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Editor’s Introduction

This back-to-church-after-the-summer sermon finds David Read raising a fundamental question with the congregation. Why are we here? Why return to church when we could be at home in our pajamas reading the Sunday Times? And why remain in church when the culture today is so contentedly and even vibrantly secular?

Belonging to the church, Read suggests, is linked with our sense of belonging to God, and not just any God but the God who made us and redeems us and has fixed a point beyond which we cannot fall—“the solid rock of an eternal love.”

The text for this sermon is taken from the Prologue of John’s Gospel: “He came unto his own . . . ” Read hears these words telling us that we don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to the God who claims us in Christ as his own. Here is the underlying reason for belonging to the church. And when we realize that we belong to God, we are moved to share this discovery with our neighbors. For “his own” includes, Read reminds us, “the entire human family, but there are millions in our world who don’t know it. Shouldn’t we tell them, by what we say, what we do and what we are?”

We Belong To God

A Sermon preached by David H. C. Read at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on September 21, 1986

Text: “He came unto his own . . . ” John 1:11

Readings: Genesis 1:27–31; 1 Corinthians 6:12–20; Luke 12:13–21

Why are we here? What brings together this mixed group of people at this time and in this place? There are so many things each of us could be doing, strolling in the park, pottering about at home, sampling the offerings on the TV screen, or just lying in bed smothered by the New York Times. So what brings us here? In this city and in this generation we can discount the cynical answers that used to be given—it’s a sign of being a respectable citizen, your neighbours will look sideways at you if you’re not a church-goer. Today in New York there are other circles to move in if it’s prestige and reputation you’re after, and your neighbours (if you know who they are) don’t give a damn whether you go to church or not.

For the most part, I believe, we are here because we belong, or want to belong, to a community that believes in God and tries to act on that belief. A living church stands for a working belief in God. After all, the polls tell us that just being an American citizen means belonging to a community that believes in God. About 95 percent say they do. That can mean almost anything, or nothing, and is hard to square with the almost totally secularized society in which we live. A working belief in God means, in the Christian and Jewish tradition, that God is a real factor in all we think and do, that we seek a relationship with him that is as close and personal as that we have with our dearest friend. It means that in the great circle of belonging—belonging to this nation, belonging to a home, a circle of friends, a club or a community—we find, as the lodestar of this mysterious voyage through life, that the most powerful truth is that we belong to God. Such a conviction will inevitably alter the way we confront all the great choices that come our way in life, and the ultimate question mark in death.

Psychologists have said that the two most powerful instincts in human beings are religion and sex. That may account for the fact that when religion loses its grip on society, sex is apt to take over as the reigning god. Some days ago when I was pondering this sermon, I turned on the TV at random. A bad habit, you may say, but this time I was rewarded. There was John Updike, the novelist, being interviewed about his latest book. When I came in he was being asked how he reconciled the strong, religious theme in his novel with the candid treatment of sex. His answer revealed that he saw no discrepancy, and that for him, as a confessed Christian and church-goer, the two great instincts are not necessarily at war but that everything profoundly human is related to our deep sense of belonging to God. On the spur of the moment he put the case flippantly: “People go to church,” he said, “because they want to live forever. They go to bed because they want to feel what it’s like.” As I let that remark sink in I felt I’d like to hear a sermon by Mr. Updike enlarging on my theme this morning! It’s that working, all-inclusive sense of belonging to God, that should be the real reason for allying oneself with a community that seeks above all else to love the Lord our God with heart and mind and all we have, and our neighbor as ourselves.

“He came unto his own.” These words are familiar to church-goers. They come from that perpetually stimulating, illuminating, and puzzling poem we know as the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John. I expect that if I asked one familiar with this phrase what was intended by the words: “He came unto his own,” the answer might be: “It means that Jesus was born a Jew,” or that his message was directed to the Jewish people, or perhaps, as some modern versions actually translate, “He came to his own country.” But the context of these words reveals that the author was not speaking about the historic Jesus: the climactic words—“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” occur some verses later. He is speaking about the Word—which means God revealing himself to the human race, God communicating with his human family. He is speaking about God’s call to the great human family that had wandered away from the Father’s home. For him the Incarnation was the supreme act of God’s parental love, but from the dawn of history to this very moment, God comes unto his own. Everyone—American, French, German, Russian, African, Chinese, prosperous or starving, cultivated or uncivilized, healthy or disabled, believer or unbeliever, belongs to him.

This is one basic belief of a Christian church. It is a belief that marks live church members off from all who, consciously or unconsciously, reject his claim, that marks off a church as a community that proposes another aim in life, another conviction about life’s meaning (or lack of meaning) from those that seem to dominate the society in which we live. It is our business now to ponder the implications of such a working belief. “He came unto his own”—if you are now hearing the claim of the living God, if you are now among those who, in the words of the Prologue “receive him,” then we are ready to explore “belonging to God” as a working belief.

The men and women of the Bible, characters who have left their mark on history as believers, and those who impress and influence us today as examples of faith in action, draw one tremendous conclusion from the fact that we belong to God. For them it’s not a theory lurking in the back of the mind—“Yes; of course, in the end he’s the boss.” For them it is a daily working belief, and what it says is this: since I belong to God then nothing, not my worries, my pains, my fears, my sense of loneliness or depression, not the worst catastrophe that can happen to me, not death itself, can separate me from his love. The great images of the Bible come to life: He is our Rock, our Refuge and Strength, our mighty Fortress, our sure Foundation. He is the ultimate Lord of all being and underneath us are his everlasting arms. Jesus descended into this hell of alienation from man and God that is our deepest fear in the working belief that nothing could break the tie that bound him to that everlasting love. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” were his last earthly words, and when he appeared again his disciples were given for all time their share in this assurance. They knew what he had meant when he said: “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father who gave them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”

This working belief can be expressed very simply: to accept that we belong to God means that there is a point beyond which we cannot fall—the solid rock of an eternal love.

Belonging to God is then a belief that is lodged in the depth of the soul and begins to shape the direction of our lives. But there is more to ponder. We’re not just talking of that mysterious self that we call the soul. We are not invisible angel-spirits but human beings clothed, like the animals, with bodies, solid, complicated, bodies, from which we cannot escape, although we may rise beyond them in dreams and prayers. Yet it has become so difficult to persuade people that religion, this business of belonging to God, has to do with these bodies as well as our souls. The Bible has much more to say about the body than the soul. A worshipping congregation is a marvelous assembly of bodies which cannot be transformed into some nebulous flotilla of invisible spirits. So when I realize deep down that I belong to God, I should realize that this goes for my body too. It’s a gift from God which I hold in trust for him. And that has practical consequences as a working belief.

In the passage we heard from Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Church, he dealt with one aspect of our treatment of the body. Corinth was known for its total sexual license. It was one big 42 Street. And Paul had discovered that some of his young Christians there were interpreting his Gospel of the grace of God and freedom from the law to mean that, so long as their soul had been saved, they could do what they liked with their bodies. Hence his thunderous denunciation of the licentious bed-hoppers of Corinth, “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”

Your body, he is saying, is not your own. It belongs to God, and you are responsible for it as a steward of God’s gift. This has implications far beyond the point that Paul was making here. If we, including our bodies, belong to God, then we have a duty to respect them. Without giving in to the prevailing hypochondria of the moment, we owe these bodies of ours at least enough care to keep them in repair, as good stewards of this gift of God.

So when we talk about the Christian doctrine of stewardship we mean much more than the use of money. When people come to recognize that word as an ecclesiastical code word for fund raising, they are tempted to switch off. Money and possessions do come into the picture, but only because they are such an integral part of the lives that belong to God. The basic belief is what Paul meant when he simply said: “You are not your own.” The power and glory of the Gospel—and the joy—lie not only in the assurance that since we belong to God, we have a safety net through which we cannot fall: but in the discovery that all we have—bodies, homes, talents, ambitions, bank accounts—we hold in trust for the God to whom they belong. When that becomes real belief, a new and satisfying power is at work in our lives.

“He came unto his own.” What we really are: his own. This is the crucial decision in anyone’s life: recognizing that we are “his own” and not “our own” to do what we like. That is what’s meant by receiving him, this living, giving, loving God. To as many as receive him, the One who became one of us in Jesus Christ, he gives the power to become the sons and daughters of God. To receive him means just saying: “Yes, Lord, I’m not my own. I belong to you. Take the whole of me.”

Then it must become as clear as daylight that a community of Christians with this working belief will want to share this discovery with all our neighbors. Evangelism is for us not an attempt to brainwash others into becoming Presbyterians. It’s the joyful invitation to all who are feeling lost or alone to share what Christ has given us. Rejoice with me! “He came unto his own” and “his own” are not the members of a holy club. “His own” includes the entire human family, but there are millions in our world who don’t know it. Shouldn’t we tell them—by what we say, what we do, and what we are?

Prayer: Lord, we are thine, help us to know it, to know it in the depth of our heart and to act accordingly, through Christ our Lord. Amen.