It's Just Snacktime Before we have Coffee Downstairs

My church is in the middle of a four week series on Communion. The readings and sermons and prayers all will focus around communion, with the purpose of exploring it's meaning and how Christ meets us in the bread and the cup. Best of all, we are celebrating the feast every Sunday for four Sundays in a row. I never really understood the once a month thing. If it were up to me it would be every Sunday 52 weeks a year. Talk about being fundamentalist -- that just seems fundamental to me.

I came across this interesting post at the blog "2 Ages Verging" on why Evangelicals don't get the sacraments. Ryan Cordle posits that it has much to do with the fact that evangelicals don't seem to want to face up to death. He might have something there except that most evangelicals don't make any connection with death and the eucharist. It may be true the Ev's are dense about death, but if there is no connection between death and the sacraments, then it seems unlikely that this is what causes evangelicals to miss the point.

Worth reading anyways.

Stumpy Worship

I recently attended a half day conference on worship and leading worship. It was conducted by a well known worship leader and musician (or perhaps he was a musician and worship leader). I say "well known" but that really is a relative sort of thing. That is to say he is well known in certain praise-and-worship-leading worship leading circles. Yes...I meant that sentence to read that way.

I suspected that I was in for something less than stellar, but I went into it saying that I was not closed to his message. I really was "openish" to what he had to say. I must say that I was not disappointed.

His initial message, about an hour and fifteen minutes of expounding on 2 Chronicles 29 was actually pretty good. Not earth-shaking, but a reasonably solid sermon on how YHWH calls us to worship Him and how he uses worship to shape us. Then we went to the Q&A and this is where we began to part ways. Every question and every answer was about music. The underlying assumption was a basic equation: music=worship. The reflexive property applies and it is an exclusive relationship. Worship is music and only music. There was no discussion of the reading of scripture, sermons and homilies, coporate prayer and confession, or even of sacraments. In his explanation of the text, he focused on sections like this:

As the offering began, singing to the LORD began also, accompanied by trumpets and the instruments of David king of Israel. The whole assembly bowed in worship, while the singers sang and the trumpeters played.

Yet he completely ignored these sections, and their implications for Christian worship:

They brought seven bulls, seven rams, seven male lambs and seven male goats as a sin offering for the kingdom, for the sanctuary and for Judah. The king commanded the priests, the descendants of Aaron, to offer these on the altar of the LORD. ²² So they slaughtered the bulls, and the priests took the blood and sprinkled it on the altar; next they slaughtered the rams and sprinkled their blood on the altar; then they slaughtered the lambs and sprinkled their blood on the altar. ²³ The goats for the sin offering were brought before the king and the assembly, and they laid their hands on them. ²⁴ The priests then slaughtered the goats and presented their blood on the altar for a sin offering to atone for all Israel, because the king had ordered the burnt offering and the sin offering for all Israel.

It was as if all that other stuff, the altars and the utensils and the blood and the animals and the sacrfice...that's not worship. It's something else.

Of course, Jesus is our sacrifice. We make different kinds of offerings than Hezekiah's priests, but our offerings ought not be limited to the musical kind. At one point, he even said something like, "I led them in worship for about 30 minutes, and then Paul preached..." I managed to not scream -- but just barely.

It's all just too truncated. Not wrong really, because music is and can be worshipful. But it is like playing basketball without any arms, just legs. You can do the running around part, but there are huge sections of the game that are simply missing. It would be easy, if you didn't know better, to think you were actually playing the game, because you could certainly still get all sweaty and out of breath from running around on the court, but it ain't the real deal. It's just part of it.

When worship is singularly about fuzzy feelings and the buzz you get from loud instruments played too high for too long, then it is so limiting. The scripture makes it clear that the apostles dedicated themselves to prayer, reading the scripture and the breaking of bread (communion). There is no mention of music. How did we get to the point where we have gone to the polar opposite of the Church of Christ and those old school orthodox Presbyterians that actually banned instruments? Now we don't ban music, it's ALL about the music.

The seminar section was followed by a 2 hour "worship concert" where his band performed lots of the music they had written for worship. I kept a rough count and I would estimate that about half the songs were actually about Jesus, using biblical images and wording to sing about God's character and work. The rest tended to be songs that expressed the singer's love, passion, commitment, dedication, etc. Nice songs, but dangerous because they sound like gospel, but they are not. These "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs did not dominate, but they were certainly a significant part of the repertoire. I can't condemn them entirely, because there is certainly an element of this responsive lyricism even in the Psalms. Yet it seem perilous to repeat them so often because the lead us to think that we can impress God if we are passionate enough, committed enough, or love him enough. Safer, I think, to repeat songs and stories about what God has done and is doing. Dead men can't sing, but Jesus can raise the dead and give them new voices.

One of my colleagues spoke in his defense to say that in the area from which he comes (Belfast Ireland) and in which he ministers, he almost certainly is reaching people who have been too long chased from the gospel by the church. I allow that this is almost certainly true, and is a perfect example of how God's grace can and does reach across our shortsightedness and incompetence to draw his people to himself. He meets us even in the stumpy awkward sessions we call worship services and his gospel prevails -- in spite of what form or shape our meetings take.

Yeast Burps and Sweat

Peter Reinhart talks about the 4 levels of understanding anything: Literal, Metaphorical, Political (ethical), and Mystical (anagogical). He illustrates this with bread.

My wife and I once considered becoming bakers. We did not have the capital to start the business but it always held a certain fascination for me. The nature of creating and consuming a "transformative" food, as Reinhart presents it here, resonates deeply with me. I love good bread. I love the idea of making something that nourishes people in a very fundamental and literal way. I also love the idea of helping people to understand other way that bread can nourish them. It is no accident that our eucharist is bread and wine, both of them transformed and transformative. He doesn't get explicit about it here, but he is treading sacramental ground and just opening the door a crack to let us begin to see how God uses mundane and ordinary things to make invisible Grace visible and tangible.

All the world, every part of creation is a sacrament of God's grace. Bread is a good place to start seeing that. 

Listen to Reinharts talk here. It's about 15 minutes.

The Glory of a Feast!

"Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers, why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry, or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half of earth's gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become. For all its rooted loveliness, the world has no continuing city here; it is an outlandish place, a foreign home, a session in via to a better version of itself -- and it is our glory to see it so and thirst until Jerusalem comes home at last. We are given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great" 

 -- Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, p. 189).

"I wish you well. May your table be graced with lovely women and good men. May you drink well enough to drown the envy of youth in the satisfactions of maturity. May your men wear their weight with pride, secure in the knowledge that they have at last become considerable. May they rejoice that they will never again be taken for callow, black-haired boys. And your women? Ah! Women are like cheese strudels. When first baked, they are crisp and fresh on the outside, but the filling is unsettled and indigestible; in age, the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling comes at last into its own. May you relish them indeed. May we all sit long enough for reserve to give way to ribaldry and for gallantry to grow upon us. May there be singing at the table before the night is done, and old, broad jokes to fling at the stars and tell them we are men . . . The road to Heaven does not run from the world but through it" 

(Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, p. 180).

Sacraments

A man digs a lump of rock from the ground. He puts it into furnace. The furnace is so hot that it melts the rock so that the dirt and dreck in it are skimmed off and the pure metal remaining is poured into a mold. The iron cools, and then the ingot is taken up again and thrust into a forge. Another man beats the iron with a hammer, flattening it, folding it, reheating it, shaping it, twisting it, heating and beating over and over. In the end, it is an exquisitely wrought latch, placed on the door of a cathedral, as graceful in form as it is in function, and by it thousands enter in to worship the one true God.

Another man puts a plow blade into the soil and turns up the rich black earth. He works the ground to prepare it for the seed that the sows. He watches the seed sprout, and grow and turn mature and ripe. At the appointed hour he reaps the wheat, threshes it, winnows away the chaff. He takes baskets and basket of this wheat to the miller, who grinds it to flour. The baker buys it, mixes it with water and yeast and puts it into an oven to bake bread. In the end, it too goes into the cathedral, where it is broken and served. If feeds not just the body, but the entire soul for in taking this bread, these people somehow take into themselves the One True God.

Two people gather up the sand of the sea. He places it in a kiln so hot that the sand grains melt together to become liquid. He refines this liquid and adds other minerals to color it. He rolls it out as it cools, so that it becomes sheets of solid light, colored and varied. She cuts the glass, and fits it together with strips of lead. From this she makes pictures of saints, images of prophets and priests and kings and patriarchs. In the end, they go into the windows of the cathedral, and those who look are reminded of how the Light of Christ shines through our lives, just like those saints. They think about the saints, and somehow move just a little bit closer to them.

Still another man sits at his desk for hours. In front of him are books on books on books. Above them all is the One Book of Books. To the untrained eye, it seems that he sits without moving. But the discerning watcher knows that he is wrestling with the text, grappling with what the One True God is saying to His people. It is as if with his bare hands he is trying to tear out the message. Some days it flows like cool water. Other days it is like an obstinate stone that will not budge. But this is his work, to wrestle, to grapple, to hold onto and ultimately to give away the Word to those who have ears to hear. In the end, the Preacher stands up and preaches, and the words he speaks open up the very Word of God to those present, and somehow, the Sprit moves and transforms a life.

A woman digs a soft lump of wet earth from the ground. She brings it back to her workshop. She mixes it with water, strains out the sand and grit, and dries the remaining silt. When it is dry enough, she lifts out a lump and slaps the clay onto the wheel. Her wet hands dance into and around the mud, lifting and pressing, teasing and demanding until the pitcher is fully formed. It is dried and placed into the kiln where the earth is transformed into stone. She paints it and fires it again so that it is now covered in a thin layer of bright glass. It’s shape is graceful and elegant and simple. A priest fills it with water, and asked God to bless it. He pours the water into the vessel, also made of clay. He dips his hand in the water and pours it onto the baby’s head, (dip) in the Name of the Father, (dip) and of the Son, (dip) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The water trickles musically over the soft thin hair and back into the font, and somehow the One True and Living God is well pleased.

Another man takes his shears out into the orchard. Carefully, he selects each branch for pruning. It is delicate work. These trees go back further into his family’s history than the records. In time the trees fruit, and the fruit ripens and is collected and pressed and rich green oil flows from the press, deeply scented, heavy and rich. It is placed into jars, and some into small flasks. In the end, it is poured out, and the priest dips his thumb into it and makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of a young man, now confirmed in the faith. He never forgets the feeling of that wet rich oil on his forehead, and for the rest of his life feels the mark of the Spirit upon him.

And so God meets us, not in the rarefied air of space, or in the bodiless spiritual someplace. He meets us here, on earth, right now. He presents Himself to us in everyday things that He himself declares holy. We find Him in other things that He has taught us to make holy. How is it that these base things can lift us up and exalt us even to the highest heavens. These are what he has chosen to help us see and know Him. It is mystery indeed.

Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus!!

Dominus Deus Sabaoth,

Pleni sunt caeli et terra in gloria tua.

Intersection

Most of us are in the habit of thinking of the world we live in as comprised of matter and spirit. We may not, however, give much thought to how these two aspects of God’s created order interact. We tend to think of matter as operating on one plane, and spirit as operating on another. In fact, to pick my own people, the evangelical protestant tradition of Christianity, we tend to want to fall into the Gnostic heresy with ease. We view matter as evil, and spirit as good. I would like to deal with that whole issue in other posts. What I want to look at here is how matter and spirit interact and even intersect.

Intersect is really the right word. This, I think, is perhaps what makes humanity unique in the created order and what gives us preeminence. It is in us, humanity, that physical matter and spiritual essence are uniquely connected. We are both body and spirit. When the two are separated, we are no longer alive nor fully human. Consider this quote from Wendell Barry’s essay Christianity and the Survival of Creation. He comments on Genesis 2:7 thusly:

My mind like most peoples, has been deeply influence by dualism, and I can see how dualistic minds deal with this verse. They conclude that the formula for man making is man = body + soul. But that conclusion cannot be derived, except by violence, from Gen 2:7, which is not dualistic. The formula given in Gen 2:7 is not man = body + soul; the formula there is soul = dust + breath…The dust, formed as a man and made to live, did not embody a soul. It became a soul.

The implications of this understanding are enormous and profound. As Barry goes on to explain, the very dust that we are made of is an expression of God’s spirit. As created by the Living God, our bodies are not dirty, sinful or unholy in any way. If this is true, then so many things that seemed forbidden become gifts of God.

How else could the incarnation be possible?

How else could the Church actually be the Body of Christ? Do we think this is just a metaphor? If it were, why would Jesus have asked Saul why he was persecuting Him (rather than saying “why are you persecuting my people.)?

If this is so, then suddenly grace can be given to us through mundane material objects like the water of baptism and the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Now the sacraments become a work of Christ, a gift to us. How then can the regular and common acceptance of these gifts become "commonplace" or "mean less?"

Why else would God then make it clear that He plans to remake Heaven and Earth? He will simply fix whatever has gone wrong with the physical world he made. But he will not annihilate it completely. We are made to inhabit a world of matter with both our bodies and our spirits joined together forever. We will not be disembodied sprit beings hovering in the heavens.

I grew up in a milieu that liked to imagine that if we could only peel off this mortal coil and live in the spirit, we would be holy. Not so, I think. We are called to holiness now and in this life and in this body. And Christ has given us the means to do so.

Somewhat to my surprise, I am becoming a sacramentalist.