Sermon for August 14th, 2016

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Ephesians 4:1-6

1I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

The Confession of Belhar: Unity

A young Catholic man enters the confessional booth one day and says, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have committed the sin of vanity. Twice a day I gaze at myself in the mirror and tell myself how good looking I am."

The priest opens the window, takes a good look at the young man and says, "My son, I have good news. That isn't a sin. It's simply a mistake."

I tell this joke because here in El Paso, when we hear the word "confession," that's probably the first kind that comes to mind. There's also the deathbed confession, the courtroom confession, and our very own prayer of confession that begins our Sunday morning worship services.

All of these kinds of confession have in common that they involve admitting, or acknowledging out loud, wrongdoing of some kind. I confess! I did it! I'm BAD!

But there's another definition of confession, one that is important to today's message: In Romans Chapter 10, the Apostle Paul writes that "if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved."

To confess that Jesus is Lord is not to admit wrongdoing. In the church, to confess can also mean to state clearly and concisely what you believe to be true. And so a "confession of faith" is a statement of belief. Those of you who have been Presbyterians for awhile, or those of you who have served as elected officers in the Presbyterian Church, know that we have an entire book of confessions, called, "The Book of Confessions" (so we're not exactly the most creative people!).

The Book of Confessions begins with the two most ancient confessions of faith, dating back to the 4th century: The Nicene Creed, and the Apostles' Creed, which we say together in worship every Sunday after the offering.

Next, in the Book of Confessions, you'll find the Scots, the Heidelberg, the Helvetic, and the Westminster Confessions of faith--they are all statements of faith from the 16th and 17th centuries, when the protestant churches of the Reformation broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, and felt a profound need to define exactly what it was that they stood for.

In World War II era Germany, when the majority of German Christian Chruches bowed down to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, a small group of Reformed churches took a brave stand against their government--some at the cost of their lives--and published the Barmen Confession of Faith. It is the ninth confession in our Book of Confessions. Sometimes we boldly confess our faith in order to clarify what we stand against.

The last two confessions in our book are the Confession of 1967, published in...1967 (of course!) and the Brief Statement of Faith, published in 1983 when the Northern and Southern branches of the Presbyterian Church merged to form the Presbyterian Church USA (what we are now). Both of these confessions are uniquely "American" Confessions, and attempt to forge an identity for our denomination in this time and place.

All Confessions attempt to interpret the scriptures faithfully, and answer the questions, "What is the church called to BE and DO in this time and place?"




1. We believe in the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who gathers, protects and cares for the church through Word and Spirit. This, God has done since the beginning of the world and will do to the end.

2. We believe in one holy, universal Christian church, the communion of saints called from the entire human family. We believe

  • that Christ's work of reconciliation is made manifest in the church as the community of believers who have been reconciled with God and with one another;
  • that unity is, therefore, both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ; that through the working of God's Spirit it is a binding force, yet simultaneously a reality which must be earnestly pursued and sought: one which the people of God must continually be built up to attain;
  • that this unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered, and accordingly that anything which threatens this unity may have no place in the church and must be resisted;
  • that this unity of the people of God must be manifested and be active in a variety of ways: in that we love one another; that we experience, practice and pursue community with one another; that we are obligated to give ourselves willingly and joyfully to be of benefit and blessing to one another; that we share one faith, have one calling, are of one soul and one mind; have one God and Father, are filled with one Spirit, are baptized with one baptism, eat of one bread and drink of one cup, confess one name, are obedient to one Lord, work for one cause, and share one hope; together come to know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ; together are built up to the stature of Christ, to the new humanity; together know and bear one another's burdens, thereby fulfilling the law of Christ that we need one another and upbuild one another, admonishing and comforting one another; that we suffer with one another for the sake of righteousness; pray together; together serve God in this world; and together fight against all which may threaten or hinder this unity;
  • that this unity can be established only in freedom and not under constraint; that the variety of spiritual gifts, opportunities, backgrounds, convictions, as well as the various languages and cultures, are by virtue of the reconciliation in Christ, opportunities for mutual service and enrichment within the one visible people of God;
  • that true faith in Jesus Christ is the only condition for membership of this church;

Therefore, we reject any doctrine

  • which absolutizes either natural diversity or the sinful separation of people in such a way that this absolutization hinders or breaks the visible and active unity of the church, or even leads to the establishment of a separate church formation;
  • which professes that this spiritual unity is truly being maintained in the bond of peace while believers of the same confession are in effect alienated from one another for the sake of diversity and in despair of reconciliation;
  • which denies that a refusal earnestly to pursue this visible unity as a priceless gift is sin;
  • which explicitly or implicitly maintains that descent or any other human or social factor should be a consideration in determining membership of the church.
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