Berthold von Schenk's Kingdom Plan - A Sermon Series on "Giving"
Sermon 6: "Majors and Minors"

The words of Jesus (Matthew 23:23), ‘Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You who pay your tithe of mint and dill and cumin (The Mosaic Law levied tithe on all agriculture; produce; the rabbis piously applied the precept to the most insignificant of plants) and have neglected the weightier matters…justice, mercy, good faith! These you should have practiced, without neglecting the other. You blind guides! Straining at gnats and swallowing camels.” (Jerusalem Bible)

Every student in high school or college is familiar with the terms ‘major’ and ‘minors.’ In the academic life the use of these words is unfortunate. There should not be minors in education. They are often considered of less importance. It is a sad fact that we are graduating young men and women who really are not educated. The people who graduate from our American colleges are so often uneducated people. It is pitiful. They receive the least instead of the most.

In the life of the Church there are however, majors and minors. Not everything in the Bible is of equal importance. There are commands of God which applied to people living in a period of history which no longer apply to us.

Even the relative importance of dogmas has changed. Certain teachings mean more to us than they did to the Fathers and others have become of less importance. The speaking in tongues was of more importance in the primitive church than it means to us today. In the life of the Church there are majors are also minors which are of less importance.

What the Pharisees did in our text, harping on unimportant details and exaggerations, but overlooking the big things – justice, mercy and faith, we have a similar problem today. We still have such people in the leadership of the churches. They will harp on insignificant things and leave out the big things. How many church people have we met who will insist that the Bible is literally inspired. The insist that “God told the writers when to write, what to write and how to write.” You are damned if you see bigger things in Scripture. This is the book of the Holy Spirit and you can’t fence him in. Some of us will recall that when the RSV of the Bible appeared, the fight was on. There were people who insisted that only the authorized version of the Bible was inspired. Well, there are minors in the Bible and also majors. There are many church people who are like the Pharisees and scribes in our text. They make minors often more important than majors, but what is worse, is that they make majors into minors.

Let’s talk about this for a while.

The worship hour on the Lord’s Day is a major. Within this hour there must be the instruction of the Apostles, the Offering (collective giving of self through the symbol of bread, wine and money, symbols of the common life of men). A must is the ‘breaking of bread,’ the Communion. Finally, prayer and the praise of men to God. “We worship thee for thy great glory,” from the Laudemus. In the Church life of the average parish this major has been made into a minor. You can go to church if you feel like it. Absence from the liturgy according to the writer to Hebrews is “Neglecting so great a Salvation.”

The Church becomes a minor when either the sermon is neglected or the Communion of the offering. Neglect of the whole liturgy, personal absence, neglect of a good sermon, neglect of the Offering and the Communion, any one of these may relegate this major into a minor.

Our Baptism must be a major in our Christian life. It has frequently been relegated to a minor in the life of a congregation. It is just a ritual without life-long implications, of keeping in mind and in practice the fact that we are baptized into Christ, have become a part of him, other Christs. St. Paul states, “You have been taught that when we were baptized into Christ Jesus, we were baptized in his death; in other words, when we were baptized we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death; so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might life a new life.” (Romans 6:3 – Jerusalem Bible.) St. Peter tells us, “You are new born, and, like babies, you should be hungry for nothing but milk – the spiritual honesty which will help you to grow up to salvation (1 Peter 2:2 - ibid)

St. Peter continues: “He is the living stones…set yourself close to him, so that you too, the holy priesthood that offers the spiritual sacrifices which Jesus has made acceptable to God, may be living stones making a spiritual house… You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God.  (1 Peter 2 – ibid)

Yet, this major, Baptism, has been relegated to magic instead of integration into the Body of Christ. It is considered a mere ritual and plays no part in the life of the baptized and in the life of the Church. The average parish has no baptismal conscience. The child which is baptized must wait until it can be properly instructed before it can make the First Communion and Sunday after Sunday function as a kingly priest. A child must “comprehend” what the Eucharist really is before it can receive “worthily.”  What a gruesome picture this makes of grace! When children are not urged by parents and pastor to “discern the Body of the Lord,” participation in the full liturgy, Baptism is made into a minor, of less importance. Everything possible must be done so that the child receives the Baptism conscience. This is the secret of Christian Education. When an official worship of the saints omits the sermon or the Holy Communion such a worship is not acceptable. It leaves the Holy Spirit out of it, for he makes use of the Word of the Gospel (of the Kerygma, proclaiming) and of Baptism and Holy Communion in order to enable us to participate both in the past, what God in Christ has done for us, but also in the future events, the return of Christ, the messianic feast in which Christ will rule as King of kings and Lord of lords. When the Church celebrates the full liturgy the essential events of salvation will be extended so that we may already enjoy the powers of the age to come. (Hebrews 6:4f) “It is therefore false (even blasphemous) to consider one of these media as less important than the others – for instance to neglect preaching and over-emphasize the importance of the Eucharist, or to neglect the Eucharist in favor of the sermon.” (Dr. Jean Jacques von Aliman, Reformed, Professor in the University of Hauchatel, “Worship and the Holy Spirit”, St. Lit. Vol. 2, No. 2)

The Doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ  Is a major. To St. Paul the Church is the Body of Christ, the meeting of the saints about the Holy, Word and Sacrament. To the Fathers, the Church is the Eucharistic Community, under the direction of the bishop (pastor), to manifest the presence of the total Christ. This is indeed a major. What a terrible mess has been made of the concept of the Church – it is the organization, the institution, a denominational sect, a synod or the institutionalized congregation. According to St. Paul it is the Eucharistic meeting in Jesus’ Name. One can only be a member of the Church if one functions in the full liturgy.

The Offertory is a major, in the life of the baptized child of God. One can only have an offering when the worship ahs the full liturgy of the preached Word and the Sacrament. This major has been made into a minor by having collections to meet the budgetary expenses of the Church. The Jerusalem church realized the offering was a major, for it is mentioned with the preached word, with the breaking of bread and giving God all praise and glory. What a perfect prayer it is when we praise in the liturgy, “We thank Thee for Thy great glory.” If you send a check to the church office for a thousand dollars, that is not an offering, but if you place the $1000 on the altar at the celebration of the Eucharist it is an offering in which you identify yourself with the cross and its sacrifice.

Christian Education is a major in the life of the congregation. It has been made into a minor by being satisfied with a Sunday School for children, a confirmation instruction which does not center itself on the Liturgy of the Church, but pounds formal dogmas into the heads of the catechumens and makes these dogmas, and calls their assent to these dogmas, faith. Even a Christian Day School may become a minor. A pastor who was instrumental in the revival of Christian day schools in his district was invited to speak to the students oat a chapel Lenten service. He had prepared a talk on the “Purpose of Calvary in my Life.” Before the chapel the headmaster warned him that he could not speak longer than five minutes, for the teachers objected that the chapel would take ten minutes off their class work. That’s making a minor of a major. We are doing it all the time in our schools. Instead of sanctifying the secular we are secularizing even religion.

If the Christian Day Schools are a tragedy one must weep when we study the Sunday School. I say nothing against these consecrated young men and women who in spite of their lack of training are doing their best. Some congregations even conduct the Sunday School during the liturgy in the Holy Place. The parents are at their liturgy, or whatever they may do, and the children are in Sunday School. The whole congregation should take part in the Sunday School. I attended all the services in a church in Dallas, Texas on a Sunday some years ago. The Founder of this church had influenced my life greatly and it was a proud moment when I stood in his pulpit. I attended the Sunday School first. Not only were the children present but at the morning Bible Classes there was an attendance of over 5000 adults. In the evening before the evening service there were classes attended by more than 4000 adult men and women. This is what I would call a Sunday School. When parents attend the Sunday School in the Bible classes the Sunday School may also become a major to the boy and girl who is rightfully bored when he must attend the average Sunday School class.

The Office of the Ministry and over them the office of the bishop should become a major. Christ instituted the Holy Ministry that they should take his place in the Church. On that first Easter night we are told that he breathed on his disciples and instituted the Holy Ministry. He said: “Receive the Holy Spirit; forgive the penitent sinners; retain the sins of the impenitent.” We have learned that when the pastor preaches he preaches in the Name of Jesus. When he celebrates the Holy Eucharist with his people it is really Christ who is celebrating. When he forgives the sins of the penitent sinner who has confessed his sins “this is as valid and certain as if Christ dealt with us himself.” The Apostle St. Paul places the pastor on a very high level. He states: “People must think of us as Christ’s servants entrusted with the mysteries of God. (This includes the preaching of the Word, the Holy Body and Blood of Christ, visitation and anointing of the sick. St. James who also wrote by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes, “If one of you is ill, he should send for the elders (Pastor) of the church, and they must anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord and pray over him.” Epistle of St. James 5:14 – ibid.) There must be a sacramental quality of the visit to the sick, even to the extent of using an outward means. The pastor must have time for study, for intercessions, for visiting the physically and spiritually sick members of the church who have absented themselves from their liturgy and are “neglecting so great a salvation.”

The office of the bishop was a major in the early Christian Church. Not how St. Paul fights to retain respect for his office. This office was a major in the apostolic and primitive church. It no longer exists. An administrator is elected to serve as president or bishop. There is no spirituality connected with this job, for it is not an office. He is not a pastor of pastors. It’s a job. If a certain group doesn’t like him because he is a Christian gentleman he is vilified as one who is theologically unsound; a new man is elected by laymen and pastors who are often unqualified to vote or have been influenced by hide-bound fanatics.

Unfortunately we do not only make majors into minors, but minors into majors in our church life. There are three favorite substitutes which we make – creedalism, moralism, and ritualism. These are minors. These are also deadly substitutes. Creedalism is unfortunately often the substitute for faith. Faith is the substance of things not seen – not something which can be explained. One should not belittle dogmas and pure dogmas are certainly better than those which contradict Scriptures and the Christian life. What I want to say is that belief or rationalization of dogmas is not faith. When the disciples asked Jesus for the condition of the discipleship he did not hand them a Catechism but simply said, “If anyone wants to be my disciple let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”

One certainly cannot put into this category such a wonderful book as Luther’s Small Catechism. It’s a pity that his must be explained. Then, too, one should remember that many dogmas were made in controversy, against heresies. Dostoevsky has the Grand inquisitor admit that there is the sin of dogma. Dogmas also may be divisive and hold back true ecumenism; thus hindering the work of the Holy Spirit. Creedalism is often followed by mora lism and pietism. This hinders the work of the Holy Spirit. Ritualism is not he love for the Liturgy. Ritualism is more of an attitude. One considers going to church and following the ritual as true worship. One must worship in spirit and in truth. All these three substitutes are great dangers to the true spirit of faith, life and worship. It makes of God’s chosen people a frozen people – a refrigerator.

A minor in the church is also statistics. One should indeed observe the number of people who participate in the liturgy and those in the organized congregation who neglect so great a salvation. Poor church attendance is often due to the poor and mediocre preaching. Numbers, however, do not express the true spirit of the church always. Every congregation should be a militant company of the committed.

We also waste our time so much with minors so that the real work of the church is neglected. This does not only apply to the members but particularly to the pastors who forget that their major is to be “The steward of the mysteries of God.” Often they are “straining at gnats,” as Jesus states in our text.

Worship, prayer and giving are the majors in every congregation. Let us stay with these.

The renewal of the Church must begin with the parish, the renewal of the parish. The parish must rediscover its majors which are the reasons for her existence. In other words, the parish must become the Church, the Eucharistic Community.