Though I can't promise to avoid a few ad libs here and there, what follows is my first ever sermon (in verbatim script) from the pulpit on a Sunday morning. Comments welcome.
Disestablishment
Antidisestablishmentarianism has two prefixes and 3 suffixes. At 28 letters it’s arguably the longest word in our language. I did start a rumor in the church that it was the longest word in our language so I’ll take this opportunity to set the record straight: There is one word longer. I won’t be trying to say it out loud, but I’ll spell for you:
Floccinaucinihilipilification
F L O C C I N A U C I N I H I L I P I L I F I C A T I O N
For those of you keeping score that’s nine ‘I’s and 20 other letters. Though the term has roots in the 18th century and was once used in a debate on the floor of the US Senate, it hardly counts as a word. It’s just a compounding of four Latin words that each describe a different kind of “nonsense.”
Ultimately though we can leave the record keeping to the statisticians, I’m more interested in talking about the purpose of the term with two prefixes and three suffixes. The core of the term is the word ‘establish’ which we understand in about five different ways. It can mean ‘to originate’ ‘to install’ ‘to found’ ‘to enact’ or ‘to authenticate.’ There are some heavy theological implications arising from each of these variations.
The three suffixes take the verb ‘establish’ and turn it into a noun, then an adjective, then back to a noun. First it becomes ‘establishment’ which we all understand as the basic noun form: something that has been established. Then it becomes an adjective ‘establishmentarian’ which describes a person or concept that relates to or perhaps supports some given establishment. Then it becomes and ‘ism.’ I’m sure we’re all familiar with ‘ism’s they come at us from all over. Fascism, pluralism, liberalism, pacifism, racism, terrorism, heroism, antinomianism, the list goes on. You’ll certainly hear me talk about a few ‘ism’s in my sermons, the world is making up new ones everyday, and often you’ll find a new ‘ism’ is an attempt to give credence to an unconventional mode of thinking.
Both of the prefixes (anti- and dis-) are negatives. I’m sure you’ve all heard the story of the freshman English professor who was explaining one of the peculiar traits of English that a double negative results in a positive where in most every other language a double negative is a more emphatic negative. The teacher says “even more interesting is that a double positive is universally understood as an emphatic positive” and from the back of the large lecture hall one student leans to his neighbor as says, loud enough for the room to hear “yeah, right.”
Well with this word both negatives are necessary to understand the history of the term. You see, antidisestablishmentarianism arose in England in the 19th century against disestablishmentarianism (for what it’s worth there never really was an establishmentarianism). Our word describes the ethos of those political activists who believed in maintaining the relationship between the English monarchy and the Church of England. Ever since King Henry VIII with all his divorces and beheadings the English monarch was declared to be the head of the Church. The system worked great for Henry, he could finally invalidate his own marriages and many theologians liked it also, especially those who were eagerly watching the Reformation on the continent and growing steadily more disloyal to the pope.
But moving the seat of religious power 1,100 miles to the northwest did not satisfy everyone. Some disestablishmentarians were uncomfortable with the idea of any relationship between church and state. Others wanted the freedom to establish their own tenets in their own area of the country.
So who won? The Church of England remained the Church of England, but the Church of Wales and the Church of Ireland did not recognize it. The Church of Scotland was another story. There was no question Scots were largely Presbyterian, but would they establish the Church or leave it free and independent of the state? Looking at the Church of Scotland today you see the answer to that is “yes.” The Church is both formally recognized by Parliament, and fully independent on matters of spiritual discernment. The English crown affirms the Church and is represented at meetings of their general assembly, but has no undue power to affect church polity and certainly none to impinge on spiritual matters. In England the Queen is the “supreme governor” of the Anglican Church, but in Scotland she’s just a member, just like any one of you. If the Queen of England finds herself in Scotland on a Sunday she attends a Presbyterian service! Even if it isn’t Sunday she is still a Presbyterian.
Now look at the United States. Do we establish? Disestablish? or Antidisestablish the Church of America? From our conception we’ve been a Christian nation. Well, not an established Christian nation, more like an incidental Christian nation. All of our presidents have been Christians. There has been only one high-ranking Jew in the history of the United States, Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Before Kissinger the most powerful Jew on this continent was Judah Benjamin who served as Jefferson Davis’ secretary of state in the short-lived Confederate States of America. One should note neither of those are elected positions. It would seem that while we might not promote Christianity at the highest levels in America, we certainly dis-promote other faiths.
Even before the term with 2 prefixes and 3 suffixes came to be our founding fathers believed that the government would not dally in religious establishment. You will hear different interpretations of this; many preachers across the country will be taking the pulpit in this week and the next to remind the people in the pews that America is and always has been Christian and the American voter needs to remember that as she takes to the polls. But what manner of Christians would create a gap between the spiritual life and the public society?
Thomas Jefferson, writing 8 years before the ratification of the Constitution drafted a bill for the commonwealth of Virginia called the Bill Establishing Religious Freedom. Establishing Religious Freedom. Not establishing a church, but establishing freedom. Lets return to our five meanings: originate, install, found, enact, and authenticate. Which one is Jefferson doing? Well we know he believed that freedom came from God, so he’s not originating it. Authentication is something we do to determine if something is real or fake. I suppose since we are talking about legislation it would be most appropriate to say he wants to enact religious freedom. But again, why would he want to do that if he was, in some sense or another, a Christian man?
In the draft he makes two compelling statements. The first is “opinions and belief of men depend not on their will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds…” Do you believe that? We only think what we are told to think, or what we are manipulated into thinking? Jefferson certainly didn’t think what he was told to, else he wouldn’t have supported revolution. What he means is that you and I, the peasants, the destitute will only understand what we are allowed to understand. Jefferson was an elitist, all the founders were. Did you know the US Senate was originally intended to be composed of the best and brightest men from each state, not elected by the people but selected by the state government or even just the governor. IT was the House that was actually intended to represent the citizens. This system was precisely like the House of Lords and the House of Commons. We’ve long since done away with that notion, and I believe we can agree that the senators are no longer the two smartest people from each state. Yet some how they managed to retain the elitist attitude.
Jefferson’s second comment is more powerful and, though I don’t know that he intended it to be, it is profoundly theological. He states: “truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.”
A little background: Jefferson was a deist. Deism is based in human reason and natural religion. Natural religion is opposed to revealed religion. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all revealed religions. In each the knowledge of God is somehow made by prophesy or revelation. On the contrary natural religion is purely scientific. A naturalist looks at nature and sees God in the immensity of it all from the complexities of the circular system to the beauty of the fall leaves. As a deist the ‘believer’ believes because he can find God on his own in nature and not by compliance with some foreign revelation.
So truth to Jefferson, this truth which prevails on its own, is a formulation of that concept that God prevails upon the mind of the individual. Jefferson could doubt every miraculous event of Jesus life and yet by his own reason he could come to know the full depth and power of God anyway. Certainly with such a powerful mind it would be a mere nothing to formulate a document from which the most powerful nation the world has ever known would grow.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. The Constitution has established a society in which this church was allowed to be founded and fostered in a tradition with which many Americans, even those in power, do not agree. Yet we are still here and we are proclaiming a message that is in no way coerced by the power of the state. But what we have sacrificed to gain that freedom? It’s true that Christ was given many opportunities to rule and force belief but in His wisdom He forsake them. So I concede that Christianity is not meant to be imposed, but is this “established freedom” in itself an imposition?
The sociologist Robert Bellah wrote an essay in 1967 that changed the study of American society. He determined that we have adopted a “civil religion” that is parallel to or independent of whatever religion the individual has chosen. This explains why we have endured the name of God on our money, an inaugural oath sworn on a Bible, or (until recently) the ten commandments on the walls of our courthouses. Politicians scramble to adopt this language of American generic religion and the sense that we are striving for something greater, but in the end it remains a distant embrace of the transcendent. We reach out for an anonymous God, divorced from the true revelation in Jesus Christ.
Hebrews is written as a sermon to a people who are familiar with their own surroundings and their own traditions but not with Christ. They may have heard of the man, but cannot conceive of the magnitude of his sacrificial love. The author makes the argument all the more forceful by introducing Christ as the great high priest who is over and above the priests of their ancestors. Before we were the United States, before Jefferson and the elite disestablished religion, our Puritan pastors were our governors. A citizen was only provided a voice in civil government if they were first found to be living a righteous life before God. Imagine then these priests, many in number, are your American heroes: Washington, Roosevelt, Penn, Lincoln, these are the people who are embodied in this scripture as the former priests in the tradition that shapes us as American citizens. Their offerings were the founding of a state, the winning of a battle, a proclamation, or a social welfare program; actions completed once, and limited by mortality. Our great high priest, our greatest hero, is the same Christ, the same who by His unique and singular offering of himself established a kingdom on earth and in heaven that shall not parish and shall pervade every culture and civilization on earth.
Friends, the author of Hebrews reminds us today that we do not rely upon our great priests. They serve us well, they give offerings for their sins and for ours. We give our offerings today and we pray on behalf of those assembled here and those beyond our doors, even those who lead our denomination and guide our understanding of the Word revealed. But none of these can match the task before them to the awesome accomplishment of Jesus Christ, who made one sacrifice, that of his own life. Today and everyday, regardless of what you know or what you have done, Christ asks you to respond to his gift by the offering of your own life unto Him.
The truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.
The Truth has prevailed once and for all time over sin and death calling all people unto Himself.
Amen.
Benediction
There is none who finds God in a flower, or a rainbow, who does not seek the knowledge of God revealed in Christ. We do not abandon our control for the fallen attempt to allow truth to prevail on it’s own terms. We must be compelled into action by the ministry of Christ, the Truth with a capital ‘T’ and not fall victim to the human reason that tells us we must resign our religious beliefs in deference to a plural state.
Go forth from this place knowing that you offer your life to a priest who is not subject to weakness, who does not lie stagnate in a grave, but is risen and made perfect forever.
Disestablishment
Antidisestablishmentarianism has two prefixes and 3 suffixes. At 28 letters it’s arguably the longest word in our language. I did start a rumor in the church that it was the longest word in our language so I’ll take this opportunity to set the record straight: There is one word longer. I won’t be trying to say it out loud, but I’ll spell for you:
Floccinaucinihilipilification
F L O C C I N A U C I N I H I L I P I L I F I C A T I O N
For those of you keeping score that’s nine ‘I’s and 20 other letters. Though the term has roots in the 18th century and was once used in a debate on the floor of the US Senate, it hardly counts as a word. It’s just a compounding of four Latin words that each describe a different kind of “nonsense.”
Ultimately though we can leave the record keeping to the statisticians, I’m more interested in talking about the purpose of the term with two prefixes and three suffixes. The core of the term is the word ‘establish’ which we understand in about five different ways. It can mean ‘to originate’ ‘to install’ ‘to found’ ‘to enact’ or ‘to authenticate.’ There are some heavy theological implications arising from each of these variations.
The three suffixes take the verb ‘establish’ and turn it into a noun, then an adjective, then back to a noun. First it becomes ‘establishment’ which we all understand as the basic noun form: something that has been established. Then it becomes an adjective ‘establishmentarian’ which describes a person or concept that relates to or perhaps supports some given establishment. Then it becomes and ‘ism.’ I’m sure we’re all familiar with ‘ism’s they come at us from all over. Fascism, pluralism, liberalism, pacifism, racism, terrorism, heroism, antinomianism, the list goes on. You’ll certainly hear me talk about a few ‘ism’s in my sermons, the world is making up new ones everyday, and often you’ll find a new ‘ism’ is an attempt to give credence to an unconventional mode of thinking.
Both of the prefixes (anti- and dis-) are negatives. I’m sure you’ve all heard the story of the freshman English professor who was explaining one of the peculiar traits of English that a double negative results in a positive where in most every other language a double negative is a more emphatic negative. The teacher says “even more interesting is that a double positive is universally understood as an emphatic positive” and from the back of the large lecture hall one student leans to his neighbor as says, loud enough for the room to hear “yeah, right.”
Well with this word both negatives are necessary to understand the history of the term. You see, antidisestablishmentarianism arose in England in the 19th century against disestablishmentarianism (for what it’s worth there never really was an establishmentarianism). Our word describes the ethos of those political activists who believed in maintaining the relationship between the English monarchy and the Church of England. Ever since King Henry VIII with all his divorces and beheadings the English monarch was declared to be the head of the Church. The system worked great for Henry, he could finally invalidate his own marriages and many theologians liked it also, especially those who were eagerly watching the Reformation on the continent and growing steadily more disloyal to the pope.
But moving the seat of religious power 1,100 miles to the northwest did not satisfy everyone. Some disestablishmentarians were uncomfortable with the idea of any relationship between church and state. Others wanted the freedom to establish their own tenets in their own area of the country.
So who won? The Church of England remained the Church of England, but the Church of Wales and the Church of Ireland did not recognize it. The Church of Scotland was another story. There was no question Scots were largely Presbyterian, but would they establish the Church or leave it free and independent of the state? Looking at the Church of Scotland today you see the answer to that is “yes.” The Church is both formally recognized by Parliament, and fully independent on matters of spiritual discernment. The English crown affirms the Church and is represented at meetings of their general assembly, but has no undue power to affect church polity and certainly none to impinge on spiritual matters. In England the Queen is the “supreme governor” of the Anglican Church, but in Scotland she’s just a member, just like any one of you. If the Queen of England finds herself in Scotland on a Sunday she attends a Presbyterian service! Even if it isn’t Sunday she is still a Presbyterian.
Now look at the United States. Do we establish? Disestablish? or Antidisestablish the Church of America? From our conception we’ve been a Christian nation. Well, not an established Christian nation, more like an incidental Christian nation. All of our presidents have been Christians. There has been only one high-ranking Jew in the history of the United States, Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Before Kissinger the most powerful Jew on this continent was Judah Benjamin who served as Jefferson Davis’ secretary of state in the short-lived Confederate States of America. One should note neither of those are elected positions. It would seem that while we might not promote Christianity at the highest levels in America, we certainly dis-promote other faiths.
Even before the term with 2 prefixes and 3 suffixes came to be our founding fathers believed that the government would not dally in religious establishment. You will hear different interpretations of this; many preachers across the country will be taking the pulpit in this week and the next to remind the people in the pews that America is and always has been Christian and the American voter needs to remember that as she takes to the polls. But what manner of Christians would create a gap between the spiritual life and the public society?
Thomas Jefferson, writing 8 years before the ratification of the Constitution drafted a bill for the commonwealth of Virginia called the Bill Establishing Religious Freedom. Establishing Religious Freedom. Not establishing a church, but establishing freedom. Lets return to our five meanings: originate, install, found, enact, and authenticate. Which one is Jefferson doing? Well we know he believed that freedom came from God, so he’s not originating it. Authentication is something we do to determine if something is real or fake. I suppose since we are talking about legislation it would be most appropriate to say he wants to enact religious freedom. But again, why would he want to do that if he was, in some sense or another, a Christian man?
In the draft he makes two compelling statements. The first is “opinions and belief of men depend not on their will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds…” Do you believe that? We only think what we are told to think, or what we are manipulated into thinking? Jefferson certainly didn’t think what he was told to, else he wouldn’t have supported revolution. What he means is that you and I, the peasants, the destitute will only understand what we are allowed to understand. Jefferson was an elitist, all the founders were. Did you know the US Senate was originally intended to be composed of the best and brightest men from each state, not elected by the people but selected by the state government or even just the governor. IT was the House that was actually intended to represent the citizens. This system was precisely like the House of Lords and the House of Commons. We’ve long since done away with that notion, and I believe we can agree that the senators are no longer the two smartest people from each state. Yet some how they managed to retain the elitist attitude.
Jefferson’s second comment is more powerful and, though I don’t know that he intended it to be, it is profoundly theological. He states: “truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.”
A little background: Jefferson was a deist. Deism is based in human reason and natural religion. Natural religion is opposed to revealed religion. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all revealed religions. In each the knowledge of God is somehow made by prophesy or revelation. On the contrary natural religion is purely scientific. A naturalist looks at nature and sees God in the immensity of it all from the complexities of the circular system to the beauty of the fall leaves. As a deist the ‘believer’ believes because he can find God on his own in nature and not by compliance with some foreign revelation.
So truth to Jefferson, this truth which prevails on its own, is a formulation of that concept that God prevails upon the mind of the individual. Jefferson could doubt every miraculous event of Jesus life and yet by his own reason he could come to know the full depth and power of God anyway. Certainly with such a powerful mind it would be a mere nothing to formulate a document from which the most powerful nation the world has ever known would grow.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. The Constitution has established a society in which this church was allowed to be founded and fostered in a tradition with which many Americans, even those in power, do not agree. Yet we are still here and we are proclaiming a message that is in no way coerced by the power of the state. But what we have sacrificed to gain that freedom? It’s true that Christ was given many opportunities to rule and force belief but in His wisdom He forsake them. So I concede that Christianity is not meant to be imposed, but is this “established freedom” in itself an imposition?
The sociologist Robert Bellah wrote an essay in 1967 that changed the study of American society. He determined that we have adopted a “civil religion” that is parallel to or independent of whatever religion the individual has chosen. This explains why we have endured the name of God on our money, an inaugural oath sworn on a Bible, or (until recently) the ten commandments on the walls of our courthouses. Politicians scramble to adopt this language of American generic religion and the sense that we are striving for something greater, but in the end it remains a distant embrace of the transcendent. We reach out for an anonymous God, divorced from the true revelation in Jesus Christ.
Hebrews is written as a sermon to a people who are familiar with their own surroundings and their own traditions but not with Christ. They may have heard of the man, but cannot conceive of the magnitude of his sacrificial love. The author makes the argument all the more forceful by introducing Christ as the great high priest who is over and above the priests of their ancestors. Before we were the United States, before Jefferson and the elite disestablished religion, our Puritan pastors were our governors. A citizen was only provided a voice in civil government if they were first found to be living a righteous life before God. Imagine then these priests, many in number, are your American heroes: Washington, Roosevelt, Penn, Lincoln, these are the people who are embodied in this scripture as the former priests in the tradition that shapes us as American citizens. Their offerings were the founding of a state, the winning of a battle, a proclamation, or a social welfare program; actions completed once, and limited by mortality. Our great high priest, our greatest hero, is the same Christ, the same who by His unique and singular offering of himself established a kingdom on earth and in heaven that shall not parish and shall pervade every culture and civilization on earth.
Friends, the author of Hebrews reminds us today that we do not rely upon our great priests. They serve us well, they give offerings for their sins and for ours. We give our offerings today and we pray on behalf of those assembled here and those beyond our doors, even those who lead our denomination and guide our understanding of the Word revealed. But none of these can match the task before them to the awesome accomplishment of Jesus Christ, who made one sacrifice, that of his own life. Today and everyday, regardless of what you know or what you have done, Christ asks you to respond to his gift by the offering of your own life unto Him.
The truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.
The Truth has prevailed once and for all time over sin and death calling all people unto Himself.
Amen.
Benediction
There is none who finds God in a flower, or a rainbow, who does not seek the knowledge of God revealed in Christ. We do not abandon our control for the fallen attempt to allow truth to prevail on it’s own terms. We must be compelled into action by the ministry of Christ, the Truth with a capital ‘T’ and not fall victim to the human reason that tells us we must resign our religious beliefs in deference to a plural state.
Go forth from this place knowing that you offer your life to a priest who is not subject to weakness, who does not lie stagnate in a grave, but is risen and made perfect forever.
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