Transcript
Lord, with gladness, come into his presence with singing. Let us worship God.
[music]
It sorrows me to announce to you this morning that Osmond Buck Breland, one of our middler students, died yesterday afternoon of complications related to cancer treatment. A service for Buck will be held in the auditorium here on Thursday or Friday of this week and the seminary community will be notified of the date and the time of that service as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let us be in prayer and support of his wife and the parents of both families at this particular time. And let us together affirm the hope of the resurrection of the gospel which God has set
before us in Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Let the good news come now, our Father, not only in word but in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full assurance through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Continuing our reading of God's word from Galatians, we read this morning chapter 2 beginning at the 11th verse. And when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned. For until certain people came from James,
he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew,
how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The theological accord, which Paul and Barnabas successfully achieved on their visit to Jerusalem, that led to the giving of the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and Paul by Cephas, James, and John, the pillar apostles in Jerusalem, that accord, that agreement, all fell apart in Antioch. It fell apart over the issue of kosher food. In the
early church, the Lord's Supper was celebrated in connection with what they called the agape, the love feast, what we today call the church family supper. Christians gathered to eat together, and as at the Last Supper, then they celebrated in that context what we now call the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist. Peter and the other Jews in Antioch were engaged in a mixed congregation, an integrated congregation. The agreement in Jerusalem was ultimately that Peter and James and
John would go to the Jews, and Paul and Barnabas would go to the Gentiles. But no one thought about the possibility of an integrated congregation. And in Antioch, that's exactly what they had. The Gospel had drawn both Jews and Gentiles into this koinonia. And this fellowship was lived out around that table. But when certain ones came down from James, Peter withdrew. And not only Peter, but all the Jews in that congregation withdrew. So that even Barnabas
was drawn away, as Paul says, by their hypocrisy. And Paul found himself standing alone. When your best friend in ministry, your missionary colleague Barnabas, falls away, you are indeed standing alone. And Paul took them on. Can you imagine? This is quite a picture. Cephas and Paul, eyeball to eyeball, cheek to jowl. It disabuses you of that romantic view of the early church where all was peace and tranquility and wonderment. There was theological confrontation, argument, dissension, struggle,
even in that early church. So when you think that ours is the first generation to let the church down, be disabused of that fantasy. But there Paul is confronting Peter before them all, openly, not behind his back, but openly, Peter, Cephas, how can you, a Jew who lived like a Gentile, now compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? It takes a lot of courage to stand alone. You have to reach down and find a convictional level
in your own being that you may not have known was there before. When I was called from the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church of Garden Grove to the First Presbyterian Church in Burlingame, I found soon that I had gone from a congregation where I could do no wrong to a congregation where it seemed, at least, that I could do no right. And it turned out that the issue was Christological. It was Jesus. I had people
actually leaving the church because, as they put it, there was too much Jesus coming from the pulpit. I've never known what else to preach. I remember being invited, my wife and I, to the home of one of our elders. And at the end of the meal, with several other guests there, the hostess pushed back from the table and lit a cigarette and looked me in the eye and said, you know, Dr. Gillespie, I really don't care
for your preaching. And I said, well, join the line. I remember asking three of my elders one day who were, I knew, closet Unitarians, how did you fellows ever take your ordination vows with integrity? And they said to me, well, we were told by one of our previous pastors that when we came to that question to cross our fingers, those first two years in Burlingame was an experience of hell for me. My ministry was on the
line. My job was on the line. I had three little kids to support and a wife. And it was all on the line. So what do you do? Do you trim your sails to the prevailing winds? Do you talk less about Jesus and offer more sociopolitical commentary, which is what they wanted? Or do you stand alone? You're not really alone, of course, but it takes a lot of prayer to discover that you're not really alone and
to convince yourself that you're not really alone in the midst of all this. And you're not really alone in the congregation either. There were many unaware of all of this who were in great support of what I was trying to do there. But I say to you, you're going out into a church where you will often find yourself today standing alone or at least feeling that you're standing alone. There's a book out now called, "The Clergy
Killers". And the author claims that he can document by data that 40 percent of mainline churches are dysfunctional churches, that they are dysfunctional congregations that are dysfunctional because of lay leadership that's out of control. Welcome to the ministry. You better feel called to go. Dr. Loder and I were talking the other day about how do you bridge the gap in theological education between the theoretical and the practical? How do you get from academe to the practice
of ministry? And he said to me, as you might expect him to say to me, that's a very important question. But the way from the one to the other is through the convictional. It's not just filling our minds with information and data and theological opinions and becoming informed, but filtering that together through here so that we are women and men of conviction, so that we are centered in our beliefs. Now, you can go out and fight
in the church about anything and everything. And pastors who have to say it's my way or the highway don't last very long in congregations. It really doesn't matter what color the carpet is in the ladies' lounge. It really doesn't matter how often you have covered dish suppers. But it does matter who Jesus is in the life of that congregation. It does matter whether Jesus lived and died. It does matter whether Jesus was raised from the dead
and whether we have hope because Jesus was raised from the dead. That matters. The gospel matters. Paul said to Peter, you are not walking straightforward according to the truth of the gospel. It's a wonderful word, orthopodeo. Gerhard Ebeling says it's not orthodoxy and it's not orthopraxis. It's an ugly word, orthopode. He's right, it's an ugly word. But walking according to the truth of the gospel. Where the convictional level comes to play is upon that issue, the
truth of the gospel. What the church needs today are ministers who are convinced of the truth of the gospel and who are willing to walk straightforward in accordance with that truth. May your generation be a great gift to the church of women and men who are convinced here, informed by here, and willing when necessary to stand alone. Let us pray. We thank you, O Lord our God, for the gift of your son Jesus, for his life
among us, his life for us, his death in our behalf and in behalf of the entire world. We thank you for his resurrection from the dead and for the new creation that has begun with him and for the gift of the presence and power of your spirit as a foretaste of that new creation. We thank you for the gospel that bears witness to him and for the great high calling that is ours to be proclaimers of
that good news. We pray that in these days we may indeed prepare ourselves for faithful witness. That in the midst of all the books we read and the papers we write and the lectures we listen to and the conversations we engage in around the tables and in the dormitories, that we may become convinced that your gift is genuine and that your gospel is true. Lead us through these days in such a way that we may feel
comfortable with our belief. Not so comfortable that we become complacent, not so comfortable that we never will change, but comfortable with the truth of the gospel. And it is in that hope that we pray this morning for the family of Buck Breland. It is a strange experience for us in this community of young people to have one of our own pass to the church triumphant. We are grateful for his life and for his willingness to come
to seminary and prepare himself for a ministry that was never to be but a motivation that was of your origin. We thank you for his bravery, the bravery of his wife, their commitment to Christ. And we pray that she and her parents and his parents and their families may now be upheld by that hope which you have set before us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That those of us who are privileged this day to live
continue to live for your glory. Teach us what it means to walk straightforward according to the truth of the gospel. For we pray these things in the name of Jesus, our Lord, who taught us to pray together, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our
debtors. And lead us not in the temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. You, O Lord, I place my life, And praise you with my every breath, Who then can threaten me with strife, For you are here to save from death. Lord, give her, keep me in your sight, That I may live and walk in life. And now go forth into the world in peace.
And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. Amen. [music]