as long as we are here on earth. We have not and will not become perfect and sinless here. We still “press toward the mark,” (Phil. 3:14). So in that sense I should say we are being transformed into a new kind of person, but the point is that we are being transformed. We are being made into new creatures. We are in the process of becoming new people. That is the new birth, the conversion, and the santification that the Bible speaks of. God is making a new kind of person. But God is not just in the business of creating a new kind of people. He is also in the business of creating a new kind of culture for the new kind of people to live in. This new culture is called the Church. The Church is the community of the new kind of people. One of the first things we notice about this new kind of culture is that it has a new kind of leader. Jesus Christ is the King of this Kingdom. God is the Father of this family. The Holy Spirit is the frame and mortar of this house. The wonderful thing about this Leader is that He is completely for His people. We often read of bad rulers on this planet. Last night my family watched a documentary on the life of Sergei Rachmaninoff called “A Harvest of Sorrows.” That was the title to one of his songs, and, in many ways it is a fitting epitaph to his life. He was forced to leave Russia during the Bolshevik revolution, and he mourned for the state of the Russian people under the socialist rulers. He called Stalin and the Bolsheviks a “band of professional murderers.” Many human leaders down through history were willing to cause wars and violence and untold misery to satisfy their own desires to build empires of power and wealth for themselves. We are painfully familiar with leaders who make rules for their own benefit, and who has not been frustrated with institutions and agencies whose rules and decisions and actions are for themselves rather than those they pretend to serve? But King Jesus is a different kind of leader. He truly rules for our benefit alone. It was not to fulfill some need in Himself that He created us. It was not for His own good that He hung on the cross and died. He has no need of us. He created us that we might know and enjoy the life and love He gives. He created us for our own benefit. Even His laws are given for our benefit. Every action of His is done to benefit us. This new kind of culture has a new kind of borders. In fact it has no borders, for it is a culture that transcends political barriers, natural barriers, racial barriers, language barriers, and cultural barriers. How? In Christ and in His culture we leave our old cultures behind to enter into His new culture. So all the things that separated us are behind us. There are no Jews or Gentiles or males or females or young or old. All are equal and all are one. And like the “Three Musketeers,” we are “all for one and one for all.” The new culture has a new kind of values. The old culture values power and wealth. It admires those who achieve them, as long as the means of achievement is not too oppressive. Generally speaking, the world admires the man who lives in a twenty room mansion more than the man who lives in a one room cabin. Though the man in the cabin may be much happier and a much better person than the man in the mansion. But in the new culture we are no “respecter of persons” (Js. 2:1). The ground is level at the foot of the cross and we value people just because they are people. The new culture values life, and freedom. The new culture values peace, real peace between its citizens. The new culture values responsibility, and morality and love that makes its citizens actually do something positive for one another. The new culture values people and family and togetherness and cooperation and humility. It may strike you that the new culture’s values sound very much like the values Americans used to cherish. That’s because America’s values were copied right out of the Constitution of the New Culture, the Bible. And for a while Americans also cherished and preserved those values, imperfectly, but nonetheless earnestly. I fear those values are being rapidly discarded today, however. God have mercy upon this nation. This leads me to the last point for this morning. The new culture embodies all the best hopes and dreams of all the other cultures. It embodies all the things their people longed for, bled for, worked for, and died for but could never achieve. This is why there is much common ground between the old cultures and the new one. Even sinful people sometimes yearn for peace, fairness, equality of opportunity, justice, a sense of community, and love. But these things cannot be achieved by the efforts of human beings. They can only be received as the gifts of God’s grace. And they are given to us in the New Culture. That culture, of course is the Church, the Kingdom and Empire of Jesus. And here is the point; we are that new kind of people and the Church is that new kind of culture. We are not just isolated people who have been forgiven and are now going to Heaven. We are a new kind of people in a new kind of culture. By His grace let us live as new creatures in God’s new culture, here, now, and forever. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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