Almost thirty years ago when I was a seminary student, I preached at chapel services at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. I remember those beginner sermons, because in preparing them I wrestled with two Scriptures that have subsequently become life verses for me. Maybe these Scriptures also speak to you, and perhaps they even speak to our denomination.
The first Scripture contains God’s words to Baruch in Jeremiah 45:4-5:
This is what the LORD says: “I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted, throughout the land. Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not.”
Though I did not completely understand these words when I first read them, I understood that by calling me out of law school and politics into ministry, God was not going to give me the wealth and success upon which I had once counted. Moreover, the church was also not going to be a place for me to expect great “success.” Over the years this Scripture has helped me accept and deal not only with the ambiguities (as well as joys) of being pastor of small to medium-sized congregations in a declining denomination, but it has also helped me deal with the vast dislocation and destruction of institutions and traditions in our culture.
In the lifetimes of many of us, we have seen tremendous “uprooting and overthrowing.” Vast changes have occurred in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and in its predecessor denominations, so that we look in vain for the church we once knew. Christian culture in America has been significantly dismantled. Tremendous social and economic dislocations have resulted in the outsourcing of jobs, the brusqueness of the new economy, new and different immigrant groups coming to our shores, 9-11 and the war on terrorism, and the threatened implosion of revered and well-intentioned social entitlement programs that are not on sound actuarial footing and therefore threaten the very livelihood of future generations.
This “overthrowing” and “uprooting,” which happened in Jeremiah’s time and which we see all around us, are experienced by many as unmitigated disaster. But I wonder if they are not also an invitation and opportunity for the church to proclaim to our hedonistic and individualistic culture (in the words of John R. Mott who perhaps first combined Jeremiah 45:5 and Matthew 6:33): “Seek not great things for yourself … but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” While prospects for individual prosperity and “success” in church and culture may be rapidly diminishing for many of us, the prospect for the breaking in of God’s kingdom is great! As a saint (Mary Curd) in a church in Richmond, Va., once told me “man’s extremity is God’s possibility.”
The second text from another seminary chapel is Luke 10:17-20:
The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Philip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom, says one characteristic of the vital, growing (and often persecuted) “southern church” of Asia, Africa, and Latin America is not only that it takes Scripture seriously but also that it believes in the supernatural–in miracles—like those performed by the seventy-two in Luke 10.
While my personal experience of casting out demons is about as limited as that of most Presbyterians, I believe I have seen gifts such as prophecy and healing operate today, and I am convinced that God is still the God of miracles. I believe that while miracles are much less important than God’s gift of eternal life in Christ, they often are a means by which people are drawn to the Savior. Finally I believe that Scripture teaches that Jesus gave the church authority to perform miracles in his name.
Some evangelical Presbyterians think that the outcome of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the nineteen-twenties was sheer tragedy because a majority in the General Assembly decided that believing miracles had happened in Bible times was optional for church officers. I personally think the real tragedy occurred centuries earlier when the church stopped believing that miracles still happened in its own day while continuing (schizophrenically) to insist that they had happened in Jesus’ day.
I was raised with such a “cessationist” (miracles have ceased) theology. In my twenties, I became something of a theological liberal for a time. Providentially, I found out that there is a third option–that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever and that he still performs supernatural miracles.
Part of the relevance of this discussion of miracles is that the renewal of the Presbyterian Church (USA) seems—humanly speaking—impossible. It would take a miracle–or a series of miracles– for it to happen! But Jesus is still the same. Therefore we need to earnestly pray for–and even expect–the miraculous, even in the PC(USA)–whether in its individual congregations or in its totality as a denomination. I believe God’s willingness to perform miracles is often in direct proportion to our need and desperation. Are we desperate yet?
While Luke 10 is clear that Jesus makes miracles happen, Jesus himself teaches that our source of joy must never be in miracles but rather in God’s choosing us to be his own for eternity. This is a thoroughly Presbyterian theme! Jesus says even to those who have just experienced great spiritual victory, “Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
I hope that perhaps after great desperation and groaning before God, both parts of this verse will be our experience.
Winfield Casey Jones resides in Pearland, Texas.
