Still Under Construction

Matthew 23:1-13

October 29, 2017

William G. Carter

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

Down in Chinchilla, there is a tunnel under a railroad track that has been closed for repairs. Repairs on the one lane tunnel have been going on since late spring. Since it’s normally a busy road, this has been a point of contention for those of us who are inconvenienced by the construction.

Commuter traffic is a pain in the neck. For those who live at the bottom of Shady Lane Road, it’s almost ten minutes to drive an alternate route to get on the highway. If there were a fire on the wrong side of the tunnel, the Chinchilla fire trucks would have to drive five miles in the wrong direction to get to a spot normally a tenth of a mile away.

As you can expect, a number of people are not happy about the project or its delay. One neighbor, not known for her restraint, has taken to phoning the borough office every day to say, “When is that tunnel going to get fixed?” They recognize her voice when she calls, and give her the same reply: “Still under construction.”

Still under construction. After a month of thinking together about the Protestant Reformation that began 500 years ago this Tuesday, the same can be said about the church: still under construction.

Maybe that’s because nothing ever happens quickly in the Christian church. In 1984, a film maker named Philip Groning contacted the monastery of Grand Chartreuse, a remote Christian community high in the French Alps. He said, “I would like to bring a camera and shoot a documentary about your monastery.” They said, “We will get back to you on that.” Sixteen years later, the abbot wrote a letter and said, “Okay, we are ready for you.” They weren’t in a hurry.

Maybe you’ve heard the joke, applicable to all kinds of Christians, but I’ll pick on us. How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?  Answer: “Change?!”

Nobody likes change, especially religious types. Even if they desire change, they don’t like it when it comes. Simply witness the words of Jesus from the 23^rd chapter of Matthew. Back in chapter 5, he said, “I haven’t come to abolish our religion of the Torah and the prophets. I have come to fill them up, to make them full of life.” Yet as we heard this morning, Jesus criticizes the practice of the religious leaders of his own day.

Among all the hats he wore was the hat of the reformer. He watched the Pharisees who interpreted the words of Moses and declared, “They don’t practice what they preach.” He pointed a prophetic finger at the Bible scholars of his day and said, “Their teaching will tie you up in knots and put enormous burdens on your shoulders.”

These people love to sit at the Mayor’s prayer breakfast and preen around like well-dressed roosters. They wear their finery as if to say, “Look at me, look at me.” They give big donations in order to be noticed. They clear their throats disapprovingly if you don’t call them by the right titles. And if somebody is in dire need, they won’t lift a finger to help.

That’s what he says in the text we heard a minute ago. I stopped the reading there, before he gets downright caustic. Chapter 23 is a clear-eyed and fierce denunciation of the religion of Jesus’ time. And it’s no wonder that the religious leaders conspired to get rid of Jesus and put him on the cross. That’s how reformers are often regarded.

After Pope Leo threw Martin Luther out of the Roman Church, the reformer was riding through the woods when some soldiers on horseback suddenly surrounded him. It turns they had been sent by Frederick, the prince of Saxony, to whisk away Luther and hide him in a castle where the Pope’s people would not find him. Luther’s life was in jeopardy for standing up to the abuses and excesses of the church of his day. Needless to say, Brother Martin thought a lot about the cross of Jesus.

Change is difficult. Reform comes at a cost. Try to make a constructive difference in the world, and there is always a push back. We know this; some of us know this all too well.

And it’s particularly true in the Christian community. The Gospel invites us to become more and more like Christ. Most of the time, we regard that with admiration: we can become more loving like Jesus, more compassionate, more outspoken about injustice and abuse, more gracious and merciful – more like Christ! What we don’t want, much less expect, is that becoming like Christ may mean that we may end up suffering like him, too.

Like the grandfather who took his granddaughter to an art museum one day. He had the time available, since he had just been fired from his job for blowing the whistle on some financial monkey business in the company. The management thanked him for speaking up, and after the hubbub died down, they gave him the pink slip for speaking up.

So he takes his granddaughter to the art museum. They come around the corner of the corridor, only to see a large and fairly accurate depiction of Jesus on the cross. It was pretty graphic, and both of them gasped. The young girl said, “Grandpa, what does this mean?” And without any filter, Grandpa blurted out, “No good deed goes unpunished.”   

So you want to change the world and make it a better place? It’s not going to happen without a struggle. And it’s particularly true of the Christian Church, the people called together by Christ, the people called to become like Christ – we are still under construction.

In fact, you’ve heard about the 95 Theses that Martin Luther posted on the door of the Wittenberg Church that prompted the Reformation. Here is the very first item on the list: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” That is, our entire Christian journey is one of returning to God again and again. We’re never done with that. We never finish returning to God until we finally, once and for all, fall into the arms of God.

In a way, that is liberating good news. It frees us from the tyranny of perfectionism. Just let it go. Give up the myth of your own self-improvement, and keep moving toward God. Start over every day, if you must, because our lives depend solely on the mercy of God. Repent, repent, keep repenting, and be joyful about it for Christ’s sake.

And it’s a reminder to the church, too, that we can never rest on our laurels or stay stuck on the “way it used to be.” The Presbyterians love to speak a slogan that might go back as far as St. Augustine: Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda! That was the bumper sticker on the back of Augustine’s mule. It means “the church reformed, and always being reformed.” It’s the conviction that the church must continually re-examine itself to pursue the purity of what it believes and what it practices.[1]

John Calvin talked this way in Switzerland, in the generation after Martin Luther. He declared the Protestant Reformation was not about change or innovation, so much as a return to what the church was meant to be, long before it became big business.

And in the Roman church, the same phrase was used by Hans Kung and others at the time of the Vatican II council of the 1960’s. God is still at work in the corporate body of believers, increasingly their love, deepening their commitment, pushing them into the world as salt and light.

The emphasis on God is essential. The full phrase goes like this: “The church reformed, and always being reformed by the Word and Spirit of God.” It is God who is working on us, still forgiving our mistakes, still correcting our distortions of truth, still cleansing us of sin, and making us a sign of what God wants for all people everywhere.

So as a lifelong Protestant, I’ve been thinking about what that might mean for you and me, in our own day. Here are a few thoughts and observations:

The first comes from Fred and Char Lyon, who report on a conversation that their daughter in law had with the Vatican not long ago. Perhaps you remember that the Rev. Jan Edmiston, married to their son Fred, is currently serving as the co-moderator of our national denomination of Presbyterians. As a national leader, she was given seven minutes to speak with the representatives of the Roman church. Makes me wonder: if you had seven minutes to say whatever you could, what would you say?

Fred and Char report that Jan talked about leadership, specifically the leadership of women alongside men. Can you imagine a church where people are not disqualified to be leaders because of their gender? After all, if you are going to baptize everybody, you have to receive the God-given gifts that they will bring.

Just because the apostle Paul wrote a couple of corrective sentences to a few undisciplined Christian women in ancient Corinth does not mean that his words should be universalized to stifle all female leadership in all churches in all times, especially since it is the same apostle Paul who says in that same Corinthian letter, “Now women, when you prophesy (that is, when you preach), here are a few guidelines.”

Now, I’m not sure what the representatives of the Roman church said in response to Jan. I imagine they said, “We’ll get back to you on that.” Change doesn’t come quickly.

But here’s the second thing, O beloved church of Protestants: let’s stop beating up on the Catholics. The time is over for that. If you had an ornery priest earlier in your religious life, I know others who had an ornery Presbyterian pastor. We can’t universalize and dismiss a major part of our Christian family just because of some bad experiences in the distant past. At its heart, the Roman Catholic faith is a Christ-centered faith, with deep spiritual tradition and rich liturgy.

I had lunch last Thursday at the rectory of Our Lady of the Snows. My buddy Msr. Quinn was buying. As I warned a few of you, I knocked on his door and said, “Joe, it’s the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation. I have come to your door with all of my complaints.” He raised a suspicious eyebrow and said, “How many do you have?”

I said, “Only one.” What is it? “That it has taken five hundred years for all of us work together for Jesus.”

Then I told him about my friend David Lamotte, folk singer and son of a Presbyterian minister. David, a Christian, has just formed a band with a Jew and a Muslim. When I said, “Tell me more,” David replied, “We’re not insisting on singing in unity; rather, we’re singing in harmony.” I like that.

Finally, a third thought, from Friday’s Washington Post. Stanley Hauerwas, retired ethics professor at Duke (and classmate of Phil Muntzel and doctoral advisor of Charlie Pinches), wrote an opinion piece where he declared the Reformation is essentially over. The Protestants won.

Hauerwas notes, “Most of the reforms Protestants wanted Catholics to make have been made. Indulgences are no longer sold, for instance.” Now there are other distortions to be addressed. One of them, he says, “is denominationalism in which each Protestant church tries to be just different enough from other Protestant churches to attract an increasingly diminishing market share.” I agree with him: “It’s a dismaying circumstance.”

And yet, he says, “I remain a Protestant because I have the conviction that the ongoing change that the church needs means some of us must be Protestant to keep Catholics honest about their claim to the title of the one true Catholic church.”

“The Reformation may be coming to an end,” he says, “but reform in the church is never-ending, requiring some to stand outside looking in.”[2]

It all seems to suggest that every Christian church needs to nail a sign on their doors: “Still Under Construction.”

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See the helpful article by Dr. Anna Case-Winters, “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda: Our Misused Motto,” Presbyterian Survey, May 2004.   https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/ecclesia-reformata/  

[2] Stanley Hauerwas, “The Reformation is over. Protestants won. So why are we still here?” The Washington Post, 27 October 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-reformation-is-over-protestants-won-so-why-are-we-still-here/2017/10/26/71a2ad02-b831-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.425096d7602c .