Magyar Egyház, 1978 (57. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1978-07-01 / 7-8. szám
12 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ life and give an example to all, how you can carry out for the commission of our Master. Be ye faithful, says the command, all the people who gathered together to witness your ordination seem to say and echo the words loud and clear: “BE YE FAITHFUL TO GOD, AND TO OUR SAVIOR!” Do not mind that others will fall and turn away from God and deny our Lord, YOU be faithful! Remember the ones, who even in these days suffer for Christ, yet they remain faithful to him under all circumstances. Therefore, you and the people of this congregation, and all should remain faithful to God. The Lord God Almighty will be with you and guide you as you go on: He promised never to forsake His servants. May you be true and faithful both now and for evermore! D. A. INSTALLATION SERMON Debra M. Johnson Scripture: Eph. 4:4-16 I want to be brief this afternoon, not only out of necessity, but also because I think it might be instructive. A large part of a minister’s job is concerned with speaking, but an even larger part is in knowing when to stop speaking, or when to speak very little. I do not say this merely as an apology for a brief address. Rather, I want to discuss the way a pastor must be limited—not inept or handicapped, but rather having a sense of what the limits are that one must respect in the relationship with a church. The afternoon’s scripture reading speaks of the church as a body, with Christ as the head, and the congregation as the various other bodily members. It is a point that Paul makes many times. When each part does its job, all goes well. But if one part began to try and to the whole of the body’s job—if a hand, say, evolved consciousness and decided to try to see and hear and breathe and digest, as well as grasp things—trouble is obviously on the way. It is the same with a church. One person cannot be the entire church—not the minister, not any of the elders, not the highest giver, not the teacherhuman resources are too limited for any single individual to do all that needs to be done. But if each person accomplishes his or her individual tasks with care and love and a sense of humor, the church lives -"d breathes as a healthy body. Those of you who have heard me before know that I often use the comic strip Peanuts to help me with what I want to say. In one episode, Lucy and her little brother Linus arc standing on a hill watching the stars. Lucy remarks, “Space is too large. We don’t really need all that room. Most of those planets and stars are way too big! The whole solar system needs readjusting.” Linus looks at her a moment, and then asks, “What can we, as individuals, do?” Sometimes, when we look at the problems of the world, we feel that trying to communicate God’s message of peace and forgiveness is like attempting to readjust the solar system. Who is interested? Who wants to hear? With most of the nations of the world competing with each other for power, prestige, or just money, what room is there for a message of love and brotherhood to be heard? Yet we know that with human cooperation and divine grace, God’s Word can be heard. It has gone out from a small corner of Judea to make itself felt all over the world. No one person was responsible for this. The Word of God was spread by the devotion and sacrifice of thousands. We know some of their names, but doubtless others are not even remembered. Yet, they all played their part as members of the Church, the body of Christ. The Church may advance through individual heroics, to be sure. But it also advances because many little people, people like you and me, love God and try to do His will to the best of our abilities. No one part is better than the other. The house of the Father has many mansions; the body has many members. John Calvin, in his discussion of the passage from Ephesians which I read, remarks that ministers of the Word are like the sinews that bind the body together. The pastor binds the church together in obedience to God’s Word. An exhaulted and demanding task, surely! And yet what good are sinews without bones and muscles? A sinew can do nothing on its own—it can’t stretch, bend, or move at all. You, the congregation, are the bones and muscles of the church. You are the ones who have been called out— remember that the original Greek word for church, “ekklesia,” means precisely “those who are called out”—-the ones whom God has chosen to witness to His work in the world. I am only here to do what I can to help you accomplish that task. God truly works in mysterious ways. He brought you and your ancestors from Hungary, and me and my ancestors from Ireland, and placed us together here in Roebling with a commission to be about His work. We need each other for that work. There will be times when we feel that we have let each other
