Providence United Methodist Church
August 6, 2000 ~ Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Scripture ~ II Samuel 11: 26- 12: 13a; Psalm 51:1-9; John 6: 24-35
Sermon ~ Communion and Forgiveness
Preacher ~ George Thompson
A strong Anglican hymn begins with this confession:
“O God of earth and altar,
Bow and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die.
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.”1/
I am drawn unto the words because I am filled with appreciation for the man who wrote them. Gilbert K. Chesterton was a renowned journalist, poet, and novelist who loomed large over the first quarter of the Twentieth Century. Literally. He weighed over 300 pounds much of his adult life. Yet his rotundary was only exceeded by his profundity. As a pundit, writing a much-anticipated column for London’s Daily News , he commanded legendary attention. The world awaited his newest word of wit and wisdom. He possessed the prophetic courage of an Anthony Lewis and the analytical skills of a George Will.
When this intellectual giant was converted to the Christian faith, many were shocked. He wrote one of the most ardent defenses of orthodoxy ever articulated by a lay theologian. In his autobiography, he answered the skeptic’s question, “Why did you join the Church?” with these six lean words: “To get rid of my sins.”2/
Perhaps we avoid the candor of these words; but I suspect that most of us concur with this simple confession, especially on the Sundays set aside for the Eucharist.
When the aging psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote a best-selling volume a generation ago and entitled it, Whatever Became of Sin? he struck a sensitive nerve. The Reformation debunked the use of a confessional for interaction of priest and parishioner. The Catholic Church, through the counter-reformation, watered down the sacrament of confession and made of it a perfunctory event rather than a transforming act. During the modern era, psychologists have replaced priests. Guilt has been tagged a disease caused by exterior influences -- usually parental. Therefore, no one is responsible for sin. Few people acknowledge its reality, confess it, confront it, purge it, and remove it as a power over one’s life.
Some of us are not so easily convinced that confession is irrelevant or unnecessary. I, for one, come to communion precisely to get rid of my sin. The seven deadlies are my constant temptation: gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, envy, sloth and pride. By thought, word, and deed I am a sinner in need of the word of grace that the church alone provides. O Lamb of God, I come here to kneel and to be fed. And quite frankly, I don’t know where else to go in order to receive a true cleansing.
The church growth gurus tell me that I am a fossil from the past. “Don’t write those prayers of confession in the bulletin. People don’t come to church in order to be reminded that we are sinners. Give them all those “Be happy attitudes,’” I am told. I am reminded that many fast growing churches do not recited the Psalms. Too many speed bumps. Those poems of confession are especially downers. The result is that we have packaged the Christian faith in a way that contradicts biblical authenticity. We resemble the deplorable description of the church made by H. Richard Niebuhr when he described the shape of American Christianity: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”3/
The lectionary texts this morning rattle our cage and call us to worship for a different reason. The lesson from Samuel presents the piercing personality of Nathan the prophet. At the risk of being executed by the king, he walked into the oval office in Jerusalem and accused David of the most heinous of crimes: adultery, cover-up, lies, and even murder. Psalm 51, our lectionary text, was written by King David in response to this riveting moment of truth. According to tradition, the humiliated and repentant king begged for God’s mercy when his sins were revealed by Nathan. We usually read this psalm on Ash Wednesday and on this Sunday of Ordinary Time. Tradition says that David’s great prayer of repentance was henceforth recited in the temple. His sins were told to all the people throughout the land. David confessed, begged for mercy, altered his ways, and remained humble to his dying days. He, furthermore, suffered the consequences of his sin without protest. He could have joined Chesterton’s plea,
“Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.”
Ironically, David will always be remembered as Israel’s greatest ruler. He was a liar, an adulterer, a murderer and much more. But he was a sinner redeemed by grace.
Why did you come to communion today?
The evangelist John tells us that Jesus fed a multitude of 5000 people, using the resources of a lad with five barley loaves and two fish. After the feeding, he departed to the other side of the Galilee. Yet, the crowd followed him. The hungry, sick, tired, oppressed, and fearful followed. They came to church again. Why? Jesus accused them of coming to church for the wrong reasons: to be fed, to be entertained by miracles, to be healed without lifting a finger. Presto. Magic! They trailed Jesus to Capernaum by crossing by boat. As they pressed around him in the town, he said tersely, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”4/
There are many places in which you can find bread for the belly and drink to satiate one’s thirst. Many of us have feasted at the stock market, but we are hungry for more profit. Some of us have eaten at the trough of a great university of knowledge; but we are still confused by the chaos of our existence. Knowledge did not save us. We have tasted of sex for amusement. We have witnessed violence for thrills. We have practiced consumptive spending for our pleasure. But we remain hungry. We are still thirsty for something more satisfying.
This is because the church offers a food which no one else serves. We provide a forgiveness that heals our hunger. We need the food of salvation and the cup of redemption. We have spoken a word in anger that we cannot retract. We have polluted the purity of our marriage by self-centered actions and callous indifference to another’s feelings.
Communion is the sacrament of the second chance. And we need to be fed. Moreover, we need the power to arise from this altar as a new person -- not as a fraud who has just gotten caught. We need the accountability of this redemptive community: people who will forgive us but hold us responsible for a life moving in the direction of righteous behavior.
Yes, today we come to communion in order to get rid of our sins. We come because we cannot really survive without this food.
In the summer of 1969 I served three churches in Union County. Smyrna, named after a congregation mentioned in the book of Revelation, had been added to my charge in June. EArly one Sunday morning about this time of the summer I conducted a simple service of communion. The people of Smyrna stayed at the altar for a very long time. I had thirteen miles to drive to my second service in Wingate. But they remained at the altar until all have prayed sufficiently. Many wept visibly.
Why?
I learned that week that the previous appointment had been supplied by a lay pastor. He was an excellent pastor. But he was not ordained and was not authorized to administer the sacraments without the presence of a deacon or elder. This congregation had gone over a year without the sacrament of Holy Communion.
Maybe it has been a long time for some of us as well. A long time since we have truly and earnestly repented of our sin. A long time since we have felt like a new person. A long time since we have heard the words:
“Ye who believe his record true
shall sup with him and he with you;
Come to the feast,
be saved from sin,
for Jesus waits to take you in.”5/
Footnotes:
1. Gilbert K. Chesterton, “O God of Earth and Altar,” contained in Masterpieces of Religious Verse, edited by James Dalton Morrison (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1948), p. 394.
2. G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography (London, 1936), p. 329.
3. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York, 1937), p. 193.
4. John 6: 27a NRSV
5. The United Methodist Hymnal, no. 616.