Reformation Day (which this year – perhaps too appropriately – fell on Halloween) provides a needful occasion on which to reflect on the role of Scripture and preaching in the Presbyterian Church. The matter is made urgent by the recent election that sacrificed (at a cost of 600 million dollars on the presidential race alone) substantive debate about the serious issues before this republic on the altar of entertainment, spin, and downright dirty lies.
As one commentator noted, neither candidate trusted the American people enough to tell them hard truths about decisions that will affect our lives in the next decade.
The connection between preaching and a political campaign is obvious. The health and vitality of a functioning representative democracy and the faithful life of a Presbyterian congregation have much in common. A Presbyterian church lives or dies, not by spin and counter spin, not by good feelings or good instinct, not by mindless worship and dumbed-down preaching, and not by whipping up the partisans on either side of explosive, polarizing issues, but by educated and reflective hearers of the Word who serve God through the life of the mind. Educated hearers of the word are a protection against faithless, ideological leadership and preaching. Likewise, educated voters hold candidates accountable when they are told the truth and given a genuine choice.
If this presidential election demonstrated anything, it revealed that fear rules: who will keep you safe; who will destroy your health care. [Who speaks for the true church; who is apostate?] Senator Kerry painted President Bush as a domestic policy terrorist; President Bush painted Senator Kerry as a guy who will cause the next terrorist attack. The media, making dollars hand over fist, looked on gleefully, and did nothing to get underneath the real and difficult issues – domestic and international – before this nation and indeed the world.
This nation’s founders were convinced that an educated electorate and educated representatives were vital for maintaining a healthy polity, and developed checks and balances to override the greed and myopia of a popular majority. After all, Hitler was elected to office; totalitarian socialism came to Czechoslovakia through the ballot box; and an enthusiastic, hyped up crowd demanded Jesus’ death. Democracy, in the absence of education and reflection, can be dangerous. We have become a nation of focus-groupies whose uneducated opinions matter more than the educated, thoughtful leadership and decision-making of those we elect. We have given our citizenship into the hands of marketers and polltakers; candidates have become commodities.
Congregations and sessions have a responsibility to help keep the preaching of the word faithful to the Scriptures, which abide and remain life-giving “no thanks to earthly powers.” Embedded within Reformation understanding of the Word alive within the church is a dialogical dynamic, which will not work unless people know the scriptures. This dynamic does not, in good faith, undermine the freedom of the pulpit, but enriches the hearing of the word. I am not free to preach anything. I am responsible for faithful exposition of the Scriptures – and I pray that those who hear, guided by the Spirit and their love for the church, will set me straight should I confuse Pat Robertson’s syncretism or Elaine Pagels’ Gnosticism with the gospel of Jesus or the teaching of the Apostle Paul.
The church is not strengthened, but divided, by cheerleading for various causes, by demonizing those who disagree with us, by undermining those who have been elected to office in the church, or by living in fear of honest criticism that seeks to build up rather than tear down. I often suspect (and a deeply saddened by the suspicion) that our polarized denomination is a mirror image of the USA, of red and blue constituencies, of mocking and undermining the convictions of brothers and sisters in Christ, and of using any weapon in an arsenal of theological and biblical posturing to win. Thus we are captive to the world, even while “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the . . . cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12)
We need a more excellent way, one that believes and hopes for a different church and a different nation – before our culture wars lead to the next civil war. But it will take hard work, humility, a dedication to God’s Holy Word, and a commitment to “test any word that comes to us from church, world, or inner experience by the Word of God in Scripture,” which is the authoritative standard for faith and life. (From “A Declaration of Faith“)
Too many people claim to be faithful to God’s word, but they use tactics against their opponents that flirt with evil intention and hatred. Is it too late for preachers and hearers of the Word to learn once again, as descendants of the Reformers, to become a people who test the claims that flutter around us, and measure our life together and our witness to the world, by the Word of God in Scripture?
by O. Benjamin Sparks
