Faithful Innovation: Ecclessiology in a post-covid Church
Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Ross Lockhart
Message: Video sermon by Ross Lockhart
This morning it gives me great pleasure to share with you a video prepared for us by the Rev. Dr. Ross Lockhart. Ross is the Dean of St. Andrew’s Hall (the Presbyterian Seminary at VST) and the Director of the Centre for Missional Leadership at VST. He is also the author of the chapter on Ecclesiology in the book Faithful Innovation: Beginning A Conversation For a Post-Covid Church. On top of all that Ross is a friend who, if I am honest I have been reticent to ask to preach at CVPC because I think he is one of the best preachers out there today. I pray that you will find his message as moving as I did.
Scripture: 1 Peter 2: 1-10
2 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says:
“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”7 Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”8 and, “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Intro: Back to the future
Camp Douglas Camino.
Camp Douglas chapel – stones. Stones mark previous generations of Christian life and witness and yet the act of worship is also future orientated – from what God has done, to what God is doing and, ultimately, through the promises of Scripture, what God will accomplish. And so we praise God in Christian community we call the church as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Worship helps us go “back to the future.”
No, not the classic 1980s movie with Marty McFly “Back to the Future” but Back to the Future remembering the past faithfulness of God to us as Christians as we look towards the future that God has promised in Scripture through Jesus Christ.
In the Christian church we often have a “back to the future” feel as we gather to tell the stories of God’s faithfulness from the Bible and witness to God’s mighty deeds in our days while looking forward to Christ’s return in the future. We look back to the future in hope. And we live out that Christian hope in this, Christ’s church – his body in the world.
And even as we look back, in order to catch a glimpse of God’s future, the present-day church is always in flux and experiencing change. It feels like that has never been truer than right now – after several decades of the church moving to the margins of Canadian society, and now we have been struggling through this time of Covid. (Faithful Innovation)
GT: Christians under construction, in danger of falling back on old ways
Peter writes
“Back to the Future”
And we catch a glimpse of that “back to the future” in today’s reading from the New Testament. This little letter near the end of our Bible has the apostle Peter writing to churches in Asia Minor. Scholars are fairly sure this is the real deal – the real Peter writing this letter (sure maybe with a little help from Silas who he mentions in the letter).
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The same Peter who dropped his nets and followed Jesus as he walked along the shoreline. The same Peter who followed Jesus up to the temple of Pan and in that heathen place on the border of modern Lebanon declared Jesus as the Messiah, the son of the living God. The same Peter who in the next breath could not accept that Jesus would die for our sins and was told to get behind me Satan. The same Peter who would deny Christ three times. The same Peter who returns to his old ways after the resurrection only to be met on the shoreline by the risen Christ, cooking breakfast and instructing him to feed his sheep and tend his lambs with Agape love. Yes, that same Peter is the one who writes today’s letter. Where is he? Well, in 1 Peter 5: 13, Peter says that he writes this letter from Babylon with Silas help. But that doesn’t make much sense – Babylon of the days of King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel and the Lion’s Den, (my shack, your shack and a bungalow) are long since passed and in Jesus’ day Babylon was greatly reduced to a small town.
No, most scholars suggest that Babylon is being used here as a code word to mean “Rome.” Peter, in the Imperial capital, writes to some struggling house churches in Asia Minor – Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia and so forth that we call modern day Turkey. These are churches that if you sit with a cup of tea and read through the Book of Acts you’ll catch Paul establishing churches in his missionary journeys.
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I led a couple of congregational tours in the footsteps of Paul through Turkey and Greece and was struck by the distance Paul travelled founding these young communities of faith. It’s an odd feeling to be honest to travel in a place where you see both the remnants of the old eastern Empire – the Hagia Sophia church – once the largest in Christendom now in Istanbul former Constantinople – sitting somewhere between a decommission mosque and a museum. But it’s in the countryside where Peter writes his letters today that you see only stones where there used to be vitally alive congregations of Christian faith.
In Pisidan Anitoch, for example, you can visit the ruins of the place where in Acts 13 Paul preached his first big sermon. To stand and preach today there is to remember how fragile the Christian message is when placed in human hands.
Peter seemed to understand that. That’s why in writing to these young house churches he says rid yourselves of malice, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Focus instead on that spiritual milk that helps you mature into salvation of the Lord.
Peter was aware that these small house churches, left to their own devices, were constantly in danger of reverting to their old pagan lifestyles. They were in danger of going back to the future of their old pagan lives. Remember, this is a Christian leader who himself had fallen back on old ways before Jesus met him on the lakeshore in John 21. He knows of what he speaks.
TW: We are under construction, in danger of falling back on old ways
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Of course, it’s no different in our day. Story of Rod Stewart visiting Richard Topping’s church in Montreal. Richard apologizing for the construction that was taking place that summer in the sanctuary with scaffolding, etc.
Rod Stewart said, “Ah, but pastor, isn’t the church always under construction?”
In 2017 churches marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation – the church reformed and always reforming, or as former SAH Dean Stephen Farris is fond of saying – the church reformed and always in need of reforming.
Going back to that future – is to repeat the blind spot that everyone is nominally Christian and we are trying to get people to switch teams. That’s why in 33 chapters of the Westminster Confession there isn’t one on mission. We didn’t need to do mission to people who were essentially Christian.
Just as the early Christians were in danger of falling back on their pagan ways and forgetting God, we too can be in danger of living as if there is no God.
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GT: Christians go back to the future not through sin but the cross
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Peter encourages the Christians of Asia Minor to go back to the future in a different way. He reminds them that they are living stones being built on the cornerstone Jesus Christ. He wants them to look back to the cross in order to look forward to the future God has promised. The back to the future he wants is one that is rooted in empty cross and empty tomb. Once you were nobodies, but now you are God’s chosen people. Once you had no mercy, but by going back to the cross and into God’s grace filled future you’ve received mercy. We come to church not only to worship God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit but to be reminded of who and whose we are. We are chosen. Royal. Holy. Precious in God’s sight. As the Message version of the Bible says:
But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
Now that’s worth getting out of bed for in the morning!
GW: We go back to the future not through sin but the cross
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This promise is available to us today, by grace, that we too can go back to the future by remembering what God accomplished on the cross of Christ and by looking forward in hope. As a Christian community there are so many here and in other houses of worship today who need to be able to look back on something that propels them forward in hope. The Christian ‘back to the future’ is looking back to the cross of Jesus and looking forward in hope to Christ’s return. In the meantime, we remain active participants in God’s ongoing story of redemption and reconciliation through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Theological NT Wright’s image of a Shakespearean play in five chapters. Four chapter missing.
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Play our part. And what is that part? Do, Be and Say witness. Darrell Guder. That is where we become the living stones that Jesus as the chief cornerstone is building into his church.