At Stanford University there is a psychologist named Festinger who has a theory which he calls “cognitive dissonance.’ If you teach at a university like Stanford, you are supposed to use big words like that. As strange and new as it may sound, it’s very simple. It means that there is a big gap between my ideals and my actions, what I believe and what I do, my goals and my deeds. There is a difference between the image I have of myself and the image I try to project for other people and that discrepancy is “cognitive dissonance.” Festinger says that the tension that results from this is the cause of much of our physical and emotional suffering. And all of us know that kind of suffering to some degree pretending to be perfect when we are really imperfect; projecting an image of success when deep down we feel like failures. Trying to be innocent when we know we aren’t – when we know that we are all sinners. Responding to the expectations of others, striving hard to meet those expectations, when we really know we can’t measure up. “Cognitive dissonance” the gap between where we are and where we or other expect us to be.
We all have that problem; Paul felt the Jews had it in a spiritual way, though they didn’t know it. Paul addressed the problem in his letter to the Romans in the passage from the second chapter which was our scripture lesson today. Do you know any people in history who have clung more tenaciously to a name than the Jews? The ethnic, social, and religious connotations of what it means to be a Jew is scorned and fulfilled by some and respected and made holy by others. I doubt if there is a name more pronounced in history and in present day culture in designating a particular people than the word “Jew.”
Circumcision was the identifying mark of the Jew. Paul addresses the failure of the Jew by challenging the meaning of circumcision and calling for a “circumcision of the heart.” Paul affirmed the call of the Jews to be as “God’s own people.” It was with the Jews that God had made a covenant to be His “chosen race.” To them he had given the law.
The Jews were proud of that and herein came the problem. In their pride, in their “setting themselves apart” from the rest of the world, circumcision being the mark of that they became the victims of “cognitive dissonance.” Now Paul didn’t use that word because he was a student of Gamaliel, not of the Psychology Department at Stanford University. Listen to Paul address this “cognitive dissonance” of the Jews:
“You then who teach others, will you teach yourself?
While you preach against stealing, do you steal?
You who say that one must not commit adultery,
Do you commit adultery?
You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?
You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?”
(Romans 2:21—23 RSV)
The failure of the Jew was the failure to harmonize identity and action, belief and action, belief and practice.
I
This brings us to the core of our scripture passage, and the image upon which the sermon is built. It is the image of circumcision, the distinctive Jewish mark, but a special call by Paul for a “circumcision of the heart.”
The problem was that the Jews had allowed circumcision, that unique mark which God had set aside for the Jews to identify them as His covenant people, His Chosen Race, to become superficial and meaningless. This is the way Paul put it in verse 25: “Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law; but it you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision.” (vs. 25 RSV).
Then Paul made his case. Listen to him.
“For he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. He is a Jew who is one inwardly and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal. His praise is not from men but from God.” (Romans 2:28-29 RSV).
John Wesley used this 29th verse as the text for his sermon by the title “Circumcision of the Heart.” He preached the sermon at Oxford University on January 1, 1733. It is the only sermon Wesley preached before his conversion at Aldersgate in 1738 which he kept in its original form and used throughout his life and especially in his teaching of Methodists. This is important to know because it underscores a distinctive belief of a Methodist Christian which we are focusing on today: Holiness of Heart and Life, or Personal and Social Holiness.
As I shared in an earlier sermon, in 1725 Wesley had had a conversion to the ideal of holy living. He never abandoned this idea though it was cast in a different framework after his Aldersgate conversion.
Between 1725 and his Aldersgate experience in 1738, he consistently misplaced holiness. He was driven by the idea that one must be holy in order to be justified. That was a futile process which drove Wesley to the deep despondency that eventually brought him to Aldersgate. One of the decisive shifts that came in his conversion at Aldersgate was a reversal of the order of salvation - justification preceded holiness, not vice versa.
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, of Bishop J. Lloyd Dicell, calling in a pastor who had been disappointed in his appointment. The Bishop said, “My brother, I want you to know that this appointment has been sanctified by long hours of thought and prayer.”
The man replied, “Bishop, that’s the strangest Methodist theology I ever heard.”
The Bishop asked, “What do you mean?” The fellow answered, “According to Methodist theology a thing has to be justified before it can be sanctified.” (Roy H. Short, History of the Council of Bishops, Abingdon, 1980, pages 62-63).
The man was right – though his argument has nothing to do with how Bishops make appointments, I’m sure. Justification precedes sanctification. Yet, Methodists according to Wesley, maintain the doctrines of justification and sanctification with equal zeal and diligence.
Listen to Wesley:
“full, present justification, on the one hand, and of entire sanctification both of heart and life, on the other; as tenacious of inward holiness as any mystic, and of outward holiness as any Pharisee. (Sermon, “On God’s Vineyard”, Works VII, 205, quoted by Synder, pages 146-147).
The circumcision of the heart.
So the case is clear for us who would follow in Wesley’s train, and I believe in all scripture we are called to inward and outward holiness – to holiness of heart and life.
John Wesley stressed the image of God as well as the Word of God, Human creation In the Divine image was fundamental for Wesley because it meant a deep, ineffaceable similarity between the human spirit and the spirit of God which even the tragic effects of the Fall could not destroy. Salvation was still possible, but only by God’s grace, because sin put, men and women under such bondage that they could never freely turn to God.
Like Gregory of Nyssa and other early teachers of the Eastern Church, Wesley sought the will as essential to the image of God. God had given men and women a will, either to serve Him or to rebel. Now, because of sin, the will was under bondage. People chose to do evil rather than good. Salvation therefore meant restoring the image of God and freeing the will to do God’s will. By grace, men and women could will to serve God. Thus, the highest perfection in Christian experience is to serve God with the whole mind, heart and will. And a passage typical of many others, Wesley says that true Christianity is “the love of God in our neighbor; the image of God stamped on the heart; the life of God in the soul of man; the mind that was in Christ, enabling us to walk as Christ also walked.” (Journal, V, 284. Howard Snyder ibid. p. 144).
So Justification and Sanctification go together for Methodists. Listen again to Wesley:
“Methodists do not think or speak of Justification so as to supersede Sanctification, so neither do they think to speak of Sanctification so as to supersede Justification. They take care to keep each in its own place, laying equal stress on one and the other. They know God has joined these together, and it is not for man to put them asunder: therefore they maintain, with equal zeal and diligence, the doctrine of free, full, present Justification, on the one hand, and of entire, Sanctification both of heart and life, on the other; being as tenacious of inward holiness as any mystic, and of outward (holiness), as any Pharisee. (Sermon, “On God’s Vineyard,” Works, VII, 205 quoted by Snyder, pp. 146-147).
So, the case is clear for’ us who would follow in Wesley’s train, and I believe in all scripture——we are called to inward and outward holiness, to holiness of heart and life.
It was captured clearly and succinctly at the formal establishment of Methodism in America at the Christmas Conference in Baltimore, 1784. The question was asked, “What can we rightly expect to be the task of Methodists in America?” The answer came clear and strong: “To reform a continent and spread scriptural holiness across the land.” That’s personal and social holiness.
III
But what does all this mean? It means far more than I can lay out in a sermon, probably more than I could lay out in a book. Simply put, it means we as Christians are to be holy as God is holy, that the church is to be that demonstration plot of holiness set down in an unholy world. Jesus said, it means that we are to love God with all our hearts, mind, soul, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. And Paul said it means that faith without works is dead, and the works of faith is love.
I like that description someone made of Mother Theresa of Calcutta: “She gave herself first to Christ, then through Christ to her neighbor; that was the end of her biography and the beginning of her life.” It was this woman who is a luminous example of a person taking God’s call to holiness seriously, who said, “Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves on God’s grace and on our will to be holy.”
And another modern person who took God’s holiness seriously, Day Hammarskjold, said “The road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”
Wesley would affirm this commitment. Listen to him:
“This is the prism of Christian perfection loving God, and loving our neighbor these contain the whole of Christian perfection!” (Quoted in Outler, Wilson Lectures, p. 16). Wesley spoke of inward holiness” that is love of God and the assurance of God’s love for us. And He spoke of “outward holiness” that is, love of neighbor and deeds of kindness. He was fond of speaking of persons being “happy and holy.” For him the two experiences were not opposites, but actually one reality. “Why are not you happy?” Wesley frequently asked then he would answer “Other circumstances may concur, but the main reason is because you are not holy.” (Works, IX, p. 325).
But never was it personal alone. In his extravagant way of stating things he made clear the unity of faith and action. “Christianity is essentially a social religion,” Wesley declared, “And to turn it into a solitary religion is indeed to destroy it.” (Work, V, p. 296) On another occasion, he put it in this fashion: “The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.” (John Emery, Editor, The Works of the Reverend John Wesley, A. M. (New York: 1831, VII p. 593).
Note: The quote from Dag Hammarskjold comes from Markins, New York: Alfred A. Knophf, 1964, p. 122).
What I’d like us to do now is simply underscore the two separately personal a d social holiness. And then speak briefly about the church as the holy people who will be the primary witness of holiness of heart and life.
First, personal holiness.
The New Testament refers to Christians as “saints” and those who are “being sanctified.” Perhaps the clearest scriptural call is Romans 12:1-2:
“I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be transformed by the renewal of our mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good an acceptable and perfect.”
When I preached the sermon on Sanctification in this series, I used as my primary scripture, a passage from I Thessalonians the fourth chapter. The two keys verses in that passage are verses 3 and 7: “For this is the will of God, your notification…for God has not called us for uncleanness, but for holiness.”
In terms of practical application, Paul used two areas of concern: the home, and our relationship to others. What does holiness in the home mean?
Men, it means loving your wife as Christ loved the Church and gave His life for Her. Women, it means loving your husband and being subject to him as the head of the family, because you are submissive to Christ.
Children, it means obeying and honoring your parents.
Parents, it means respecting and valuing your children as unique, unrepeatable miracles of God, not provoking them to anger, but bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Now this is not my word. Read it in the fifth arid sixth chapters of Ephesians.
It all boils down to love, unconditional love.
There are all kinds of ways of raising children. Some parents are wealthy; they can give their children anything they want. But if they do not give them love, they leave them impoverished. Some parents are poor; they can’t give their children hardly anything. But if they give them love, they leave them rich beyond measure. Some parents are permissive; they allow their children to move and do as they please. But if they do not give them love, that freedom is interpreted as rejection. And other parents raise their children with rules and strict disciplines. But if they give their children love they give them freedom. To be loved unconditionally is to be given roots, to know who you are, to have a sense of pride in being who you are. It’s the greatest gift that mothers and fathers can give the children. (Mark Trotter, Gifts to Cherish, May 8, 1983).
It’s the greatest gift husbands can give their wives and wives can give their husbands. It’s the greatest gift parents can give their children and children can give their parents. Unconditional love. It’s the mark of holiness in the family.
In talking about holiness to the Thessalonians, Paul also talk our relation to others; “Do not transgress or wrong your brothers” he said. That was the negative expression. The positive - that simple admonition: “Love one another.” Here it is in a story told by a reporter of a nurse in the Veteran’s Hospital in Coatsville, Pennsylvania.
“It was lunch time on the Psychiatric Wards of the Veterans Administration Hospital here. Patients privileged to leave the locked wards had gone to the Main Dining Room. For the sixty or so left in the locked wards of Building Four, there was a small dining room with food delivered from the Central Kitchen. Building Four had one nurse and two orderlies to get the seriously mentally ill patients through their meals. Six hands were simply not enough.
A toilet had overflowed, but the nurse could not find anyone to clean it up, so she tried to do so. Do it herself while she kept her eye on five patients in wheelchairs along with a dozen others milling in a hallway, each trying to get her attention. Three times in twenty minutes she had to rush by a patient curled in a corner before she had a moment to stop and gently urge him to his feet.
“Doesn’t this ever depress you?” a visitor asked.
“Not really,” she replied, with a smile. “If I ever begin to feel depressed, I remember that I may be the only person who cares what happens to these men. And then comes the strength and patience to keep going, to keep loving them.”
That was the woman’s job you say, and you are right. But the question is, do we do our jobs in holiness – not “transgressing or wronging our brothers?” But more than that, do we live our whole lives loving one another? That is the key to personal holiness.
Chuck Colson has written an illuminating and challenging book entitled Loving God. The members of our Work Area on Mission have been given copies of it I highly recommend it. It’s primarily a book on personal and social holiness. In one chapter entitled “The Every Day Business of Holiness,” Colson makes the case that holiness is loving and obeying God. In that chapter he gives a series of personal vignettes that illustrate telling truths about holiness. Those truth are:
One, Holiness is obeying God loving one another as He loved us.
Two, holiness is obeying God - even when it is against our own interest.
Three, holiness is obeying God - sharing His love, even when it is inconvenient.
Four, holiness is obeying God - finding ways to help those in need.
That’s a pretty good brief to go on in your quest for personal holiness. That’s the key to personal holiness. Now a word about social holiness.
Our temptation when we consider holiness and righteousness is to address what appears to be the obvious sins - in our case today, issues like pornography, abortion, and homosexuality. Interestingly, all of these are related to our sexuality and perversions in our thinking about sex, as well as deep anxiety about ambiguity – a fear over what we don’t know, can’t control, and are unable to be certain about.
Also, we spend a great deal of our right indignation energy with issues like “Prayer in public schools.” Now I want you to hear me clearly. I spent ten of my life at The Upper Room in a ministry focused on prayer. I’m committed to prayer. The issue of prayer in public schools is not as simple as many of our politicians who want the vote of us evangelical Christians would make it.
You see as a Christian, I am committed prayer, but there is a difference between Christian prayer and most other forms of prayer. I would have had real reservations about my children, when we lived by Southern California, being led in prayer by the young teacher who had just come back from her latest weekend with a most popular Eastern guru who had just arrived from Tibet. Or, by the young man teacher, deeply religious, but not Christian, who just finished a crash course in How To Conduct a Séance, which for him was what prayer is all about. I don’t want person who are not Christian, maybe some who are explicitly non-Christian, modeling for children what prayer is all about.
Do you see the point I a making. Christian prayer is an act of the people of God who are committed to God’s sovereignty and holiness and to the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Any other prayer is what the prophets referred to as the “noise of harem assemblies” – what Jesus referred to as “praying to our sins.” The responsibility for teaching Christian prayer belongs not to public schools, but to the family and the church.
But getting back to my original point about our tendency to restrict our holy and righteous outrage against the obvious — homosexuality, abortion, pornography, and the like.
The Methodist Church is somewhat clear in its position on homosexuality. The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church says, “We insist that all persons are entitled to have their human and civil rights insured, though we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”
That being clear, let me make my point without you mistaking my position and the official position of the United Methodist Church. “We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and we consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”
The Scripture reference that people use most in condemnation of homosexual is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The usual reason given for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is sexual immorality - and certainly that was a part of it. Yet when the prophet Ezekiel talked about it, he said: “This was the quilt of your sister Sodom; she and her daughters had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
I say all of this to make a point that in our passion to scrub America clean of its most obvious vices, homosexuality, abortion, pornography, and so on – we often narrow the scope of Christian concern. And by our silence, we implicitly embrace those things not on our hit list, aligning ourselves with the subtle sins of power, privilege and conspicuous affluence. (Dare to be Different – Dare to Be Christian – a pamphlet by Colson, page 13, published by Prison Fellowship).
Do we hear Ezekiel? Certainly social holiness has to do with pornography, abortion, and homosexuality — but it also has to do with in Ezekiel’s words, people having a “surfeit of food” and of becoming comfortable, even calloused in “prosperous ease” taking no thought of aiding the poor and needy.
We’re rightly upset as citizens and especially as Christians about the present economic situation of our nation — the staggering deficit that grows daily. Hopefully we are learning that there are limits to what we once thought was the endless abundance of the American economy. Government deficits must be curbed, lest they continue to fuel inflation which is morally indefensible and threatens the very fabric of our national life.
But, let’s keep perspective. If inflation is a moral issue as we believe it to be, so, too, is society’s concern or its unconcern for the disadvantaged and oppressed. We Christians know from the Old Testament prophets that a people who would “sell the poor for a pair of shoes” in fearsome judgment of Almighty God, and we know from Jesus Himself that our judgment will be based on how we respond to the “least of these.”
We could spend hours asking questions about what social holiness. What does social holiness have to do with a morally decadent society that no longer questions pre-marital or extra-marital sex, that has trivialized marriage and brought about a culture in which there are almost as may divorces as there are first time marriages each year?
What does social holiness have to do with a prison system that contributes to the making of a criminal society, rather than preventing crime and reforming offenders?
What does social holiness have to do with a nuclear arms race that clouds the world ominously with fear and drains the financial recourses of the major super powers.
What does social holiness have to do with housing patterns that have issued in a bankrupt public school system?
I can’t answer the question in terms of specifics. But the questions themselves call me to a commitment to holiness of heart and life. I ask these plaguing , baffling questions to make my big point – that all these questions, while legitimate, must be preceded by something far more crucial and that’s what I want to address briefly in the next few minutes.
What can we rightly expect to be the task of Methodists in America? - To reform a continent and spread scriptural holiness across the land. What is required for such a mission? The circumcision of the heart which will identify us as those people who love God, who seek to obey Him, and who are committed to the promise that the kingdoms of this world will one day become the kingdoms of Christ.
But in the meantime – Ah! That’s the point. In the meantime, what is to be our task! Our first and primary task is to be the Church — to be the kind of community we need to be in order to be faithful to the Christian gospel — to be the church we talked about last week, seeing through the eyes of Christ, speaking with the voice of Christ, healing with the hands of Christ, and breathing the Spirit of Christ. Then we would know that “our first political task is to be the church, to keep criticizing our message, mission and life together so that we become a people who are formed by the gospel. We best criticize the world by being the church.” Our social concern may appear ineffective to the world. Jesus himself appeared ineffective to the world. His power was the truth rather than worldly violence propping up falsehood. Our aim is not “effectiveness,” but a prophetic demonstration that Jesus makes possible a new social order based not upon what works or competing self-interest, but upon his Lordship.
“This is not a withdrawal from the world. It is a plea to confront the world on our own terms. The imperatives “come unto me,” and “do this in remembrance of me,” theologically precede, “go into all the world.”
“In its very existence, the church serves the world, not by running errands, but by providing a light, that is, providing an alternative for society. The gospel call is invitation to be part of a people who are struggling to create those structures which the world can never achieve through governmental power and balanced self-interest. By its very existence the church is a paradigm for a society which the world considers impossible.
“For instance Christian charity will always be more radical than social legislation because the world can never serve the poorest and most powerless. The best it can do is to give the less powerful a little more power and call that justice. The world can never give dignity to the very young, the very old, the very retarded, the very sick. All it can do is dole out a few meager rights and call that compassion. For the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick, there must be hope that is not dependent upon public policy but upon the promise that God’s love is stronger than death and that nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Only the church can be the communal source of that radical hope. We must care for the world by forming the church around this truth and no other.”
(William H. Willimon, “In But Not of The World”, Circuit Rider November, December 1982, published by The Methodist Publishing House, pages 8-9).
This does not mean that we do not labor diligently as Christians for justice and peace; it doesn’t mean that we don’t take seriously the political process and work for systems and structures, legislation and political leaders who will serve “the common good.”
What it means is that we do not put our hope in these. It means that the church does not put her trust in any part or person, economic or governmental promise of panacea. We perfect our lives in holiness, we live together in the church as a people who have already tasted the kingdom, we demonstrate by who we are, what we say and how we live, that there is a kingdom. Reality that transcends all earthly systems and programs.
