All Sermons

A Vision for the Church By Alister McGrath

Well really in this chapter I thought I'd try and bring some of the ideas I've been working with during this series of lectures together and the Reformation and the Visions of the Church title is trying to get across the idea that we really do need to renew our vision. That we always need to ask ourselves, you know, what is the church here for? What are the principles to govern the way the church lives next? And the Reformation I think gives us a very important agenda for this.
Because in many ways the Reformation is just reminding us that there have been a whole stream of Christians living before us who have tried to think through some of the big issues that confront the church in the world and their answer, their approach can still be valued as it was just today.
It appears to me that one of the greatest forms of arrogance is that which says an idea has to be bang up to date to be of any use. I think there's a need to realize there's a lot of wisdom there in the past as well and that in turning to study the Reformation basically we are turning to study a period which continues to be of use and relevance to us today.
Let me give you again those words from St Paul in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 in verse 21.
Test everything, go fast to what is good. And Paul there is making the point that we're not simply looking at the past and saying whatever's there in the past has to be used today. You're simply saying we've got always to look back in the expectation that we will continue to find things there which are of relevance to us today. That seems to me to be an amazingly important point to take on board. Why the Reformation? I think the Reformation continues to be of continuing importance to us especially because Reformation is so clearly a quest for Christian authenticity. In other words it's one of those few and remarkable periods in history of the Church when people began to ask that really hard question. Why is the Church here?
What does it mean to be a Christian? How can we make sure that we really are remaining faithful
to the Christian vision and the Christian calling? And in many ways it's a moment of
refinement, a moment when the Church tries to ask itself whether it needed to reconsider its
own nature, its own calling, its own teaching to bring it back into line. And that whole process
seems to me to be of continuing relevance. A Church can quite easily get itself stuck in a rut.
It can quite easily accidentally turn the direction to profoundly unhelpful. And if these
things happen we've got to face up to the hard questions and the process of Reformation and
renewal which is needed to bring the Church back online. It seems to me that Reformers are setting
us an example here. They're saying we did it and it was painful but it was profoundly worthwhile
because there's no room for complacency of any kind here. Faithfulness is something that can
quite easily become eroded and there's a real need to go back and rediscover something that
could very easily be lost. So what I'm going to do now, if I may, is begin to focus on a number
of themes where I think the Reformation has something important to say to us. In some cases
you'll see I'm picking up a theme I've spoken about already. In other cases I'll be developing
new ideas which nonetheless bring together things I've already touched on.
The first thing I want to say is this. The Reformation reminds us of the importance of
rediscovering our roots. Rediscovering our roots. Because roots after all are what anchor us. They
are what give us stability. In the Christian approach, our roots are what nourish us and give
us stability. And if you lose those then very quickly you'll find things wither up and die.
In the 1960s we had this remarkable period which in his book Reinventing Australia Hugh McKay
describes as a process of value shedding. And McKay makes the point in that book that quite
simply an awful lot of things were thrown away during that period which never should have been
thrown away at all. And McKay's point is that it's hardly surprising that there is an outburst
of interest in traditional forms of Christianity when liberalism was so devastatingly contemptuous
of traditional Christianity in the past. To rediscover our roots is not to lapse into
nostalgia. It is not to be a traditionalist. It is not to say the way things were in the past
is always better than the way things are today. It's simply to recognize the importance of being
stimulated by our past and maintaining continuity with it. To anyone who says roots make you an
irrelevant, roots just make you repeat what was there in the past, then I ask you to consider the
example of the Italian Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries. Our movement as you know had
a profound impact on the Reformers but the Renaissance in many ways was saying simply this.
Here in 15th century Italy we are experiencing culture in a very barren form. Why don't we
reach back into the past to a period when culture was rich and dynamic and reclaim those roots and
transform the culture of the day. The slogan they used was ad fonte, back to the fountainheads,
back to the sources. And those of you who know how enormously creative and culturally rich
the Italian Renaissance was will see that reaching back into the past can provide an
output of richness and creativity. It's drawing on the richness of the past to bring life and richness
to today's culture. And in many ways the Reformers were doing something quite similar.
They were reaching into their past going back to Scripture, going back to Augustine and saying our
church is barren, our church has lost its way, let's reclaim something enormously important
which so easily seems to have become lost. And of course the imagery of a stream is enormously
important here. If you think of a stream that's bursting forth from the spring in a mountainside
and then percolating onwards down to the sea, the nearer you are to the source itself,
the clearer, the purer the water is going to be. And in many ways that model is helpful
because it reminds us how Christianity bursts into the world as a dynamic faith, a faith which
so quickly seems to have lost some of that dynamism but lost it only temporarily. And by
going back to our roots in the New Testament we can rediscover not just the doctrinal content
of our faith but also that sense of enthusiasm and excitement which so often we miss in today's
church. When we read the Gospels and see the enormous and precious views had on people,
they react to the apostles and read of the church exploding into life in Europe, we begin to realize
we seem to have lost something. And of course that then forced us to ask the question,
is there any way we could recover it? It is a thorough antidote to any kind of complacency.
So it seems to me there's a really important point being made here. Roots give us stability,
they anchor us to the past, they prevent us from going off on some of these wild experiments
that liberalism offered us in the 1960s. Sadly I think many who used to be members of your church
chose that route and they are declining in vitality and in numbers. It seems to me to be
very important to make the point that we need that stability, we need that framework to prevent us
from becoming rampant individuals and instead have that stability which comes from having contact
with the past. But it also maintains our continuity with the lifeblood of Christianity
itself. It is all too easy to take steps which break that vital link with the New Testament
and that link once broken can sometimes be very hard to restore. So it seems to me there's a very
important point being made there. Of course rediscovering your roots could be understood
in a number of ways. For example in the recent history of your church for some people rediscovering
roots meant in effect rediscovering Scottish culture and bringing that fact into your church.
Well I'm sure that would be very very helpful and the Scottish tourist board is doubtless thrilled.
So I think somehow you stand for something much deeper than that. That actually you are here
because you are a living continuity with the Reformers and with them to the New Testament
itself. And you can reach back and reclaim that sense of significance, rediscover that sense of
purpose. You can be a church which works with a purpose by rediscovering how your forebears
understood and applied the gospel. And that seems to be a very important situation where it's so
easy to lose sight of our identity. My second point is really rather different and that is
that the Reformation offers us an understanding of the nature of theology which is very important
today. They make two observations which I hope you will not regard as being controversial.
Observation number one, much modern theology is written in a style and using a vocabulary
which doesn't make sense to much Christians. And number two, much modern theology deals with issues
which bear little relation to the concerns of ordinary Christians. Let me mention an
English writer called David Lodge. David Lodge used to be a professor of English at the University
of Birmingham and is a novelist and he wrote a novel about 10 years ago called Nice Work.
And this compares the lives of two very different people. The managing director of a struggling
engineering work in Birmingham whose desperate concern is to keep his employees employed because
things are going wrong. And the world of a lecturer in English at Birmingham University who is into
deconstruction in a very big way. And he simply makes the point that there's a world of difference
between these two. The one very much enmeshed in the reality of everyday life. The kind of issues
that ordinary men and women are concerned about. And the other whose kind of way in free-floating
orbit having no bearing at all with everyday life. And there's a very fine passage in this book
where Lodge describes the sense of utter amazement when this lecturer discovers that
for 99.9% of the world the issue of the arbitrariness of the relations
between signifier and signified has no significance whatsoever.
But what I want to make is that an awful lot of academic theology is of that view. In other words
that it really does seem to bear little relation to the life of the Church. This institution does
not fall into that category but nonetheless I think it's important just that we make the point
that theology does lead to the orientated towards the needs of the Church. And the Reformation
provides us with exactly that kind of model. Wilbur and Calvin are unquestionably theologians.
They are theologians of the first rank who continue to be of importance right down Christian
history. But they were also pastors. And I think it's fair to say it's shown in engaging
issues that matter for ordinary Christians. The issue of death, the issue of sin, the question
am I really saved? That would probably be dismissed as an irrelevance in an academic department
of theology. But it's a real issue for ordinary Christians. And Wilbur's point is simply that
theology has to deal with the life and death issues that ordinary Christians want to talk about.
If it ceases to do that it has lost something enormously important. And it does seem to me to
be a vitally important point that theology has so much to offer the Church but it must take the
concerns of the Church and the concerns of ordinary Christians seriously. Otherwise it
would be seen as some kind of hobby, some kind of trivial intellectual pursuit which may intrigue
people but does not serve people. And it seems to me there's a need here to ensure theology
is equipping people to deal with the questions that really matter, to enhance their understanding
and appreciation of the Christian faith and to deepen the work of the Church and all that stands
for. And it seems to me whether you look at Luther or Calvin you find the same thing happening time
and time again. They regard the work of the Church as being enormously significant and they continue
to work towards it. I think that model is helpful and I think it continues to be of use today.
Here is a quotation from Karl Barth in an essay where he addresses exactly this question,
the role of a theologian. Barth as you know stands in a Reformed discipline and in many ways you can
hear Calvin speaking through what Barth says. Theology is not a private subject for theologians
only nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately there have always been pastors who
have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject
studying for pastors. Fortunately there have repeatedly been congregation members and often
whole congregations who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological
infants. Theology is a matter for the Church. Now I think that's very important first of all
because it affirms that there is a real need for theology in the life of a Church. Christians are
thinkers and they want to think about their faith, they want to explore its depth, they want to savour
its content and they want to know how it relates to other areas of life and other areas of thought.
And we need to encourage our people to sink those deep shafts and discover the full depth and
integrity of their faith. But that does not mean it takes off into some kind of independent orbit.
There's a real need for it to remain firmly linked to the agenda of a Church.
One of my favourite German writers is a theologian called Martin Koehler. Martin Koehler who was
particularly influential during the 1890s and he wrote a phrase which is often seen to me,
which is very helpful, he wrote this phrase, mission is the mother of all theology.
Mission is the mother of all theology. And by that I think he meant this, I think it says when you
are in a situation of having to proclaim your faith to those who are not Christians that really
sets everything in perspective. They identify as the things that really matter. You begin to
realise that this theological debate over that is actually not all that important. The missionary
agenda of a Church provides us with a corrective to a purely academic theology. If a theology does
not help in relation to the work of Christian mission, it does I think have some questions
to answer. Some of you remember last night I was talking about the whole issue of apologetics.
I tried to make a point there that actually theology does make for good apologetics because
it helps us understand the nature of the Christian gospel and the nature of the human predicament
and thereby allows us to build bridges from the gospel to where people are. It seems to me that
this mission orientation of theology remains vitally important. That then is my second
broad point. We need see theology in its right perspective. Thirdly, we need I think to rediscover
how important creeds and concessions are. I think this is a particular concern of this lecture
series and seems to me to be a very significant concern as well. To turn to documents such as
for example the Heidelberg Catechism or Western to Confession or Western to Catechism is in effect
not simply to return to our roots. It is also to counter the individualism that is such a
rampant feature of our culture. It is reminding us that our faith is not something which we invent
or we control but something that has been handed down to us. There's a very definite
sense of stewardship there. Others have fought for these ideas because they matter profoundly
and they have handed them over to us now and we are today stewards of these truths.
Again that seems to me to be a very important thought to bear in mind.
I remember once hearing John F Kennedy's speech in which he talked about the torch of liberty
being handed on from one generation to another and it's a very real sense in which the torch of
the gospel is also being handed on and the creeds and those confessions are there to keep us safely
on the rails regarding what the gospel is and why it is so relevant. It seems to me to be
frankly important that we respect and honour the wisdom and integrity of previous generations and
these creeds and confessions are of enormous importance because they make that corporate
wisdom available to us. They give us again structure and stability to the Christian faith.
They also I think can be profoundly helpful. I feel many of you have had the experience of being
at bible studies where you know perhaps a particularly difficult discussion has not
been going very well and then somebody says something which actually eliminates things,
actually gives you a way of seeing something or approaching a question or dealing with an issue
and from that moment onwards things get better. Creeds and confessions are like that. Very often
they give us a framework, occasionally give us an enormously helpful phrase which really gets our
discussion going in the right direction. Yesterday for example I mentioned very briefly the Western
Captivism, the first question you know was it the chief end of man to glorify God and enjoy him
forever. There is so much theological meat in that. It really gives you a basis for preaching
a sermon on the purpose of the Christian life, on the way in which we can actually enjoy God.
There is so much there. I'd like to invite you to see creeds and confessions in two ways,
in a restrictive and in a creative way. They restrict you in effect because they say
not that way but this way. It keeps you on the path of orthodoxy and if you think that's
unimportant then look what happens to congregations who go their own way. People want orthodoxy these
days. It's one of the reasons why evangelicalism is becoming so important. If you lose contact
with orthodoxy you will simply wilt away and become indistinguishable from a liberal culture.
So it restricts you, it keeps you on the narrow path if I put it like that. But that is also
enormously creative because it gives you an idea of the enormous range of things that you can do
within that framework of Christian orthodoxy. It's not simply restricting you, it's also opening up
all kinds of ways of explaining the gospel and applying it. And it seems to me that the creeds
and the confessions remain of importance to us. And my final point now is a very simple point
but nevertheless one I think that matters. It's helped a lot to study people from the past.
In this lecture course we've been looking above all Luther and Calvin. We could have added many
many others to that list. And what I want to make is it really helps to look at men and women from
the past. Why? Because first of all it reminds us that the gospel is not simply about ideas.
It is about people's lives being transformed. To study Luther or to study Calvin is not a study of
interesting historical figure. It is to study a believer whose life has been taken and shaped
and renewed by God. And to study an individual from the past is in effect a single case study
of the grace and providence of God in action. It gives an idea of the kind of things that God
could do through us. To study Luther for example is to see how someone burdened with a sense of sin
could discover the grace of God and exult in that. So the people in your congregation
who are deeply aware of their sins and are wondering what do we do with this?
Luther may be someone who they could get to know about. There will be others who will be wondering
were on earth am I meant to be in the world? And Calvin's discovery of the vocation of God
might well be of service to them. So first of all it reminds us of the embodiment of the gospel
in human lives today as then. Not talking about ideas, not talking about general principles,
though those come into it. Primarily it's about the way in which God takes and transforms and
relates to people like us. To study Luther or Calvin or any of the other great figures of the time
is to give us an indication of the kinds of things that God might do with us or might do with those
we're ministering. It's an invitation to discover what God can do with people once he gets hold of
them. That I think is a very important first point to make. The second point of course is related to
that. They also bring to us ways of thinking about the gospel, grounded in scripture, blessed
up with their own experience and those are things which we can take and use today. And again the
point I want to make is this. All of us who are engaged in ministry are in effect resource people.
Our task is to deepen our own understanding and joy in the gospel and to enable others to come to
deeper levels of understanding and amazement in the gospel. People like Luther and Calvin and
others we've talked about like Donaldson Edwards can be enormously helpful as resources to people
who are struggling with their faith or wondering how best to explain the gospel to their friends.
And the final point here is on the day of savings. You know I mean it's all very well for
me or for you to stand up and say well of course the rights of the gods like this because it makes
it so much more impressive if you say Luther says or Calvin says even if you think exactly
the same thing. So very often it will really lend weight and dignity to your own discussions
by actually quoting Luther and Calvin in response. Let me then try and bring all these thoughts
together and if I may I'll do so by just focusing in on that slogan I've used several times.
The Reformed church is a ecclesia semper reformanda, a church which is always reforming itself.
The phrase seems to go back to the era just after Calvin probably about 1570 but it is a very good
summary of the principles of the Reformation because it reminds us that the Reformation is not
about some defining moment in the past which is set in stone and which we have to as it were
mechanically reproduce today. That would be about tradition. The Reformed church is about life in
the word of God. Rather the slogan is saying quite simply the reformers sought to reform and renew
the church of their day on the basis of scripture. They sensed it had lost its way, it had lost its
vision, it had lost its relevance and they were convinced that each of these could be recovered.
Many of you may feel the same way sometimes about your church. The point I want to make
is the Reformation is saying these things can be regained, they can be recovered. The approaches
used by the reformers remain as helpful today as they were back then and the same basic agenda
is always there. Not change for change of sake, no way, but rather a determination always to ask
are we remaining faithful to the word of God in the way which we think and live and act.
There are those who will in effect seek to dissociate you from your heritage to break
those links with the past. Perhaps going back to the history of your own denomination there
were those who saw the moment of union as being a very convenient moment at which to break the links
with the past. In other words instead of looking back to Calvin and Wesley you simply stop looking
back all together. The point I want to make is to snap those links is potentially quite simply
to snap your links with something life-giving, something that matters and something which you
have had the with pilgrimages from Sydney to Geneva. No, we honour Calvin by doing what he did
bringing a church back to life on the basis of the word of God and it seems to me that agenda
and that task remains as important today as it ever does and if Luther and Calvin are right
and I believe that they are then in effect you there is no need for us to kind of way
make the gospel relevant by updating it you know by cutting our links to the past
rather our task is to realize how relevant the Christian gospel is, how relevant it is in itself
and then begin to unfold it, explain it, apply it knowing that its relevance is something intrinsic
to the gospel not something we have to impose from somewhere else. I believe passionately
that we need a vision for our church. Without a vision our churches will perish and perhaps
Luther and Calvin offer us a vision not so much what they do but rather of what God can do when
a church remains faithful to the word of God. You all know the motto of the city of Geneva
post to neighbors looks after the shadows comes light and maybe after a shadow in your own recent
denominational history the light is there waiting to be reclaimed by those who remain faithful to
the word of God and scripture as Luther and Calvin did before us. Thank you so much for
listening to me throughout this long series and may I say how much I have enjoyed talking to you.