A New Awakening?

Birdie sent a link to me this morning asking if I had read this article.  At the time I had not, but during my lunch break I did. In that article was an excerpt from a sermon preached in 1962. It seems to me to be just as relevant today 46 years later. People are being raised up today to lead the church back to what it really means to have a personal relationship with our Risen Lord. I believe we are standing on the precipice of either a new Great Awakening or something dire. The question really is predicated upon whether or not we as believers can wake up out of our stupor and see where Jehovah is moving and follow Him in that direction.

On Sunday morning, May 6, 1962, at the largest Episcopal Church in Rhode Island, a sermon was preached on the text "Who Spake by The Prophets" (from the Nicene Creed).

This assistant clergyman at Grace Church, Providence, said among other things:

"In today's ministry, there are just too many men who volunteer for the priesthood while leaving the mantel of prophecy gathering dust in some neglected back closet. This is done in most cases because it is 1) much safer, and 2) much easier. Do believe me that with the one exception of counseling and / or confession, the priestly office is easy. Any borderline defective who can read and manipulate his hands could celebrate Holy Communion. This is easy even when complicated by the embellishments of liturgical acrobatics sometimes staged to impress pageant addicts by those whom one of our college chaplains refers to as 'a vast conglomeration of cassock-clutching, candle-counting, all-American altar boys.'

"But what of the present majority of churches where such is not the custom? Here often the prophetic office perishes in the real job description: calling for an emasculated pastor. What is wanted in too many churches is an amiable, dignified, machine oiling. King-of-cliches, who will keep the Holy Ghost ghostly, the preaching platitudinous and the spirit of the living Christ locked safely in the sacristy. What too many churches demand today is by no means a moral leader – but a round-collared, or plain-tied, country club manager. And I say this without the slightest intimation that there is anything intrinsically wrong with a country club – unless it and its leader are masquerading in the name of Jesus Christ and His Church. In this case, it is an abomination – as seen in the familiar doggerel:

    Like a mighty country club moves the Church of God
    Brothers, we are treading on the safest sod!

"This type of church certainly doesn't want a clergyman who takes Christ and his life seriously. For the final and conclusive approbation of the prophetic ministry was in the fact that our Lord himself was a prophet – and so referred to himself more than once. He never once referred to himself as a priest (only the Epistle to the Hebrews did this in a heavenly sense). He never referred to any of His followers as priests and He did not select as His Apostles any of the priests who existed in His time. Furthermore, He exercised the prophetic ministry. For one thing, He injected politics into His pulpit – only they were called Pharisees and Sadducees rather than Democrats and Republicans. He denounced respectable clergy and He denounced the government. He ran roughshod over outmoded but very seriously cherished institutions such as the Sabbath and the dietary laws. Finally, He was materially injudicious enough to upset a big business – in cleansing the temple of its moneychangers. Hence, having lived like a prophet, He died like one.

"To most of the contemporary world – at least the few in the eastern Mediterranean who even heard of Him during His lifetime – He was a material failure; who became world-famous only after many years when the various guardians and chaplains of the status quo, seeing that they could not lick the movement, joined it. This is the primary example in defining one type of conservative as a person who worships liberals who have been dead a long, long time.

"What happens when the church loses its social consciousness? Karl Marx happens. Adolph Eichmann happens. Fidel Castro happens.

"I think of few fields in the ministry more important than counseling. Yet one of our greatest needs is to know the truth about ourselves – when supposedly 'even your best friend won't tell you.' How can people be expected to receive or even seek out help from an ecclesiastical Dr. Doe who desecrates his pulpit with irrelevancy while dodging so many issues that he ought to be a mascot for one of the baseball teams in Los Angeles?"