Hello all -
A few years ago I did some study seminars with the Foundation for Reformed Theology. As a result, I am on their email list. While I read a lot of things from many different sources each week, this email I received from the Foundation yesterday was particularly comforting, uplifting and inspiring to me, given the times in which we are living. I hope it is to you.
Peace...
PT
Dear Friends of The Foundation for Reformed Theology:
I once heard John Leith give a lecture on the church in which he
quoted Calvin from Book IV of The Institutes:
"Although the melancholy desolation which confronts us on every side may
cry that no remnant of the church is left, let us know that Christ's death is
fruitful, and that God miraculously keeps his church as in hiding places."
In this section Calvin is unfolding his doctrine of the church but this
particular passage has as much to do with reminding us of the source of our
hope as it does with the life of the church itself. The counsel here is not to
despair.
Despair, bitterness, even anger at the way things are constitute temptations to those who would live by faith and not by sight. They are also, in a weird way, the residue of love. If one did not love the church so much, if one did not invest so much of one's heart in its mission and life, if one did not dare to undertake great things in its service, then one would not feel so much despair at its wreckage, or bitterness at our blasted hopes, or anger at all the ways the church has failed. A studied indifference would never yield such despair. Only love can risk such a temptation.
Yet, as Augustine has taught us, even our loves can be disordered, and our despair just another name for pride. The great thing about feeding on our disappointments is that there is no shortage of supply. Still, there is something deeper here than just a kind of discouragement that afflicts all who seek to minister to God's people. The great opponent of despair and bitterness is not our virtues, not our ability to conjure up more cheerful moods. No, the great opponent, even enemy of such demons is Jesus Christ. He has always called out such demons and confronted them with a gospel that is neither angry nor bitter, neither triumphalistic nor proud. Instead, he gives himself to us such that despair and bitterness can be given no quarter in our thinking and doing. He reveals these demons to be signs of death. And he reveals himself as the One who conquers through the Cross. Jesus is Victor! The crucified and risen Lord reigns over this world, over this sinful world, over all our failures, bitter defeats, and painful despair. They are not more powerful than he is. And they cannot be taken more seriously than his victory over sin and death. One does not have to be a Norman Vincent Peale to acknowledge that the good news of Jesus Christ should put a smile on all our faces. He is Lord! And it is a sin to love our disappointments more than we do his victory.
So, what about the church? I suspect that being a faithful Christian is never easy, and that challenges always abound, perhaps different ones but just as difficult in different times and places. The church I grew up in during the 1950s no longer exists, which is, in truth, not such a bad thing. However, the church that seeks to minister in our fractured and divided world today, does so from a weaker position in the culture than formerly. Even being a Presbyterian today is something of a counter-cultural calling. Perhaps such has always been the case. The Reformed tradition is not a populist tradition. But that should not bother us, or it should bother us as little as Israel was bothered by being small and comparatively weak piece on the chessboard of the ancient world. We will, in any case, accomplish little good by playing to the culture's anger and divisions. Far better to do something different: to rejoice in the gifts that draw us together and enable us to witness with a full heart and generous spirit.
Some of the congregations my father served are barely hanging on today, and others have closed. I am in regular conversation with friends in churches I once served whose faithfulness in the face of adversity makes me weep with gratitude for them and their witness. Rather than bemoaning what they no longer have, they embrace the calling to which God has called them in this time and place. They rejoice that God has called them to witness here. And now. They refuse to be embittered, not because they have such reserves of will power but because they know who has won the battle, who is Lord, who will let nothing separate us from his love. And because they know that, they can be ridiculously confident. They can "smile at all their foes," even their own demons of bitterness and despair, turning instead to work on things that truly matter.
So how do we go forward when faced with the "melancholy desolation which confronts us on every side"? In his address to a group of pastors in Germany delivered in July of 1922, later published as "The Need and Promise of Christian Preaching," Karl Barth ends his remarks by also quoting Calvin. In this case, he quotes from Calvin's commentary on Micah 4:6: "Although the church is at the present time hardly to be distinguished from a dead or at best sick man, there is no reason for despair, for the Lord raises up his own suddenly, as he waked the dead from the grave. This we must clearly remember, lest, when the church fails to shine forth, we conclude too quickly that her life has died utterly away. But the church in the world is so preserved that she rises suddenly from the dead.... Let us cling to the remembrance that she is not without her resurrection, or rather, not without her many resurrections." (The Word of God and the Word of Man, p. 135)
That is how we go forth, not with strategies of success or the power of our own virtues but from death to resurrection. In Wendell Berry's words, we are called to "practice resurrection." The risen Lord will not let us feed off our own bitterness or despair.
Pious words? On the evening of December 9, 1968, the night before he died, Barth talked on the telephone with his old friend, Eduard Thurneysen. 1968 was not a great year in either American (assassinations, riots, protests) or Europe. Before he hung up, Barth told his friend that despite the darkness, it was vital to "not lose heart!" There is still One who reigns, even Jesus Christ.
It is a sin, a theological sin to lose heart as if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, as if the risen Lord does not reign, as if his light were unable to pierce our darkness. It is selfish to "lose heart" and feed off our resentments. They are not our sacrament. Besides, there are so many more important things to do, not least is to receive the gift of studying with Augustine, Calvin, Barth, and so many others who have found encouragement and hope in the victory of Jesus Christ. It is that victory that gives us confidence and energy to embrace this world, to love Christ's church, and to care for the least and last and lost whom he claims for his own. And it is that victory that enables us to be glad that we are called to live in this day and time - not yesterday or whenever we thought it was better - but this day and time. This is the day the Lord has made. We are to rejoice and be glad in it.
The Foundation for Reformed Theology exists to help pastors and elders not to lose heart, but rather to drink deeply from the wells of the Christian faith, to rejoice in the company of others who have walked this way, often in the face of far greater adversity than we encounter, and to read and study and prepare to surprise an often sad and all too wise world with the unexpected good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Thomas W. Currie, Interim Director of The Foundation for Reformed Theology
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