Sermon preached by Dr. John A. Huffman, Jr.
June 29, 2008
Copyright © 2008, John A. Huffman, Jr.
All rights reserved.
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
Today we observe the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
The title of this message is Sacramental Vision.
For over a year now, we've heard a lot of talk at St. Andrew's about the word vision. We don't have to say much about that, do we? For many months now, your duly elected representatives have been sharpening their focus on what the future of St. Andrew's can look like, as they endeavor to synthesize your thoughts and dreams that declare teachings of Scripture.
A word with which we are somewhat less familiar is the word sacrament. Just what is a sacrament? Most Christians, when confronted with this question, get a puzzled look on their faces. It sounds so theological. The best way I know how to state it in understandable terms is that a sacrament is the "outward sign of the inner working of God's grace in our lives." It's a kind of show-and-tell time. Our two sacraments are baptism and the Lord's Supper. When an adult steps forward in adult baptism, that person is declaring that they have repented of sin and put their trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. It's show-and-tell time. When a couple presents their child for infant baptism, they are entering into a covenant relationship with the pastor, the congregation and with God to surround this little one with all the means of God's grace in the hope and prayer that, someday when that child is old enough to know what it's all about, that child will step forward and confirm the vows taken for him or her in the sacrament of baptism. When we come, as we do today, to the table of the Lord's Supper, we are eating the bread representative of the body of Jesus and drinking the grape juice representative of the blood of Jesus, reminding ourselves of His death and resurrection. We are telling the world that we have repented of sin and put our trust in Him alone for salvation and are claiming the power of the Holy Spirit to live lives according to His Word until He returns or until we die and step into His presence, whichever comes first.
Today, as we prepare to come to the table, my prayer is that the Holy Spirit will help us sharpen our sacramental vision.
I.
First, may we focus our sacramental vision in greater biblical faithfulness.
I've just returned from the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The majority of my time there was quite positive. There were some good times of worship. There were exciting reports of what God is doing in our local and world mission. We heard challenging preaching and had great fellowship, as our dysfunctional family came together in what now is an every-other-year event.
Since 2002, I've been on a General Assembly Task Force called "Mission Initiative: Hearts & Hands Together," in which we set the goal of raising $40 million, half of it to establish new churches and the other half to send new missionaries. This has not been an easy task. Thursday night, the task force reported in that we are now above the $33 million mark and still moving forward. Our own St. Andrew's Church has been the lead church in the denomination, having now given $1.5 million to complete our pledge. This has gone to help establish the new church plant in Ladera Ranch and helped with the development and growth of our Orange County Chinese church. In addition, in collaboration with a couple of other churches, we have sent two new missionaries to teach at Forman College in Pakistan and sent two new missionaries from our own church, Brett and Shelly Faucett, to do AIDS ministry in Thailand and to coordinate those same efforts throughout Southeast Asia. Multiple good stories such as these were told at General Assembly.
Then, in the last 24 hours, actions were taken of a devastating nature, which made headlines across the United States. Yesterday's, Saturday, June 28, 2008, L.A. Times had this headline, "Presbyterian leaders OK gay clergy." With that, all the old frustration and anger erupts to the surface among those of us who, for well over three decades, have endeavored to maintain and protect the biblical credibility of our confessions, policy and our Book of Order.
Once again, we are in a crisis time. At least five times before, in the last 30 years, we have been at this point. Twice before we have been successful in defeating such an effort to change our Constitution. No General Assembly can change the Constitution. The reality is that such a change must be approved by a majority of our presbyteries.
But, for the first time, the General Assembly has successfully overruled the authoritative interpretations that have officially blocked the ordination of a avowed, practicing gays as deacons, elders and ministers of the Word and Sacrament. This action, combined with the "Peace, Unity and Purity" report of the last General Assembly, now opens the door by a very narrow vote to practices many of us believe are directly opposed to the clear teachings of the Bible. Although many of us are committed to protect the civil rights of gay and lesbian people and to provide pastoral care as we ourselves as sinners receive, we are not able to condone such lifestyles. What this General Assembly has done is remove that authoritative interpretation that declares, "What the Bible says is sin we dare not declare no longer to be sin."
On Friday, the "Presbyterian Renewal Network," of which St. Andrew's is a part, issued this joint statement:
Today the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) lies gravely wounded, by the hand of its own General Assembly. This Assembly has struck multiple blows, threatening to sever the sinews that hold us together as a Christian body and as a part of the larger body of Christ. This is a day for grieving.
The General Assembly today, by majority vote, has conveyed to our congregations and to the world that it rejects the Bible's teaching and our Reformed confessions' affirmation that homosexual behavior does not comport with Christian faith.
The Assembly also is asking our presbyteries to remove by their vote the constitutional requirement of "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness" as a standard for officers in this denomination.
Moreover, this Assembly has adopted a constitutional interpretation that is intended to strip the church of its ability to set any binding standards for the behavior of its officers.
These decisions place the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in spiritual jeopardy. They threaten to cut us off from God's ancient law, given for our good, by which God prohibited adultery and all other sexual relations outside the marriage of man and woman. They threaten to cut us off from the apostolic Church, which laid only a few behavioral requirements on the new Gentile believers--among them that they "abstain from sexual immorality." These actions threaten to cut us off from the PCUSA's birthright in the Reformation, with its insistence that all matters of faith and practice be decided on the basis of "Scripture alone." They threaten to cut us off from the vast majority of the global Church today, which holds firmly to the orthodox faith that this Assembly so lightly casts aside. These actions threaten to cut us off from our own denomination's members and congregations, which also by large majorities affirm the biblical teachings on these matters.
We grieve for the Assembly's terrible loss of faith. We grieve for the thousands of churches in our denomination who receive this news with shock and dismay. And we grieve for all those who are encouraged by this action to engage in sinful behaviors that God does not bless. The Church's calling is to hold out to them the Gospel message of forgiveness and redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As pastors and members of this denomination's 11,000 churches, it is our turn to recall the response of Nehemiah, and weep over the news of this destruction of God's house. It is our turn to say that we have sinned. It is our turn to come together to repent and to rebuild.
This is not a day without hope. We join the hundreds of thousands of faithful Presbyterians in looking to the Church's Savior in this hour. We reaffirm our love for the Savior and his Church. We invite Presbyterians to join us in seeking God's help to turn back this effort to lead the Church to a place where it is in danger of becoming no Church. None of the damage done by this Assembly is final or irreversible.
What does this mean for us here at St. Andrew's? Needless to say, it is a great embarrassment, as we have tried to be faithful to Scripture. In spite of the efforts, a vocal, militant, political minority is endeavoring to change the mind of both the culture and the Church on these matters of human sexuality. On the other hand, this is not the first time that we have faced this issue. When I came as your pastor 30 years ago, these matters were then brewing. Our budget as a church was $500,000, with $150,000 of that going undesignated to General Assembly, Synod and Presbytery. The only two separate lines in our mission budget were small annual gifts to Laubach Literacy and to Hoag Hospital. Because of these controversial issues in the intervening years, your Session has increasingly tightened the reins on our financial support to the point that the from the cashflow of our budget, which was well over $7 million last year (not including the building program), $2.5 million went to local and world missions, with every single penny of that money, other than the per capita tax, designated for specific purposes, many of which are non-Presbyterian. We have well over 150 line items in our mission budget.
And now your Session will, over the next months, deal in a deliberative fashion to decide what else we must do to maintain the integrity of our mission. Already, we are helping to host the Presbyterian Global Fellowship national meeting, which is being held August 13-16 at the Long Beach Convention Center. We already support financially and with our efforts this affiliation of churches committed to biblical, Christ-centered, missional ministries.
In addition, we are hosting here at St. Andrew's, October 13-15, Gathering XI of the Presbyterian Coalition, which is the action arm of these multiple Presbyterian renewal organizations. Hundreds will gather here from all over the United States to plan the strategy to defeat in the presbyteries these changes in the Constitution and to come up with alternative strategies for Christ-centered, biblical mission.
The reality is there can still be strong local churches ministering creatively, even as mainline denominations of which they are a part find themselves immobilized and declining in membership and finances brought about by these negative theological trends. Nothing that happens at the General Assembly level of our denomination need alter the Christ-centered, biblical vision that we have before us. Let us not be deterred from that vision. Let us move forward, focusing on our sacramental vision in greater biblical faithfulness!
Everything I've said to this point in the message is an addition to the Communion meditation I had planned on the same topic. To have gone ahead with what I had already planned without speaking to the denominational issues would have been to hide my head in the sand to these new realities.
At the same time, there are other aspects to this sacramental vision as we come to the table.
II.
Second, may we focus our sacramental vision on the faithful care for our own.
Who of us, in a time of crisis, has not had a deacon, a pastor, a covenant brother or sister, a Stephen Minister or just another Christian friend stand by to love us and help us. And who of us has not, in our better moments, been there for others in their time of need.
Two people who have been a great inspiration to me in our ministry at St. Andrew's are Sue Ann and Larry Beaty. Active leaders in the life of St. Andrew's, they have been sensitive to those with special needs. They have helped St. Andrew's become a most important part of their lives. They've established a covenant group that provides family for these persons who would not fit as naturally into some of the other programs of the church's life. And they provide opportunities in worship, encouraging these very special people, not only to be at home at St. Andrew's but to have a role in our leadership.
One of these is a dear friend of mine by the name of Annie Wilshek. Those of you who attend Saturday evenings will recognize Annie immediately. She's one of our most faithful. This video, backed with pictures, amplifies these words of testimony given by Annie, whose body is caught in the clutches of cerebral palsy but whose effervescent love for Jesus and her family of faith here at St. Andrew's is so palpable.
Annie's witness
@QUOTNOIND = Hi. I'm Annie Wilshek. I'm an usher at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. Welcome to St. Andrew's Church. I've been an usher for five years at St. Andrew's, and I love it. God has made a tremendous impact on my life, and I enjoy it. I love St. Andrew's, and I love what I do, and I will not stop going to church. It's a very important day in my life on Saturday night, here at St. Andrew's. I feel this is where I need to be every Saturday, and I won't miss out. I'm here to worship and pray and sing to make a joyful noise to the Lord, and I just thank God for it. Our God is a good God, and I rejoice in that. I hope to continue to give my testimony to God and glorify God's name. Thank you, Lord!
How special it is to have such a great witness by Annie with her experience multiplied thousands of times over for those of us engaged in the faithful care of our own who are being cared for by our own.
III.
Third, may we focus our sacramental vision in care for those out there.
Throughout our 60-year history, St. Andrew's has sent out thousands in servant ministry projects, as close at hand as Costa Mesa and as far afield as Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America. Talking about thousands makes our minds blur. How much better to be specific.
Two of our people who go on a regular basis in servant ministry projects are Fritz and Elaine Westerhout. Fritz, a respected retired OB/GYN, did this video report he prepared for this message on a recent Christ-centered mission project he and Elaine did at Tenwek Hospital in Kenya, Africa.
John has asked me to tell a mission story about Africa, but to set the stage, I need to tell you something about the country and the hospital in which the story takes place.
This is a map of Kenya in Equatorial East Africa. Nairobi, the country's capital is here in the southern portion of the Central Highlands. Two hundred twenty-five miles northwest, across the Rift Valley, over the Masai Mara, and on to the Western Highlands is Tenwek Hospital, and this is how you would first see it from the air. Tenwek is a 325-bed general hospital, the largest and best mission hospital in Kenya. At the entrance is this sign giving the hospital's name and the four powerful words of its mission statement, "We treat, Jesus heals." This is Tenwek's front entrance, and I would ask you to compare this, in your mind, to the new entrance to Hoag in the beautiful new Women's Pavilion, because Hoag and Tenwek do have some things in common. They are similar is size, they are affiliated with Christian churches and, like Hoag, Tenwek draws patients from considerable distances because of their reputation for providing the best medical care in the area. But there the similarities end, because while Hoag is well funded and equipped and has the latest and best of nearly everything, Tenwek is chronically under-funded, under-staffed and under-equipped. There is no CT and no MRI. The operating rooms are antiquated, and disposable items that are used once at Hoag and then discarded are washed and used over and over at Tenwek until they literally fall apart; and the surgical instruments are old and worn with scissors that may not cut and clamps that may not hold, but it's also the best they have. And into this less than perfect institution come some of the sickest patients I have ever seen. Sicker by far than the average patient in an American hospital. Sicker because of difficult access to medical care. Few people own cars, and public transportation is slow and unreliable. Sicker because preventative medicine is almost unheard of in this part of the world and sicker because even in a hospital where a complete OB ultrasound costs $2.50 and the bill for a major operation including doctor, hospital and medications is $250, they are still too poor to afford it.
When you combine the limitations of the hospital and the sickness of the patients, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, but when I think of Tenwek, I always think of Paul's writing in II Corinthians 12 where he says he has been given a "thorn" in his flesh to keep him from being proud.
Three times he asks the Lord to remove it, and each time his answer is the same, "My grace is sufficient for you, My power works best in weakness." Certainly God's power is abundantly manifest in the weakness of Tenwek.
And now the story.
It was 11:30 at night, and I had just gotten soundly asleep when the phone rang. The nurse on the ER that night was one of the most intelligent and experienced nurses I had ever worked with. She had been there many years, had seen everything and was fazed by nothing, but there was an edge in her voice when she said, "Dr. Westerhout, I have a patient up here who is bleeding to death and I need you right now!!"
Needless to say, I was immediately awake, jumped into my shoes and literally ran up the hill to the hospital and into the ER, and there was one of the sickest patients I have ever seen. It's difficult to detect anemia in a Kenyan at first glance because of the pigment in their skin, but this lady was not black, she was grey. Her pulse was rapid, her breathing was rapid, her blood pressure was falling, she way lying in a pool of blood, and it was immediately apparent that the nurse was entirely correct; she was far down the road to bleeding to death. The blood bank had been called, and we were told that there were only six units of blood in the entire hospital, and none of them matched her type.
Her story had begun a few hours before in one of the remote villages where she had uneventfully delivered her third child. Everything had gone well until they tried to deliver the placenta, and it wouldn't come and then bleeding began. Her native attendants had done everything they could and had tried all the traditional native remedies; but nothing worked, and it became apparent that she was going to have to go to the hospital. The problem was that the village was so remote and so poor that they had no cars, and so they had to carry her on a makeshift stretcher in the dark for nearly an hour before reaching the nearest motorized transportation. and then it was an additional 45 minutes to the hospital.
After a quick exam, we realized that this lady was almost certainly going to die no matter what we did; but if she had any chance at all, it was to take her to the operating room and try to remove the uterus and stop the bleeding before she died. And so, without even moving her to a transfer gurney, the nurse and I grabbed the bed and ran across the small plaza that separates the ER from the operating room; and while we scrubbed and gowned and gloved, other nurses pulled instruments and sutures and drapes and, in just a few minutes, we were ready to go.
And then something happened that is unique in my experience and has never happened in any other hospital in which I have worked. Everything stopped, we bowed our heads and the anesthetist, in the Kipsige language, which was what the patient spoke, began to pray; because one of the great traditions at Tenwek is that before every operation, no matter how minor or major, no matter how routine or, as in this case, how catastrophically emergent, we always pray before surgery. And so, the anesthetist asked that God would be with us as we operated. That He would give us clear minds and steady hands and that, if it was His will, this patient might be restored to normal health. And as he spoke, a great sense of peace and calm came over the room, and the presence of God was as intensely tangible as I had ever experienced.
Talking afterward to one of the nurses who was assisting, she said that she had experienced the same thing. It was so vivid that you could almost imagine that, if you opened your eyes, you would see Jesus Christ standing there saying, "Don't worry. Just do the best you can, and I'll take care of the rest."
The prayer was soon finished; a quick anesthetic was given and, as we made the first incision, it was like doing an autopsy--there was no bleeding. I thought the patient had died and turned to the anesthetist and said, "Is she gone?" "No," he said, "But just hurry." Well, to make a long story short, we finished the operation and were able to stop the bleeding and, as soon as it stopped, the blood pressure began to stabilize. Two of the missionaries who happened to have the same blood type came up in the middle of the night and donated a pint of blood each, which was nowhere near what she had lost but helped her through the critical hours after surgery; and after a difficult two-week hospital course, she went home, alive and well, to be with her family.
That evening, I was writing an email to John and Jim describing some of the happenings at the hospital, and at the end I wrote, "If you know of any skeptics in the congregation at St. Andrew's who don't believe real miracles happen in this modern time, send them out here, because at Tenwek miracles of healing happen on a daily basis."
And finally, reading from Luke 4:40, "As the sun went down that evening, people throughout the village brought sick family members to Jesus. No matter what their diseases were, the touch of His hand healed every one."
Do you get a feel of this privilege of going out there in the service of Jesus Christ, carrying the Gospel in word and deed?
IV.
May we focus our sacramental vision on our own personal lives.
Way back in January, we had a big tent in the parking lot. Remember that evening when 800 of us came together in the "Celebrate '08" event? At that time, we handed out memory stones and encouraged you to write in indelible ink a life verse, a vow to the Lord, some kind of statement that ultimately would be buried at the foot of the cross in the center of our plaza. At that time, our building program was only a big hole in the ground. Some weeks later, we handed out more of the stones at our Saturday night and Sunday morning worship services.
The inspiration for these memory stones comes from what Joshua did when he led the people across the Jordan. He had 12 stones, each one representing one of the tribes, placed in the dry river bed of the Jordan River. Then he had 12 additional stones placed on dry land at Gilgal, a town in the Jordan Valley. These were designed to be memory stones. When the people of God would see those stones at Gilgal, they would be reminded of how God led them out of the captivity of Egypt, was faithful to them in the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and had held back the waters of the Jordan so that they could cross on dry ground into the Promised Land.
Last month, many of us from St. Andrew's drove by Gilgal on our way from Jericho to Galilee. We saw no stones. They're long gone. But as I looked to the Jordan River, I imagined those 12 stones, now buried deep in the river bed, some 3,300 years of water flowing over them, still there as reminders of God's covenant with his people and their response to that covenant.
Today, the majority of those memory stones have already been placed at the foot of the cross here in our plaza. Last night, we took one of the last baskets and poured them into that excavated hole; and this morning between our two services, the rest of those stones will be placed there. And tomorrow, those stones will be covered over, most likely never to be seen again. But you and I know, as we drive by St. Andrew's and as we look to the cross, we will be reminded of what we wrote on that memory stone back in 2008, grateful for God's promises which we've claimed and the privilege of being in personal relationship with our Lord. May we be constant in our surrender of our own lives to Him.
V.
Fifth, may we focus our sacramental vision on this church's future.
This morning immediately following the second service, we are having a special-called congregational meeting to elect a Co-pastor Nominating Committee to do a national search for the next pastor of St. Andrew's, to whom I'll be privileged to hand on the baton of leadership a year from next May.
God is the only one who knows who that person will be. Because of the very careful preparation of your leadership approved by you as a congregation, you are privileged to consider a present, valued associate pastor of this church in that national search. It's important that you be much in prayer, both in the selection of those who will work on your behalf in the national search and for that leader and the leadership team that will be brought together to minister both within the life of St. Andrew's and in your missional outreach.
Jesus gave a wonderful commission to His disciples just before He ascended into heaven. He declared to them, "'But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth'"(Acts 1:8).
There He was, challenging them to a sacramental vision for the future, as the doctor/historian Luke includes right in the beginning of his history of the early church.
Don't think carrying out that vision is going to be easy. It wasn't for them, and it won't be for us! You see, this is a counter-cultural sacramental vision. Those Apostles, all but one, gave their lives as martyrs for Jesus Christ. They lived in a hostile world whose sexual, religious and material values were much the same as we face today. They lived in a pluralistic world of contrasting and competitive values, lifestyles and religious expressions. To their Jewish brethren, they were viewed as too liberal, because they took the Gospel to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. To the pagan, Greek and Roman religious culture, they were way too conservative, because they declared Jesus Christ was the only way to salvation, calling to repentance and personal trust in Him as Savior and Lord. We shouldn't be too surprised today when the culture pushes and shoves its relativistic value scheme upon us. We march to a different drumbeat, that of a sacramental vision, which calls us to: biblical faithfulness; care of our own; care to those out there; constant spiritual renewal in our own personal lives; and to a deep prayerful commitment to the future of our own St. Andrew's and Christ's Church Universal.
Let me bring us to the table with two short, personal vignettes.
Lois and Bill Anderson were two of our long-term Presbyterian missionaries supported by St. Andrew's. They served so faithfully in Kenya and in the Sudan, raising up several generations of Episcopalian and Presbyterian leaders, first in the Sudan, then at St. Paul's Seminary in Nairobi, Kenya, and then more recently back in the Sudan, and even in 1992 founding the Nile Theological College in Khartoum, Sudan, during their retirement years. Sadly, a year ago last January 2007, Lois and their daughter Zelda were killed in a car-jacking incident in the outskirts of Nairobi. Bill was devastated by the loss. And yet, this week at a General Assembly breakfast where he received the 2008 Bell-Mackay Prize, he thanked God for the privilege of ministry and challenged us with the secret he had discovered for creative living. His challenge was, "Do your work and trust the Holy Spirit!" When you have this sacramental vision of the ups and downs, all we're called to do is faithfully do our work and trust the Holy Spirit to honor our faithfulness.
Finally, Mark Roberts, former pastor of the Irvine Presbyterian Church, now Senior Director and Scholar in Residence at Laity Lodge in Kerrville, Texas, told us of an incident that happened to him at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church back in 1972. Lloyd Ogilvie had just come to that church several months before. On a Sunday morning, he announced that he wanted to introduce to everyone the ministers of Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Mark noted how that was a bit of a yawner. He knew who the staff was, no big deal, until Dr. Ogilvie said, "Turn to the person on your right and turn to the person on your left and introduce yourself as their 'minister.'" He said that this was a mind-blowing moment for a 14-year-old youngster. "There I was sitting in church with my father. I was just along for the ride. Now I'm introduced as one of the ministers of the church. Did that ever make me feel big and strong next to my father, to turn to him and tell him, 'I'm your minister.'" Mark went on and challenged us to never forget that every one of us is a minister whose faithfulness to Him in calling is absolutely critical.
As we come now to the table, may we come with sacramental vision who, as Christ's ministers, confess our sins, claim His forgiveness, prepared to go out into the world as His witnesses, doing our work and trusting the Holy Spirit!
This entire message can be heard orally and/or viewed in video by going to our website, www.standrewspres.org.