Opening Worship

Document DOC 2

Opening Worship

Sermon

Notice – Construction in Progress

1 Pet 2.4-12, Mk 1.14-18

Part A – Rev. Dr Peter Borgdorff

I am deeply honoured to deliver the first part of this sermon this morning – a sermon that has been developed in two parts. After I have finished part A, the Rev. Doctor Clifton Kirkpatrick will deliver part B. One sermon – two preachers – the same message.

May God be honoured by what is said here today.

As many of you arrived on this campus during the last few days you, no doubt, noticed a major construction project that dominates the landscape of the campus. When finished, sometime in 2011, it will be a beautifully renovated facility that will be known as the Covenant Fine Arts Auditorium. Construction sites almost always are messy. That is the way it is when scaffolding and construction equipment are scattered about. The completion of the facility can only be anticipated – maybe even visualized by trained eyes – but someday soon the building will accommodate many fine offerings of praise in the fine arts that God has given.

We are gathered in this place this morning as a community under construction. It’s really important for us to acknowledge that reality, not only as we begin the journey as a World Communion of Reformed Churches, but also as individual members thereof. As we worship together here, keenly aware of our representative presence on behalf of our home churches and their nearly 80 million members around the world, we acknowledge before God and to each other that we ourselves are under construction. We acknowledge our state not merely to sound a note of humility – or to offer it as an excuse for our imperfections – but to testify that we have read and heard the word of the Lord through God’s servant Peter when he writes “As you come to him, the living Stone…you also, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2.5).

At this historic gathering it is so appropriate not only that we are beginning our journey to Unity in the Spirit in worship, but also that we are doing so in the clear awareness that we are gathered as the people of God. Yes, we are a people of the Reformation – and we are here under the rubric of many names – but together we are a people under construction. We have chosen to describe that construction to be a communion – a fellowship – a spiritual house – an ecumenical organisation – a testimony – a vehicle – to bear witness to the centrality of Jesus Christ and the gospel that has made us whole. Before we together can do the work of God we need to be constructed into that “spiritual house” in order that we might perform and live into the “holy priesthood” we are called to be.

It is noteworthy – and an essential reminder (don’t you think?) – that God’s redemptive activity in the world – and in our lives – is presented as a preface to what we are called to do. It is that gospel we share – and the redemptive message we have heard – that forms the basis of the communion we now celebrate. Our communion and fellowship is first and foremost in Christ who in his grace makes us to be a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (1 Pet 2.9). It is in Christ where we find our identity and our calling; it is in Christ – and by the power of his Spirit – that we are gathered in this place. It is in Christ – and by his power – that the Communion of Reformed Churches is launched. It is the gospel of Christ we proclaim: it is the love of Christ for the people of the world that gives hope to the nations; good news to the poor; binds up the broken-hearted; proclaims freedom to those held captive and release from darkness for all who are prisoners of the spirits of this age. It is Christ’s care for all that God has made that propels us to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, to comfort all who mourn, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendour (Isaiah 61).

And, of course, serve we must. The Apostle Peter in the passage we read states it clearly. We must finish the verse and hear the consequence “that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Cliff Kirkpatrick, in part B of this message, will focus our attention on the specifics of serving. Suffice it to say for now that through the Communion of Reformed Churches we have an opportunity to be faithful together to both the proclamation and the living-out of the gospel message. To proclaim the gospel as being redemptive and transformational without engaging the spirits of this age is neither biblical nor reformed. To engage the spirits of this age without the proclamation of the gospel will align us with countless humanitarian efforts that are at risk of being neither redemptive nor transformational in a biblical spiritual sense. The Communion of Reformed Churches can walk a more excellent way. In our service together we must do both – proclaim and serve; preach and teach; resist and promote; genuinely care for people’s spiritual well-being and prophecy that every square inch and centimetre of this world belongs to God. As a communion we are not called to create the space of God’s domain – but rather – to let the world know that it already is – as it always was – the handiwork of a mighty God.

The traditions of the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) have a common source. Yes, historical developments may have influenced a different emphasis for each partner present here today. But, that does not mean that one tradition trumps the other, or that one should be lifted above the other. The historical emphasis that each now brings to the communion is needed to enrich all of us in this more intimate relationship. Together, as the constitution affirms, we will be true to our confessional commitments as expressed in the historic creeds from which all of us derive our reformational principles. But most of all, together we will seek to live in the spirit of what it means to be in communion. To find ourselves “on the way” and accepting each other as fellow pilgrims on the road to obedient service. By God’s grace, we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” for such a time as this, so that we may “declare the praises of him who called (us) out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Yes, we are under construction as a communion, as an organisation, as prophets, priests and kings. At times it may be messy – pieces of our construction equipment may be scattered here and there. But let us be the servants of Jesus Christ this day together. Let us demonstrate for all to see that we are gathered in the “Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace.” Let us be together the disciples of Jesus who prayed for the Church to be One.

Blessed be his marvellous Name!

Part B – Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick

Jesus talks about what a great day it will be when people come together from “east and west and south and north” (Luke 13.29) to join together in the realm of God. Friends, this is indeed such a great day, and I join Peter Borgdorff in giving thanks to God that we have come from all parts of the world to join together in the new construction that God is doing among us. As we came together as the WARC global family in Accra six years ago, one of the younger delegates in my church’s delegation announced with glee that “this is the closest we will get to Pentecost this side of heaven!” And she was right. But today we are even closer!

This is a great day! It is the day that the Lord has made! It is a day that will make history as we have brought together these two branches of the Reformed family from all corners of the earth to “be one in Christ … that the world might believe!” (Jn 17.21) Sisters and brothers in Christ, let us rejoice and be glad in it!

As many of you know, the World Social Forum gathers each year around the theme that “a different world is possible” in order to offer a different vision from the rich and powerful of the world – a vision of a world where the gap is closed between the rich and the poor, where peacemaking rather than domination is the order of the day, where poverty and its attendant symptoms like HIV/AIDS are eliminated, where creation is restored, and where a social order is put in place built around collaboration and community. As Reformed Christians and a global Reformed body, we have shared these aspirations (and see them as part of God’s plan for humanity). We have also been part of this global movement based on the firm conviction that a different world is possible. As we start a new chapter in our life together as a World Communion of Reformed Churches, this conviction needs to be our central affirmation and is indeed God’s will for us.

This same theme, that a different world is possible, is what we hear echoed as we read from the Gospel of Mark of Jesus coming to Galilee proclaiming the good news that “the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near.” (Mk 1.15) Jesus’ announcement was not simply about the love of God in a theoretical sense or even as an experience of personal faith but that a new world was indeed possible and is in fact breaking into human history with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a realm very different from the kingdom that Mark’s hearers knew so well – the kingdom of Herod – based on the principles that might makes right, that those of power and privilege should be protected, and that the people exist to serve the emperor and not the reverse.

The realm that Jesus announces is that grounded in the words of the Psalmist, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it.” (Ps 24.1) It was foretold by Amos when he imagined a world where justice will roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream and by Isaiah when he had a vision of a world where there is good news to the poor, release for the captives and liberty for the oppressed (Am 5.24 and Isa 61.1-2) – a world whose values centre on liberation, restitution and reconciliation.

Jesus’ announcement comes with an invitation. It is like an alarm clock letting us know that the time is fulfilled and we need to wake up and respond to his invitation to repent, to believe and to live into this new world with passion, energy and hope – to go into the streets and change the patterns of human life so that all may know life in fullness. It is an invitation to reorient our lives to God’s way in the world. And the invitation is extended to us as well two thousand years later!

I am struck that the first thing that Jesus did after making this bold announcement was to form a community of disciples. For Jesus knew well that a world of justice would only be possible if it was also lived out by a community of disciples who practiced the reality of justice and reconciliation in their own lives and who were partners with Jesus in helping this reign of God break into human history. For Jesus, justice and communion were the hallmarks of the Christian community. And that is why they are the hallmarks of our commitment to be a World Communion of Reformed Churches.

The work of the Holy Spirit through a vision of the realm of God and of life in communion has also broken through in our life together as Reformed Christians in recent years. It was the Holy Spirit working through the power of a visit to the slave dungeons in Ghana at the WARC General Council in 2004 that inspired us to create and live out the Accra Confession. To go to Elmina and see that the Dutch Reformed Christians who ran the slave trade saw no contradiction in building their chapel on top of the female slave dungeon made us resolve to never again stand aside in the face of injustice. It was – and it is – imperative as followers of Jesus Christ for us to say forcefully and effectively, “no!” to the global systems that impoverish people and destroy the creation – and “yes” to the realm of God.

In a very different way, the Holy Spirit was with us when we gathered from WARC and REC on this very campus in the middle of an incredibly cold and snowbound winter in 2006. We had all come expecting to tinker with the mechanisms that would allow us to cooperate better between our two organisations, but as we shared our stories around the fireplace in Prince Centre, it became clear to us (to a person) that God was not calling us to figure out how to cooperate better but rather to be one – that just maybe this Reformed communion, which is more likely to split than any other, might be the communion that could pioneer in becoming a communion where so-called “evangelicals” and “ecumenicals” could realize that we belong to each other and are called together to work for a different world in our time.

This week is our opportunity to claim for ourselves (and for our churches) God’s call to justice and communion as our own. It is time to believe and act upon what we have doubted for far too long – that a different world is possible and that Reformed people and churches can really live together in communion as a testimony to the one body of Christ worldwide. It is a time to bring our stones, however imperfect they may be, into a new spiritual house founded on the living stone, Jesus Christ, to be a holy priesthood in order to proclaim the mighty acts of God to all the world. This is a defining moment for Reformed Christians and an incredible opportunity to join God in changing the world and changing the character of our Christian community.

May God richly bless us and the World Communion of Reformed Churches as we are built into a spiritual house around the living stone, Jesus Christ, and become a living demonstration of God’s promise that a different church and a different world are possible!