Scripture: Exodus 19:5-6; Ephesians 4:1-7; Ephesians 2:14-22 Series: 2022
Part of a series on the Apostles’ Creed, this Epiphany Sunday sermon unpacks the line ‘I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,’ clarifying that ‘Catholic’ means the whole/universal church, not the Roman institution. Tracing the church’s roots from God’s covenant with Israel (Exodus 19) through Christ breaking down the dividing wall (Ephesians 2), Pruitt argues that in Christ there is no longer an in-group and out-group. He then expounds the four marks of the church from Ephesians 4—one baptism, one faith, one Lord, one hope—and uses a digression on Methodist history (the name’s origin in the Oxford Holy Club) to show the church belongs to everyone. Believing in the Holy Catholic Church means trusting Christ to be at work beyond what we individually see or judge.
Illustrations: elementary-school-cool-kids, methodist-name-holy-club, methodist-circuit-method, hymnal-catholic-asterisk, church-as-corporation
January 8
I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church
“So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me. You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation. These are the words you should say to the Israelites.”” Exodus 19:5-6 CEB
I love to hear my kids talk to each other about elementary school. Two things they talk about often are crushes, who has them, and the cool kids. It is amazing that wherever there is a school, there is a set of cool kids. How you define them varies from place to place, but it is fairly universal that some kids are more popular than others. Some kids, it seems, are more favored than others by the teachers and staff. There are in-groups and out-groups.
When it comes to the church in the world, is the church an in-group or an out-group or neither?
Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on the apostles creed, that historic doctrinal statement of the faith. We are going to look at how the creed encapsulate scripture and offers it to us in a way that shows us what has been revealed from God about who God is, how the world is, why we are in need, how Jesus saves us, and what we should do about it.
Today, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.
The word Catholic is quite weighted in our language today. This is one of the more confusing lines of the creed to modern ears. Do we mean “I believe in the Catholic Church”, capital C, with the Pope and bishops and unmarried priests?
Quite frankly, no. The word Catholic is not a proper noun referring to a single entity. It is an adjective referring to something that is basically universal.
It comes from the Greek Katholikus which is the preposition kata, meaning ‘about’ and olos, meaning ‘whole.’ About the whole. It was two words later turned into one word.
In the old Methodist hymnal, there is an asterisk by ‘Catholic’ in the Creed, to let people know that it means universal. So why shouldn’t we just translate it as universal? Wouldn’t that be less confusing?
The main reason is that if Jesus is the word of God, the word made flesh, words matter particularly to Christianity. Catholic doesn’t quite mean universal. It doesn’t mean everywhere. It means the whole of a thing; the whole of the church in places and nations. The statement of belief in the creed is that there is a church set apart (the meaning of holy) that is whole in some way.
In our world today filled with denominations, it is hard to imagine the church as a whole. It is worth remembering that denomination just means name. Every generation, people get fed up with denominations, in a totally understandable way. Denominations have baggage and legacy costs. There are complicated histories and legacies that can sometimes seem to get in the way of the life of faith. Legacy costs like pensions and histories and rules from long ago.
The history of the United Methodist Church is long and complicated. The church is a few years older than the United States of America. The US Constitution was finally ratified in 1788. The first Methodist conference in the US was in 1784. The world has changed a lot since that time. The country has changed a lot.
The Methodist Church has changed. In the early 19th century, Methodism was the largest church in the United States. Growth happened faster and easier because when Methodists planted a church, they didn’t need a one-to-one ratio of pastors to churches. The circuit method allowed one pastor to plant multiple churches. Methodists were on the frontiers not the big cities. They were provincial churches, not downtown churches.
One of the most confusing things about Methodists is why the name stuck. Why call yourselves Methodist? It started as an insult. Even today, it sounds like an insult. It started as a high-falootin’ Oxford insult. Charles Wesley was meeting with some fellow undergrads at Oxford. They were trying to be holy. They started a club. The holy club. They asked Charles’s older brother, John, to help them structure their time and John gave them a series of 22 questions and commended them to serve others more. They were called Methodists not because they were methodical. It goes back to an Ancient Greek conflict between different medical schools. The followers of Galen thought that medicine was restricted to a select few. You had to be of the right family to be a doctor. The Methodists thought that anyone could be a doctor with the right training. The church in England had a distinct class system of those who could be holy and those who could be not. The Holy Club thought everyone deserved the opportunity to seek God fully and to pursue their faith, that is why they were called Methodists. God could transform anyone’s heart and everyone should have the opportunity to seek a heart transformed.
Now, the name is confusing. It has a legacy. Like the word Catholic in the creed. It may seem like it would simplify things to change it. But the question for us should always come back to Scripture.
Our first understanding of the church comes from the people of Israel. Abraham is called to the promised land by faith. Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, they are all called together by faith and end up, eventually, in Egypt and in bondage. Yet it in is in their escape from bondage that the people of Israel are truly formed.
Exodus 19, that we read earlier, declares God’s covenant, God’s promised relationship with Israel clearly.
So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me. You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation. These are the words you should say to the Israelites.
God covenants to this particular people in order to bless the whole world. The rest of the Old Testament, unfortunately, is the story of the disobedience of Israel. Over and over again, God blesses the people. The people spurn the blessing. God sends judges or prophets. The people spurn them, too. Consequences ensue. The people return to God. The process starts all over again.
The Messiah, the anointed one of God, breaks this cycle by completing the cycle. The purpose of the covenant is for the coming of the Son of God into the world. And now the promise and the blessing is no longer exclusive to a single nation but offered openly to the whole earth which belongs to God, as it says in Exodus.
Today is Epiphany Sunday. Or more officially, the mystery of the manifestation of Our Lord, Jesus Christ to all people.”
The day when we celebrate the coming of the magi or wise men to visit Jesus. They are the first gentiles to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. They bring gifts to honor him.
We celebrate that in Christ the church has been opened up to all. There is no longer an in-group and an out-group. There is no longer a cool kids table in the cafeteria. There is no longer need for conflict, as Paul says in Ephesians 2. It is a long passage but super important.
“Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barrier of hatred that divided us. He canceled the detailed rules of the Law so that he could create one new person out of the two groups, making peace…As God’s household, you are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. The whole building is joined together in him, and it grows up into a temple that is dedicated to the Lord. Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.” Ephesians 2:14-22 CEB
God is building. Not God has built. God is building, active, continuous. God is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.
Two chapters later, Paul clarifies the call of what it means to be the church.
“Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love, and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together. You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all. God has given his grace to each one of us measured out by the gift that is given by Christ.” Ephesians 4:1-7 CEB
We have here the four marks of the church. One hope, one Lord, one Faith, one baptism. The church is found where these four things are found. I am going to take them in reverse order.
One baptism. This Sunday, as well as Epiphany, we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord and so it is a fitting day to think about baptism. The church has one baptism. Not two or three. Baptism is not an individual act. Baptism is dying in Christ’s death and rising in Christ’s life. Baptizing twice is a claim contrary to Ephesians. The Bible itself never gives clear instructions on preparation for Baptism or requirements for baptism. We have examples of baptism. The baptism of Jesus. The baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch. The baptism of various families as a whole, including children. The different traditions of baptism come after the Bible. What Paul is saying here is that there is one baptism because God is one and whenever you were baptized it counted because it was about God and not you. Baptism is our entry into the church not by our will but God’s.
One Faith is the next mark of the church. We have come to understand this through the Creeds. We will say the apostles creed after the message. Our faith is in the Triune God, not another God. The church has this one Faith, not multiple faiths. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ has saved us, offered us mercy and forgiveness and new life and a new way of life. This is part of being the church. Living a new way of life marked by one Faith. Living by faith and not by sight. Living in a way that only makes sense because Christ is risen. That is what it means to be the church.
One Lord is the next mark. The church is under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The church serves Jesus Christ. You cannot serve both God and mammon. The church proclaims the reign of God. The church is the place where Jesus is seen as Lord and we are not. Authority comes from God and not from us. Where the reign of God is proclaimed, not the reign of me or you or whomever we want.
The last mark is one Hope. Baptism is how we enter the church. One Faith is what we believe. One Lord is who we are and whose we are. One hope is where we are going. Our hope is in the ultimate Justice of God. God will make all things new. The brokenness of this world will be redeemed.
The church is not a gathering of convenience. Our belief is not even in individual churches but that there is a church set apart as a whole that Christ is building. Christ has opened the church, his own body, to us all. We are under the Lordship of Christ, the judgment of Christ in this in-between time after resurrection but before our final hope.
It takes faith to believe in the Holy Catholic Church. It takes faith to believe in the presence of the body of Christ beyond those whom we individually judge. A lot of churches today function like corporations. They serve their shareholders/members. It is transactional. To believe in the Holy Catholic Church is to believe in Christ acting beyond what we see. It is to believe that Christ is acting in places we don’t see but trust.
As Paul says in 2 Corinthians, we are not peddlers of God’s word, but people of sincerity. It would be easier to peddle the word of God. To spin into palatable, consumable chunks.
Again, the story of Israel is the story of the faithlessness of man and the faithfulness of God. The story of the church is the story of the faithlessness of man and the faithfulness of God. Our faith is not in ourselves or institutions or abilities but in Jesus Christ our Lord who seeks us when we are lost, who finds us when we don’t want to be found, who heals us when we are sick, and who calls us together despite ourselves to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world.
Let us pray, Gracious God, in Jesus Christ, baptized by John in the Jordan, you came to share our life and deliver us from sin and death. As we are baptized with water pour out your Holy Spirit upon us to make us your beloved children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.