Now that we’re in the third article (section) of the creed, I think it’s helpful if we think of last week as the “topic sentence” – I believe in the Holy Spirit – and then the phrases that come after as under that. The Holy Spirit has everything to do with the church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Think of the children’s sermon last week (with the vacuum being the holy spirit that gathers people together in the church) as a way to connect these two weeks.

So here we are at holy catholic Church; the communion of saints.

And let’s take care of one thing right away. The holy catholic Church is NOT the Roman Catholic Church. The word catholic means universal or united. And remember that the creed was written when the church was one church, on the move, spreading more organically than institutionally. Our friends who worship at Our Lady of Grace are part of the catholic church, as are those who worship at Shepherd of the Valley, West Groton Union, St. David’s, the Baptist church down the road….all Christian churches are the holy catholic church.

So then, what does it mean to say we believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints?

Last week I made the point that in the Bible the Holy Spirit always comes to people who are gathered together. Faith is never a purely private matter – it is always communal. It is personal in that each of us claim it for our own, but it can never be isolating or individualistic. John Wesley (founder of Methodist church) said this about the notion of a “private religion”:

Directly opposite to this is the gospel of Christ. Solitary religion is not to be found there. “Holy Solitaries” is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness by social holiness.

You could say that the church was the first social media platform – a place where everybody comes together to share.

I’ll share here what I shared with the Confirmation Class last week as we talked about what it means to affirm the Christian Faith and to join the church.

Can I be a Christian without going to church? Yes, it’s like…
being a soldier without an army
a sailor without a ship
a business person without a business
a tuba player without an orchestra
a football player without a team
or a bee without a hive.

By definition, Christians gather, and when we gather we are the holy catholic church. Let’s take the words one at a time…

Holy

In both Greek and Latin there is only one word which we translate sometimes as holy and sometimes as saint – meaning we could read the entire phrase…
the holy spirit, the holy church, the communion of the holy.

Or think of it this way…
The Holy Spirit is what makes the church, those who commune together – holy.

It’s primary, fundamental meaning is to be so close to God and, therefore, to be sacred. It’s secondary meaning is to be pure or morally perfect. And yet, I think we have flipped the two and think that to be holy is FIRST to be perfect and that THAT is what gets us close to God.

When in fact it is the other way around – to be holy is to be close to God and being close to God is what makes us pure.

Clearly the church is not pure, nor is it morally perfect. We don’t have to look far to see the church failing mightily in this department. But still she is holy. God does not abandon the church for her mistakes and offenses.

For example, the Holy Land – the countries in the Middle East where God chose to act in history, first through the Israelites and then through Jesus. The land is not holy because of what goes on there, it is holy because God chose to show up there.

To say that the church is holy is not to claim for it or for its members a moral purity it obviously lacks, but rather to claim for it and those in it – us – the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit – which in turn makes our lack of moral purity even more tragic. The holiness of the church is both an affirmation of the presence of the Holy One in it and a call to it to be more faithful to what that presence demands.

Catholic
This word means universal – always and everywhere. It also means “according to the whole.” In other words, what makes the church catholic is not just its presence everywhere, but that people from everywhere are part of it and contribute to it.

We are one – in God’s eyes even though the divisions among us are many. So often we speak of the divisions in the church as if they shouldn’t be there. But what if God rejoices at the different ways the church expresses the faith, knowing that that way more people will find a home in it.

When we say, I believe in the holy catholic church, we are affirming the existence of the church even in the midst of our various theologies, traditions and polities; and we are affirming our part in that church.

Church Greek: ekklesia – which means called out of the world for a different fellowship. Certainly the early church was this – a people set apart, out of step with the world around them.

And the ancient Israelites were as well. So many of the weird laws we find in the Old Testament existed simply to cause the Israelites to look different from the people around them, so that they were distinguished from the many religions of the time.

And I think the church can lose her way, when this is NOT the case – when the church becomes acculturated – that is taking on the ways of the world so that we no longer are “different.”

The first time this occurred was in the 4th century when Constantine converted to Christianity and the Christian faith and the political realm became enmeshed.

The church needs to remain outside the culture enough, so that it can critique it and if needed even condemn it. And this is particularly true today. If she’s not careful, the church can begin to look more like a particular political party than the church. If she’s not careful, the church can begin to look more like the entertainment industry or the advertising industry.

It’s good for the church to look, sound, smell and taste different than the other places we frequent. It’s good for us to hear a word in Scripture that shapes or even challenges our understanding of economics or politics or psychology or ….

Doing things differently here is okay. We ought to hear music here that we hear no where else – we ought say words here that are unique to our life of faith. We should think differently about our relationships here, not so that our lives are compartmentalized and our church / faith life are separate from the rest of our lives. On the contrary….our life together in the church is different so that we will be different in the other areas of our life.

Think of it this way. The hour we spend here in worship is really a dress rehearsal for the rest of our week. When we share the peace here, we are practicing being peacemakers at home and at school and at work. When we listen carefully for God’s word here, we are practicing at becoming discerning listeners of the many competing voices and influences the rest of the week. When we sing praise to God here, we are practicing at noticing where God is at work everywhere else so we can praise Him out there. When we give at the offering time here, we are practicing at being generous in every way possible the rest of the week.

Saints
It might seem outside the Protestant expression of our faith to declare that we believe in the Communion of Saints. But remember this was written BEFORE the Roman Catholic church developed their system for beatifying and canonizing Saints in a formal manner (1000).

Saints in the Bible are always in the plural – there is no such thing as a singular saint in the Bible. All Christians are saints.

Last summer I was reading a blog post about the Communion of Saints and this was in the comment section… (Ginger Johnson)

One Easter when I was waiting to be ushered up to the rail for communion, I had a mental picture of Jesus handing out bread, feeding the 5,000, and the people stretched out and covered the hills in the distance. And I realized that the communion of believers stretches back into the past and into the future. I often remember that mental picture when I’m proclaiming the creed.

The church is a place like no other.
It’s history is 2,000 long and its roots in Judaism go back thousands of years before that. And yet, while its roots go deep, it is not a museum or an archive of the past.

We tend to use the word institution to describe her. But a better image is that the church is an organism – because the church is alive. Certainly because we inhabit it – but actually because the Holy Spirit is alive and on the move here among us.

And when the Spirit shows up – strange and wonderful things happen. Steve Legge experienced this recently. He’ll share with you now.

Gail asked me to share with you a personal and heart-felt reflection … I am going to read my own words from notes, not trusting myself to speak without them – you will understand this in a moment.

Some of you may recall that I led you in the Call to Worship last Sunday.

As we were saying the Lord’s Prayer, I got lost – it became obvious at some point when people were saying something other than what I was saying. I stopped and listened – heard where you were – and re-joined.

At the end as I sat down, a remarkable feeling came over me. Always before, when I have made some mistake, however small, my feeling has been one of embarrassment and disappointment at failing to make everyone’s worship experience as perfect as possible.

But this time, instead, a feeling of comfort and gratitude came over me. That you were out there, and in the right place – and that through you, I was drawn back from my lost place, to the right place … with you.

That is the church at its best!
Amen.