THE FAITH ENTRUSTED TO US

(A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. A. Leonard Griffith in Timothy Eaton Memorial United Church, Toronto, on Reformation Sunday, October 26, 1997)

About noon on the eve of All Saints Day, 1517, two Augustinian monks approached the Castle Church at Wittenberg, Germany. One of them, a heavily-built man named Martin Luther, produced a hammer and nails and a printed placard which he fixed to the door while his companion stood looking on. That was not an unusual occurrence. The placard simply stated some 95 theses that were being proposed for debate on certain religious issues. Yet even Luther did not foresee the consequences of that commonplace act. He never dreamed that those hammer blows would shake the whole church and be heard five centuries later by Christians gathered in this place of worship today.

That was then. What about now? What is God saying to us as we remember the Reformation that began five centuries ago? What Word in Holy Scripture speaks to us who are heirs not only of Martin Luther and his contemporaries but of all the Reformers in the church's history? I am arrested by a Word that leaps out of a New Testament letter written by a man named Jude who identifies himself as the brother of James, both being blood-brothers of Jesus. It's a little letter, only one chapter, 25 verses, but it was addressed to a situation similar to that in the church today. Verse 3, as the New English Bible translates it, would have resonated in the heart of Martin Luther. It says, "Join in the struggle in defence of the faith, the faith which God entrusted to his people once and for all." Let's ponder on that verse and the truths which it contains.

First, it is telling us that there is a body of Christian faith which has come down to us through the centuries. The older version calls it "the faith once delivered to the saints." We did not invent that faith any more than we invented the wheel, and we don't have to invent it all over again in every generation. We call it The Gospel, and here is what the British theologian, P.T. Forsyth, Wrote about it:

So what is the Gospel, that body of Christian faith which has come down through the centuries? Oddly enough, I heard it summarized on a British television comedy "Father Ted." It's about a Roman Catholic priest who has a small parish on an island off the coast of Ireland. He and his curate Dugal and a senile associate scarcely fit the image of servants of God. In fact, sometimes the programme seems so profane and blasphemous that one wonders that the Catholic Church allows it to continue. Yet every episode strikes at least one serious note. A visiting bishop asks Dugal if he is having any trouble with his faith, any doubts. Dugal thinks a while and then says, "Well, you know about God, how he made the world and how it fell into sin, and God sent Jesus to live and die to save us from our sins, and Jesus rose from the dead and went to heaven, and we hope to go there too. That's all I am having trouble with." Yes, but that's the whole Gospel, the whole body of Christian belief; and the bishop is so upset by Dugal's doubt that he throws off his mitre and becomes a hippie.

The Gospel, as Jude says, has a one-and-for-all quality. It is unique. There is nothing like it in history or in any other world religion. Someone put that truth in the form of a story about a conference in outer space to which the many planets sent delegates to report on the progress made by their civilizations. Some reported that they had abolished poverty and war, others that they had eradicated all illness and disease, others that they had closed the prisons and reduced the crime rate to zero. Aware of their failures in this regard, the earth delegates sat there embarrassed. Finally their leader rose to his feet and said, "We have no good news to report. Nothing important has happened to us, except, maybe, one small thing. A few centuries ago God visited the earth." The others looked at him in amazement. "You say God visited the earth. How did you receive Him? What did you do with Him?" Earth's delegate hung his head in shame and confessed, "Actually we killed him... But he rose again... God visited the earth."

That says it all! God visited the earth in Jesus Christ who lived and died and rose again for our salvation, who ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to work in the hearts and community of Christian believers. That is the Gospel, the Christ-event, the foundation of our faith. It happened once and need not happen again. All that we Christians believe is based on it.

Jude goes on to say that this Gospel, this body of Christian faith, has been entrusted to the church. It is always an honour to be entrusted with something of great value - a sum of money, the upbringing of children, or the care of a beautiful church building such as the one in which we now worship. As members and friends of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, we have inherited a precious legacy. We may have shared in the planning and cost of other church buildings, but this one was handed down and delivered to us. We are its trustees and we want to be worthy of that trust. We know that we have to protect this house of worship, preserve its beauty and keep it in good repair so that it will be a spiritual home for future generations.

Today we remind ourselves that we have received a less tangible but more precious legacy. Not only this church building but the faith which it enshrines has been handed down to us. We have inherited that faith, we are its trustees, its custodians, and we have to be worthy of that trust. I tried to pound home that truth when I taught Preaching in the Toronto School of Theology. My students may forget what they learned from me about sermon techniques, but I hope and pray that they will not forget my heavy insistence that there is no freedom of speech in the pulpit. We Christians have a Gospel to proclaim, a body of belief given by God and entrusted to the church; and it is our duty to preserve that faith and hand it down to our children, uncorrupted and unperverted, still in its original truth.

That's what Group Captain Leonard Cheshire said that he expected of the church. He was one of the heroes of the Second World War, winner of the Victoria Cross. Later he became Lord Cheshire, honoured for the chain of nursing homes which he established in Britain and abroad for the care of the incurably ill and the victims of concentration camps. After becoming a Christian he turned to the church and he explains why. He says, "If God exists and has spoken to us, then the facts he has revealed are no more capable of private interpretation than the facts, say, of aerodynamics," He adds, "When I became a pilot I had to learn the laws of aerodynamics and went to a training school with the authority to teach me. There I expected and found teachers to give me the facts, not their own personal ideas." Cheshire goes on to say that he expected the same thing of the church - not human ideas but the saving facts of the Gospel, "the faith which God entrusted to his people once and for all."

That faith, declares Jude, must be defended, and he calls upon us to join in its defence. Our struggle may be against the secular world culture. Beyond any doubt there are forces in our society intent on destroying the Christian faith and Christian morality. They are present in science, literature, politics, business, education, entertainment and the media. Some were identified in a recent article in the Globe and Mail entitled Why this beating up on Christians? They are the modern counterparts of the enemies of Jesus who believe that there was nothing the world needed more than to have him die. They blaspheme everything sacred, they ridicule the simple faith of ordinary people, they attack traditional Christian values, they lampoon the church, they crucify Christ afresh. Is it any wonder that they have provoked a right-wing backlash which is basically a struggle in defence of the faith? We may compare it to the little boy who was ordered by his mother to stop fighting and who cried out, "I am not fighting, just fighting back!"

Yet the church has less to fear from enemies without than from so-called friends within. Those were the people who troubled Jude. He identifies them as false teachers who deny the church's basic beliefs and rules of conduct. His strong and vivid language underscores the truth that, when we contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, we may have to contend with the saints themselves, some of whom are very influential. A respected historian writes, "I reject the pretension of Christianity to be a unique revelation of the truth about Reality and a unique means of grace and salvation." In a Christian (?) magazine, a popular journalist says that we should drop the name of Jesus from our worship and substitute a more modern role-model like Martin Luther King. A leading bishop from the Church of England throws doubt on the veracity of the New Testament by dismissing the resurrection of Christ as "a conjuring trick with bones."

Jude, however, does not leave us fighting the faithless. Rather, he counsels us to "fortify ourselves in our most sacred faith" and to trust God who "can keep us from falling..." Martin Luther knew what that meant. When he stood against the heresies of his day he stood alone, yet not alone, for God was with him to keep him from falling. "Here I stand," he cried, "I cannot do otherwise! God help me!" That's what it means to join in the struggle in defence of the faith which God has entrusted to his people once and for all. On this Reformation Sunday, I challenge you to join in that struggle.