Devotional / Inspirational
Thomas E. Corts, President Samford University
“As editor of a Christian ethics journal, I am constantly looking for a relevant, insightful, enjoyable, and prophetic word. When Charles Wellborn sends an essay, I need not read it—it always rings the bell. This book will sound a ten-alarm fire!” Joe E. Trull, Editor Christian Ethics Today
CHARLES WELLBORN, a native Texan, was educated at Baylor University, Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Duke University, and the University of Edinburgh. During World War II he served in Italy with the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, the American ski troops, and was twice decorated. For ten years Wellborn was the Senior Minister of Seventh and James Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. He was for almost thirty years a member of the faculty of Florida State University and now serves as Professor of Religion Emeritus. Wellborn is the author of six books and over 100 essays and articles. Since retirement he divides his time between his home in London and friends and family in the United States.
Grits, Grace, and Goodness
“There is no denying that Charles Wellborn, child of the Southwest and the South, is from the land of grits. Grace came to him in forms beyond explanation—in wartime survival, in finding Christian faith, in the bonds of friends and family, in the bliss of an agile mind, and in dear colleagues. The goodness came to him recognizably from his Lord, the impact of home and family, the formative experiences of university years, the youth-revival movement, and the satisfaction of work well done. But goodness was also his to impart to those in need—in direct ministry, as university academic, as neighbor, and as friend. If life cannot be reduced to a single sentence, and if ‘we will understand it better by and by,’ then Grits, Grace, and Goodness is an enormous help in the here and now.”
WELLBORN
Grits, Grace, and Goodness
3
THE BIRD IN THE SANCTUARY
(This article is a revision of a sermon preached in the Chapel at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, and in the Schwab Auditorium at Pennsylvania State University, State College.)
O
n a Sunday morning a number of years ago I was scheduled to preach to a congregation gathered in a lovely and impressive sanctuary—one with stained-glass windows, high beamed ceilings, and rich carpets. As the church’s pastor and I came into the pulpit to begin the service, we noted something that many others have probably witnessed at one time or another. A bird had somehow found its way into the sanctuary. The bird was fluttering back and forth, high up under the ceiling beams. From time to time it threw itself frantically against the stained-glass windows, seeking a way out, only to be thrown back helplessly. I suppose it would have more symbolism if the bird had been a dove; actually, as I remember, it was probably a woodpecker. I think anyone can easily imagine what happened. We sang the hymns—and watched the bird. We prayed—and some of us did “pious peeking” and watched the bird. I tried to preach—and the congregation watched the bird. After the service had been dismissed I mustered up my courage to inquire of the pastor, “Why didn’t we just stop the service and get the bird out of the sanctuary?” The pastor was embarrassed by the question. He replied, “Oh, I thought about doing that, but I just hated to interrupt what was going on!” To me, that simple incident—a bird in the sanctuary— became a kind of double-barreled fable, an acted parable with both a major and a minor emphasis.
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The minor emphasis is, I think, obvious. The pastor did not interrupt the service because he hated to disturb “what was going on.” What was going on? We were engaged in the mechanics of religion, the activities in which decent, respectable people engage when they go to worship, the identifiable religious activities—singing, praying, preaching. It had become so important to this pastor and, I suspect, to many others like him, to go through the motions of religion that he could not bear to interrupt them, even when something had happened that destroyed much of their meaning and effectiveness. Is this not the situation in much of the church today? Are we not often concerned so deeply with the “motions”—whatever our particular version of those motions may be—that we see them as ends in themselves? Our particular motions may be traditional acts of worship, or they may be more modern activities, such as study groups, meditation seminars, or interminable dialogue sessions. They become entrenched and so important in themselves that it is sacrilegious to interrupt them, even when they serve as superficial substitutes for life and action. That was, for me, the minor impact of the parable. The major thrust is both more subtle and more important. That bird in the sanctuary, throwing itself helplessly against the windows, seeking an exit to the world outside, is a potent symbol of much of the modern church. I do not mean the church as an ecclesiastical institution, or as a rat race of organizational activism, or as an aesthetic enterprise, showing off its architecture and its music, or as a social service enterprise. I mean the church as it was founded to be—the living body of our Lord, pulsing with power and the potential of both physical and spiritual redemption. This was the New Testament church, turning a pagan world upside down. Unhappily, this church is too often locked away in our ornate and costly sanctuaries. Having efficiently and safely incarcerated the church, we then come once or more a week with pious mien and stately step to visit it. Many of us “go to church” as we would go to a religious museum. For an hour or so we pay our respects, and then, church over, we go back out into the real world, back to where we live and work and play, leaving the church imprisoned within stones and steel and stained-glass windows. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the fact that we talk much and easily about the church. We sometimes use terms so glibly and frequently that they become like old coins, passed from hand to hand until the inscriptions are rubbed off and it is no 30
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longer possible to determine their value. It is essential for the man or woman who seeks reality in religious faith to understand what the church is in its essence. The New Testament used several metaphors to describe the church, but the most powerful and descriptive is that we have just employed—the church as the body of Christ. It is possible for us to think of the church as a building, an organized institution, or a program of activities. If we so conceive of the church and if we are honest and sincere in our religious commitment, we may end up, as many contemporary Christians have, giving our ultimate devotion to a structure, an institution, or a calendar of activities—the tragedy described by someone as “first-rate loyalties to second-rate causes.” Some years ago I sat in a local church conference in which members considered a moral issue cutting to the heart of the church’s self-understanding of its nature and mission. The question was hotly argued. Finally one man—a good man—rose to make his comment: “We have discussed this question now for some time without mentioning our major concern. We must remember that we have a million dollars worth of property on this corner, and we must be certain, whatever we do, that we protect the church’s investment.” Do you see what had happened? A good man with honest intentions had so misunderstood the meaning of the church that he had wrapped his spiritual commitment around bricks, plaster, and mortar. He had forgotten that, important as the protection of a church’s property is, there is something more important: to do the will of God, to let the church, as the body of Christ, be the church—alive, powerful, and redemptive in the world. Not really different in orientation are those who see the church not as a building or a program, but simply as people, grouped together for a common purpose. My own denominational tradition has a time-honored definition of the church as “a body of baptized believers, banded together to worship and serve God.” However valid this definition of the local church body in its institutional function may be, it becomes demonic if one gets “hung up” on it or accepts it as the last word. For if this is the essence of the church, then the church is human-made, just exactly as if it were a building. For multitudes today the church is a group of people who choose to associate themselves together for laudable purposes—one good organization among many in the community. It fits neatly in with civic clubs, fraternal organizations, and 31
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charitable concerns. One picks a church to join in the same way that one might pick a country club—because it is in the right part of town, has attractive facilities, provides good music, has a personable minister, and includes congenial people in its membership. Churches strive for good fellowship, which often means that they consist of people we enjoy seeing frequently and with whom we share a whole complex of common interests, economic, political, and social. This is to miss the whole dynamic of the church or, at least, the church portrayed in the pages of the New Testament. The primitive church is never depicted as a group of people who got together because they liked each other. I have never been convinced, for instance, that Peter and Paul “liked” each other. The evidence is that they irritated each other intensely and seldom if ever agreed on major issues. The New Testament describes the pattern of a church made up of people who did not necessarily like each other but were able to find something that transcended their differences and bound them together in a common calling and a common task. This is a bond far stronger than mere fellowship. Our Lord said, “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18). The foundation rock is the incorporation of women and men into the body of Christ. I submit that not only the powers of death, but far less frightening forces are constantly prevailing today against the church as a bureaucratic organization, a building, a program of activities, a hierarchy, a denomination, and a group of like-minded people. What then is the church? It is the body of Christ, divinely and supernaturally called into being by the creative and redemptive grace of God. Human beings do not finally build it, or organize it, or promote it. Into it men and women of faith are mystically incorporated. They are in evangelical terms “born again.” Christ is the head of the church, and those who commit themselves to him are made one with him—we in him, and Christ in us. We are spiritually alive; we are the concrete manifestation of Christ in the world. Where we are, there is the church—if it is anywhere. What does this realization imply? It means simply that we cannot leave the church in the sanctuary when the worship services are concluded. We are the church, and wherever we are—at home, in an office, in a classroom, in a restaurant or bar, on a farm, or in a factory—there is the church. It is spiritual delusion to believe that we can go to church or leave church, putting on or taking off the 32
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church like an old overcoat. We are the church or, at least, if we are faithful men and women, we are seeking to become the church. The question I ask here is simple and to the point. I inquire as to the state of the church but not the church in its cathedrals, meeting houses, or chapels. I am asking about the church where you and I live. How goes it with the church in your kitchen, your shop, or your place of business? When theologians discuss the marks of the true New Testament church, they most often talk about such matters as the proper observance of the sacraments or ordinances, the polity of the church, its doctrine, and its practices. Too often, we neglect the even more basic marks of the church as it functions in the world, characteristics that are emphasized in the book of the Acts as it describes the life of the early church. It is significant that while this scriptural material has little to say about doctrines, sacraments, ordinances, or polity, it has much to say about more elemental things. If we are to be the church, wherever we are, how do we test the spiritual health of the church we are becoming? What are the marks of the authentic church? Wherever the church is, there is love. Precisely to the extent that the church does not live by love, it misses the mark of authenticity. The early church made no claims to out-organize, out-promote, out-build, out-manipulate, or even out-think anyone else. It did promise to out-love everybody else. The hostile world in which it found itself marveled that these women and men of faith out-loved the pagan world. Their love reached out to embrace those who did not accept the church’s doctrinal teaching, as well as to human beings of both genders, all races, and every economic or social status. From a New Testament standpoint an individual can repeat all the right creeds, believe all the right doctrines, go through all the right religious “motions,� discourse learnedly on everything from Barth to Buber, but if he does not love, he or she is not the true church in the world. Wherever the church is, there is service. Service is love in action. I mean here concrete service, blood-and-sweat service, forcing one to become involved in the concrete suffering of the world about us. That world is presented not abstractly, but specifically in the person of the nearest human being in immediate need. Years ago, when I served as Chaplain to the University, part of my responsibility was to act as liaison officer on the campus for two government programs, the Peace Corps and Vista. I interviewed dozens of students who were interested in 33
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investing a year or more of their lives in those programs. Most of the students I talked with came out of religious backgrounds—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and others. I heard them say over and over again, “All my life I have heard people talk about service. Preachers preach about it, we sing about it, we pray about it, my professors in the classroom lecture about it, we study about how to serve. I have had enough of talk. I want to get my hands dirty in human need. I want to do something for somebody in a way I can see and touch and feel.” It seems to me that there is the essential impulse of the church to serve. Where is the church as the body of Christ? Is it only where we talk, sing, and pray, or can it be found beyond the religious motions—wherever individuals give themselves in honest, decent concern for the needs of other human beings? Wherever the church is, there is witness. This is surely one of the authentic marks of the true church, the church as the body of Christ, alive and powerful for human redemption. In the book of Acts we are told that “The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved” (Acts 2:47). Christians loved, served, and witnessed, both in their personal lives and by their words. Thus, they thrust themselves into the lives and destinies of others. Witness must be by both act and word, for the act finds its expression in the word, and the word is the translation of the act. If we are becoming the church, we are becoming witnesses. “I will make you,” said Jesus, “to become fishers of men.” Love, service, witness—these are the real marks of the authentic church, the church as the body of Christ, alive and powerful. But if the church is to love, serve, and witness, it must somehow break loose from the stone prison in which we have incarcerated it. It must take on flesh and blood. It must take seriously its commitment to the “follow-ship,” not just the fellowship, of Jesus Christ. It must go where Christ is. And where is he? Is he not where he has always been, wherever there is suffering, sorrow, discrimination, misery, hunger, loneliness, and despair? He stands in the midst of life in all its brutality, injustice, and sin, saying, “Come unto me.” Can we follow him? Can the church be the church? Do you remember that bird—that helpless bird throwing itself against the stained-glass window? Is it not time—high time, urgent time, almost perhaps too late—to smash those stainedglass windows, pull down the heavy oaken doors, and let the church loose in the world?
34
Devotional / Inspirational
Thomas E. Corts, President Samford University
“As editor of a Christian ethics journal, I am constantly looking for a relevant, insightful, enjoyable, and prophetic word. When Charles Wellborn sends an essay, I need not read it—it always rings the bell. This book will sound a ten-alarm fire!” Joe E. Trull, Editor Christian Ethics Today
CHARLES WELLBORN, a native Texan, was educated at Baylor University, Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Duke University, and the University of Edinburgh. During World War II he served in Italy with the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, the American ski troops, and was twice decorated. For ten years Wellborn was the Senior Minister of Seventh and James Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. He was for almost thirty years a member of the faculty of Florida State University and now serves as Professor of Religion Emeritus. Wellborn is the author of six books and over 100 essays and articles. Since retirement he divides his time between his home in London and friends and family in the United States.
Grits, Grace, and Goodness
“There is no denying that Charles Wellborn, child of the Southwest and the South, is from the land of grits. Grace came to him in forms beyond explanation—in wartime survival, in finding Christian faith, in the bonds of friends and family, in the bliss of an agile mind, and in dear colleagues. The goodness came to him recognizably from his Lord, the impact of home and family, the formative experiences of university years, the youth-revival movement, and the satisfaction of work well done. But goodness was also his to impart to those in need—in direct ministry, as university academic, as neighbor, and as friend. If life cannot be reduced to a single sentence, and if ‘we will understand it better by and by,’ then Grits, Grace, and Goodness is an enormous help in the here and now.”
WELLBORN
Grits, Grace, and Goodness