Easter IV – B

May 3^rd, AD 2009

Meadowvale Lutheran Church, Mississauga     

Pastor Peter Lisinski

“A CREDIBLE CHURCH”

(Texts:  I John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18)

A few days ago, Pope Benedict XVI issued a formal apology to the Canada’s First Nations people for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in our federal government’s residential schools program of the mid-twentieth century.  Such shocking examples of the moral failures of the Christian church in any denomination – as well as the moral failures of individual Christians – can shake the faith of even the most committed church member, and justify the growing ranks of those who dismiss the value and validity of any and all institutional religion.

After all, even the majority of believers – those inside as well as those outside of the church – think it’s possible to believe in God, and faithfully serve God, without the church.  But the ancient creeds we recite in our worship liturgy claim otherwise:  “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church…”

Of course we do need to distinguish between the Church and God.  God is divine; the Church is only human.  God is the Creator; the Church is created.  God is perfect; the Church, obviously is not!  Nonetheless, the claim that we don’t need the Church in order to believe in God is a mistake.  The Bible tells the story of God making himself known in the world through the life and mission of God’s chosen people – first in, Israel and now also in the Church.  The apostle Paul puts it this way:

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved!  But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?  And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?”

Believing in God and serving God depend on learning, first of all, that God exists; and then discovering God’s will for his creation, and understanding what God expects for those created in his divine image.  And without the community of faith to whom God has spoken, and through whom God speaks to the world – the human race would never have known the salvation God has designed and destined all people to share.

In today’s second lesson, John presents an early Christian vision of the life to which God calls us:

“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.  How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?  Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

The Church God has called into being – the kind of Church that is credible, the kind of Church the world can believe in – is a community of mutual love and personal sacrifice.  Those were the characteristics that attracted people to the church in the first century of its existence and, I believe, will attract them still in the twenty-first century.  The Christian Church is called to present the world around us with a vision of the abundant life God intends for all his children.  And our world needs to see that vision desperately.

It’s not enough to believe in a quiet, private God who may inspire a sense of wonder and gratitude through the beauty of a sunset or landscape; a God who provides for our daily needs of food and shelter, a God who may ease our fear of death and dying, but who otherwise makes no personal or ethical demands on us.  But in and though the Church, the voice of Jesus Christ publicly proclaims God’s word and will to gather all his children into the one Holy Communion of God’s salvation:  “I am the good shepherd.  And I lay down my life for the sheep.  I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.  I must bring them also, so there will be one flock, one shepherd.” God’s salvation takes shape in a human community

And so we are called to believe in the Church – not as the object of our worship; not as the source of our salvation; not as the servant of our personal convenience, and certainly no because it is morally perfect.  We believe in the Church as the medium God has hosen to make the divine message of abundant life in Jesus Christ credible – believable – in a world God longs to hear it, challenges to believe it, and invites to live it!