Sermon 1

The Organic Nature of the Church - 1

The Rt. Rev'd Dr. Ray R. Sutton

A young mother was recently approached at dinner-time by her pre-school-age son. To her surprise, he explained that he wanted green beans and carrots with his dinner. The mother was so proud of him that she decided to go to the store to buy some beans and carrots. She was accustomed to serving only canned vegetables. But this time she wanted to reward her son for preferring such grown-up cuisine. She would impress his little taste buds with recently grown vegetables.

To her mortification, however, the little boy shocked her with his response. He told her not to bother about going to the store. He said, "I would like some of those beans and carrots that grow right in the can." The mother paused in the kind of unbelief that often accompanies those amazing statements that children make to their parents. She asked him to repeat what he said. So he eagerly clarified that he wanted "can-grown food." "And besides," he added, "it is much faster to have food out of the can."

At that response, she corrected him in frustration, "Son, food doesn't grow in a can; it grows in the ground; it can only be preserved in a can for a little while." The son gave her one of those puppy dog tilts of the head, as though he was totally unconvinced. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "No mom, the stuff from the ground is dirty . . . the food from the can is clean and easy." Apparently he thought that beans, carrots, and any other organic delicacy grew best out of a can. It was a perfectly logical deduction by a little, inner-city preschool child. All he had ever really seen was his mother open a can and plop out the vegetables on the plate. His conclusion: the organic grows in cans.

After many years of listening to little children's profound comments, I have long since ceased being amazed at their theological insight. The little boy of our story does not disappoint us. In one simple-yet-profound comment, he has summarized a major misconception about the theology and life of the modern Church. Our small friend failed to comprehend the organic nature of food. The same kind of leap in logic is often made about the Church. For, the Church is organic. The use of the word "organic" to describe the living relationship between God and His people is not novel; it embodies the very language found in the Holy Scriptures. Consider how the dynamics of the spiritual life are portrayed in the Old and New Testaments by images such as seed, sheep, vines, stones, bread, wine, a child, a bride, and so forth. For the most part, these are all living creatures or the product of living creatures. Even inanimate images like stones are referred to in an organic, living way. In sh6rt, however, when God wanted to tell us about life in Him, He did so with living creatures.

Nevertheless, a common mistake has plagued the Church and its theology, whether some form of a mechanical view of grace in the Middle Ages (e.g. Transubstantiation), or modern trivial approaches to evangelism, Church growth, and salvation. The flaw is to view the Church and its relation to God in some mechanical, over-simplified and fragmented way; in short, in a non-organic manner. The orthodox Anglican theologian, Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, best described the organic nature of the Church in his description of the organic sense of the Bible. Like a body, the Bible in its own particular category of revelation is an organic whole. Every part has its proper place and function. The removal of apart disturbs the balance and integrity of the whole." Applied to the Church and theology, organic means living, whole, and unified.

This brings me to the approach that I would like to take in the three talks that I have been asked to give by the Bishops of our Church. To develop the organic nature of our relation with God, to one another and in the world, I would like to turn our attention in Holy Scripture to perhaps the central and most familiar passage for presenting this organicism, St. John 15. Here we find three essential aspects of the Church's organic life. Union with the Triune God, His people, and the world is likened organically to a vine. Three key verbs appear in this passage: we are to "abide" in the Trinitarian God, "1ove" one another and "witness" to the world. All three relationships are organic in nature and so I want to talk about "organic union" with God in this first talk, "organic love" for one another in the Church in the second, and "organic witness" to the world in the third.

In this sermon and lecture, we begin with the organic union between God and man. Jesus describes it as the "abiding" relation, the union among a vine, branches, and the vinedresser. Although much can be gleaned from this passage about abiding, I particularly want to focus on Christ's call to abide in God as Trinity in unity.

The immediate context of St. John 14 reveals the notion of the disciples' being indwelt by the Trinitarian God. Our Lord says to them in verse 23 "if a man loves me [Jesus] he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." Notice the plural, "we will come to him and make our home with him." Then in St. John 15, the "abiding" relation is also described in Trinitarian terms. Jesus says, "I am the vine and My Father is the vine dresser" (15:1); here is the Father. Christ adds, "Abide in Me, and I in you" (15:4), which means the Father is known through the Son. Finally, He includes the Holy Spirit in this abiding relationship when He says of the Holy Spirit in the next chapter, 'He will guide you into all truth" (16:13). In other words, our relationship with God involves a personal knowledge of all three Persons of the Holy Trinity through Christ by the Spirit. In the words of the great orthodox Princeton theologian, Benjamin Warfield, the New Testament calls the Church to a "common Trinitarian consciousness" (B. B. Warfield, Biblical Foundations). This is no small observation.

Man's tendency is toward modalism, the ancient heresy of viewing God as a mode of one Person rather than three Persons, One God. In other words, man¹s natural bent is to view God as taking on a mode of existence such as a father, son, or spirit. So we only know God as one or the other instead of growing into a "common Trinitarian consciousness." Martin Thorton, the famous Anglican theologian, analyzes, ". . . the soul's successive experience of the Father, Son, and Spirit precede the unified experience of the undivided Trinity." In other words,". . . we have to face the fact that however loyal we are to our creeds, we are ascetically inclined to tritheism thoughout this life. All Christian souls [with the exception of pure Contemplatives] will stress one person of the Holy Trinity when suddenly confronted with the word 'God.' Our first psychic reaction to... [the word God) is either a cognition of the transcendent Father, or an image of our Lord Jesus Christ, or a spiritual feeling for the immanent Spirit" (Thornton, The Heart of the Parish, p.193). This insight simply says that we essentially begin our life as modalists, viewing God as or through, one or the other members of the Godhead. It is difficult in our minds and hearts to hold all three members of the Godhead in a unity without reducing one to the other. Maturity is to know God as a Trinity in unity, all three persons as One God, and not to the obliteration or exclusion of the other persons. In one sense, to know one person of the Godhead ultimately leads to a knowledge of all three: through Christ we know the Father in the Spirit. But in this world of imbalance, spiritual immaturity, and modalistic heresy of emphasizing one Person of the Godhead over and against the others, it is easy to see why many Christians have a stronger knowledge of one of God's Persons almost to the exclusion of the other(s).

In times past, Christians have understood the need to mature through a growth in relation to all members of the Godhead. D. L. Moody, the great evangelist of the last century, said, "I remember that for the first few years after I was converted, I had a good deal more love for Christ than for God the Father. I looked upon God [the Father] as the stern judge, while I regarded Christ as the mediator who had come between me and that stern judge to appease his wrath. But when I got a little better acquainted with my Bible, those views all fled. After I became a father and woke up to the realization of what it cost God to have his Son die, I began to see that God [the Father] was to be loved just as much as his Son was." Moody came to the realization that he was to love and know God as the Father and not only as the Son.

Putting it another way, we are not to have a one-dimensional relationship with God. We are to know all three persons and not one or two partially to the exclusion of the others. If we do, then some sort of modalistic imbalance is reflected in ourselves as well as in our relationship with God. I believe that we find this practical outworking of modalism all through the theology, literature and even denominations of modern Christianity. As Peter Adam says in his book, Living the Trinity, there are and will be 'Father-Christians, Son-Christians, and Spirit-Christians" (P. 15). I would add that we even have Father-denominations, Son-denominations and Spirit-denominations. This kind of modalism is even expressed in popular jargon used to describe Christians. It was common a few years ago to refer to "Jesus Christians," and today many Christians make the designation of "Spirit-filled Christians."

Please don't misunderstand. As a committed classical evangelical, I believe strongly in having Christ as one's personal Savior and Lord. And I'm also for being filled with the Holy Spirit. But the danger is that in correcting 6ne pr6blem, perhaps we have created a bigger one. While emphasizing one or other member of the Holy Trinity to help people, we have set the stage for incredible spiritual disaster. I believe that we are only beginning to witness the effects of a modern Church that has essentially become modalist in its understanding of God. People, for example, can attend worship and never say or sing, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." In fact, it is only the orthodox liturgical churches that have preserved the Gloria Patri and who have really protected the foundational doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The rest have either lost it because they are liberal or because they are lax in their enthusiasm. What we really need in this day and time are thoroughgoing Trinitarian Christians in whom all of God is formed all the time. This is an organic, holistic view of a relationship with the God who is Three and One. Let us briefly outline what it means to know God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit at one and the same time.

First, an organic relationship with God will include God the Father. What does it mean to know God as Father? It means to know Him as Transcendent, all-powerful, Sovereign, Great, Just, while at the same time knowing Him as a benevolent, caring, and provident Heavenly Father who would not give His children stones when asked for bread. In addition it means knowing God with the mind and not simply the emotion or the will.

A failure to grasp God as Father can manifest itself in a variety of aberrations. For one, many denominations and even Christians do not know the contours of "God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth," as we confess in the Creed. In this case, God is never more than the familiar, friendly, and the sentimental. God is a Santa Claus type of Jesus-friend with whom we are identified by the warm "fuzzies" that we receive from our experience. God the Father, of the Bible, even in the New Testament, is not presented this way. He is transcendent, Sovereign, and awesome. As the old song goes, 'He's got the whole world in His hands." The problem with that song, however, is that it never says what it means to be in His hands. For if God truly has us in His hands, then we should bow down before Him as Psalm 95, the "Venite," instructs us. The great reformed leader and popular speaker, R. C. Sproul, once made an amazing observation to me. He said that he had come to the conclusion that we will never get the Church to return to a belief in the Sovereignty of God, until it restores the use of the kneeler for prayer. He said, 'How can you confess belief in a Sovereign God and not bow down before Him in prayer? This requires more than bending the knee in the heart, it entails the Pauline doctrine of "presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1-2) by physically getting low before our heavenly Father." This is a remarkable statement. I obviously concur as a Reformed Anglican. We forget that every major Protestant denomination used to have kneelers (Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists etc., etc.,). You can see them in the older churches, whether the mega-church of First Baptist of Dallas or some of the ancient Presbyterian and Congregational buildings in New England. Knowing God the Father means reverencing low before Him as the Father.

Within Anglicanism, it is not coincidental that there has been a move away from kneeling for prayer in the modern versions of the prayer book. It is possible to worship in many Episcopal parishes nowadays and never have to kneel for prayer, or even confess sin for that matter. It is further significant that the move away from kneeling, perhaps the supreme act of acknowledging God as the Father, occurred about the same time the innovative ordination practices concerning women took place. The appearance of the two at the same time in history is too blatant not to see some kind of relationship. Indeed, the First Person of the Trinity is under massive attack in the culture and in the Church more than ever before, or at least since the first-century Christians had to call their members away from the worship of the false goddess Diana. Today, there is a reaction altogether even to call God Father. As we approach the next millennium, this will be one of our greatest challenges in fending off the resurgence of the old goddess, baalist, Ashteroth, mother-earth religion.

On the other hand, I have seen Christians go to another extreme because they really do not truly know God as the Father. They seek a replacement "Father" the wrong way. Out of a vacuum of fatherhood in their own lives, they obsess on father replacements without truly knowing God as Father. Many times in this day and time, out of a lack of a human father or a poor relationship with his or her earthly father, false substitutes are sought in some mechanical system or formula. Even the Law of God itself as we know from the Pharisees in the New Testament, can become a mechanical substitute for a relationship with God. Legalism results. A legalism of any sort, even with the Law of God itself is an attempt to find a false security in something inanimate to the exclusion of a real relation with God the Father.

Consequently, it is often the people who stress authority the most who have the most difficulty with authority. These people are sometimes the very ones calling for the pastor to be more authoritative, that is, with everyone except himself or herself. Another scenario might be simply that a person may struggle with authority in the Church, because there has been not only the natural vacuum of a father in life, but a spiritual vacuum created by a defective knowledge of God as Father. The result may be tension with him who represents this Fatherhood of God, namely the pastor or the bishop or other authority figures, ecclesiastical or otherwise. These are only a few of the aberrations of not knowing God as the Father. Nevertheless, Jesus calls His disciples to know the Vinedresser, whom we confess as God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Second, an organic relationship with God will include God the Son. What does it mean to know God as the Son? Jesus says, "Abide in Me, and I in you," namely God the Son (15:4). But notice the reciprocal emphasis expressed by the relation between Jesus and the disciple, 'He in us and we in Him." It implies the intimacy of friendship and mutuality. Indeed, later in the passage, Jesus specifically says, "No longer do I call you servants. . . but I have called you friends" (15:15). Therefore, the Anglican theologian, Martin Thornton, says of the relation with God the Son, ~ a sense of communion, rapport, and finally love will be to the forefront of the soul's experience. Such a soul is likely to be widely sacramental, probably imaginative and meditative rather than intellectual..." (p. 194). And in referring to the sense of companionship with the Son, he adds, "This conception gives us the subjective side of love and is the factor which gives rise to Christian Joy; the rightly subjective desire of the Christian should be to be loved by the Incarnate Son, and to accept this love of God poured down upon him with surrender and joy" (Thornton, p.198). It is no secret that the very people who have emphasized a relation to the Son have often ended up quite sacramental. Church historians (Horton, Davies, etc.) have observed that sacramental emphases sometimes track evangelical awakenings. When one understands the nature of knowing God the Son, it is not difficult to comprehend why the evangelical-to-sacramental connection has occurred enough to be an observed pattern.

On the other hand, if we relate to God only as Son, rapport and a sense of communion can reduce God to the overly familiar and remove all sense of mystery. God is simply my 'buddy," or 'bubba" in the south; of course in the north it can lead to a sort of "Yoh Jesus" approach. The tendency will be to lose sight of God as Almighty and for Jesus to become a semi-divine "friend." It is possible to become overwhelmed by divine mercy to the exclusion of divine justice. When this happens, "we seek love without wrath, comfort without fear, forgiveness without patience, and reward without endeavor" (Thornton, p.198).

Often "Son Christians," to use Peter Adam's designation again, will be the very ones emphasizing the social groupings and gatherings of the Church because they are sensitive to the need to meet a deeper need for companionship. Most of these groups and movements within the Church are not necessarily bad in and of themselves; in fact, awareness of personal need is critical to the ministry of the Church. The problem many times occurs, however, when the smaller group in its companionship and identity becomes more important than the larger church or even the Church itself A lady from another denomination the other day expressed concern over the father of her daughter-in4aw. He has taught Sunday School at First Behemoth evangelical church for many years. Apparently though, he has not been to church actually to worship God in over five years. Think of it, he has gone to church, but then again he hasn't. He hasn't gone for the glory of God, he has gone for the group from whom he receives stroke and dittos. Well the lady expressed that she was troubled by this and asked me if that were normal for a Christian. Obviously I said "no" and explained the need to know God as Trinity and not to be simply a "Son Christian." The same can happen with all kinds of social, spiritual, benevolent, and educational efforts in the church. Folks sometimes know God the Son to the exclusion of an emphasis on the spirituality of the Father and the Spirit. Sometimes the Christian's life ends up askew and the Church is damaged.

Third, an organic relationship with God includes God the Spirit. What does it mean to know God as the Spirit? Jesus says that the disciples are to "abide in His love" (St. John 15:9). Significantly, St. Paul tells us that love is produced by the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). So the call to abide in love is one ultimately to abide in God the Holy Spirit. The Anglican theologian Martin Thornton says, "The Holy Ghost is immanent in the world and within the soul and he is spontaneously known as the Paraclete: he is the Comforter spiritually experienced; he is God indwelling, and he gives feeling to religious experience" (p. 194). Knowing God the Spirit means a healthy sense of the subjective, in that one becomes aware that God works and lives in him or her. The Lord's presence becomes more acute. It invigorates the personal to the point where the individual is sensitive to God^'s individual concern. Just as a personal name was given at baptism, so grows a deep awareness of the love of God for me" through the Spirit. All of this is often concomitant with meeting God the Holy Spirit in one's life.

However, if God is related to only as Spirit, the great sense of the presence of God can be mutated into false mysticism, subjectivism, introversion, sentimentality, over-stress on feeling and even pantheism; God can be treated as a force or vibration. Yet, in our modern societies, the individual's personal experience with God has insidiously become dominant to the point of tyranny for everyone else. One has described this as the perversion of the "priesthood of all believers" into the "papacy of all believers". William Kirk Kilpatrick wrote a stinging critique of secular psychology a few years ago, Psychological Seduction: the Failure Modern Psychology. In his chapter, "The American Spirit," he discusses the problem of the Spirit-Christian who places so much emphasis on experience that experience is higher than Scripture. The Spirit-Christians "contuse the Holy Spirit with the [negative part of the] American spirit; that is, they think religion too is a matter of equality and democracy and of hitting the trail in search of a new experience whenever the spirit moves them" (Kilpatrick, p.166). Such a reduction of God to the Spirit only launches Christians into the business of manufacturing experience. Spontaneity becomes the ultimate proof and test. Kilpatrick counters, "1s a person most authentic when he is having a burst of emotion? When he is... expressing himself freely and copiously? Isn't it rather the case that when we think of a friend's or relative's essential attributes, we think of his reliable, habitual, deep-grained responses rather than those surface parts of his personality that are subject to sudden crying or sudden volubility? In like manner God is more interested in the underlying character that a person brings to worship than in his emotional state of the moment. And, therefore, shouldn't we be striving toward a form of worship that is also faithful and reliable and not subject to the fluctuating moods of the individual? What Christ has done for us, and not what we do for Him, needs to take center stage" (p. 170-171).

As another has pointed out, whatever emphasis might be found on the personal in the Scriptures is not with a view to the individual, but for the individual to find his or her true purpose in the context of the corporate, the Church. For example, Jesus did not teach His disciples to pray, "My Father." He taught them to pray privately with a plural personal pronoun. The point of private prayer is not to be an individual but to join the corporate body of Christ through private prayer in the corporate words of Christ, hence, "Our Father."

Trinitarian Christianity calls us to a full maturity of an abiding relation with all three Persons of the Godhead. To this end, it should not be missed that the Prayer Book itself is an incredible guide to Trinitarian spirituality. Outside of the Bible it is the best! Anglican theologians have noted that there are three basic services: the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer, the Holy Communion and Family or private prayers. Each of these services seems to emphasize one of the members of the Godhead, although all three certainly call us to belief in all three persons of God.

First, the Daily Office according to Richard Meux Benson is "the prayer of Jesus to His Father through His body." Built around the Psalter, the Daily Office conveys more of the sense of the Transcendence, the objectivity, and the incomprehensibility of God. We stand, kneel, and even sit, but we never move forward at any point in the service. Our attention is drawn to the Sovereignty and vastness of God as we look forward and upward facing the chancel. There is a certain sense in which a distance is established and kept in the Daily Office. As a Christian repeatedly says the Daily Office, he or she is taken to the webbed mystery of God the Father Almighty.

Second, the service of Holy Communion obviously emphasizes God the Son. St. Paul speaks of "participating in one cup, one loaf, and indeed Christ Himself" (I Corinthians 10). This oneness created is not to be understood in an incorrect way. To this end, Anglicanism has been careful to resist any sense of a physical transformation of the elements. On the other hand, Thomas Cranmer was fond of using his powerful phrase "we in Him and He in us" to describe the effect and goal of the Eucharist. It is union and communion with the Living Christ that occurs through this powerful service. And we' become through it "very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son."

Finally, the prayer book in the Family Prayer section compels the Christian to a personal knowledge of the Third Person of the Living Triune God, the Holy Spirit. The Family Prayer section especially guides the believer and his family through worship in a home setting. The prayer book does so by applying the Lord's Prayer model of spirituality in a dynamic fashion. In other words, through set forms of prayer and devotion, Scripture and prescribed prayers form the extemporaneous faith and prayers of the individual Christian (with his family) on a daily and even moment-by-moment basis. In this sense, there is a subjective element brought out in the Christian life. The presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit is to be present in the believer's life day to day. However, an individual life in Christ apart from the Church is never envisioned in the Bible. Strictly speaking, even spiritual gifts are not given to the individual outside of the Church. They are imparted to the individual through the Church. If there is any message in the New Testament Book of Acts it is this. The Spirit creates the Church. The gifts and grace of God are given through the Church to the Church. Therefore, prayers and devotions for the family in the prayer book provide means of grace for the believer to pray extemporaneous prayers with the Church of all ages. For if the Church does not join in our prayers then our prayers are worthless. If you will, the prayer book guarantees that our extemporaneous prayers, as shaped by the Church's prayers, are not in isolation.

And so the rule of faith in Anglicanism is a threefold system. It has been likened to a fence to keep the Devil out of one's soul. "This carefully constructed fence of the spiritual life is built around a series of big strong posts, firmly embedded in the ground, and placed at regular intervals; these represent the Eucharist, which acts as the central support of all else. A more numerous series of smaller stakes, embedded in the ground and placed at more frequent intervals between the main posts are the Offices [normally prayed daily or at least more frequently]. Finally there are a number of horizontal, parallel cross-pieces which may vary in number, size, strength, or material, which link up the verticals and which are dependent on them; this is private prayer" (Thornton, p.206).

Therefore, the classic liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer preserves Trinitarianism. This is ultimately what liturgical worship is all about, leading us into and protecting Trinitarian Christianity. Notice that free worship almost always abandons the "Gloria Patri", "Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost." As the Trinity goes, so does all of orthodox theology. Instead, Christ calls us to an organic union with God the Father through God the Son in God the Spirit. It cannot be produced in a can. To this end, in a world of Father-Christians, Son-Christians, and Spirit-Christians, may we pray the prayer of John Donne, "Batter my heart, three-person'd God." And having prayed that prayer may the 'three-person'd God" bring us to a true knowledge of the blessed, Holy Trinity in unity. Then, may our view of God be bigger to the point of our maturity; or better, may we become more mature through union with this Trinitarian God that we might see how vast He truly is. It is like a conversation between C. S. Lewis's renowned magical lion, Asian,. and a little girl, Lucy. Upon noticing the enormous size of the lion, Lucy exclaims "Aslan, you're bigger." "That is because you are older, little one," answered the great beast. "Not because you are?" queried the girl, to which the lion responded, "1am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger." May we find our God so big that we would have union with Him as a Trinity in unity. Amen.