Restore Us

A Sermon About Spiritual Revival

Preached at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church

On August 15, 2004

By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, Ph.D.

Texts:

Isaiah 5: 1-7

Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard:  My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.  He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.  And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.  What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done it?  When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?  And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard.  I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.  I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rein no rain upon it.  For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!

Psalm 80: 14-19

Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted.  They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down; may they perish at the rebuke of your countenance.  But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.  Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name.  Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Hebrews 11: 29-12:2

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned.  By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days.  By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.  And what more should I say?  For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets--who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.  Women received their dead by resurrection.  Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection.  Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.  They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented--of whom the world was not worthy.  They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.  Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.  Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Sermon Text

The title of my sermon is taken from the nineteenth verse of Psalm 80:  "Restore us, O Lord God of hosts!  Let thy face shine, that we may be saved!"

The title might just as well be "Revive Us!" but I know that Presbyterians get nervous when the word, "revival," is mentioned, so for the moment, let me stick with another that fits our puritan reserve:  restoration.  Let me begin this sermon with a prayer about restoration that will reveal where the sermon is heading.  Let us pray:

Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit will restore us: first, that your Spirit will restore our energy and enthusiasm, so that we will carry out the ministry of Jesus with the same joy and exuberance and determination which the saints mentioned in this morning's scripture obviously had.  We also pray that your Spirit will restore our awareness of the presence of our living Lord, so that no matter what obstacles to ministry we may encounter, we shall not get discouraged.  Restore us, O God.  Let thy face shine upon us, that we may be faithful servants of the One who died for your Kingdom!  Amen.

The first thing I want to give you in this sermon about restoration is a wider perspective.  When you labor in a trench and can't see over the top to what's happening on the rest of the field, you can get to thinking that the whole battle depends upon what happens in your own wee place; and also that nobody has it quite so hard as you do.  It's consoling to discover that you're not alone, and that people in other trenches are working just as hard as you, and some harder; and that though your battle is important to the people in your trench, it probably won't make or break God's campaign. 

A couple weeks ago, Alice and I met with friends at a retreat in Tennessee, and we studied the first six chapters of the book of Acts, which recounts the history of the very early church.  As we talked about what the first disciples encountered, we couldn't help comparing our experience to theirs.  We got to talking about how things are going in our churches, which are in Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia?mostly Bible belt states.  Ever since our group dispersed geographically in the mid 1970s, Alice and I have felt rather like outpost missionaries.  Particularly during the years that we lived in Miami, a city of astonishing ethnic and religious diversity, our tales of ministry sounded rather like battle field reports to our Bible belt friends, whose congregations by contrast were strong and healthy, nestled as they were in hospitable cultures.  But this trip, Alice and I didn't feel quite so much like outsiders, because the church tales we heard from our colleagues were beginning to sound more familiar to us.  Some told of aging congregations, the difficulty of attracting new members, a shrinking pool of volunteers, and the fatigue of those who are still bearing the load. 

It's said that misery loves company.  That's a strange consolation, isn't it?knowing that others have it just as rough as you do, or maybe even worse.  You'd think that that would make you even more discouraged, because by gaining a broader perspective you become aware that the big picture isn't very much better than what's going on in your own trench. 

Nevertheless, I am consoled by knowing that I am not alone, that there are people both far and near who are struggling with challenges very like mine.  Now, if we could just find a way of communicating and comparing notes, maybe we could think of solutions to our common problems.  Even if we didn't come up with quick fixes, at least we could support each other to keep on keeping on.  It does help to know that people who understand what you're going through are keeping you in their thoughts and prayers.  Our denomination puts out a Mission Study Yearbook to help Presbyterians do just that.  This book describes what Presbyterians are doing in mission all over the world.  It mentions the names of people ministering in each place, and day-by-day calls on the reader to support them in prayer.  New Castle Presbytery is mentioned in the mission yearbook.  Did you know that as you work in the food cupboard, or the clothes cupboard, or the Emmanuel Dining Room, or in the numerous ministries mentioned in the last Hanover Herald, Presbyterians who don't know you personally are nevertheless praying for you, asking God to make you strong, asking God to bless what you are doing in the name of Jesus?  You have your own cloud of witnesses, and they aren't all in heaven, either!  There is a host?that means an army?of brothers and sisters in Christ, laboring in their own trenches, who support you daily in prayer.  Thanks be to God, we are not alone!

Let me widen your perspective even more, by calling your attention to that heavenly cloud of witnesses which is in heaven, which our passage from Hebrews mentions.  First of all, they had it way tougher than we do!  They faced lions, torture, burnings at the stake.  An old hymn remembers how faithful were such saints, "in spite of dungeon, fire, and sword."  When Alice and I visited a museum in southern France, which honors the resistance of our French Huguenot cousins, we were appalled to hear that their enemies, Catholic counter-Reformationists, would steal their children away, execute the husbands and imprison and torture the wives.  We saw a Huguenot pulpit cleverly built inside a barrel, which could quickly be closed and concealed if the enemy overran their camp.  We North Americans are so privileged to live in a milieu of relative tolerance and tranquility.  Despite the fact that things are more difficult for our churches now than they were in their heyday--say, the mid 1950s--we nevertheless have little grounds for complaint.  We need to consider the whole scope of Christian history to recognize that we are very fortunate indeed, and that the challenges we face pale in comparison to the horrors faced by that great cloud of witnesses which looks down upon us now and prays for us.

I began this sermon by saying that we Presbyterians shy away from the word, "revival."  Why, I'm not exactly sure.  Presbyterians tend to be reserved, as I said.  God's "frozen chosen," some have dubbed us.  We are definitely not given to religious enthusiasms.  Falling down in the aisles smacks of fakery to us.  We want our religion "decent, and in order," in part, I think, because we want to be in control, like our mentor Calvin, a lawyering-theologian, who ran Geneva like a small town sheriff.  Insistence upon control quenches the Spirit, though, and there's the rub.  We Presbyterians have got to make room in our piety for revival; and especially we in this congregation must, because we are trying to reach out and welcome people who are not afraid of ecstasy.  In fact, they long for it.

What do I mean by revival?  I mean becoming more alive in God's Spirit.  For folk of a puritanical bent, what would revival look like?  How would we know whether we were becoming revived or not?  Well, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, the Spirit blows where it wills.  And as Paul taught, the Spirit equips folk as it wills.  In some, the Spirit produces different outcomes than in others.  You won't necessarily need to be waving your arms or clapping your hands or laughing out loud, or falling down in the aisles, or speaking in tongues to know that the Spirit is upon you.  Quakers can be certain of that sitting stock-still!  I knew, once, oh so dramatically, the presence of the Spirit.  So, I can tell you by experience, when you have felt the Spirit's presence, you will not ask what the signs are.  You will know.  It's fantastic, the visitation of this mighty Spirit!  More than lessons in church management and member recruitment and fund raising, the church needs to let down its guard and welcome in the Spirit.  Our church needs revival.  I had set out not to speak in those terms this morning, because I thought maybe it would scare you away.  I was determined to speak only of our need for restoration, but the Spirit kicked me and said:  Don't you go slip sliding away now, Tom.  Speak of what you know you need, and your flock needs.  So, I'm saying to you, church.  I need, we need, the Spirit's revival.

To return now to where we began in this sermon, it is that revival, that revival by the Spirit that shall restore and save us.  The awkwardness of my sermon title this morning, "Restore Us," is that it might seem to imply that our glory lies somewhere in the past, and that we must do everything we can to recoup it.  In my opinion, much of the church redevelopment thinking in our denomination seems to have this very intent:  to help us somehow build ourselves up again, so that we can become again who we were fifty years ago.  Well, I don't know whether that's possible, but in any case, I'm not interested in going back there.  As Bob Dylan used to sing, "the times they are a changin'."  We must get out of the new ones if we can't (or won't) lend a hand.  Or, in the words of the hymn we shall sing in a moment,

The church of Christ

  in every age,

beset by change but Spirit led,

  must claim and test its heritage

and keep on rising from the dead.

Let us pray for spiritual revival, and may the Spirit give us courage to apply our heritage to very different circumstances and keep on rising from the dead.