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The following message for the moment is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "Great 20th Century Christians." Angelo Roncalli. The scripture reading of the morning is the gospel according to Matthew, the 16th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 13. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi,

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he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,

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but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one

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that he was the Christ. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word written. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. A little over 30 years ago, my brother was married in one of the large Roman Catholic churches in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. I was not permitted to be a part of the wedding ceremony. I

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was not yet ordained. I was simply a student in seminary, but I was a Protestant, and in those days no Protestants, Orthodox, or any other Christian variety could participate in a Roman Catholic wedding service except Roman Catholics. Two weeks ago, I performed a marriage on this very spot, and I was assisted in that marriage by a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. In fact,

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across the course of the last ten years, I have probably done about 30 weddings together with priests, sometimes in Catholic churches, sometimes in Protestant churches, twice in Roman Catholic cathedrals assisted by bishops. A great deal has changed in the last ten years, in the last 30 years, in terms of the relationships between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and most

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of that progress is due to the efforts of Angelo Giovanni Roncalli. You know him more commonly by his papal title, Pope John XXIII. On October the 9th, in the year 1958, Eugenio Pacelli, who had been Pope Pius XII, died. Pius XII was, one might say, persona non grata with the Protestant and Orthodox worlds. This was because he was a rather austere and ascetic individual. It's also because

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he entered into political concordats with people like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Perón, and others, and he also did more to advance the cult of Mary in Roman Catholicism than any other pope in modern history. As a result, he was not well received in the Christian world outside of the Roman Catholic faith. But the man who succeeded him as pope, Angelo Roncalli, was elected at 77 years of age

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to take up where Pius XII had left off. And as we study the documents of that period, we discover that he was basically chosen for three reasons. First of all, because the Roman Church was anxious that the machinery of its organization be more responsive and updated. Things had become rather autocratic during the reign of Pius XII. Secondly, the Roman Church was very interested in better

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relationships with many nations and also with other Christian bodies. And thirdly, Pope John was chosen at the advanced age of 77 years because they wanted only a transitional pope. They did not want someone who would be upon the papal throne too long. As a matter of fact, Roncalli served slightly less than five years before he died. But in those five years, he did all of the things that

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his church asked him to do. And more importantly, he called the Second Vatican Council, which caused sweeping changes within the Roman Catholic Church and brought it into a kinship with the Protestant and Orthodox faiths, which had not existed for 400 years. When it comes to Christian unity, no man in the 20th century has a name that stands higher than that of Angelo Roncalli. That is the reason

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I consider him to be one of the great Christians of this century. Pope John was a man of great humility. He came from a very small village, just a handful of houses, called Sotto Il Voce in the Bergamasque section of Italy. He was born in 1881. His parents were tenant farmers. He used to say quite frequently that there were three ways of being poor, wine, women, and agriculture, and

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his father chose the dullest. People from that section of Italy, the Bergamasque section, were well known for their wit and their repartee. You perhaps remember how on the first Christmas after his election to the papacy, he visited the major jails in Rome, and as he would enter each one, he would say, "Since you couldn't come to see me, I came to see you." Someone in one of the jails

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called out to him, "I'll wager that this is the first time that you have ever been in jail," to which the Pope immediately responded, "Oh no, I've been in the jail many times, usually visiting my cousin." There was in him no pretension. There was also a profound spirituality about the man. If you read his spiritual journals, which he kept for almost 70 years and which are called The Journey

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of a Soul, you will discover that he had four great goals in his own personal life. The first was to be humble, the second was to walk closely with God, the third was to always be open to growth and learning new things in the service and the study of the things of faith, and the fourth was the promotion of unity among Christians. The stories about his humility are legion. One of my

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favorites concerns the first time he was interviewed by a reporter from the Vatican newspaper. The young man came in and, as was the custom, he asked his questions while on his knees. Pope John said, "Young man, please sit in that chair." "Oh no," he said, "I must not do that when I'm in the presence of the Pope," and Pope John looked at him and said, "Well, if you must not sit, then I must not stay.

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I shall leave the room." And faced with that alternative, the youngster jumped into the chair and the interview continued. They design, you know, for every Pope a papal crest or emblem, and when they brought to Pope John the design which was proposed for him, there was, in a major part of it, a lion. He observed that for a few minutes and then said, "Well, the lion can stay,

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but you should make him much more friendly and lovable." And he was a man who, in his humility, died owning practically nothing. In his last will and testament, he said, "I am particularly happy to die a poor man." Is it any wonder that such a humble and gracious spirit should have been visited by more people of great and small station in the four-plus years of his pontificate than

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visited his predecessor in the twenty years of his papal reign? I remember the last time that I visited the crypt beneath St. Peter's in Rome. This is where a good number of the Popes are buried. Some of the sarcophagi are very remote. Some of them are in dark corners. Some of them are very beautifully carved. Others are quite simple in design. Occasionally, you will see,

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by one tomb or another, a few lighted candles and perhaps a bouquet of flowers. But then I noticed up ahead of me a kind of glow and a low murmur of voices. And as I came around the corner in the passageway, I found myself confronted by the tomb of Pope John, a plain, simple block of white marble with his name on it, but surrounded by a sea of candles of every size that you can imagine,

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and hundreds of bouquets of flowers, and dozens of people kneeling in prayer. It is said of Jesus that the common people heard him gladly, and just so, the common people responded to the humility of Jesus as they saw it in good Pope John. The second thing I would ask you to think about when you remember Angelo Roncalli is this, that he had a deep and passionate love for people. In the

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tenth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks to his disciples about himself as the good shepherd and about his disciples as the sheep of his flock. And he talks about how the sheep respond to his voice and do not respond to any voice which they do not recognize, and that he welcomes them into his fold and that he protects them. He says he is willing to lay down his life for them. And then he

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says this interesting thing, "I have other sheep who are not of this flock, and I will bring them, and they will hear my words." Now what Jesus was saying in those words was this, that not all those who would claim him as Lord would come from Israel. There are others from other parts of the world who would hear his voice and respond to him as good shepherd. Now it is true that at the beginning

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of his ministry, he sent the disciples out to minister only within Israel. He said that they were not to move into other parts of the world for service, but it is also true that at the end of his earthly ministry, his last word of instruction to his disciples was, "Now you are ready to go out into all the world and make disciples of all nations." And even during that time when he

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confined his disciples to ministering in Israel, at that same time he extended and talked about a much wider ministry. For example, he lectured in Samaria. He said that being a Jew was no guarantee of salvation. The highest word of praise which he ever extended to anyone concerning their faith was to a Roman. He made a Samaritan the central character in one of his major parables. He said

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that people would be drawn to him from the four corners of the earth, and he did not describe himself as the light of Israel. He described himself as the light of the world. There was in Jesus, you see, this all-encompassing compassion and love for every human being everywhere, and he wished to draw them all to himself. And this same kind of compassionate, unifying love can be

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seen mirrored in the life of John XXIII. It was shown in many different ways. There was a time in his 50s when he was a papal delegate to Bulgaria, and his task there was to be particularly engaged in trying to build better relationships between the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. So beautifully did he succeed at this, so winsomely and graciously did he express the love

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of Christ in his own life, that when the old patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church died, he left instructions that over his heart in his casket was to be put a holy medal given to him by his friend Angelo Roncalli, or take his ministry in Turkey. When Mustafa Kemal became dictator of Turkey, being very anti-religious, and that included all religions, he decreed that no

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representative of any religion could wear any distinctive garb that applied to Muslims or Orthodox or Jews or Christians of other nature, whatever. They could not wear any distinctive garb. Many were outraged at this. Many left Turkey over this. Many turned their backs on that land because of this. But Angelo Roncalli called all of his priests to a church one day, and they all

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entered in their priestly regalia, and inside he had collected a great number of pieces of used clothing. And a few minutes later, when the doors of the church opened, the men walked forward in some rather outlandish costumes, the fit not always so good, but nonetheless they were in civilian attire. And for the remainder of his ministry in Turkey, he never wore anything other

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than civilian garb. And at the time of his election and again at his death, words of kindness and gratitude for his respect for the government and the nation of Turkey were prominently headlined throughout that nation, and that has been true of no other Pope. Or think of when he was patriarch of Venice. At the time when he was serving in Venice, the Communist Party in Italy was very

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active there. Now at that time, there was a rule in the Roman Catholic Church instituted by Pope Pius XII that if anyone became a communist, he or she was immediately excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. Angelo Roncalli never exercised that excommunication, and not only did he tolerate his Catholic brethren and others being communist, but when he became Pope, he put in a

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new rule which stated that a person could belong to whatever political party suited his desires, and with regard to communism, one could be a communist without fear of excommunication unless, of course, one accepted the atheistic teachings of communism. It is, of course, an obvious contradiction in terms to call yourself a believer and an atheist at the same time. Again, you see,

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he broadened the net. He was open and gracious and merciful to all. Come back with me again to St. Peter's in Rome. The monument to John XXIII, which stands in one of the side naves of the Basilica of San Pietro, is different from any other monument in that great Basilica. Most of the art there, as you know, is Baroque or Renaissance in style, but the monument to Pope

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John XXIII is a huge block of steel. It stands about 14 feet high, is about 8 feet wide, and probably a little over 2 feet thick, and etched into the front of this great block of steel, across the bottom of it, are symbols of all the world's hurt and pain and separation. There are walls and there are barbed wire and there are guns and other kinds of weapons. There are the broken

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bodies of children and of men and of women. There are all kinds of symbols which represent division and disunity and dissonance. And then rising up one side of this great piece of steel is a huge figure of John XXIII, and he is bending down very low with his arms extended, ready to pick all this up and press it to his own heart. The monument is stunning in its simplicity and it is very touching

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in its truthful tenderness. Mariel Trevor, who wrote one of the lives of John XXIII, says the whole matter, I think, in a single sentence. She writes, "Pope John did not see himself so much as the vicar of Christ's power as he saw himself as the vicar of Christ's love." And finally notice, and this of course most importantly, John XXIII was the great pope of ecumenical advance. There's

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an old story about a man who died and he went to heaven and an angel was taking him down the hall, and as they walked down the hall there were doors on either side that were closed, and coming out from under one door was water gushing out. And the man said, "Who's in there?" And the angel said, "Oh, that's the Baptist." And they went a little further and they passed another door and there

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was loud singing going on inside. And they said, "Who's in there?" He said, "Oh, that's the Methodist." And they went a little farther and they came to a door and you could hear a horrendous argument going on inside. And he said, "Who's that?" He said, "Oh, that's the Presbyterians." And then they came to a door which had wooden boards nailed across it and signs that said, "No trespassing. Keep out."

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And inside he could hear low conversation and then laughter, and then low conversation and then laughter. And he said to the angel, "Who's in there?" And the angel replied, "Oh, that's the Roman Catholics. They don't think anybody else is up here." Well, I haven't heard that attitude expressed by any member of the Roman Catholic Church for many, many years. In fact, the only time I hear that

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kind of talk, as if heaven is reserved exclusively for those who hold to one particular theological position and that there is no hope for any others, the only time I hear that kind of talk is from rigid, fundamentalist Protestants. John XXIII was interested in ecumenical advance from the youngest days of his priesthood. Of course, he could not advance his designs to the full until

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he became Pope, and this is the reason that he called the Second Vatican Council. He was asked on one occasion why he had summoned these bishops from all over the world, and he walked to the windows in his office and he threw them open and he said, "To let in some fresh air." His desire was to modernize the Church, and he never spoke of those who were not Roman Catholic as somehow

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lesser. He never spoke of them as being non-Catholic. He would always say, "They are our separated brethren." He was guided in much of this by one of those whom he read very faithfully, John Cardinal Newman. Newman said, "In what is necessary, let there be unity. Where there is difference, let there be liberty. And in all things, let there be love." There were only two

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times when Pope John interfered directly into the affairs of the Second Vatican Council, an authority and a power which he had. One was when he ordered that all of the observers from other churches and also from unbelieving groups be given seats right down front so they could see and hear everything, and he also opened all of the meetings of the council to them. Some people wanted to

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exclude those who were not Roman Catholic. The Pope welcomed them to all of the meetings. The other time that he interfered was when a document was brought in which had been prepared by a particularly conservative group within the church. Most of the bishops of the Roman Church were opposed to this document. They saw it as being very one-sided because the committee that drew

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it up was an unbalanced committee, and at that point, Pope John XXIII stepped in, appointed a new committee which was balanced, and the discussion on the nature of Revelation went forward from an even perspective. Many things have happened because of the Second Vatican Council. The 20th century experienced things because of the growth of the Roman Church in that council, which it had

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never known before. Freedom of belief without the interference of the state was held up for the first time in Roman Catholic teaching. The greatest emphasis on the personal study of the Bible that had ever appeared in the history of the Roman Church was brought forth, and I recently read one statistic in which it was suggested that 24% of all of the world's Catholics are actively

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engaged in the regular and faithful study of the Bible. And in addition to these things, out of that council came meetings between the finest biblical scholars from Rome and from the Orthodox tradition and from other churches, and out of those meetings has come a rich theological and philosophical and exegenical wine that has brought new flavor and excitement and insight to the

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Church. Now make no mistake, Pope John understood the Roman Catholic Church to be the one true Church, and he understood himself to be the infallible leader of it. But even though he never broke any major tenet of Roman Catholic doctrine, he brought into the Roman Church a freshness, a newness, an openness, and an excitement, an attractiveness which he hoped would draw others.

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And at the same time, when he looked at those others, whether they were drawn to Rome or not, he respected them for their differences, and he held them up as being sisters and brothers in Christ. In a very real sense, it can be said that the Roman Catholic Church has done more reforming in the 20th century than the Reformation churches like our own have been willing to do.

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Now sadly, since that council, some of the things that were gained have been lost. Some great teachers in the Roman Catholic Church have been silenced. There has been little progress with regard to the place of women in the Church. Some say that there is a tendency toward papal autocracy to be seen in the present Pope. That's a debatable matter. And unfortunately, there have

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been some instances in which the Church has joined together with local government officials to do things which are prejudicial in favor of the Roman Church. We have an experience of that here in Pittsburgh, where, for example, only 41 percent of our population is Roman Catholic, but 75 percent of the opportunities for television broadcast in this city are given to the Roman Catholics.

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And that's because the man who serves on the city's government, who has relationship to the television channels and so on, happens to be a brother in the Roman Catholic Church. Well, all these things to the side. Come with me to St. Peter's just one last time, and stand and look up into that great dome designed by Michelangelo. Around the bottom of the dome,

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carved into the stone in letters 12 feet high, are the words in Latin, "Tu es Petrus, thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." You remember those words of Jesus to Peter and how he followed them up by saying, "And to you I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and what you bind on earth will be bound on heaven, and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

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Now that text is the central text of the whole structure of Roman Catholic theology, for it is from this text that they derive the understanding of the absolute centrality and authority of the Pope. Now most Protestants disagree with the Roman Catholic interpretation of those words, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." Most Protestants say that the rock

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that is being referred to is not Peter himself, but rather the confession of faith which he had just made. You remember Jesus asking, "Who do men say that I am? Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Thou art Peter, and on this rock, on what you've just said, on that confession..." [silence]

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[silence] "...on me, the Son of the Living God, the church will be built." This is the view that is held by most Protestants when they seek to interpret this verse. I studied that passage of Scripture, I suppose, for 25 years. I studied it in Greek, I studied it in Aramaic, the language in which it

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was probably originally spoken, I have read dozens of books on the subject, and I have myself come to the conclusion, and I think most of the leading scholars in the field agree, that when Jesus said to Peter, "Thou art the rock," he was referring to Peter specifically. He was saying, "Peter, you are the rock on which I'm going to build my church." And by saying this, Christ gave to Peter

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a great honor and a great responsibility. But one must notice that at the same time one acknowledges this, there is no place in the Scriptures where it suggests that this office of Peter's is to be passed down from one generation to another. It was necessary for the first years, the establishment of the church, but there is no suggestion that it is then to be passed down from generation to

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generation. And insofar as the reference, "I give to you the keys of the kingdom, and what you bind will be bound, and what you loose will be loosed," yes, Peter said those words, Christ said those words to Peter, but he also said them to all of the other disciples. You can read about that in Matthew chapter 18 or in John chapter 20. And it's also significant to notice that at two different

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places in the New Testament, Peter was rebuked once by Paul and once by James. So any concept of infallibility falls in the face of those rebukes. So Protestantism and the Eastern Orthodox Church as well, two-thirds of the whole body of Christ, does not accept the papacy as the Roman Catholic Church understands it. Nevertheless, we all know that the Pope is the most well-known

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Christian in the world. Half of the world's Christians are Roman Catholics. There is no single figure recognized by more people, no matter what their belief, no matter where they live, there is no single figure who represents in and of himself Christianity to more people than does the Pope. When he proclaims the gospel, when he announces the mission of the church, no other

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living Christian can say those things and know as he says them that he will be heard by so many. And that is the reason, my brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, that we must always pray for the Pope, no matter whom he might be. But in our hearts, there will always be a special place for that old chubby Italian gentleman who was so beautifully homely, Angelo Giovanni Roncalli.

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And we will reverence him and respect him in a way that is altogether unique, because the purpose of his humble and loving life was the same from the early days of his priesthood till the last words he uttered on earth. For as he lay dying on Pentecost Sunday in June of 1963, he kept repeating one prayer over and over and over again. Ut unum sint. Ut unum sint. That they may all be one.

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That they may all be one. Let us pray. Our Father, Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, pray that the church might be one, and the Holy Spirit recorded those words so that down through the centuries we might have them always before us. Our prayer today, then, is altogether in accordance with Thy will. We pray it without doubt,

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without question, and with real earnestness of heart. O God, make the church one. Let there be no sacrifice of truth, but let there always be growth in love. And out of that love, ultimate truth will be found. And the name of that truth is Jesus. And hearing the cry of the one shepherd, all of the flock, even those of whom we know not,

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will come together, the one body joined to praise Thee and to save the world. Amen.