Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr
A Sermon on Isaiah 58:9-14 and Galatians 5:13-15 by Chris HenryShallowford Presbyterian Church – November 4, 2012
On Wednesday evening, after our Trunk or Treat, I was talking with a member of the congregation out in the parking lot. He pointed to the church sign on Shallowford Road and asked, “What does that mean?” “It’s the title of my sermon for Sunday,” I replied. The look of consternation on his face did not change. “Okay…but again, what does it mean?” Fair enough.Though he has been gone for forty years, Reinhold Niebuhr is one of the saints for whom I give thanks on this All Saints Sunday. For those of you who have never heard this odd German name and are also wondering what this title means, here is a brief description. Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was born in Missouri in 1892, the son of German immigrants. His father was a pastor in the German Evangelical Church, one of our sister denominations within the Reformed Protestant family. Niebuhr himself went to seminary and, in 1915 (at age 23), was ordained as a pastor. He served a congregation in Detroit for thirteen years, a congregation that had sixty-six members when we arrived and grew to over 700 before he left in 1928. For thirty years, Professor Niebuhr taught theology and Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. From that position, Niebuhr crafted a new theology, which he called “Christian Realism.” Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism and the Third Reich, the Second World War, and Soviet communism, Niebuhr grew from a crusading idealist to a hardnosed pragmatist. In that time, he also gained recognition as the most influential religious leader and thinker in our nation.In 2012, his name is rarely spoken. His only popular contribution seems to be the Serenity Prayer, which often goes unattributed. To a large degree, and to our own detriment, we have forgotten Reinhold Niebuhr. His profoundly deep theology has been replaced by paper-thin spiritual sound-bytes. His insistence on engaging with those of different perspectives has gone out of style in an era characterized by polarity and division. His appreciation for ambiguity has given way to ideological purity. His pragmatism has been superseded by extremism. In forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr, we have lost a voice of public theology that could be both instructive and corrective in our own time.The prophet Isaiah, in the passage we read this morning, calls the people of God to get their speech and their action in proper alignment. Exile is coming to an end, and the people of God must prepare for this new day. The instructions are clear: stop pointing fingers and casting aspersions, start serving one another and caring for the community around you. And then, when you repent and regroup, you will be recreated. Your light shall rise in the darkness; your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you will take delight in God.Several thousand years later, Reinhold Niebuhr preached, “When we talk about love, we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means… being responsible, responsible to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind.”[i]People of Christian faith are called to the responsibility of love. In other words, we are not permitted to sit on the sidelines or withdraw from worldly need in order to maintain our perceived purity. As Niebuhr wrote in his 1952 book, The Irony of American History, “We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power.”[ii] At least one of Niebuhr’s students took this call very seriously. His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and he gave his life because he was determined to practice his faith. Bonhoeffer was executed in 1945 for his opposition to Hitler’s rule in Germany. It was Bonhoeffer who wrote, after studying under Reinhold Niebuhr: “Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”[iii]So, remembering Reinhold Niebuhr calls the church back to its God-given prophetic task in the community and in the world. When people are suffering in our nation and around the world, the church is called to respond. When injustice and hatred deny to some the abundant life God offers to all, the demands of the gospel compel us to speak and to act. Niebuhr was right: the church must never shrink from its call to be the body of Christ beyond the walls of the sanctuary.But there is a difference between Niebuhr’s Christian Realism and the idealistic activism of the Social Gospel movement that he finally dismissed. The difference is Niebuhr’s emphatic insistence on humility and his awareness of the ubiquity of sin. If we were able to ask Reinhold Niebuhr which aspect of the current political climate most exasperated him, my guess would be this: the self-righteousness of all sides. Alongside his insistence that the Christian church must act in causes of justice and mercy, Niebuhr also maintained the utter necessity of humility in those actions. As Niebuhr wrote, “we have become so deluded by the concept of our innocence, that we are ill prepared to deal with the temptations of power that now assail us.”[iv] Do we not see the impact of this deluded thinking all around us? Do we not see finger pointing and arrogance?The call of the church, according to Niebuhr, is to engage in acts of justice and compassion while at the same time acknowledging our own imperfection. The call is to prophetic mission reinforced by reverent humility. It is this powerful combination that we have lost sight of in recent decades. In forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr, we have created a church culture that mirrors the division all around us, even using the same labels. This kind of antagonism is nothing more than capitulation to the culture of polarity and extremism. We can do better than this. We must do better than this. We can do justice and love kindness while walking humbly with our God.I saw a powerful picture of the church in action last Saturday in Hapeville. Early that morning, a group of over one hundred gathered together to build a playground and pavilion, plant trees and flowers, and build community with the people of El Nazareno Presbyterian Church, one of our New Church Developments near the airport. Throughout the day, relationships were formed as strangers became friends; working side by side, sharing stories and smiles, and serving God by loving neighbor. A diverse array of congregations worked together, celebrating all that unites us in Jesus Christ. And meaningful, practical, real transformation took place; by the end of the day, dozens of children were sliding and swinging on a playground that did not exist only hours before. There were hugs and high fives from very different people who did not know each other when the day began. This is the church in action. This is what we are called to do and who we can be together, when we focus on our common faith in the one who came not to be served but to serve.The Apostle Paul wrote powerful words to the church in Galatia: “you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.” Indeed, freedom is a concept that originates in the very heart of God, who calls us out of darkness and into light, out of captivity and into liberation. But Paul’s powerful words do not end there: “only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” Without humility and responsibility, freedom can quickly give way to pride, arrogance, and even domination. We need Niebuhr, who wrote, “Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; but pure love without power is destroyed.”[v]The message to the Christian church today is quite clear. No one needs to be convinced that we live in an age of ideological antagonism, when the capacity for complex thought and ambiguity is seen as a sign of weakness. Dialogue of any type has become obsolete in this age of shouting smug insults. The church must be the community that remembers our call to humility and to active mission. We believe in a God of both power and love, and we believe that we are not God. Therefore, utter allegiance to any humanly constructed ideology or movement will is, most candidly, idolatry. God alone is sovereign and worthy of worship. A little humility and even some deference would do us all some good in these heated and anxious days.Some have objected to Reinhold Niebuhr’s perceived pessimism about the church, humanity, and even the future. His detractors proclaimed that humankind could move beyond its sinful past and bring God’s kingdom. Niebuhr certainly lacks this kind of cheery outlook. But optimism is not the same as hope, and I for one find Reinhold Niebuhr among the most hopeful of theologians. The difference is that Niebuhr’s hope does not rest finally on the actions of humans or on electing the right leaders, as important as those tasks might be. Niebuhr’s hope is centered on the power and grace of God. In perhaps his most powerful declaration, the theologian, pastor, ethicist, and Christian leader wrote:“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love.”[vi]Hope, Faith, and Love. In the days ahead, those are words well worth remembering. Amen.
