Worship is who we are

I have recently arrived at a new parish.  There were some difficulties in the recent past in the life of this congregation, but the people are hopeful that God will renew and reinvigorate the fellowship.  Hearing about the past, and the hopes for the future, led me to think about much of the training I had in seminary and in the pastorate.

Much of what I was taught was to relate to the culture and be the “best game in town” for the people of the community.  In the words of one of the teaching pastors, “The Gospel is offensive to people.  We need to communicate it in such a way that people know they have been offended.”  This leads to ideas of contemporary music, designer coffee, cutting edge technology, and creativity in weekly gatherings.

The problem with the underlying assumption in all of this is that, if people come for the bells and whistles, the eye and ear candy, when a different congregation in the community performs better, the people are tempted to leave and take their friends with them.  This is the surface problem.  The deeper issue is that in looking to all of these superficials to “save” or grow a congregation, what we are doing is conforming the Church to the people, rather than echoing the proclamation of Kingdom for the past 2000 years, which is that the people need to be conformed to the Church.

People need to be conformed to the Church.  This is not a popular position today.  I think it has something to do with our inherent selfishness, our entraptment in the passions of sin, that lead us to rebel against this idea and try to remake the Church for every generation.  We can never do as good a job as society at large, however, without becoming indistinguishable from society at large.  Motivational speakers give better lectures, coffee houses have better drinks and more comfortable seats, and Hollywood has better drama.  Many congregations have tried to emulate these things, but in so doing forget that God makes a distinction between what is holy and what is not.

Personally, I think we succumb to this kind of thinking about remaking Church because we have forgotten (or never knew) our history.  The current congregation I serve was founded almost 125 years ago; the previous one I served was 176 years old.  And yet these ages are a drop in the bucket for the 2000 year history we have of the Church.  The United States itself has only been around for the last 10% of the life of the Church.  When we look at how many different situations, changing cultures, disasters, plagues, invasions, persecutions, nations, and kingdoms the Church has endured, we get a different sense of who we are.

If we are to bring new life to congregations, we need to do what no one else in our society does: Worship God.  We don’t need to worship ourselves and our desires, albeit with some language about God thrown in to seemingly “sanctify” our desires.  As the Church, worship is not what we do, it is who we are.  We would do well to see how we have worshiped in other changing times and see how God was faithful then.  Instead of creating the Church in our own image, we would do well to realize that the Church is the Body of  Christ and we are to be conformed to His image.

Reading List Suggestion

I have recently finished reading Mountain of Silence by Kyricaos Markides.  It is Markides’ account of several conversations with an Eastern Orthodox monk on the island of Cyprus.

This is an extremely interesting read, as Markides is very well read and articulate, and Father Maximos (with whom Markrides has his conversations) is also very well read and articulate.  Markrides has a very worldly and secular background, being a sociology professor, and brings that frame of thought to some very fundamental questions of the Christian faith.  Father Maximos, drawing on the deep history of Church thought, responds to Markrides’ questions in ways that make him (and many who read this book) have to take an honest look at many of his presuppositions in life.

This is a book that is interesting, challenging, and can be a useful tool for anyone who seeks to delve deeper into the faith, and possibly learn some answers to some of the questions that many skeptics have of the Church.

Enjoy!

Ashes to ashes…

During our Ash Wednesday service last week, my youngest daughter (3 years old) came forward with my wife to have ashes put on her head. She looked up at me with big eyes and asked, “Does it hurt, daddy?”

Of course I said, “No, honey,” but that got me thinking.

Ash Wednesday, and all of Lent for that matter, ought to hurt.  It is during this time of year especially that Christians look inward and see how much more God still has to work in us.  Our goal is to be conformed to the image of Christ, and we have a long way to go to reach that goal.  What we see inside, until we completely partake of the divine nature (2 Peter 1.3-4), ought to hurt us because it hurts God and breaks His heart.

Now I am not trying to be masochistic here.  This ought to be a good hurt because it shows us where in our lives we need more divine help and in which areas we are to pray and ask for the prayers of others for us.

May you have a good, and painful Lent.

Freezing…and Freezing…and Freezing

I have never experienced a cold like I have for the past few days.  It was only in the 20’s and 30’s out, but it was a cold that had no relief.  I’ve been in negative 30 before, but there was always an opportunity to warm up.

Last Monday an ice storm swept through our area and knocked out our power.  We were without power as the air grew colder and colder.  Our fireplace was the only thing that kept us warm, but our house was designed to have the fireplace for ambiance, not warmth.

After three days, I sent my wife and four kids to a relative’s house and decided I was going to stick it out.  That was probably the dumbest idea I have ever had in my entire life.  Six bodies give off a lot more warmth in a confined space than one does.  It got very, very cold in the house, even with the fire.

I left the next day.

I have often wondered what it was like in the days of the settlers.  Now I know, and now I am extremely glad I did not live then.

Thoughts upon death

Our community has recently experienced a tragedy.  Three high school seniors, foot ball players and very popular boys, died when their boat capsized in frigid waters.  One of the boys’ bodies has been recovered and the other two are still missing almost two weeks later.  This even has rocked this town and found everyone asking why.

Whenever a young person dies the response is usually similar: the death is seen as unnatural because it happened too soon.  The boys did not have the opportunity to grow, have families of their own, and do all the things everyone else gets to do in life.  They were robbed of their futures and it does not make sense.

Implicit in this is the idea that when an old person dies it is a part of the natural order of things and acceptable.

I cannot agree with that idea.  Death is never ok.  It is not a part of the natural order of things.  Even when senior citizens die it is robbing them of something.  Think of those situations that are all to commonplace any more.  An elderly person’s body is failing but her mind is whole and strong.  She questions why this has happened and prays every day that God would take her and end the misery she is in.  Or a person’s body is strong and healthy but his mind is gone due to Alzheimer’s and his loved ones question why this happens and pray every day that God would simply take him and end this dark and shadowy version of their father/grandfather/husband/brother.  The aging process and the dying process are never normal, nor are they every natural.

We were created to be immortal.  Death is not natural; it is the enemy.  It can be a mercy and a release, but it is not natural.  The good news of Christianity is that Jesus Christ defeated death.  There is an ancient Easter hymn in the Church that says, “Jesus Christ is risen from the dead / trampling down death by death / and upon those in the grave / bestowing life.”  This is the recreation of what is and the renewal of what was supposed to be in our lives.  In Christ we become immortal once again and death has no power over us.  This is because, when we convert, we join Jesus in his death.  We die with him in order that he may raise us up to new life in him.  We are done with death because we are united to the author of life.

Yes, we still suffer the effects of this fallen world in our bodies.  We inherited that fallen condition.  But it does not have the last word.  When we are Christians, we have been reborn by water and the Spirit, and death no longer has any power or sway over us.

Would that we would believe this and act accordingly.

Obama the Apostate?

There has been much internet chatter about whether or not Barak Obama is a Muslim.  With a middle name like Hussein, it is easy to see how some people can come to that conclusion, especially since he was registered as a Muslim when he lived in Indonesia and attended a Muslim school there (of course almost all of the schools in Indonesia are Muslim).

But Obama has repeatedly denied the accusation that he is Muslim and has pointed to a very definate conversion experience in coming to faith in Jesus Christ.  And there are some that question the validity of such a conversion under the pastoral leadership of Rev. Wright, but it seems that those who claim Obama is Muslim or that Rev. Wright could not have led him to Christ are missing one fundamental element: God.

Christians believe in the core of their being that God can reach anyone and that God will accept anyone who sincerely accepts His gift of savlation in Jesus Christ.  If I were to question Obama’s conversion, I would have to question my own, or that of anyone else for that matter.  If Obama says that he has accepted Christ and that he has a relationship with God the Father through the Holy Spirit, who am I to say that could not happen.  And as for Rev. Wright, the fact that people were and are converted through his ministry gives me hope for my own ministry that God can use even me.

No, what concerns me about Obama’s faith is not a questioning of his conversion or even the brand of Christianity he was discipled into at his home church.  It is the religion that many in the world will see as that which he converted from:  Islam.

Now whether or not Obama was ever a Muslim in practice or faith matters very little at this point.  The fact remains that he is perceived as having been, at one point in his life, Muslim.  Muslims generally do not look favorably upon conversions from their faith to another.  And many of the extremist groups with which we are so deeply engaged on the world scene as of late take an even dimmer view of conversions from their faith: they kill the apostates.

This seems to present an interesting situation to the prospect of an Obama presidency in matters of diplomacy in the Muslim world.  How would those countries (the people in the streets, not necessarily the governments) react to the leader of the United States of America being an apostate?  Would it help the cause of minorities in those countries?  Would it diminish our already damaged image within them?  Would it make Obama a target for more serious attempts upon his life?  Would it encourage more attacks on not just the “crusaders” but now the “crusaders being led by an apostate”?

Rick Warren held his interviews becase he believes that faith must inform policy.  I agree.  And the perception of faith, or lack thereof, informs reactions to policy.

This is something we need to consider.

Convergence Worship in the Extreme

My daughters all attend the local Catholic elementary school. As a part of their week, they attend Mass (Catholic worship service). This past week my wife and I decided to stay for the service after we dropped off our kids for school. Our oldest daughter, who is seven, was reading a portion of the Scripture for the service and we wanted to be there to hear her read (she did absolutely great!).

The opening hymn for the service was Shine, Jesus, Shine, which is a fairly contemporary service. It was even in the service book along with other contemporary favorites! Now, admittedly, I haven’t been to a Mass in a long, long time, but I was blown away with the amount of contemporary worship songs in their service book when my own denomination, the United Methodist Church, doesn’t even include these songs in its hymnal.

Then, at the end of the service, the priest brought out a monstrance. This is a large, golden object that is similar to a lampstand, but instead of having a spot for a candle at the top, there is a kind of sculptured sun. In the center of the sun is an open place where a piece of the wafer from the Eucharist is placed. The priest set this all up and announced that they would be having a period of “adoration of the blessed sacrament” immediately following the service.

This adoration devotion is something from the mediaeval days of the Roman Catholic Church in which visibly seeing Christ (in the form of the wafer from Communion–remember Roman Catholics believe that the elements in the Eucharist literally and actually transform into the body and blood of Christ) replaced actually receiving Christ. For more information on this service, click here.

Shine, Jesus, Shine and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Now that is convergence!

Church and Race

Today I ran across an article on CNN’s web page Why Many Americans Prefer Their Sundays Segregated and I found it quite interesting.  There is a wonderful quote:

“But interracial church advocates say the church was never meant to be segregated. They point to the New Testament description of the first Christian church as an ethnic stew — it deliberately broke social divisions by uniting groups that were traditionally hostile to one another, they say.”

The ‘first Christian church’ was the only Church there was, so of course everyone worshiped together!  This is one of my pet peeves.  People look at something in the New Testament and then try to make it fit their preconceived notions of what is right and wrong without taking into account a) the first century was a radically different culture than we have today and b) 2000 years has passed since then.  When people forget that Jesus lived in history, and that the Church has had a whole lot of history, they end up with very bad ideas of how things ought to be.  This is a wonderful case in point.

First of all, the “ethnic stew” didn’t work.  There were two people groups, Jews and non-Jews.  Guess what?  The non-Jews ended up excluding the Jews from the Church (it is a bit more complicated than that, but essentially that’s what happened over a five to seven hundred year period).

Second, we now live in a world that has churches separated by race.  This means that, of course people are going to attend racial churches.  Racial churches exist.  Now they may have been born out of systemic sin, but they exist nonetheless, and we can’t force that to change.

I personally don’t understand the hoopla over the issue, anyway.  I am a part of a denomination that is continually apologizing for racism and is ever-seeking new ways to be inclusive (to the point of excluding pictures of white males on its website homepage, because everyone knows that to be inclusive means excluding “the man”) and things don’t change.  We still have congregations that prefer to worship in styles in which they are accustomed and with people who look like them.

That is not systemic racism.  That is the human condition.

The first church I served was a 99.99% retired congregation.  They intentionally cut ties with the preschool that was using its facility because they were a “retired church.”  Was this age-ism?  Perhaps.  Was it sin?  I’ll leave that for God to decide.  The point for them was that they wanted people around with whom they could relate.  Society (and the denominational hierarchy) was constantly giving them the message that “old people don’t matter…we want young people because they have more life to give.”  They liked traditional worship, both liturgical and informal, camp-meeting style.  And they liked their organ music.

When we look at it from an age perspective, it seems logical that people would want to congregate with others like them with similar preferences in worship style.  But when we start talking about the color of people’s skin, all of a sudden it is systemic sin and institutional racism.

Now why is that?

Confusing theology with self-esteem

My kids have a video from Max Lucado’s Hermie series about a stink-bug named Stanley.  Stanley is upset because God made him stinky, and no one wants to be around him.  God tells Stanley that He made him that way for a reason and he does not make mistakes.  At the end of the show, after a lot of angst on the part of Stanley (and all of the other characters trying to deal with the fact that Stanley stinks), there is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to celebrate that Stanley is a stink-bug because his smell saves the day.

Veggie-Tales usually has a similar theme: You are who God made you to be, and that is all that matters.  Don’t let other people tease you or make you feel bad.  “God made you special and He loves you very much.”

These self-esteem messages to kids do have their place, but when this is the only theology that kids (or their parents for that matter) receive, it becomes detrimental to the faith.  Let me explain.  If I were to take these affirmations of my own self-worth as theological truths (God made me how I am and loves me very much), then there is no problem whatsoever with a whole host of inclinations I may have.  I am a thief.  I am gay.  I am a womanizer.  I am greedy.  I am lazy.  I am a glutton.  But God made me this way, so it must not be a sin, therefore I am going to read the Bible and all theology through the lense of my personal internal struggle as being a struggle with societal expectations of me, and not sin–because God made me this way!

Do you see where this is going.  Right now in the United Methodist Church the debate is about homosexuality, and the argument is usually that God created people in this fashion because “they have always felt this way.”  Therefore God is the cause of the homosexual attraction and, since God cannot make or create sin, homosexual attraction must not be sin.  And if that is not sin, then those passages in the Bible and Church history that portray homosexuality as sin must be reinterpreted to fit the feelings I have always had.  This is bad theology and a very, very slippery slope.

If we did not live in a world that has sin in it, I would agree that however someone has always felt must be the way God intended it to be.  But we live in a world where individuals have also grown up and always felt selfish and greedy, ready to exploit others for their own personal gain.  We live in a world where individuals have always felt self-loathing and cut themselves.  We live in a world where individuals do not get the chance to grow up beacuse they died moments after birth due to a defect in their genetic make-up.  And God did not intend these to happen.  They occur because we exist in a cosmos that is in need of redemption, and that cosmos includes our feelings and our natures.

I am a big fan of St. Patrick and I love the prayer attributed to him.  There is one portion of it that usually gets left out of most of the abreviated versions in print for Protestants.  It comes before the famous “Christ before me; Christ behind me…” passage.  It prays:

I arise today

through God’s strength to pilot me:

God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me,

God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me,

God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me,

God’s way to lie before me, God’s shield to protect me,

God’s host to secure me:

against snares of devils,

against temptations of vices,

against inclinations of nature,

against everyone who shall wish me ill,

afar and anear, alone and in a crowd

Please note “against temptations of vices, against inclinations of nature…”  Patrick and the Celtic Church Tradition he helped to found understood well the inner struggles with sin that we all have, a struggle that is always there from as long as we can remember in our lives.

The United Methodist Church would do well to recapture this theological point, rather than the self-esteem affirmations we peddle to kids, as foundational for our understanding of sin and salvation.

If you would like to read the entire Prayer of St. Patrick, it is found here.

A Radical Idea

Here’s something worth considering (maybe):

Perhaps John McCain and Barak Obama ought to reinvest their campaign contributions to jump-start the struggling economy or provide necessities to families on the brink.  I mean, come on!  When you can raise tens of millions of dollars in one month, and do it month after month, why not share the wealth.  Or are tv ads and getting your name on the letterhead at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue really more important than the economic vitality of the American people?