A Riverside Sermon
A Riverside Sermon
Extract from a sermon delivered 25 May 1960 at Riverside Church in New York, at the observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910.
he great new fact of our time, which the Edinburgh Conference saw and hailed with joy, is the fact that the Church of
the Lord Jesus Christ is now for the first time a universal family
present in almost every nation. We rejoice in that fact. But we
grievously misrepresent this fact if we forget that the church is
present everywhere as the home base fora world missionary task: rejoicing
in the existence of the younger churches and helping them in their
tasks must not become a substitute for missionary commitment.
Interchurch relations are not a substitute for foreign missions.
Global ecclesiastical introversion does not cease to be introversion
by being global. It is necessary to say this rather sharply in order
to separate a false from a true understanding of the new situation
we are in. The Church is in the world for the sake of the world,
and its concern is with the whole world. The specifically missionary
concern is with the world that is outside the Church and does not
acknowledge Jesus as Lord. God has brought us-through the
faithfulness of his servants-to the point where the Church is
present now in almost every land. But we do not stop there; we
press on to the ends of the earth. This perspective of the ends of
the earth is essential to the integrity of the Church's confession that Jesus Christ is Lord- essential anywhere, whether the Church is
old or young, strong or weak. The Church, wherever it is, is not
only Christ's witness to its own people and nation, but also the home
base for a mission to the ends of the earth. It is not enough to say
of the younger churches, "They and we are brethren -they being
Christ's witnesses there in Asia and Africa, and we here in America."
On the contrary, both they and we can only confess Christ truly
where we go with him to the ends of the earth. So on the one hand
we can rejoice as we see the churches of Asia sending out two
hundred missionaries beyond their own borders and planning missions to some of the big cities of Europe and North America. On
the other hand we must recognize that our obligation to take the
gospel to the ends of the earth is as urgent and compelling in 1960
as it was in 1910. Our witness must be in some recognizable sense
a joint witness, so that men may see not us but God, who has made
us partners and brothers who were once strangers and foreigners to
each other. I am not asking for large organizations, for the wholesale
pooling of funds and resources. I do not believe that this would be
helpful. I am asking for a variety of specific arrangements in particular cases, in which Christians of different nations and denominations pool their efforts in such a way that men will recognize in
our mission not the remnants of colonialism and the cultural expansion of the West, but the going forth into all the world of him
who is the Savior of the World.
The forms and patterns of the missionary task are changing and will change as the consequence of the fact that the Church is now worldwide. But the missionary task is still fundamentally the same - to go forth outside the frontiers of Christendom and make Christ known among all the nations. That colossal task is still largely ahead of us. The meeting of the gospel with the great non-Christian religions has hardly yet begun. There is no possible ground for any slackening of the foreign missionary concern. We must press on together as partners in obedience towards the goal, to the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ.
The Edinburgh Conference, after speaking of comity, conference, and joint action, went on to speak of unity. It was precluded by its terms of reference from discussing questions of faith and order on which the churches disagreed; but whatever its terms of reference, it could not avoid recognizing the fact that the question of unity was involved in faithfulness to the missionary task. In fact, its Committee on Unity and Cooperation unanimously endorsed the judgment of the Missionary Conference of Shanghai three years earlier that "the purpose of foreign mission is the creation in every country of a single united church." That was fifty years ago. It was a passion for the evangelization of the world that produced that sentence. Men who had stood up in the streets of great Asian cities to preach the gospel knew that the issue could not be avoided. You have to answer the question, "What is the fellowship into which the evangelist is inviting the convert?" Is it a body that represents one cultural and religious segment of mankind, or is it a fellowship that represents in principle simply mankind as a whole, redeemed and recreated in its true image through Jesus Christ? If we define the task of the Christian world mission as offering the whole gospel to the whole world, then it cannot be other than the whole Church, the whole healed and reconciled fellowship of men in Jesus Christ, that offers this invitation. The question of the unity of the Church is thus not a question of the size or number of our churches. It is a question of the meaning of our churchmanship. It is not a question of taking the existing denominational structures and riveting them together on a wider frame to form one structure of the same kind. That picture of reunion rightly frightens many who have a true understanding of the nature of the Church. The task of reunion can never be severed from the task of renewal. The search for unity is in principle a penitent return to the Lord of the Church himself with the prayer that he may show us where we have gone astray, and may give us again that unity in him that will enable men to recognize in the Church the lineaments of the household of God. The proper bearer of a universal gospel is a universal fellowship.
We cannot, with any hope of being believed, preach to men the word of our Lord that he, when he is lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to himself, if we continue stubbornly to say that even his love is not enough to draw us close to one another and enable us to live together as brethren in one family. The task of Christian reunion must begin with penitent and believing prayer to the Lord of the Church himself that he may so cleanse and renew the Church that men everywhere may be able to recognize in the Church of Christ their own true home. Then men who see us under whatever sky and from whatever tribe may be constrained to say: This is not a strange or foreign thing, this is my Father's house, this is home.
The Edinburgh Conference spoke of the unity of the Church as a vision very far off, but they were not ashamed to confess that it was the goal towards which they must move. I believe that we have reached the point in the story of the ecumenical movement when we must ask ourselves whether we still agree about the goal, and whether, having traveled this road together for fifty years, we have come near enough to define our goal with greater accuracy. That is the question being put to the World Council of Churches by its Faith and Order Commission in the report that is to come before the meetings in Scotland this summer. The council, and through it the member churches, will be asked whether they are willing to accept a more precise statement of the nature of the unity that we seek than has been possible up till now. I believe this discussion will be of vital significance to the future of the ecumenical movement. It will show whether the movement can still move; whether our present forms of cooperation are to be recognized as a stage on the way to a full recovery of the proper form of the Church or fixed as a permanent substitute for it; whether we are willing to be a pilgrim people ever ready to forget what lies behind and press on towards the goal. Every movement that gathers to itself great reserves in men, in experience, and in money runs the risk of becoming chiefly interested in its own existence and development. The ecumenical movement is not immune from these dangers. It behooves us to remember that we are called to be dwellers in tents, not in houses, that we are never to be content with what has been done, but always to press on towards the goal, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. The true fulfillment of the ecumenical movement will come when its organizational structures are no longer necessary because the Church itself has been led - through whatever sufferings and humiliations - to the recovery of its true unity, its true form as the one household of God in which the redeemed of every nation are at home.
I have been speaking of the ecumenical movement, of churches, of councils. But of course in the end it is not to these that the Word of God is addressed: it is addressed to men and women. Tonight this word is spoken to us. We have been thinking of the great soldiers and servants of Christ who went before us in this work, men who spent themselves to the uttermost in his service and have now gone from our sight. This work is now put in our hands. Let us -as men and women who are on our way to the judgment seat of God - listen again to the words of the great apostle (Phil. 3:8-14):
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Jesus Christ has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Does that describe you and me, brethren? Is that the impression that people get when they look at us in this ecumenical movement? Do we count everything rubbish for Christ's sake-power, position, security, a good reputation? Do we count it a privilege if we have some share in his sufferings? And do we know the power of his resurrection? Is our life and work marked by that supernatural quality for which there is no name except holiness, and no explanation except the presence of the Holy Spirit himself? Are we pressing forward with that goal before us -to be holy as he is holy? Let us not deceive ourselves. Everything we say about unity and mission, about drawing all nations into the one household of God, about being Christ's witnesses and servants to the ends of the earth, remains mere clap-trap -except on one condition: that there is at the heart of it all a supernatural life lived here in this twentieth century in the form of the Holy Spirit, a life that has its roots deep down in a discipline of secret prayer and self-denial, and its fruit in a strong and cleansing charity. Here also it is always a matter of pressing on towards the goal. If you stand still you slide back. We are on pilgrimage, not in permanent quarters. We serve a Lord who for the joy set before him went forward to the Cross, despising the shame. If we would follow him, we must press on, not slacking, not accepting any concordat with the world, not looking for ease or security, but seeking only to offer him new obedience day by day until he comes.