The most fantastic summer storms are blowing through the Southeast right now.
Sometimes I wish I could wear some kind of big, light-weight glass box, and I would walk outside, and even work inside this box while it rained. I suppose to describe rain with the metaphor of “sheets” would be cliché and probably not adequate, so I should say the rain this evening was coming down in king-size quilts. These quilts were whipping off the roofs of the different buildings of my apartment complex and slamming into each other, twisting around, flinging free and plummeting to the pavement below. The brand-new beds of flowers and pine-straw quickly filled and over-flowed with cool rain-water. We looked out the window of our third-floor apartment and we couldn’t see the trees on the other side of the gate. Except when the sky lit up with flashes of forked lightening. Someone told me yesterday that the thunderstorm two nights ago had woken them up. He said there was blast of thunder that sounded like God had cracked the sky wide open right over their house. I tend to sleep through such events, which I find regrettable. So much for grilling brätwurst tonight, but I was OK with it since I don’t wake up for these storms at night. Some consider me lucky, but I don’t.
Last night, we ate supper with some women from the Salvation Army shelter. About eight women are staying at Uptown Church this week, and it was a blessing to be around them. Starla had been a truck driver and a therapist, but she began to have health problems and couldn’t work. She ate her food very slowly, savoring every bite. She is a woman who knows how to appreciate food. She moved to North Carolina from Texas, where they have the best beef brisket, and very little pork. Chris Yost presented the gospel message to these women, who listened much more attentively than I would if someone was trying to get me saved. When Chris got the promise of Genesis that the devil would cause problems for God and his people, that he would bite his heel, but that God would send someone who would crush his head, I felt myself well up with emotion.
The Lord is good, and his steadfast love endures forever. He is faithful, he is faithful, he is faithful. I am so unfaithful, but he provides. I fill my soul and my stomach with lesser things, but he feeds me with his body and his word. I cover myself in the worst sort of dirt and filth and he sends his rain and baptizes the earth and me. He’s making my heart and this world a garden.
Julie and I are spending a couple of days in Charleston with my folks. My gracious pastor (and boss) Thomas Devonshire Hawkes encouraged me to take a couple of days to spend with my dad. 10 years ago, dad suddenly lost most of the vision in his left eye. It’s not an eye problem, it’s an information problem. The optic nerve is not transferring information properly to his brain, so there’s not much that can be done with lenses. Then a couple of months ago, the same thing happened to his right eye, but he was able to get some sort of experimental injection that improved his eyesight over a few days and he was able to keep working and driving in most conditions. But then two weeks ago, he had a second attack on his right eye, and he is now legally blind. He got another injection, but it didn’t help, and he has found himself suddenly unable to work, drive, or read. So obviously this has been a huge hit on him. He spent 7 years building up a business that was finally starting to be successful, and he loves to read and learn that way. He faces a difficult road, no doubt.
So I’ve been trying to think up active things a legally blind person could do. I brought a mandolin and a banjo down and dad has a guitar. He’s a gifted musician, though he’s never really put much time into it. He won’t be able to read music but he could feel his way around the instrument and trust his ears. He could actually become a fantastic musician. Today, I took dad to play disc golf. Julie and I really enjoy playing and have a couple of sets of discs. It doesn’t seem like this would work out very well for a guy who’s mostly blind, but it actually was great. Dad wouldn’t be able to play on his own, but as long as someone is with him who can guide him, he does well. So, he can’t really just look out and see the basket, but you point him in the right direction, and once you get closer, point it out to him, and he can pick up on it. He had a great time, so we’re hoping that could be something that catches on.
Dad doesn’t just see blackness. He can watch TV, though he has to be pretty close. My parents are looking into a big TV which will help a lot, but dad doesn’t want to sit around doing passive things for the rest of his life. So he can walk around, but he’s had some accidents, including cutting his leg on a sign and running over a small child (she was stunned, but unharmed, you know).
So I’m looking for ideas. I need ideas of “active” activities that someone could do who didn’t need to see close detail or fast moving things. So, like, flying balls that should be caught or swung at aren’t a good idea. Thoughts?
In hindsight, it seems to be generally a bad idea for a Worship Director to commit to a book review soon before Easter. But the fact that the Easter season is overwhelmingly busy in the world of worship good news indeed. But regardless, I meant to write this some time ago. I’m holding myself to my commitment, and hopefully doing some justice to such a wonderful book from such a wonderful saint.
The book in question is Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative. I wrote a brief introduction some time ago that may be worth reading. The mantra that continues in author Robert Webber’s Ancient-Future series is that “the road to the future runs through the past.” On first glance, one might be tempted to think this is a jab at the youngin’s, a critique that the contemporary church should be more old-fashioned, but that is not at all Webber’s point. The road he references is a continuum, running through the past, leading to the future. Both are necessary.
A critical point of Ancient-Future Worship, is that “Worship does God’s story.” This is the model we see in scripture, in Old Testament worship, in Heavenly worship described. God loves his story. I had a friend who was wresting with the merits of sovereign election, when he suddenly proclaimed “So if God ordains all things, then basically all of history has just been one story that god has been telling to himself for his own enjoyment.” I thought that sounded scandalous at the time, but I realize now, that’s exactly what is happening, and it is good!
Webber relies heavily on the Byzantine paradigm of redemptive history of Creation – Incarnation – Re-creation instead of the Western Augustinian paradigm of Creation – Fall – Redemption. The Augustinian paradigm is not wrong at all, but the Byzantine paradigm offers a valuable perspective, particularly emphasizing the importance of the incarnation. Webber claims that “reflection on the incarnation and its connection to every aspect of God’s story is the missing link in today’s theological reflection and worship. The link is found in these words: God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.” (p. 35) When we gather for worship we reflect on a God who takes on flesh, who enters time and space, who completely unites with the work of his hands to fix the problem of sin and death. The incarnation is the moment in time at which point the problem and the solution meet. Creation and redemption are hopelessly separate if not for this one divine instant.
So how do we do God’s story in our worship? Webber posits two critical ways: Remembering, and anticipating. First we must remember the past. The Old Testament is rife with examples of worshipful remembrance. “I will sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea.” (Ex. 15:1) This extended quote from Webber is particularly insightful:
“Remembering is the opposite of forgetting. When we forgot the past, the past is dead in our lives… Biblical remembering is much more than an intellectual recalling. Biblical remembering brings God’s saving events to mind, body, and soul. Biblical remembering makes the power and the saving effect of the event present to the worshiping community. When we take bread and wine, for example, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Spirit, is made accessible through the faith of those who see him and his saving work through the symbols of his broken body and shed blood. The word remembrance (in Greek, anamnesis) has the force of “making present,” “making alive,” “making real.” Remembrance is also directed to God. It says, “God, remember your saving deeds–remember how you delivered us from the power of the evil one and conquered death.”
“It may seem strange to say worship reminds God, but think of it–the content of God’s saving deeds is the content of eternal heavenly worship. God loves his own story. God’s story is to his glory, why wouldn’t he love it? So, God loves our worship when we remember his saving deeds in Jesus Christ. Our worship tells that old, old story. That’s the story God gave the world, and that story is the content of worship. Through worship the world learns its own story. And how will others hear unless we do God’s story in worship, calling people to remember God’s story?
There are so many critical points in this quote, two of which I’ll highlight. First, the remembering God desires is a holistic remembering. We remember the music of heaven when we sing praises. We remember the body broken, and the blood shed when we take the Eucharist. This is not just a cerebral assent to the reality of an historical event. Rather, it is a physical, emotion, mental celebration of the event. Second is that remembering is not only reminding ourselves, but it is reminding God. There is an anthropomorphic element here, because of course God does not forget his own story. But God delights so much in the beauty of his story that he loves to be “reminded” by the weekly retelling of his story among his people.
The other way we do God’s story in our worship is by anticipating the future. A characteristic of ancient near-eastern civilizations was a view of time as cyclical repetition. So a distinctive of ancient Israel is viewing time as linear with a genesis and an eschaton. They knew where they came from and where they were going. For ancient Israel, and for the Church today, worship should be a clear foreshadowing of heavenly worship. That is why images like the ones found in Daniel, Revelation, and Isaiah are so key to our worship. In Isaiah 6, we get a picture of worship in the throne room of God:
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
This passage and others reflect the narrative of worship that God desires, and as such should greatly inform our worship today. We tend to go astray in all sorts of ways from this theme. Many traditions confuse who is really on that throne, putting human feelings and problems at the center of every act of “worship.” Other traditions turn worship into a purely cerebral act, an academic exercise in which to pat themselves on the backs for having the most well-developed theology, as if “thinking-deeply” is going to be the sole substance of eternal worship. But God loves his own story. And we are far better off joining him in the eternal retelling of his own story than we are trying to invent our own competing stories.
Worship was wonderful at Uptown Church this morning. I had a sense of both the transcendence (bigness) and the immanence (closeness) of God. It is so good to participate in worship with the saints, bringing their (our) broken selves before the throne of grace, glorifying God, crying out for mercy, receiving it. This morning our sermon was delivered by Dr. James Anderson, Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary just up the road, and a member of our flock. Here is a summary and some thoughts:
Dr. Anderson expounded on John 4:1-45. This is the passage where Jesus stops to rest at Jacob’s Well in Samaria, and a Samaritan woman meets him there. Jesus speaks to her, crossing all sorts of cultural boundaries, (1. Samaritan 2. Woman 3. Serial Monogamist 4. Adulterer) confronts her with her own sin to bring repentance, and gives her life, and ultimately reveals to her the true nature of worship, not primarily concerned with a physical location, but with a spiritual orientation. However the point of this passage is not only to show how Jesus corrected this woman, but show just how far across cultural bounds the gospel travels. The key verse, according to Anderson is v. 42. After the woman told the town what happened, they believed and invited him to stay with them. To the woman, they said “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” And this is meat of the text. Because to a Samaritan, this Jew claiming to be the Son of God must have been worse than NO news. Without delving too much into the history, suffice it to say that Samaritans were part Jew, part various pagan, and were hated by Jews. Samaritans had convinced themselves over generations that they were the rightful bearers of the promise of God, and for a Jew to show up as the Messiah sealed it that they were wrong, that they WERE half-breeds and they WERE heretics. But then Jesus destroys these wicked walls of hatred, racism, sexism, and judgementalism in one fail swoop with his interaction with this woman. He was not pluralistic, but maintained that the Samaritans were wrong, that salvation would come from the Jews. But even so, Christ in his very actions declared that the gospel, the good news of salvation was for ALL people. Not for every person, but for people of every race, language, sex, class, intellect, moral failure, ability, age and whatever else divides.
The question is, do we believe it? Do we look around us and believe that the gospel crosses boundaries? Dr. Anderson was incredibly humble to describe a situation from his on life just the previous week. Standing in the line at the DMV, he was behind a young African-American man wearing a hoodie with a hip-hop logo on it, dragging on a cigarette, with his baggy jeans hanging on the ground. Dr. Anderson is a very thin, very white academic (geek, as he describes himself) who was born in England, and lived mostly in Scotland. They couldn’t have had less culturally in common. He thought of the fact that he would preaching on this passage of scripture, and considered the possibility that the Lord in his infinite wisdom may have put him in this situation for that reason, and that he should strike up conversation with this man. Then he thought that perhaps that thought was sufficient to illustrate the sermon. And finally, he thought that simply thinking about crossing culture to talk to this man was not enough, that he probably should actually do it. At that moment, the doors to the DMV opened, and they walked inside, and got in two different lines. Dr. Anderson’s first feeling was relief. And his second feeling was shame about his first feeling.
I know that feeling all too well. It is amazing to me sometimes just how prejudiced I am. I know the feeling of wondering if an African-American man I walk by on the street has a gun, of locking my car doors in a predominately black or hispanic area, of assuming every poor person I encounter has probably blown their fair shake on drugs, alcohol or hookers. I am primarily concerned with protecting what’s mine, whether life, property, or identity.
I think it’s difficult for churches to be truly multicultural or to cross boundaries of class. This is not just true of white, suburban, middle-class churches either. And instances I’ve seen of forced integration seem to cause more problems than they’ve solved. But regardless of what we can accomplish in this life, we should ask what our blinders are, and how we can confront them. So we say we believe the gospel is for all people, but when we look around, do we just see people like us? Then it seems likely that we don’t really believe the gospel is for all people. I don’t believe every church should look the same, rather that different traditions have different strengths and we collectively form a holistic body of Christ. But we should always be seeking the Spirit’s sanctifying power, working wickedness out. So let’s pray, and ask the Lord to tear down these walls, to reveal ways that we can cross cultures, to believe that the gospel is not just for us, but for the whole world.
I just arrived back in town from a fantastic staff retreat in Boone, NC where they had this blizzard on, all except the five hours that we were on the slopes. The Lord was kind and gracious to us, because the weather provided a ton of good natural snow, but the conditions while skiing were perfect. So I wanted to jot down a few thoughts.
As a staff, we looked at 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12:
1 For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. 2 But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. 3 For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed— God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. 11 For you know how, like a father with his children, 12 we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. (ESV)
Trying to really hone in on v. 9, we discussed what it meant to share “not only the gospel but our lives as well” as the NIV has it, and we evaluated how we are doing as a staff. We considered this in relation to each other on staff, to the church, and to the world.
The question that I am wrestling with is this: Is there a way to really divorce sharing the gospel and sharing your life? I think my pragmatic forebears would argue that one can share the gospel without sharing one’s life, and that one might share one’s life without ever sharing the gospel. At least my initial reaction is this: If one has the true gospel, how can they share their life without sharing that same gospel? And if one understands the gospel, understands a God who takes on flesh, who “dwelt among us,” how can one share this gospel without sharing their life?
Perhaps this is idealistic. There are plenty of rational equations in the Christian life that can lead to despair if one doesn’t have a place for “already/not yet” in their theology. For instance, if I sin, and repent, which is a turning away from sin, then I am committing to sin no more. But I do sin again. Rationally, this doesn’t make sense. If I repent, then I should sin no more. If I do sin again, then I am not truly repentant. But I AM truly repentant, and still I sin again.
Perhaps this is similar. An example of tensions, sharing life/sharing the gospel. But the major difference is that sin and repentance are morally conflicting. One is good, the other bad. But sharing life and the gospel are both good. And they don’t seem to be in tension the way, say, law and grace are. So it seems as though we would just say “both are necessary.”
But if we read Paul, it seems as though he considers “sharing life” to be something extra. As in “We shared the gospel, and that would have been sufficient, but we had so much affection for you, we were compelled to share our lives as well.” So maybe my postmodern, touchy-feely, community-driven worldview wants to say that you have to share your life, but perhaps Paul doesn’t say that. And maybe it isn’t even possible. If a man pastors a flock of hundreds or thousands, can he really share his life in any meaningful way with them all? But it still seems as though the temptation is to compartmentalize your world into “my life” and “my ministry” when perhaps it is better for these to look like concentric circles. And a person has to choose who lies where in those circles, but either way, there is an element of life-sharing all the way out.
Regardless, it is clear to me that there must be some element of life-sharing in one’s sharing of the gospel. It may be true that one cannot meaningfully share one’s life with every person with which one shares the gospel, but that life sharing ought to be happening in some way. We are created for relationships–we see that from the Trinity.
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