On the day after adjournment of the 217th General Assembly, I began a weekend of preaching at the Smyrna Campmeeting in Conyers, Georgia. Families have gathered at this place since 1827 for a week of morning and evening worship services. In those 179 years, the only time campmeeting was not held was the year a gentleman named Sherman was touring the neighborhood. The first campers came in wagons and lived in tents. Those with children brought a cow to supply milk, and the only air conditioning was provided by breezes and shade trees. Worship was held outdoors until an open air, tin-roofed tabernacle was built about 100 years ago. Sermons often went more than an hour.
Today at campmeeting, sermons are shorter. Lighting is provided by electric fixtures instead of lanterns. Everybody has a cell phone. Milk comes from refrigerators. People staying the week live in pop-up campers or one of the 20 or so cabins clustered around the tabernacle, and the cabins have bathrooms and running water. Occasionally music is provided by folks whose instruments have to be plugged in. But worship is still held morning and evening for a week under the tabernacle. There are still no televisions and no air conditioning. People still sit out under the shade trees in the heat of the day, and conversation is still the prime form of entertainment. Babies are still baptized, and faith is renewed by singing and hearing the Word. People are still challenged to love and serve God in ways that make a difference. The week still ends with a service of Holy Communion. In the midst of all the changes, the taproot of faith still runs deep.
So it is, I believe, with our church in these days. The taproot of faith runs very deep in the PC(USA), and it upholds us in the midst of change and uncertainty.
This is a season in which we are called to deepen our understanding of what it means to be the church. Ecclesiology is not just the name of a General Assembly committee. It is the crucial theological work before us now.
In recent months two resources have helped and challenged me in this work.
One is the section of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion dealing with the church, particularly Book IV, Chapter I. I came across this passage while writing a Doctor of Ministry paper in April. Calvin begins this book by restating that it is only by faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ that we come to salvation. The church is one of the means of grace by which humankind comes to know and is established in this grace. The marks of the true church are the preaching of the Word and the observance of the sacraments. Calvin then states, “… some fault may creep into the administration of either doctrine or sacraments, but this ought not to estrange us from communion with the church. For not all articles of true doctrine are of the same sort. Some are so necessary to know that they should be certain and unquestioned by all men as the proper principles of religion. Such are: God is one; Christ is God and the Son of God; our salvation rests in God’s mercy; and the like. Among the churches there are other items of doctrine disputed which still do not break the unity of faith.” (IV, I, 11, McNeill edition).
Calvin goes on to argue that the quality of life of one’s fellow church members should not be the basis on which one decides whether to stay or leave the church. Speaking of those who would leave the church in offense over the behavior of others, he points to the Apostle Paul’s remarks in I Corinthians 5 and 11. He comments that “in thinking it a sacrilege to partake of the Lord’s bread with the wicked, they are much more rigid than Paul. For when Paul urges us to a holy and pure partaking of it, he does not require that one examine another, or everyone in the whole church, but that each individual examine himself.” (IV, I, 15). The theme of sections 17-22 of this chapter of Book IV is summarized as “The imperfect holiness of the church does not justify schism, but affords the occasion for the exercise within it of forgiveness of sins.” (Book IV, Section I).
While chewing on Calvin, I also have found myself drawn to meditate in recent months on Jesus’ farewell address to the disciples in John’s gospel, especially John 15:12-17. Here Jesus commands the disciples to love one another. Then he talks about his redeeming death for them, his election of them to be his disciples, and his appointing of them to go and bear fruit. He ends this section by saying once again, “This I command you, to love one another.” (John15:17).
Throughout this last address to his disciples in John’s gospel, Jesus ties his relationship to them and the relationships they are to have with each other to his relationship to “the Father.” The love Jesus commanded believers to have for each other has little to do with warm, fuzzy feelings; feelings cannot be commanded. Instead this love is about relationship. It is about knowing and being known as Jesus speaks of knowing and being known by “the Father.” What this text has said to me is that God expects us to have relationships with our fellow Christians of all theological persuasions that are a reflection of the relationship that flows in the Trinity. Regardless of what language we use to talk about the Trinity, it seems clear that Jesus is holding up this kind of intimate, gracious relationship as the gold standard for believers. Could it be that on the Day of Judgment the first question Jesus will ask us is “Did you love one another?”
I said on the night of the moderator election in Birmingham that I believe in a God who makes a way where there is no way. This is the true taproot of our faith and this never changes. Only the Holy Spirit can create in us the kind of grace that Calvin speaks of and the kind of love Jesus commands us to have. Only the Spirit can take us into this territory. It will be a great adventure, and I look forward to going forward together over these next two years as your moderator.
Joan Gray is moderator of the 217th General Assembly and a pastor from Atlanta, Ga.
