Sermons

Rev Susumu Morinaga (Tr. Simon Cozens)

I'd like to talk today about something rather appropriate and rather timely. It's something that causes a lot of problems, and so I'd like to deal with it quite promptly. I'd like to put all the details on the slides, but I know you wouldn't be able to read the words so unfortunately I've had to just put down the big points.

"Christ is our peace", Ephesians 2. The theme of this year's convention is "living in peace"; "blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God". On this theme, we've had our keynote address from Muraoka-sensei, and those of us who suffered long Hebrew and Greek language classes in the seminary classroom heard Prof Muraoka speak as a language scholar himself, and discuss the subject from various viewpoints. All of the speeches and sermons have been about peace; the children's sessions are studying the same theme as well. Our early morning prayer sessions and the main conference worship session too.

I want to talk about four main points: the first is about peace in general; then about seeking peace ourselves; then I want to look at what the peace that we should adopt is all about; then about what that means. Let's start with the Bible's view of peace in general. That is to say, I want to look at what the Bible's general teaching, throughout the Bible, is on peace.

I'm going to give this a slightly theological treatment, and you may find the beginning of this to be a bit boring but if you just close your eyes and hang on, we'll be done before you know it.

Some points about peace in general.

God is spirit
God is infinite, eternal, immutable God
God is all-powerful and all-knowing
God is holy, righteous, good, true.
God is a trinitarian God.
God created heaven and earth
God sustains all things by his will
God is peace; He loves peace
God seeks peace
God wants to bring peace to those who have no peace between them
God has sought peace between Himself and Israel
God has brought about peace between Himself and mankind through Christ.
God has brought about peace between Himself and those who believe in Christ.
God has, through Christ, brought about peace between those who believe in Christ.
God has commanded those who believe in Christ to seek peace in this world.
God has commanded those who believe in Christ to work towards peace in this world.
God has promised to bring about an eternal peace between man and nature in the last days.

Here are seventeen "articles". I've thought about where you could put "peace". You could add to the fourth article - God is holy, righteous, true - "God is peace". Then "God is peace" would be a deep assertion about God's character. You could put it after "trinitarian", that God is unity in trinity, that God is community, and so that God is peace itself. So you can think about "peace" as well as "trinity".

But if we look at article 17... your eyes are probably glazing over. So let's think of the whole thing as what the Bible says about peace. From one to eight - "God is spirit", ... "God is peace" - we can put those into one group. From nine to eleven, we'll put into another group: "God seeks peace". Everything else, we can't really summarise. We have to deal with them individually. So I wanted to put some broad titles above these points. The first eight: "the God of peace". From 9 to 11, "God seeks peace". Finally, "Realisation of peace in Christ", "Peace with God", "Our peace", "Peace with the world", "Peace of the world", "Final peace".

Out of these, I chose one to talk about. I chose the fifth one, "our peace". I wondered whether or not this choice would be appropriate for the occasion; as it gets to August, everyone starts to think about the war. And of course, dealing with the war is an important issue, that we really need to think about at this time. But I decided I wasn't going to speak about these issues at this conference, that is, I'm not dealing with "peace with the world", or "peace of the world", but I want to concentrate on number five, "our peace".

Now because the war is something I get a bit angry about, people might think that I'm habitually dragging up these problems, but I think that number five, "our peace", is more important because it deals with all of these things, including the problems of the war. And if you go and count all the passages of the New Testament you'll find that those dealing with peace between believers are much more numerous than any other issue in the Bible. So the Bible too teaches that peace between us is an extremely important issue.

And so I want to try to talk about "our peace". Through Christ, there is peace between us and God, our sins are forgiven, the problem of judgement is solved, we can walk with God from now on. Most of the songs that we sing are rejoicing that there's peace between us and God; praise is pretty much about this - the relationship between God and me. I'm forgiven. There is peace between myself and God.

But moving on, and equally importantly, there's the fact that through Christ, God has brought about peace between those who believe in Christ. That's a horizontal relationship. It's just as important as the vertical relationship between me and God. It's a relationship under God. It's a test of whether the vertical relationship is real or not. That is, that God has satisfied us with enough joy and strength to make both our mission and our disagreements into an offering before Him.

If there really is a relationship between me and God, there will be a brotherly relationship between myself and other Christians. By entering into a relationship with other Christians, I will be satisfied with joy and strength. There's also joy in the relationship between myself and God, but that is a vertical relationship that comes out of God's overwhelming grace. That's how we go out into the world, full of grace.

But what is our peace? God has brought about peace between us through Christ, but what is that? When I say "between us", I mean "as brothers and sisters", and by that I mean, the Church. God has brought into being the Church and filled it with His peace. The thing I want to concentrate on here is the Church.

When I talk about "the Church", there are various things which come to mind; there's the local church, there's the universal church, there's the global church. The thing I want to particularly concentrate on is the global church, the church in the world.

Let's quickly go over a bit of church history. First, there was a broken relationship between God and humanity. But God wanted peace between Himself and humans. God started with peace between himself and Israel, and He brought that about. Then in the New Testament, Jesus came. He brought about amazing peace; before it was just Israel and God. Now we're talking about affirmation between men and women, between converts and Gentiles. There was a long period where they couldn't enter into the assembly together; but then Jesus came. He broke down all of the dividing walls. He particularly broke down the walls between the Jews and the Gentiles. There was a great deal of hatred between the Jews and the Gentiles, but Jesus, at the cross, broke down those barriers.

In Christ, there was one church - Jews and Gentiles, men and women, were able to meet together to worship God. Now this wasn't an easy thing. The Jews and Gentiles brought with them into the church all of the problems that they'd had before. Paul fought against this, and it was a violent struggle. But nonetheless the church was one, meeting together.

Some time passed. Now the church was not just dealing with the problems of Gentiles and Jews, but it had all sorts of problems: problems with women, with traditions, with deception. How you should pray became a problem. There were cultural differences. There were problems about veneration. These were the problems of the church at Corinth. The problems of the church at Corinth are the problems of the Church today. Problems of veneration. What do we do about idols, difference in tradition. All sorts of problems came up. Paul was desperate, he fought these things, so that the church would remain one. The Church remained one for about a thousand years.

While the Church remained one, the whole of the Roman Empire was at peace. There were wars in the mission fields, but the Roman Empire, the Roman Church, while the Church remained one, Europe enjoyed an amazing peace. When the Church remains one, countries and societies are joined together. The Church was one.

But then, starting from 1054, the Church divided into East and West. There were various reasons for this: should we trim beards or not, what date should the Resurrection be, should we be celibate or not. Because of these different reasons, the Church split into two. But that's just two.

And then there was the Reformation, and the Church was divided into the three; Western church, Eastern church, Protestant church. The Reformers didn't want to bring the Church into schism; they wanted to reform the church itself. But they couldn't do that. Other than starting up their own churches, they couldn't find a way to express their faith, and so, in weeping and mourning, they left the church that had been one, and started their own churches.

But then there were so many divisions in the church that the church fell into complete division. The Reformers wanted to bring the Church back to what it was, but instead they ended up magnifying the divisions inside the church. According to a survey, there are currently 20,000 Protestant denominations alone. 20,000 denominations.

I want to think about the Japanese church. Even in the Japanese church, there's just as many innumerable divisions and denominations as the European church. The missionaries - not those missionaries who are here today, but the missionaries in the Meiji (1868-) period - did us the huge merit of bringing the Gospel of Christ to Japan. We don't have anything to compare to the way they spent themselves in spreading the Gospel. But unfortunately, as well as that - as well as the Gospel - they brought denominations to Japan. Europe, which had a thousand year history of the church being one, had absolutely no reason for bringing a divided church to Japan. There was no theological reason for it.

But they brought denominationalism with them into the mission field. There were several reasons why. Just as the Western church split, there were cultural, racial and political reasons for it, and these things produced the Reformist movement. So you can't simply blame the Reformation for this either. They were doing their best.

But, you know, Luther and Zwingli had this argument about the Eucharist, whether Matthew 26:26 refers to the real body of Christ or the symbol of Christ. And while they were imagining that this was something that should be easily sorted out, they found out that couldn't sorted it out. And so they took some specialised interpretation of the Bible, and ended up in schism. And the same with so many other things: whether baptism should be by total immersion, or whether we should just splash a few drops of water on the forehead - this is the kind of thing that the church split over.

We divided about judgement; there were so many other things that we should have been co-operating on that we decided to split over. There were points of doctrine about the church itself - one of the biggest problems was brought about by my own Reformed church... but I'm not going to go into that tonight.

We might have emphasised the vertical relationship first, but we left the horizontal relationship behind. We disagreed about what kind of link there was between my own membership of a church and my salvation. There were problems: do I just believe in Jesus to be saved? No, you have to be baptised to be saved!

It's the problem of the Ephesian church in Rev 2. We're smart. We can seize on mistakes. But we've forgotten our first love.

I think the church today is dying of schimitis. But everyone knows this is bad. It's bad, right? And there've been various movements to bring the church back into unity. There's been dialogue between Protestants and Catholics. But it's all failed.

In 1910, we had the Edinburgh World Mission Conference. The outcome of this conference was the World Council of Churches, the WCC. I was brought up in the conservative tradition, and I knew nothing about the WCC. When I asked my teacher, a missionary, I was told that the WCC was a work of the devil; but for today's talk I looked into the aims of the WCC. They're fantastic aims. Oh, if we could achieve this... So I wanted to believe in the work of the WCC, but of course the WCC has been taken over by liberals, and instead of concentrating on faith, they're concentrating on other things. And so I think it's a pity, but the WCC isn't going to do it.

But what about us today, the work we have in building the world church into one? From the issues with the WCC through to today's church, the movement to build up the unity of the worldwide church has been met with indifference. The dream of the global church has become nothing but a dream. Now we're thinking about developing unity inside of denominations. Why don't we have a movement to unite inside of denominations? Or a movement to unite those who have split off from our particular denomination? There've been many movements like that, for mission or for studying the Bible, but it's almost like we've said "Well, it's too late to unite the Church, so we'll unite something else instead. We can't think about the global church, so let's simplify the problem and concentrate on our own church."

Our peace - the peace of the worldwide church, the wish of Christ that we would all be one - is it really impossible? Starting from the current situation, the divided church with its disharmony about doctrines and viewpoints, keeping a record of records, not trying to understand the other person - there's good reason for thinking that its impossible. But should we just give up? I don't think so. This is exactly the kind of situation that we should be doing as much as we can about! So we are not going to give up.

There are several reasons for not giving up. First and foremost, because it was the Lord's wish that we would all be one. It was the Lord's painful and fervent prayer that we would all be one. It was our beloved Lord Jesus Christ's final request that we would all be one. And also because our unity is an important sign that we are Christians. The fact that we would all be one is the way that the world is going to see that God is in us.

There is a reconciliation that breaks down the walls between Jews and Gentiles, between men and women, between racial segregation and discrimination, which makes us one, at the cross of Christ. Because of the cross of Christ, we must be united. My Reformed church has the doctrine of the visible church and the invisible church - do you have that one? This is worrying. The thinking goes that even though we are all divided, by faith, through Christ, we are all one. So my Reformed denomination doesn't worry about divisions in the church. By faith in Christ, even though we're divided, we're still one. This is a mistake. This is wrong. If were all united by faith in Christ, wouldn't we want to act like it in our ordinary lives?

It's a strange thing: Christ has made us one, but we're not acting like we're made one. That it's OK to remain divided now because Christ has made us one - where does it say that in the Bible? Really smart theologians have gone around in circles over this one, and it's just stupid. What do they understand about this?

I said that there was a thousand years of peace in Europe, right up to the Reformation. I wonder if many of the wars since then have had something to do with schisms. If the Church had remained one - really remained one - how many of those wars would have still happened? The problem in Ireland too... now they say the problem in Ireland is really a racial problem. Maybe so. But if the Church was one, would that problem have really happened? Tell me if my thinking is wrong here.

...

I keep thinking about this. When the Catholics started sending missionaries to Japan, it was a really dangerous country. Spain, Holland, England, America - why didn't these countries get Protestants and Catholics together before sending missionaries and say "we're going to send missionaries to this dangerous country, so we need to work together." Because they sent missionaries out while they were divided, Hideyoshi, the Tokugawa shogun, was really smart. He knew that the missionaries were divided and so he worked out that he could kick out, say, just the Spanish missionaries and persecute their followers, and wouldn't do too much damage. Divisions are dangerous; divisions in Christianity are really dangerous, a dangerous sin. Much blood has flood because of this sin.

The First World War and the Second World War - stop me if I'm wrong here - would they really have happened if the Church had remained united? Oguri-sensei talked about Bonhoeffer today, who said that the church needed to be united in order to stop the war - an amazing thing to say! He thought that if the church had been one, they could have stopped the war. I think that if the church had been one, the war wouldn't have happened. And so there's a direct connection the between handling problems of the church and handling the problems of the world. If we can solve the problems of the church, we can bring peace to the world, don't you see? This is our problem. This the problem of Christians in Europe, the problem of Christians in Japan.

We so easily imported divisions into the Japanese church. It should be enough just to spread the Gospel. Why do we have to subscribe to the name of the Reformed church or the Lutheran church? Japan's a mission field. You don't need anything else - Lutheranism or Calvinism or Methodism - with just Jesus, a Bible, and a united church, Japan would suddenly become a Christian country.

We have to do something to unite the church. What should we do? Well, that's the problem, isn't it? What can we do to unite the church? I think this conference is a model. We heard about those Japanese in America who are running conferences to prepare new Christians for re-entry into Japan. That's a fantastic work. But this conference is special. There's people from the Lutheran Church here, from the United Christian Church of Japan; if the Lutherans did something in Japan, would they let the UCCJ in? If the UCCJ did something, would they let my Reformed church in? No. There's some charismatics here too; all sorts.

There used to be some Catholic priests here as well amongst us; they said "we used to recommend worshipping Mary, but now we don't worship Mary at all. We want to build a Biblical faith." There are plenty of priests like that in Japan. We had a conference together with them. This is the model. That we have a conference like this in Europe is a miracle! We should import this conference to Japan! (Amen!) To bring the Church together.

It's impossible to unite the church theologically, because you won't all agree with my doctrines. We're not going to agree on all the little details, but that's OK. All of Jesus' 12 disciples were different; all the seven churches in Revelation were different; it's OK to be different. It's OK to differ about faith or assurance or about how you read the Bible. And it's OK to fight. Paul and Barnabas fought and walked away, evangelising separately; but they didn't schism!

To revert to the truth, you need to branch off and sort things out, and you musn't schism. Schism is a sin! Christ is our peace! He's the knot that ties our peace together. There's nothing of this in the world, but we have it: faith, the Holy Spirit, baptism, Father God. We've been given so many important things to unite us. Paul saw so many problems and divisions in the church at Corinth, but he kept his eyes fixed on the Cross of Christ. He told them to focus on the central facts of the Gospel, even though they had their differences, and for a thousand years it worked. Even baptism worked out fine despite the fact that they had the differences we still have today about it.

In 2 Timothy 1, Paul exhorts Timothy to stir up again the spirit of God. A while ago Metcalfe-sensei gave a sermon to London JCF that I thought was dead right. The Pentecostal revival was a revival from above; it was God's will, and man couldn't resist it. But there's another revival, when we stir up again the spirit God has given us. We all have the spirit; there will be a day of the spirit. That's the spirit that we have to stir up again. How do we stir it up? We stir it up together, not breaking up the church, or the regional church, not insulting each other or tripping each other up. Not causing discord in the national church; not causing discord in the global church. If we can do this, the spirit will be stirred up; if we can do this, revival will come.

There are revivals that come directly from the heart of God, and there are those which we can cause. If we all get together and pray as one, with very different people and with people who think completely differently from us, and we meet in Christ, forgiving one another, and becoming as one, then the spirit will be stirred up.

All spiritual movements will disappear. Why will they disappear? Because of divisions. All the revivals so far have ceased because of divisions. To really be one... that was Jesus' wish. "Just as I and the Father are one, I want you to be one." You cannot separate a faith in Jesus and a longing to be united. So today's church, this divided church, is sinning throughout its body. We all need to repent, and receive forgiveness, and look towards Christ and his cross. All of my brothers and sisters impact me because we are all one body.

I mean, even if there's someone whose doctrine I can't agree with and if we discussed it, we'd just get angry, can't we just say "Hello" to them? Suppose we had a big conference where we all got together, and if we discussed "policy", we'd end up fighting - can't we just have a big conference and just have a cup of tea together or something? If we could just get together and realise that we're brothers and sisters, wouldn't that be enough? If we start talking about theological issues then we'll end up dividing again, so let's just put the cross before us and embrace one another. That we be being as one. Muraoka-sensei said this morning that love is peace; love is also unity.

What should we do? I'm challenging you. At least, talking about the global church is a bit big for now, so can't we just think about the Japanese church? Should we unite the Japanese church? Japanese people really have a devilish common sense; I don't know if that's right or not. But they don't have any faith in the Japanese church as it is; it's divided, there's no unity. If it was a company, you'd say that without unity it would get destroyed. Jesus said so as well, didn't he, "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Japanese people know that. We're so divided that they think Christianity's going to fall. They know about the Bible, about Jesus, about God, but can't put any confidence in the church.

The weakness of the Japanese church is... the Japanese church. The weakness of evangelism is Japan is the Japanese church. The church is cancerous. If we didn't have a church, we could really evangelise. But if the church was united, Japan would be would be Christianized. If the church was united, Japanese politics would change. The world would change. Shouldn't we pray for this?

Even while I'm talking about uniting the Japanese church, I keep thinking, no, it's no use. But we're doing it here! Can we take this with us? If we could get the UCCJ and the Lutherans and the Calvinists and everyone else - there's twenty thousand of them so there's enough choice - together, just once a year, or even once every ten years, looking to Japan and saying "we are united", testifying together, the mission would be overflowing.

Looking at the figures, the numbers of Christians in Japan is now about 0.4% It's going down. It's down from 1% to 0.8%, and now it's 0.4%. In ten years when all the older people have died off, the church will be decimated. ...

We need a movement, whether it's Calvinist or Lutheran, or whatever, I don't care, to get us together in Christ, at the Cross, by the resurrection, as one, working as one body, that kind of a movement... I'm not very good at starting movements, but... if there's anyone here who is... I'm looking at some of you guys from America... could do something to turn the Japanese church around and put it in order, that kind of a movement - for mission. To get over this wall of 0.4%. To get us to 20%.

We need to pray; to repent of this spirit of division, it's from the flesh. It's a terrible poison from the devil, we need to repent. To hate anything that brings division, to fight against it and to be one. Shouldn't we start that kind of a movement? Shall we do it? Then we'll go back to Japan... and everyone will look at us with really stony faces... I'm going back to Japan in September and I've been thinking about doing this, but people will just go "That Reformist guy Morinaga-sensei's on really weird drugs..."

But this is the final challenge in my career. When I was a high school student, first year of high school, I believed in Jesus. But I fell away after that - because I saw that the church was divided. I fell away, I didn't go to church for two years. Please, for the salvation of the Japanese souls... can we not say "evangelising"? The church - well, it's just a question of perception - should really be spreading the real meaning of the peace of the gospel, so they might be able to spread the Gospel, shouldn't we work together at building peace in our church? Let's pray.