Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Episcopacy, Apostolicity, and the One True Church"
Date: September 16, 2007
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon requests:  “How do we know what to think when we hear from the Pope that the Catholic religion is the only true religion?  Strong voices from all around us seem to say their way to Christianity is the only way!” 

“What is the purpose of the church?”

I have on my office wall this picture of the interior of the chapel at my seminary, Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.  I know you can’t see it well, but it is a large stained-glass window comprising the entire back wall of the large, A-frame chapel.  When I first arrived there in 1970, I thought it odd that such a window was at the back of the chapel instead of the front, where you could gaze at it during the service, especially if the preacher were boring!  The chapel is called the Chapel of the Great Commission, and the huge window-wall is a depiction of today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew, known as the Great Commission.  Christ is depicted ascending into heaven, and around him are the various disciples.  Inscribed across the entire back wall in the window are his words:  “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

It took me just a little while to adjust to the fact that the window at the back of the chapel was indeed in the proper place.  For, after each chapel service, we seminary students turned to leave with the charge that we were being trained to fulfill Christ’s command to “go and make disciples of all nations.”

The word disciple appears 269 times in the New Testament, and the word Christian shows up a scant three times.  So notes Dallas Willard in his new book The Great Omission:  Reclaiming Jesus’ Essential Teachings on Discipleship.  Willard declares that the church today has inverted that emphasis:  being a Christian in many churches does not entail being a disciple—namely, a student, follower or apprentice of Jesus.

Now, I ask you to take what I’ve shared with you and put it on a shelf for a few minutes, for we’re going to pull it down again.  Because what it says is vital to the sermon requests I’m attempting to answer today.

In July, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly headed by Pope Benedict before he was elevated, reaffirmed the Catholic doctrine that the church of Christ “exists fully only in the Catholic Church.”  This doctrine reaffirmed one issued seven years ago in the encyclical Dominum Iesus, which insisted that when Vatican Council II in the 1960s said that the church founded by Christ and the Holy Spirit “subsists in” the Catholic Church, it meant that the church of Christ “continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church,” not withstanding the fact that many godly elements—of word, sacrament and ministry—are at work outside the Catholic structure.

Dominus Iesus also issued a famous—or, for many, infamous—language rule:  Orthodox and Old Catholic bodies, as well as the existing Roman Catholic Church, are rightly called “churches” because they have bishops in apostolic succession from the time of Peter, regarded as the first pope.  But bodies descended from the Reformation—meaning Protestant churches—do not have an episcopate, and they celebrate a flawed Eucharist—meaning we do not believe the bread and cup actually become the body and blood of Christ during the sacrament.  Consequently, for Catholic ecclesiology, those churches/we are not a church “in the proper sense,” but are (to use the Vatican II term) “ecclesial communities.”

Now if all of that is more than you wanted to know, or you’re ready to download this sermon from our website so you can read it again, it all boils down to this, and the fancy words in my sermon title:  episcopacy and apostolicity.  The Roman Catholic Church, being a hierarchical entity, places great regard in the role of the pope at the top, presumably descended one-after-another in unbroken line from Peter, designated by Jesus as ‘the rock upon whom I will build my church.’ (Matthew 16:18)  While some Protestant churches have bishops—Anglican and Episcopal, Lutheran and United Methodists—they do not claim an unbroken line.  And we in the Free Church tradition—Baptists, United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ—we are largely autonomous congregations with a bottom-up power structure, with the most influence exerted by each local congregation.

However, I’ll tell you this from personal experience:  In our tradition, when a minister is ordained, each ordained clergyperson present is invited to come forward for the laying-on-of-hands.  In 1973, when I felt a dozen ministers’ hands upon my head, I felt the great weight of the historical church.  Someone once laid their hands on those ministers’ heads, and someone on the heads of the ministers before them, and on back further and further.  It might have even gone back to some Catholic priest or bishop, or even a pope!  After all, many of our ancestors from centuries past were Roman Catholic prior to the Reformation in the 16th century.

A number of members and regular worshippers at Bay Shore Church come out of the Catholic tradition.  Some of you have made that known to me; others not.  I don’t expect you would be here if you truly felt our church was less valid than the Catholic church, or deemed worthy of being considered only an “ecclesial community” instead of a true church.

Now it is time to bring off the shelf the earlier mentioned reference to disciples, and introduce you to the word apostolicity.  (Someone asked me if I could pronounce all the words in my sermon title!)  Protestant teaching, sacramental life and ministries, although flawed in Catholic eyes, do fuse together qualities derived from Christ and the New Testament churches.  Where these elements come together there is apostolicity, from the root word apostle, or disciple.  Maybe our brothers and sisters in the denomination known as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in which the Rev. Elaine Schoepf was raised and ordained, had a good idea when they chose that name in the early 19th century.  Their aim was to return to the early practices and structure of the church in Jesus’ time.  Nowhere does Jesus mention the concept of bishops.  It was the Apostle Paul in the next generation of the church who spoke of bishops and deacons. 

We don’t require a higher ecclesiastical authority than that of Jesus himself who commissioned his original dozen disciples to go and make disciples of all nations.  We are about that task each and every Sunday here at our church, which is surely an “ecclesial community,” but most certainly a church.

What then, I’m asked, is the purpose of the church?  First, I think the structure of the church exists to acknowledge God’s role in Creation and power over the world, as we know it.  Acknowledging the presence of God, we gather here week-by-week to worship God.  (And I have another sermon request seeking to understand whether God demands praise from us.)  Recognizing God, we gather to hear God’s word spoken through prophets and apostles and God’s Son.  We gather to offer our earnest prayers to God.  All of this comes together in our worship of God.

Second, I think the purpose of the church is service.  It is one thing to define oneself as a Christian because you believe and come to worship.  It is another thing to step forth in service, to be a disciple of Christ as you seek to do Christ’s work and ministry in the world, both locally and beyond.  And I’m not going to enumerate here all this church’s mission projects and special offerings that seek to accomplish that task.

Third, I think the purpose of the church is to be in community with one another.  I won’t argue that you can worship God, and pray as well, on the golf course or in a fishing boat.  But where is your community of fellow Christians, fellow disciples on the faith journey to support you, and for you to support in return?  That is why we have prayer chains.  That is why we have caregiver groups and Shepherd’s Staff and other fellowship and support groups within this, and most every church.  You are not alone in your journey.  You are surrounded by others who will share your joy as well as support you through your need.  That is what Christ’s ministry was truly about.  And that is what Christ’s church is to be about today as we become his faithful disciples.

I’m not against the Roman Catholic Church.  Two of my grandparents were raised Catholic.  I have lots of friends and a church secretary who are good and faithful Catholics.  There are all kinds of churches around, some more orthodox and traditional than ours, others more evangelical or charismatic than ours.  Each, in its own way, is true in its understanding of how to worship and serve Christ.  I just do not believe that only papal succession and the role of bishops can define what is the one true church.  For Jesus, it was far less about the structure of what would follow, than it was about the life, cares and concerns of those to whom he sought to minister.