F. Harry Daniel
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: August 20, 2006

"Who ARE These Presbyterians?"

Who are these Presbyterians? That is not an easy question to answer. If you asked the average American, you would discover a number of caricatures:

They are the people who believe in predestination. Question: "If you walk in front of a train, but it's not your predestined time, what would happen?" Answer: "You'd be both foolish and dead." That is fatalism which says: it's all in the cards and there's nothing you can do about it. That's not predestination. Predestination says that God is down here loving, gracing, directing, and gifting life, and that this God calls us to live in our freedom responsibly as daughters and sons.

They are dour, long-faced individuals who have forgotten how to laugh. You know the type who when presented with their favorite desert say, "I know that this must be bad for me because it tastes so good!"

They have those domineering teachers pounding the catechism into the heads of small children. I once met a man in Chicago who had been imprisoned in a concentration camp, and he said that it was the catechism that got him through. That is why the use of the catechism method is still valuable.

They are those people who listen to long sermons. Question: "Why do Presbyterians preach longer than anybody else?" Answer: "They don't, it just seems longer!"

They are those people who engage in theological hair-splitting. They know how to make something simple complex. Don't you know the difference between infra and supra-lapsarianism?

They are focused! I had rather see coming toward me a whole regiment with drawn swords than one Presbyterian convinced he or she is right and doing the will of God!

What are Presbyterians? That is not an easy question. We are wonderfully diverse: culturally, racially, politically, sociologically.

We are white, black, yellow, and red. There are 100 million plus of us. There are some who say that we out-number you know who in the world. We are gathered in over 109 different bodies around the world. Most of our ancestors came from Switzerland, France, Germany, Netherlands, and of course Scotland. But our fastest growing areas are in Africa and the Far East.

While we once were largely of British extraction that is not true any more; the largest Presbyterian church is in Korea.

When the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was on his first plane trip to this country, he said the airplane was full of gnomes, international spies, and Presbyterians in first class. They were, he said, the only ones who could afford it. That might be a sociological way of identifying us. We do tend to be middle and upper class in this country. But not always.

Some will say, Why bother? This is a day of reducing things to their lowest common denominator. Are we not we all striving for the same thing? Are you not attempting to resurrect denominational pride and exclusiveness?

That deserves a two-fold answer. I hope to remove misconceptions which are the soil of prejudice. And I am seeking to commend our heritage that ought not to be taken lightly. It has values worth preserving. Our heritage is more than a description of what has been or is. It offers a vision of what could be in a time like ours. And we must be doing something right because during a recent census six million Americans claimed to be Presbyterians when there are only three million on all the known rolls. We need to claim our heritage because there is a lot of distorted theology being presented in the media and some questionable Biblical interpretation.

Our family tree reaches back through history into the Old Testament and God's covenant with Abraham, on into the New Testament and the formation of the early church. It continues through the dark ages and the middle ages through the medieval church which was the preserver of faith and culture, and on into the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation, our real birthplace. Our spiritual parent is a Frenchman, John Calvin, born 1509, died 1564 at age 53 having produced a prodigious amount of theological writing. Educated for the law, he studied at the University of Noyon and lived most of his life in the Swiss city of Geneva.

Calvin had a very profound religious experience though he was reticent to describe it. He felt himself grasped by the living God in an overpowering awareness of the transcendent majesty and sovereignty of God. That experience drove him to the question of purpose: what does God want of me, the church, humankind? That's our question! Calvin calls us to devote all our energies to answering it. Though he is a much maligned child of his time, nevertheless, we are Calvinists!

What are our major characteristics? Some are unique, others we share with other Christian bodies but they are distinctive of us because of the emphasis we give them. Some you may recognize, others you may not.

1. We are a theologically-minded people. More than any other Christian body we have emphasized loving God with the mind. We do not do this to be intellectual snobs, we do it so that we can address the problems of the world rationally. We strive to grasp and express the implications of our faith. That is the reason we are always writing creeds. They are editions of our experiences with God. There are a host of such creeds. We have a right and a duty to restate and interpret faith as the occasion may require. We want to know what and why. We have a passion for the truth. Theology is offering the whole of existence to God and for God's glory. Calvin's crest is an outstretched arm in which the hand holds a heart in flames. These words encircle the scene: "My heart I give you, Lord, eagerly and sincerely." We have to put our minds to that task!

2. We are a people who believe in the sovereignty of God passionately. All belongs to God: nature, history, life. Our chief responsibility is to discern the will of God and do it. God made us, bears us, carries us and saves us. Our response is to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. We are committed to doing this in this world. While we are conscious that everything depends upon God, we work as if it depended upon us. For us Christianity does not revolve around the feelings and fears of the human heart. The chief end of religion is not to win heaven and avoid hell. It is to do God's will. We are not in the business of satisfying our own feelings or gratifying our desires for safety and comfort. Peace and security are serendipities, the result of submission to the sovereignty and will of God.

3. We are a people committed to this world. The world is in a bad way and we have two choices: escape and hope God will get us out of it, or stay in it and work. Calvin believed that God had not simply called him to spend eternity in heaven, but to do God's work in Geneva. He was a Christian humanist not called to escape this world. This world is "the theater of God's glory," and is to be taken with utmost seriousness. It is the place where God's character and purpose become unveiled. In politics, business, science, art, music, industry, social life, God is sovereign. Human beings are more than machines for the purpose of creating and distributing wealth. We all have a calling, in whatever place and time we find ourselves we will serve God and seek the good of our neighbor. We maintain humanity among human beings who are tempted to treat others as well as themselves as things, obstacles, or expendable commodities. We put the light of the sovereignty of God upon every issue.

4. We are the people of a book: the Bible. The story that shapes our lives is God’s story. That is the narrative out of which we live. So we study it with intelligent enthusiasm. It provides us with the deepest questions and answers of life. It sheds the light which makes known the heart of God in relation to the world and to us. It casts light on life's mystery, and provides the painful answer to sin, above all it introduces, confronts us with Jesus Christ.

5. We are committed to nurture. That is indispensable to life. Growth and maturity in the faith are our never reachable goals. It is not for children only, but for adults too! For all of life! We are all in it together, we learn from each other. George Abernathy was professor of philosophy at Davidson. He taught the three year old class in the college church. He said that God may have made many things in the universe as good as a three year old, but that God never made anything better! Learning is our responsibility. That is why I bring so many books with me: that is one way of keeping the dialogue going.

6. We are a people committed to preaching. The sermon is vital for us! We have always demanded quality, perhaps only with one qualification: a time limit of 20 minutes! How does that old saying go, "No souls are saved after 12 minutes." We Presbyterians added eight more minutes to be sure the bases were covered! We believe God uses the words of the sermon to love and be gracious, to forgive and judge, to regenerate and cleanse, to console and fortify. And there are some times when I can not get that done in twenty minutes.

7. We want to share with others what God has done and is doing. We believe in mission. We believe in transforming this world. We are committed to change, to making the world a better place. We don’t give up on the world because God has not given up on the world. We don’t waste our time reading Left Behind stuff. We go to work. The future is open because it is God's. That means pain can be embraced and the gospel dream about how things ought to be can be pursued. Jesus' coming provided the gracious energy to get started. The dream is not deferred, but it has not fully come, we Presbyterians are pursuing it! And the good news is that the dream will work its way. Joys, tears, pain, achievements can all be blessed and built into God's dream.

The scriptures are filled with these visions of good things coming. No other book in the world speaks so eloquently of a world which none of us have seen, but which is quite real and just beyond our entering. It is a vision of a time when people will speak a host of languages, but all understand each other, a time of no more tears, a time when the former things will have passed away and life is new and full of wonder. I am ready for some of those former things to pass away. I am also ready to work toward those new things promised in Christ.

In the scriptures, in the music, hymns, prayers, sermons of this congregation, we can see a new heaven and new earth and feel that we are a part of a community of people committed to the God who will bring these things to pass, a people, who in the meantime, will bend every effort to live together now in the way we all believe we will live together when the kingdom has fully come.

We do not belong to ourselves, we belong to God. We should let God's wisdom and will and grace and love preside over our thoughts and actions. We should direct every part of our lives to God. We live and die in God. That is our true identity. That is what it means to be a Presbyterian! And let all God’s people gathered here say, Amen!