When Did Church Become an Event?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has waxed and now, hopefully, is beginning to wane, what was once just an unsettling undercurrent in Western church life has come to a boil and is now threatening to overflow into open conflict. Such conflict is already a reality in several congregations.

Various factions are forming over the issue of “reopening,” “regathering,” or whatever trendy term we want to use to describe the resumption of in-person Sunday morning worship services. And church people are everywhere on the spectrum regarding this issue. A few are calling other brothers and sisters who are not as cautious as they are unbelieving murderers. Many others wish to exercise a gentler caution. There are those who want to honor the governing authorities. But then there is the camp that does not feel there is much risk and wants to meet again as soon as possible. Still others want to obey God rather than man and meet regardless of any imposed guidelines. And then there are the few who are even crying persecution and are ready to take up arms to defend their rights (which, by the way, is not how the truly persecuted church has ever responded).

There are a lot of reasons behind the swirling emotions and rhetoric—nationalistic syncretism, consumer-driven ecclesiology, paranoid delusions, naked fear, cold logic, warm concern for others, to name a few. (Just ask the people at other spots on the spectrum, and they will be happy to tell you your motives.) But one of the factors that trouble me the most is the disturbing notion that many people see church as an event these days.

We tend to anachronistically read our context into the New Testament passages that talk about believers gathering, failing to note that more often than not, such gatherings took place in homes, not massive buildings with steeples, smoke machines, coffee bars, or witty sayings on their notice boards. This is not to say that massive, regular meetings of believers in buildings designed specifically for that purpose is unbiblical. But it is to say that such practices in such facilities are expedients and not a requirement of the faith.

The greatest example of this anachronistic hermeneutic is Hebrews 10:25. It ranges in translation from “Let us not give up meeting together” to “Not forsaking the assembly.” This is the prooftext that defends the notion that we must resume Sunday morning worship services by any means possible as quickly as we can. We are disobeying, or, at the least, disappointing God if we do not meet in our buildings on Sunday mornings.

Such a reading makes the twin errors of failing to understand the occasion of Hebrews and reading our context into it. The writer of Hebrews addressed his letter to Jews who had turned to Christ but who were now on the verge of turning back away from Jesus due to intense persecution on the part of their fellow non-Christian Jews-some of them their own flesh and blood! To make matters worse, they were being excommunicated from their local synagogues. The synagogue was much more than just a place of worship; it was the cultural community center of Jewish people in whatever place they found themselves. These Jewish Christians had taken to avoiding meeting with other Jewish Christians out of fear of being discovered and thrown out of their ethnic communities and family households.

Also, note the reason the writer issues the mandate not to give up meeting together. They are to gather to encourage one another, not to placate God or earn his favor. We must also remember that he was not writing during a pandemic in which all large gatherings were prohibited on the basis of preserving life. And he was not writing in an age when technology such as livestreaming and videoconferencing was not only possible but easily accessible by most of his readership.

When we casually read Hebrews 10:25 through our eyes rather than the original audience’s eyes, we picture people finding more important things to do-like sleeping in, going to the lake, or heading to a football game-rather than showing up at a large public worship center in a country where it is free to do so and family members aren’t likely to disown them if they do.

To the writer of Hebrews (and to the rest of the New Testament writers), the church was a people he encouraged to stay together, stay focused on Jesus, and to stay on mission. It was not an event he was trying to promote.

I get the appeal of making church an event rather than a community of people who trust in Jesus and who are trying to live out his mission. When we make church an event, we can measure our fidelity to the cause much more accurately and with far less personal effort. If I’m there “every time the doors are open,” I’m a good Christian. When we make church an event, it is easier to judge who is in and who is out. When we make church an event, those of us in ministry can count success by the numbers of butts in pews rather than the depth of the people we are discipling to make more disciples. And when we make church an event, we can compartmentalize our faith, limiting it to an hour each week on Sunday (or three hours per week, counting Sunday school and our small group) and keep the rest of our day-to-day life under our own will and direction.

If that is the mindset, I can see why people are getting antsy as the doors to our public houses of worship remain closed during the pandemic.

Church was never intended to be an event. Church has always been a community of people who trust in Jesus and who seek to live out his mission.

I will be the first one to say that there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction with other believers. Doing ministry behind a screen has some serious limitations. I believe Sunday morning worship gatherings ought to be a little picture of what heaven will be like—God’s people gathered in true community in his presence, enjoying the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb, and giving him praise and honor as they celebrate life and intimacy with one another and with God. It’s a little hard to look at two dozen little Zoom feeds on my screen and get that kind of foreshadowing, or to watch a livestream on my phone and feel like I’m part of something much bigger than myself. But right now, it will do. It’s not ideal, but Sunday morning gatherings are not ideal, either. They are to serve as a foreshadowing of the ideal—heaven.

If the argument is being made to re-whatever as soon as possible because of bad hermeneutics and faulty theology, I have just one thing to say.

Stop. 

Jesus didn't die so we would gather in big buildings on Sunday mornings. He died so that we could be together with him and with one another for all eternity.

Grace and peace.

Photo credit: "Admit One" by Quack712 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Celebrate the Feast

One of the few distinctions between my “tribe’s” expression of the faith (the American Restoration, or Stone-Campbell Movement) and the rest of the greater Protestant Evangelical world is our emphasis on the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper every Sunday.

In this blog, I do not want to get into the frequency of the Lord’s Supper. I believe there is freedom in our frequency (and that perhaps weekly isn’t even often enough). What I want to look at today is the purpose of the Lord’s Supper as I know it, the spirit in which we ought to participate in it, and the benefits of doing so.

My very first experience of the Lord’s Supper was dark, somber, individualistic, and, well, confusing. I am not so sure that as an outsider, confusion was not an inappropriate reaction. In the early church, those who had not yet made a decision for Jesus and had it confirmed through baptism were banned from this part of the worship gathering. There should be some element of mystery to the Lord’s Supper that outsiders should encounter.

But dark, somber, and individualistic? It reminded me more of a funeral than it did the past and future feasts the Lord’s Supper commemorates and foreshadows. And even funeral dinners have smiles and laughter. This had none of that.

Sadly, this is how many churches within the Stone-Campbell Movement “celebrate” the Lord’s Supper. I believe the reason is threefold: an unawareness and misunderstanding of Scripture, the Protestant movement’s lack of confessional liturgy, and a disproportionate emphasis on the death of Jesus during the event itself. Allow me to explain.

TABLE MANNERS

Above all else, God’s story of salvation history within the Bible is his pursuit of restored communion with his creation. Communion is the act of sharing, having something in common, participating in one another’s life and story. From eternity, the Godhead had this communion within itself—the perichoresis (infinite, interlocked, intermingled “dancing”) of Father, Son, and Spirit. Desiring to share this kind of communion with someone outside of the Godhead, the triune God created man. The Genesis account shares with us the incredible experience of God and Adam walking side by side through the garden—in communion.

Of course, things went awry. Man rebelled. He and all creation were cursed. Communion was severed between God and man, between man and his fellow, and between man and creation itself. But God wasn’t content to let it stay that way. The rest of the Scriptures unfold God’s great plan of renewing that original communion.

Through the season of election, God called people to be his representatives, starting with Abraham and the patriarchs, culminating in the people of Israel, and the later remnant. And then, through the redemption, or “buying back” of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God calls all of mankind back to him. But things are finished quite yet. Those of us who answer that call live in the “now and not yet” as we eagerly await the renewal of all things and perfect communion with God, with one another, and with God’s created order.

Throughout God’s story of salvation, he has operated by establishing covenants with his people. A covenant is an agreement between two parties. In this case, it is the greater (God) offering terms to the lesser (mankind). To establish and seal a covenant, something must be sacrificed at an altar. It is a means of ensuring fidelity to the terms of the deal. When covenants are established, Scripture makes it clear that when at the time and place of sacrifice (the altar), it is appropriate to experience sadness, to make penance, to give confession, and to seek forgiveness.

Not so at the table. The table is where the covenantal meal, the feast, takes place, Feasts commemorate and celebrate the covenant. God, the overseer of the covenant, is present at the table as his people’s host. Throughout Scripture, the table is a place where the most intimate human interactions outside of the marriage bed take place. In Scripture, the table is marked by joy, intimacy, community, celebration, and gratitude.

Jesus came to restore the joy, intimacy, community, celebration, and gratitude that the Fall and its curse stole from man. How telling it is that over 20% of Luke’s Gospel records Jesus dining at the table with the people around him! Jesus wasn’t at the table because he struggled with overeating like I do. He was there because he wanted to know and be known by the people around him.

The amazing thing about the Lord’s Supper is that it not only reminds us of the establishment and sealing of the covenant between God and us (Jesus’ sacrifice and our baptism into it), but it also points forward to the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant (the renewal of all things kicked off by the great wedding feast of the Lamb)! And what’s more, we are powerfully reminded that Jesus is Emmanuel—God-with-us. This is what is called anamnesis and prolepsis, a participation of the past and anticipation of the future as we are made more aware of God’s presence in the present.

All too often I have witnessed in our churches an overemphasis of the altar aspect of our covenant. As someone once said, “We tend to leave Jesus on the cross at communion.” And that’s sad. We can never move the table out from under the shadow of the cross, but we dare not leave Jesus there. He is with us in the present and is preparing a place and a feast for us in the future! 

Which does our practice of the Lord’s Supper resemble more?

ALTAR	TABLE
Solemn Individual Sorrow Remorse Introspective Penance Focused on Cost	Celebrative Communal Joy Thanksgiving Interactive Commitment Focused on Presence

DON’T LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges to the spirit in which the Lord’s Supper should be celebrated stems from three verses in the Bible combined with Protestantism’s traditional dislike of tradition (yes, enjoy the irony). The three verses are 1 Corinthians 11:27-29:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself (ESV).

Taken by themselves, it is easy to see why these verses make for a very somber, serious, individualistic, and introspective experience. However, we must look at them in their context. The Apostle Paul is taking the Corinthian church to task earlier in the chapter for the division within its ranks, particularly at the Lord’s Table itself. They are not waiting for one another. They gobble up everything before others can get a chance to participate! It was this abuse that eventually turned the Lord’s Supper from being part of an agape (love) feast to the Chic-let and shot glass of Welch’s it is today!

Paul is warning his readers here that if they approach the Lord’s Supper in an “It’s all about me” manner rather than an “It’s all about us and Jesus” manner, we’re heading down a dangerous path. He’s not advising them just to discern the physical body of Jesus in the bread; the context tells us that he’s also advising them to discern the metaphorical “body” of Christ—our fellow brothers and sisters.

How crazy is it that in an earnest attempt to obey this passage, we actually do the opposite of what Paul commands when we make the Lord’s Supper this private, introspective, individualistic affair!

THESE AREN’T MY CONFESSIONS

Also, most Protestant worship gatherings set aside no time for confession. This was a natural pushback against the trappings of many traditions that had become meaningless opportunities for abuse. But Scripture, again and again, shows us the importance of confessing our sins before God and before one another. A time of reflection and confession before the Lord’s Supper marks many of the “high church” Protestant liturgies. (Liturgy refers to the elements of a worship service.) For us in “low church” liturgies, we do not have such an opportunity.

But we need such an opportunity! And so we force upon the Lord’s Supper the confessional element of worship that it was never intended to represent. The misunderstanding of 1 Corinthians 11:27-29 reinforces this thinking. I’ve heard more than one person say, “I examined myself to see if I was worthy to take the Lord’s Supper this week, and I abstained because I didn’t feel I was.” Really? If that was my approach to the Lord’s Supper I would never participate. None of us are ever, on our own merit, worthy to sit at the table with Jesus. But Jesus, as our gracious host, invites us to the feast he’s prepared.

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

So what do we gain if we approach the Lord's Supper in this way? Here are just a few blessings:

• A deeper awareness of Christ's presence.
• A joyful look forward to the future rather than only a somber glance back at the consequences of our sin.
• A more accurate picture of heaven, for the Lord's Supper is a preview of a coming attraction--the great wedding feast of the Lamb!
• An easing of doubt and fear as to one's worthiness to sit at the table with Jesus. It's not about you. It's about him and us.

YOUR MOVE

If I’ve sold you on the thought that the Lord’s Supper ought to be an interactive time marked by celebration, community, joy, thanksgiving, and recommitment as we experience a greater awareness of Jesus’ presence now while looking back to what he did for us and looking forward to what he will do for us, what steps can you take to make that thought a reality in practice?

If you feel your church leadership is open to discussing the issue, share with them your heart on the issue. Feel free to show them this blog post. I’d be glad to discuss it further and with greater detail with anyone interested.

You may not worship in a place where there is much freedom to express and encourage needed changes in how the Lord’s Supper is observed. If that’s the case, I encourage you to do the following: 

• Celebrate the Lord’s Supper in your home with your family and loved ones. Jesus did not set a limit on the frequency or the day. “As often as you do this” were his words.
• Use a substantial amount of bread and fruit of the vine.
• Break the bread during the event.
• Take it by intinction (dipping the bread into the cup).
• Focus on what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do.
• Play Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration.”
• Wear party hats, blow up balloons, and throw confetti!

I’m only half-joking about those last two. The Lord’s Supper is serious. It does point back to Jesus’ sacrifice for us. But the Lord’s Supper is also a serious party. It points forward to the renewal of all things, consummated at the great wedding feast of the Lamb. And you and I, along with Jesus, get to experience it all in the right here and now.

If you’d like to learn more, I highly recommend the following book:

Hicks, John Mark. Come to the Table: Revisioning the Lord’s Supper. Siloam Springs, AR; Leafwood  Publishers, 2003.

If you’re interested in acquiring a nice plate and chalice set, check out a local artist who has hooked both us and our church up—Soil Pottery.

Grace and peace.

Prayer for Sunday, May 24. 2020

St. Patrick

May the Strength of God pilot us.

May the Power of God preserve us.

May the Wisdom of God instruct us.

May the Hand of God protect us.

May the Way of God direct us.

May the Shield of God defend us.

May the Host of God guard us

Against the snares of the evil ones,

Against temptations of the world.

May Christ be with us!

May Christ be before us!

May Christ be in us,

Christ be over all!

May Thy Salvation, Lord,

Always be ours,

This day, O Lord, and evermore. Amen.

-          St. Patrick

Honest Prayer

"Commedia? Carnivale? Plague?" by Crazy Uncle Joe (Creative Commons)

Prayer is essentially the expression of our heart longing for love. It is not so much the listing of our requests but the breathing of our own deepest request, to be united with God as fully as possible. – Jeffrey D. Imbach, The Recovery of Love

Who am I when I pray?

As a devotee of Brennan Manning, I am aware of what he calls “the Imposter,” the false self that seemingly all of us constantly battle in our lives. The Imposter is our substitute, shield, and safety net. It promises to protect the hurt, vulnerable, and ashamed parts of us, the part that we fear others might one day discover and subsequently abandon and leave in isolation.

The ironic thing about the Imposter is that it delivers to us exactly what it promises to deliver us from. The false self we constantly roll out to others to protect who we really are ironically leaves our true selves in isolation. When concealed by the imposter, our true self neither knows others or is known by them. We desperately want to be accepted and loved by those around us, and we believe this defense mechanism will do the trick. But it does just the opposite! Worse, even if we are able to somehow manipulate others into loving our Imposter, it leaves our true selves feeling even less accepted and loved than before.

It is bad enough to experience this in our relationships with those around us. How much more so when we experience it in our relationship with God! Prayer, one of the most vital channels by which we deepen our love affair with God, can drive us farther away from him when we choose to wheel our Imposter out into the presence of God. We go to prayer in desperate need to experience God’s acceptance and love . . .

. . . but God can’t accept and love what isn’t there.

Gerald May put it this way:

I am seduced and enticed by a certain image of myself as a whole, holy, loving man who is well on his way to becoming free from attachments. When this image comes up in my prayer, it causes me to pose and posture; I find myself trying to make my prayer fit my image of how a holy man would pray. I no longer really invite God into my prayer. It becomes an act, a scene I play out on my own stage for my own edification. God is there in spite of this silliness, but, for the time being, I am unaware of that saving fact (Addiction and Grace, p. 100).

Thomas Merton echoes the fruitlessness of the false self:

This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy (from James Finlay’s Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, p.34).

And Brennan Manning drives the point home:

Obviously, the impostor is antsy in prayer. He hungers for excitement, craves some mood-altering experience. He is depressed when deprived of the spotlight. The false self is frustrated because he never hears God’s voice. He cannot, since God sees no one there. Prayer is death to every identity that does not come from God. The false self flees silence and solitude because they remind him of death (Abba’s Child, p. 43).

Melancholy sets in when we consider that this might be as good as it gets with God. I think this is why so many of Jesus’ followers strive in, fail at, and give up on intimate prayer life. We’ve never been brave enough to come to God in complete spiritual nakedness. We fear to bring our true selves into the light of God’s presence, for then we will be known for who we truly are. And how could anyone love us for who we really are?

There is, of course, an alternative to a shallow and distant prayer life. And it is simply this: There is one who dares to love us for who really are. Jesus the Nazarene, and his Father who sent him to rescue us.

Oh I know, that’s old hat. We learned that in Sunday School. And I think if we took a lie detector test and were asked if we believed Jesus loves us, we’d pass with flying colors.

But most people will miss intimacy with God by about eighteen inches. That’s the average distance between a person’s brain and her heart. We’ve got the head knowledge pf God’s love, but we really haven’t let it trickle down into our heart where it can begin to transform us.

It is only we have truly incorporated into our fabric the reality that God loves us unconditionally—no matter our hurts, habits, and hangups—that  we can start to bring out our true selves, bit by bit, into the presence of God without fear of judgment or abandonment. And that’s when the real miracle of transformation begins: God begins to reshape us into a closer resemblance of how we should be.

It is the scandalous love of God that empowers us to take a fearless moral inventory of ourselves, shed every disguise, and enter into his presence with every wart and blemish exposed, hungry for his grace to cover our failures and his power to help us make us better imitators of him.

One of Brennan Manning’s favorite sayings was that God loves us as we are and not as we should be.

It’s only when that becomes heart knowledge that we can engage in honest prayer.

Honest prayer is engaging in conversation with God as we are, and not as we should be.

Grace and peace.

Sunday Prayer - Mothers Day, May 10, 2020

A Liturgy for a Moment of Frustration at a Child

 

Let me not react in this moment, O Lord,

in the blindness of my own emotion.

Rather give me—a fellow sinner—

wisdom to respond with a grace

that would shepherd my child’s heart

toward your mercies,

so equipping them

for the hard labors

of their own pilgrimage.

Amen.

 

Douglas Kaine McKelvey

 

Sunday Prayer, April 26, 2020

Francis of Assisi (1181-1226 CE)

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where the is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. 

Amen

What Is Celebrate Recovery?

For many of us, the Christian walk is not a smooth road. There are a lot of speed bumps, ruts, and potholes—in the form of negative experiences due to our own actions, or the actions of others, or of just living in a broken world, These obstacles slow or stop our progress. There are also many billboards the Enemy has placed alongside the road, signs that advertise so many quick fixes to the quest for fulfillment: “Turn at the next exit for pleasures that will change your life!” “Spiritual palliative care on the cheap ahead!” “Stop! Turn around! You missed your exit to security through your will to power!” These unhealed wounds and empty substitutes (and countless others like them) are a part of what Celebrate Recovery has come to call our “hurts, hang-ups, and habits.”

I have got my share of those. I have got plenty of scars from childhood trauma, bad breaks, and self-inflicted wounds. My lack-of-dad issues and too-much-of-granddad issues can often trigger flight-or-fight responses when faced with difficult men. And do not get me started on my mom issues. During my walk, I have come to realize I often turn down the side-street of people-pleasing in search of the affirmation and accolades of others to satisfy my yearning for peace. I have also taken the exit to overeating to numb my anxiety or loneliness or hurt feelings. And I have pulled over on the shoulder to roll down my window and throw a few bucks at one of my favorite drug dealers—overspending—in order to get a quick high. And I will get a temporary fix but only end up feeling worse about myself and even farther away from God.

If you are like me, you could use help with all your personal baggage.

Birthed from the ministry of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, Celebrate Recovery (CR from here on out) provides the helping hand that so many of us need to get over our past, break free from our present, and head toward a brighter future. CR is a twelve-step program with a couple of major differences from typical twelve-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

The first major difference is that CR makes no bones about who the program points to as the only true “Higher Power.” That person is the triune God of the Bible. Almost all the other programs of this nature keep their Higher Power vague and ambiguous, leaving he/she/its identity up to individual choice to be as inclusive as possible. While this is laudable, I have always wondered just how effective such programs were in leading people to a saving awareness of the truth. They might help you with your addition, but they might not point you to Jesus. CR is unapologetic being a Christian recovery ministry.

Second, CR does not discriminate when it comes to our habits, hurts, and hang-ups. The typical twelve-step program focuses in on one specific area of addiction—alcohol, pornography, or overeating, for example. CR, on the other hand, provides help and support for those wrestling with any pervasive temptation, struggle, or issue.

In addition to their own Christianized version of the twelve steps, CR also has eight principles which are based upon an interpretation of the Beatitudes, as well as the fuller and richer version of Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer, a staple of most recovery programs.

A typical CR meeting includes a large, unified group lesson and then small groups that are divided up usually by gender and by source of struggle. The unified lessons alternate between testimonies and studies on the steps and principles. As with other twelve-step programs, CR offers sponsors who can guide people through the steps. And, just like other twelve-step programs, CR demands that people in the program respect the privacy and anonymity of other people in the program. It is a safe place for people to come and to share their struggles and find support.

I am by no means an expert about CR. I have just started attending meetings. To be honest, I had been looking for something like this for quite some time. What I love most about CR is that it allows the local church an opportunity to be Jesus to broken and hurting people. All of us, no matter who we are, have hurts, hang-ups, and habits. All too often in the local church, we feel pressure to keep these struggles under wraps, to pretend I am okay, you are okay, we are all okay. Multiply that pressure a hundredfold if you are in vocational ministry. To admit weakness is to somehow admit being a lesser person, to being someone who is not a “good Christian,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. And so, our church gatherings can resemble something more like Pharisee conventions than places of healing for people who have been hurt by themselves, others, or the fallen world around them. CR provides an opportunity for wounded healers to approach other wounded people and offer help, with the eventual outcome that those they help in turn become wounded healers themselves.

I think Jesus would like his church to look a little bit more like that.

If you are interested in finding some help with your hurts, hang-ups, and habits in order to make more space for God in your heart and life, I encourage you to check CR out. You can find out more about them, including meetings in your area, at the link below.

Grace and peace.

Celebrate Recovery’s website: https://www.celebraterecovery.com/

Sunday Prayer - April 19, 2020

Brennan Manning, 1934-2013

"Dear Abba,

"The voices in my head this morning are hounding me with the recurring moments I’ve turned away from You because I could not part with all my rich young ruler wealth, the numerous days I’ve Judas-kissed Your cheek in the garden of betrayal, and the countless times I’ve warmed myself by a traitor’s fire and declared like Peter 'I do not know Him!' But then Your accepting voice scatters them all with a mercy fierce and ultimately kind, and I remember that I am loved. I want to simply be in You this day."

April 12, 2020 - Prayer of the Week

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurped town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captivated, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy.

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

- John Donne. Sonnet 14

Book Review: Ordering Your Private World

MacDonald, Gordon. Ordering Your Private World. Revised. Nashville, TN: Thomas 

          Nelson, 2003.

Gordon MacDonald has served as a pastor in Massachusetts and as an interim president and now chancellor at Denver Seminary, among other roles he’s had over the years. He and his wife Gail have co-authored some books together, and Gordon has written over a dozen books on his own. He and Gail have two grown children and several grandchildren.

His book Ordering Your Private World is one of MacDonald’s forays into spiritual formation. In it he talks about the intentionality of pursuing growth, not just spiritually, but in all aspects of life. From investing in God’s Word to life-long learning, from taking Sabbath-rests to living with the sense of being called, MacDonald explores what it means to be more than just a skin-deep believer.

The book was born out of MacDonald’s own spiritual journey, and as such it is filled with personal stories. Not only does this make the book quite enjoyable to read, it also gives the reader ample opportunity to relate and resonate with MacDonald’s life experiences and subsequently to take him up on his stress-tested wisdom.

Perhaps the greatest takeaway from the book for me was the clear presentation of two pictures of life—one in which life flows from the inside out, and a bifurcated life in which things may appear all right on the surface, but the chaos hiding within will eventually lead to burnout, despair, and destruction. Though he mentions neither, I couldn’t help but think about Jesus’ description of the Pharisees as being externally clean cups and whitewashed tombs (Matthew 23:25-28), and his Parable of the Two Builders (Matthew 7:24-27). It is a sobering thought to think that there might be many people who believe in Jesus and cross all the external t’s and dot all the external I’s, but who are a complete mess on the inside. Sometimes that’s me.

Ordering Your Private World has sold over a million copies and has gone through a few reprints since it first came out in 1984. That’s a testimony of its timeless lasting power. If you’re just now entering into a pursuit of deepening your inner life, or, like me, need to be reminded of what that looks like and be encouraged in your walk, I highly recommend this book to you.

Grace and peace.

You can find this book at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SAZQZM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Prayer for the Week: April 5, 2020

My God, let me know and love you, so that I may find my happiness in you. Since I cannot fully achieve this on earth, help me to improve daily until I may do so to the full. Enable me to know you ever more on earth, so that I may know you perfectly in heaven. Enable me to love you ever more on earth, so that I may love you perfectly in heaven. In that way, my joy may be great on earth, and perfect with you in heaven. O God of truth, grant me the happiness of heaven so that my joy may be full in accord with your promise. In the meantime let my mind dwell on that happiness, my tongue speak of it, my heart pine for it, my mouth pronounce it, my soul hunger for it, my flesh thirst for it, and my entire being desire it until I enter through death in the joy of my Lord forever. Amen.
- Augustine of Hippo

Silence

“Silence is solitude practiced in action.” – Henri Nouwen

“Don’t just do something. Sit there.” This was the title of a message Haddon Robinson preached in 1991 on Luke 10:38-42. In that passage Luke recounts the story of Jesus’ visit to the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. If you’re familiar with the story, you’ll remember that Martha was bustling about, trying to prepare a huge feast for her visitors (remember Jesus had at least 12 men in tow with him). Her sister Mary, meanwhile, simply sat at Jesus’ feet, letting Martha do all the work while she spent time with Jesus. This naturally perturbed Martha, who finally had enough and complained to her guest that he needed to send Mary to help her in the kitchen. Instead, Jesus refused, saying that Mary had chosen the better thing, and it wouldn’t be taken away from her.

Sometimes we can be so caught up in human doings that we lose sight of the fact that we are human beings, created and designed for intimacy with God. The spiritual discipline of silence helps to realign our hearts with this truth.

Before silence can happen, solitude must first exist. “Silence is the way to make solitude a reality,” Henri Nouwen once wrote (The Way of the Heart). For more on solitude, check the previous blog entry for my thoughts on that

WHAT IS SILENCE?

At the heart of silence is listening. It’s impossible to listen when we ourselves are talking. But this listening should not be to the world or people around us, but rather a listening for God. God rarely shouts. His word to us is often whispered. Only those who still their tongues, quiet their hearts, and remove all the distractions this world affords will be able to catch such a whisper. We live in a loud world; it screams and shouts in its demands for attention. The Prince of this world wants nothing more than to pull us farther and farther away from the God who created, saved, and loves us. In order to draw nearer to him, we must enter into quietness.

According to Nouwen, there are three phases in the transformational power of silence. Silence is a journey, an encounter, and a testimony.

Since speaking is the way of the world and often leads us into sin (cf. James 3), entering into silence is like taking a pilgrimage to another land. By definition, a pilgrimage is a journey, usually a long one, often made to a sacred place. By entering into silence, we take a trip from the loud world around us to a quiet, separate place, an alternate reality, if you will.

Of course, most religious devotees go on a pilgrimage to a sacred place in order to experience a greater awareness of God, or at the least, receive some manner of blessing from him. The inward journey of silence allows us to encounter the Spirit who dwells within us. When we close our mouths (including our inner voice) and remove ourselves from all the distractions around us, we can come near the inner fire of the Spirit.

Imagine your normal routine being like a house on a cold winter’s night with every door and window thrown open. Yes, there is a fire in the hearth, but the cold and the wind are pervasive. It’s hard to feel the heat at all. Entering into silence is like going around and closing all those doors and windows to the outside. Slowly then the heat from the hearth builds until it gives comfort and peace and assurance. So it is with the warmth of the Spirit when we can shut out all other distractions, including our own words. It is in this context that we can rest and listen for the soft whisper of the Master, the whisper that says, “I love you. No matter what you do or what is done to you, I will never stop loving you. You are mine. I will never leave you or forsake you.” In our brokenness, battling our hurts, hang-ups, and habits, we desperately need to hear such whispers, and hear them often.

In its final stage, our experience with silence leads us to bear testimony of it. The whisper of God that we catch in the silence of our interior lives becomes a beautiful and powerful secret that we cannot keep to ourselves. The culmination of silence is, oddly enough, the ministry of the word, where our message to others brings healing, hope, peace, joy, and above all, love.

Think about it. How often have you walked away from a conversation thinking to yourself, “Well, that could have gone better!” Or, “Why didn’t I think to say that?” How often are our words more hurtful or harmful than helpful? The discipline of silence will help us to change that trend.

HOW DO WE PRACTICE SILENCE?

It is important to note that the goal of this discipline is not to create an empty silence, but rather a full silence, a silence permeated with the presence of God.

As silence comes from within the context of solitude, it is critical to find a safe place and an undisturbed time to practice it. Find a location and a time of the day that works for you. Next, eliminate distractions. Turn off your phone. Lock out the cats. If you’re going to be distracted by checking the clock, set a timer. Whatever distraction can be removed from your space, remove it.

Next, listen. At first this will be a struggle. All the things swirling about in your mind will start to scream for attention. Resist attending to them. Your inner voice will tell you this is a waste of time. Ignore it. Your mind will wander. Order it hack to your place of silence. This whole exercise will seem impossible and hopeless at first, but if you stick with it, silence will come easier and easier.

Sometimes when I am greatly distracted with a great many things, I will turn to a centering prayer. I’ll blog more about them in a later post, but a centering prayer is generally two lines long, slowly repeated over and over, with the first line on our inhalation, and the second line on our exhalation. My go-to centering prayer is this:

(Inhale) I am your beloved son/daughter, whom you love;

(Exhale) With me you are well-pleased.

This “centers” me on the truth of this prayer that I can claim because I am in Christ. (Since the Father said it of Jesus, and since I am now in Jesus, the Father says it of me.) When I get to that point of focus, I then invite God into the space this has created, and I become still and silent. And I listen.

Sometimes I catch that whisper. Sometimes I don’t. Regardless of how it goes, I conclude my time of silence with a prayer of thanksgiving.

In his book Ordering Your Private World, Gordon MacDonald compares the stories of Moses and Aaron when the people of Israel were encamped at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Moses spent forty days and nights in silence, listening to the word God had for him. Aaron, on the other hand, spent that same amount of time listening to the people around him. One heard the love and affirmation of God and was encouraged to fulfill God’s call on his life; the other heard the complaints and criticisms of the people, and was so discouraged he disastrously gave the people what they wanted instead of what they needed. How you and I finish in this life will depend a great deal upon to whom or what we listen.

The fruit of silence is a powerful word from God that we cannot keep to ourselves. I encourage you to give the discipline of silence, with its sister discipline of solitude, a try some time.

Grace and peace.

Solitude

“We must be made aware of the call to let our false, compulsive self be transformed into the new self of Jesus Christ. It also shows that solitude is the furnace in which this transformation takes place.” – Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart

Solitude can be a frightening thing in our highly “social” world. Being alone with nothing but ourselves and God is not for the faint of heart, for in such a context we are completely exposed, naked in our brokenness before an all-seeing, holy, and righteous Being. There is no place to hide, no one caught in “bigger” sins or experiencing “greater” struggles for us to cower behind, and, if we’re honest, no one or thing to blame but ourselves for our wretched condition.

And yet . . . it is in this isolation that the compassionately tender and steady hands of our loving Father can perform his most effective surgeries on our hearts.

I’m writing this in the midst of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a time when hundreds of millions of people are in “lockdown,” ordered to stay at home as much as possible as our world’s nations attempt to “flatten the curve” and save as many lives as possible. And though we have countless means of entertainment and distraction at our fingertips—at least here in my middle-class Midwestern context—many of us find ourselves, well . . . restless. What better context to dive into the spiritual disciplines of solitude and silence?

Henri Nouwen insists that there is a three-fold purpose to solitude—first, it allows us to drop our false selves, then it allows God to transform our real selves into something more resembling Jesus, and finally, from our real selves we are able to more effectively proclaim the good news of Jesus and minister to those around us. That seems like a worthy goal to me.

SOLITUDE AS BOTH BATTLEGROUND AND BEAR HUG

When we practice solitude, we enter an arena. Our fight is against not only the false self, who is formidable in his own right, but also against the forces who created and control our false selves—the three main compulsions of the world:  to be relevant, to be spectacular, and to be powerful. Jesus encountered these same inner foes during his forty days of solitude in the wilderness (and assuredly at many other points in his ministry), so we too must enter the desert in order to face them down and strip ourselves of the false self they so quickly and adeptly create for us.

At the same time, solitude is where we can most easily encounter the loving embrace of our Abba. When we can shut out the world and all its demands and distractions, the presence of Immanuel, “God with us,” becomes more tangible and approachable. This offers us great encouragement, because not only do we have an Advocate who will fiercely and effectively fight on our behalf, but One who will softly and tenderly love us and tend to our wounds no matter how badly or how often we lose in our struggles against the things that force us to become imposters and frauds in an effort to conceal our imperfections and addictions.

SO HOW DO WE DO IT?

I believe it’s important to “prime the pump” for solitude. And by that, I mean investing in some Bible intake. When Jesus faced his trial of solitude and temptation in the wilderness, it was clear that he had made an extensive investment in God’s Word, and it was this investment that helped him overcome the foes he encountered on his own personal battlefield. Scripture is not only God’s Word for us, but it’s also God’s mirror for us. It helps to show us who God is and who we are, and who we’re supposed to be.

The first key to solitude is finding a place free from distractions—no people, no screens, no tasks. Just you and space. Such spaces are growing rarer in our culture. Kyle Idleman uses a closet he’s cleaned out. I use my favorite chair in the living room. Second, find a time and stick with it. For me, it’s early in the morning when no one else is up.

Then I spend time with myself, just me and God. I reflect on my recent actions and interactions. What were the motivations behind them? What is making me tick? What is driving my behavior? What about me is not fully surrendered to God? What am I hoping to hide from others about myself? What am I anxious about or fearful of, and why? Who am I at odds with, and why? What lies hidden, perhaps even from me, under the dark currents pf my heart?

It’s not necessarily a pleasant experience. Who wants to face the ugly things about ourselves? But unless we do, we will never come to a point where we are able to give those things to God and have him change them into something wonderful.

Such introspection has one of three outcomes. I could simply recoil in shock and denial and assume my false self once more. I could grit my teeth and commit once again to “white-knuckling” against my brokenness in my own power. Or I could realize my truly helpless estate and turn to Jesus in complete surrender.

And every time I turn to Jesus, he is right there beside me. The journey into solitude, oddly enough, is never a journey we take on our own. Jesus is with us, every step of the way if only we look to him. And when our struggle against the ugliness we see in our hearts begins to crush us and defeat us (and when does it ever not?), we can fall into the tender embrace of Jesus and let him take up the fight for us.

Introspection of self, acknowledgment of powerlessness, surrender to the unquenchable love of God. These are the elements of solitude.

The fruit of solitude, of course, is a compassionate response to the brokenness of those around us. When we have a greater appreciation for our own shortcomings, when we recognize our own powerlessness over them, and when we realize that God loves us and rescues us despite our hurts, hang-ups, and habits, our judgmental superiority in reaching down to “help” others will slowly be transformed into a transparent compassion that reaches out to our fellow man.

This was one of the many differences between the Pharisees and Jesus. And it can be one of the many differences between who we are now and what we can be, with God’s help. Practice solitude. We’ll look at the discipline of silence in the next post.

Grace and peace. 

What's Lent All About?

           

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) and Ash Wednesday are coming up next week, kicking off the season of Lent. So what's up with all that, anyway?

Traditionally in the church universal, Lent is the period of 40 days prior to Holy Week (the time in which we commemorate the week of our Lord’s earthly ministry in which he was crucified, buried, and raised to life).  It gets its name due to the time of year in which it occurs—“Lent” is an Old Saxon word for “spring.”

As Advent is a season of anticipation for the coming of Christ, both past and future, Lent is a season of preparation to participate in the saving actions of Christ.  The number 40 is significant in the Bible; it represents a time of testing and preparation.  Early on (2^nd century), the church used this period as a time to prepare converts for baptism, and soon it became a time for those already baptized to remember their baptismal vows, repent of sin, and recommit themselves to their calling.

              

By the 5^th century, the beginning of this season became known as Ash Wednesday, due to the practice of applying ashes to one’s forehead as a sign of a penitent spirit.  Some Christians still do this practice today. Mardi Gras celebrations are not necessarily all that edifying, as the roots of its tradition are grounded in overindulging in pleasures and passions the night before the season of Lent---to "store up" these pleasures in preparation for a season of fasting from them. While I encourage people to experiences Lent, other than the good New Orleans based cajun and creole food, I do not recommend a deep dive into the seedy underbelly of Mardi Gras.

WHY DO PEOPLE GIVE UP THINGS FOR LENT?

Lent should not be looked upon as a season in which to give up something, but rather as an opportunity to gain something new.  Lent helps us to regain our focus on Christ, helps us to take our own moral pulse, and helps us to draw nearer to God through acts of repentance, charity, and discipline.  As Don Saliers puts it, “It is time for putting aside the sins and failures of the past in order to journey toward who we are yet to become by the grace of Christ in baptism.”

            

“Giving up” something for Lent should be the result of gaining one of three things:  (1) abandoning a habitual sin, (2) being able to spend more time with God, or (3) helping those in need with the money that was saved by giving up something.  When this approach is taken, we are not giving up something as much as we are gaining something far better.

IS LENT FOR ME?

            

The answer to that question lies with you.  The season of Lent, like all the facets of the Christian year, is a tool for spiritual discipline, and all spiritual disciplines have one aim:  to draw us closer to Jesus in relationship and in likeness.  If you think observing the season of Lent can help you achieve those ends, I encourage you to embrace it.  If you’re not sure, give it a try; you can always walk away if it isn’t helpful.  And if it’s not for you, that’s all right; find some other tool for a spiritual discipline that will help you achieve a closer friendship with and resemblance to Christ.

If you’d like to have a special time of Scripture meditation during Lent, below are some suggested passages to give you a jump start.

Suggested 2020 Lenten Season Devotional Readings

2/26	John 17:1-8	3/18	Genesis 45:16-28
2/27	Amos 5:6-15	3/19	Psalm 86
2/28	Psalm 80	3/20	1 Corinthians 9:16-27
2/29	Philippians 4:10-20	3/21	Mark 7:1-23
3/1	John 12:44-50	3/22	Genesis 48:8-22
3/2	Genesis 37:1-11	3/23	Psalm 132
3/3	Psalm 45	3/24	1 Corinthians 11:17-34
3/4	1 Corinthians 2:1-13	3/25	Mark 8:11-26
3/5	Mark 2:1-12	3/26	Exodus 1:6-22
3/6	Genesis 40:1-23	3/27	Psalm 102
3/7	Psalm 138	3/28	1 Corinthians 13:1-13
3/8	Romans 6:3-14	3/29	John 8:46-59
3/9	Mark 3:7-19	3/30	Exodus 4:10-20
3/10	Genesis 42:1-17	3/31	Psalm 121
3/11	Psalm 72	4/1	2 Corinthians 2:14-3:6
3/12	1 Corinthians 6:12-20	4/2	Mark 10:17-31
3/13	Mark 4:35-41	4/3	Exodus 9:13-35
3/14	Genesis 43:16-34	4/4	Psalm 42
3/15	Psalm 96	4/5, Palm Sunday Luke 19:41-48
3/16	1 Corinthians 7:25-31
3/17	Mark 6:1-13

Suggested Readings for Holy Week

4/6	Mark 11:12-25
4.7	Mark 11:27-33
4/8	Mark 12:1-11
4/9, Maundy Thursday	Mark 14:12-25
4/10, Good Friday	John 19:38-42
4/11, Holy Saturday	Romans 8:1-11
4/12, Easter	Luke 24:13-35