Luminescence, Volume 2. C. K. Barrett
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was a man created by the Gospel, the Good News of what God had done for him, for all humankind, in Jesus Christ. It was this which made him what he was, it was this that led him to do what he did. What about today? What about ourselves? If we are to be New Testament Christians, we shall still be people created and determined by the Gospel.
PEOPLE CREATED AND DETERMINED BY THE GOSPEL
What is that going to mean in the particular practical circumstances that we have in mind tonight? I propose to say four things about it. What we Christians in the Church all owe to the world is the Gospel. This is the distinctive gift that the Church has in its power to give or to withhold. I am not saying that Christians should not be concerned about economics, politics, sociology and the like, or that the Gospel has no contribution to make to these things. But there are plenty of politicians and all too few evangelists committed to the task of taking into the weary, suffering world the good news of great joy that Jesus Christ into the world—and this is the impression we give?
Anyone reading the papers in the last week or so might get the impression of the Church that the Roman Catholics have a pope, and the Anglicans do not, and that they cannot agree whether or not this is a good thing, and of course the Methodists aren’t doing anything in particular anyway. Now we know this is an important matter, whatever the right answer may be. But I am asking the question what the world sees and hears and knows of us. Does the world think of us as people possessed by a passion for God, people whose strength is the joy of the Lord, people with a revolutionary message that is able to make all things new? Everyone owes his neighbors the wisest advice, the most practical help that he can give him, but we owe the world the Gospel.
I have not come to this service to speak against Christian unity, but I grow more and more convinced that the world would take more notice of a band of people, still bearing their old labels, but sure of their message and proclaiming it with joy and confidence, than of a monotonous monolithic united structure. That brings me to the second thing.
What we all owe to one another is the Gospel. We are, all of us in our different churches, ministers to one another, and our ministry, our service is the Gospel. We still tend, after all these years of ecumenical activity, to think in terms of the contributions our different traditions can make, and these of course are real and important, but none of them can compare in importance with what we all already have—the Good News of God in Christ. True, we all have our different insights into the meaning of the Gospel, and I for one know how much I have learnt and still have to learn from Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics and a host of others. But behind the insights and the different ways of expressing truth, is the truth itself, and it is this we owe to one another.
Let me be practical about this. When I am oppressed by the burden of sin, what I need is not the best available theology of forgiveness. What I need is forgiveness itself, to be forgiven. When I am unable to see my way forward, to cope with the problems of life and death, I do not need a great piece of moral theology, what I need is the power of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When I am struggling with sorrow and suffering, anxiety and fear, what I need is not a theodicy, but someone who will show me how to cast my cares on God. What we owe to one another is what we owe to the world—the Gospel.
Third, behind the debt we owe to the world and to one another is the debt of gratitude we owe to God. This is the spring of all we do. Some of you may have heard me quote before now the great Heidelberg Catechism with its third section on thankfulness out of which all Christian living flows. “Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, renews us also by his Holy Spirit after his own image, that with our whole life we may show ourselves thankful to God for his blessing, and that he may be glorified through us, then also that we also may be assured of our faith by the fruits thereof, and by our godly walk win our neighbors also to Christ.” Because we are so grateful to God for making known to us the Gospel of his Son, we make it known to the world. Because we are so grateful to God for ministering to our needs, we minister to our brothers and sisters’ needs.
The fourth and last thing is this. There is one point where all this argument can break down. Do I know not only with my theological intellect but for myself this Gospel which is God’s power unto salvation? If I do not, it is no good talking about gratitude for it, about proclaiming it to the world, about giving it to one another. And it may be that this is where the church today, all the churches, has to begin, not with “How may we unite our organizations?” But do we, where we are, know the Gospel? We might even find we prayed effectively for unity if we prayed together for a renewal and rediscovery of the Gospel.
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12. Editor’s Note: The sermons in this particular notebook were all written in the late 1970s while I was present in Durham to hear him on various Sundays. It is interesting that they were written in cursive (as are all his sermons) in light blue ink which over time faded. Thus, with this sermon and the others in this notebook, he took the time to write over the same words in darker, black ink where the words had faded too much. Note that he didn’t cross things out, he simply rewrote the same words again, carefully tracing over the old words. There are several other notebooks from this period that have the same problem of fading ink. This sometimes makes it difficult to puzzle out this word or that, but I have done my best.
“THE LORD’S SUPPER—AND OURS”—1 Corinthians 11.20–21
[Preached twenty-two times from 3/26/59 at South Shields to 11/10/02 at Crook]
It is a commonplace observation that we owe what Paul teaches us about the Lord’s Supper in this chapter to the disgusting behavior of the Corinthian Christians. Humanly speaking, at any rate, that is true, and we may be not ungrateful to the people whose pride, gluttony, and indecency evoked this positive rebuke. At this time, it seems, Holy Communion was not completely separated from a real meal at which the whole Church gathered about a common board and had a real supper together—just as Jesus had supper (not a crumb of bread and sip of wine) with his disciples in the Upper Room. The ideal was that each should bring what he could, the rich would bring more than enough for himself, the poor would bring what they could, and enjoy at least one good supper a week where the share out was made.
In Corinth the ideal was not achieved; perhaps it was not even sought. Each cared only for himself, and gobbled up what he had. There was no sharing, except perhaps in little cliques and coteries. The poor went hungry, the rich got drunk. It was not an edifying spectacle. Paul sums it up in these words, “You needn’t call that going to eat the Lord’s Supper, you go to eat your own supper.” What are we going to eat today? The Lord’s Supper? Or our own? There is no outward guarantee which it shall be. Of course, all these things which ought to be, done and said in the Lord’s Supper will be done and said; of that we can be sure. Whatever others may think, we know that those who do and say these things are qualified in the sight of God to do and to say them. But if you had the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury here, that would still be no guarantee that you would take part in the Lord’s Supper. There is no such guarantee. Yet everything depends on which approach we take. Are we to have fellowship with our Lord and with his people at his table, or sit solitary by ourselves? Your own may be a very good supper; but it is not a means of grace. I mean to say four things about this contrast between the Lord’s Supper and our own supper.
SELF-CENTERED, CHRIST-CENTERED
The very word own, is significant. A supper I can describe as my own supper is by definition a self-centered one. I am concerned about what I can get out of it. In its crudest form, this sort of self-centeredness appears at Corinth. People come to the supper concerned simply to get as much as they can to eat and drink—to fill their bellies as full as they can. That is disgusting and we all recognize it as disgusting. But self-centeredness can be spiritual as well as physical, and how often do we come to the Communion service with this thought uppermost in our minds—“What good am I going to get out of this service? How shall I feel myself uplifted and nourished? How shall I be built up, strengthened, fed—in my inward spiritual life?” Some of us say, “This is the supreme means of grace’, nothing else so nourishes the Christian life.” Others say, “I don’t get anything out of the service, I don’t really see much point in