Rejoice!

I find that with all the holiday-ness and end of the school year stuff surrounding Christmas I have trouble rejoicing in Christmas the same way I do Easter. While for Christians, Easter is the chiefest of holy days Christmas is still a day to rejoice in, for Truly God is incarnate and our salvation is now at hand in the form of a babe!

I picked up a book while I was at the monastery and though I am not a big fan of extensive mariology I read something that helps me to put Christmas into perspective and brings tears to my eyes and makes my heart want to leap out of my chest for joy.

Building on the Angels proclamation for Mary to "rejoice" (Lk. 1.28), the beginning of the akathist to the Theotokos reads:

An Angel, and the chiefest among them, was sent from heaven to cry: Rejoice! to the Mother of God. And beholding Thee, O Lord, taking bodily form, he stood in awe, and with his bodiless voice he cried aloud to her such things as these:

Rejoice though through whome joy shall shine forth. Rejoice, thou through whome the curse shall be blotted out.

Rejoice though the Restoration of fallen Adam. Rejoice, thou the Redemption of the tears of Eve.

Rejoice, Height hard to climb for human thought. Rejoice, Depth hard to explore, even for the eyes of Angels.

Rejoice, for thou are the Throne of the King. Rejoice, for thou sustainest the Sustainer of all.

Rejoice, Star that causest the Sun to appear. Rejoice, Womb of the divine Incarnation

Rejoice, thou through whome creation is renewed. Rejoice, thou through whome the Creator becometh a babe.

Rejoice, thou Bride unwedded.

I know a lot of that language may make some of you uncomfortable (to be honest it does that to me a little as well). But how glorious is this incarnation!! God has taken flesh, but not merely flesh, but has become a babe! This is not merely Jesus' birthday that we celebrate (more on this later) but the incarnation of our God! Jesus Christ, God of God, Light of Light, the begotten of the Father before all ages has condescended and become human. The eternally begotten one of the Father is now brought forth through the womb of a young girl in order to die and rise again so that humans can becomes friends of God.

With the incarnation of our God the beginning of the end has come for sin and death. The curse of sin is being tread under foot by an infant yet unable to walk. God has taken flesh and the tears of Eve are wiped away and the groans of creation are subsided. Glory to Jesus Christ!!

Let us praise God that a young girl when confronted with the proclamation from an Angel said: "He am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word," for it was through her womb that the creator of all things took on flesh and was born in order to redeem us all from the curse of sin and death.

Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit!! Let the joy of Christmas ring not merely because we get to see family and friends, but because our God took flesh and was born this day! Let the tears of Eve be blotted out this day, for today our Savior and our God - Jesus Christ - is born!! Hallelujah! Glory to God in the highest!!

May you all have a joyous Christmas!!

- Ben

Shared Experiences

Much of what is below is still a work in progress (especially given I just started thinking about this about 3 minutes ago) but I wanted to throw it out there before I forgot it (as I usually do).

I was just youtube-ing at work since the student center is completely empty and I have another hour and a half to work, and I came across a sweet video via my friend Tegan's blog. I promptly sent the link to my sister with whom I was IM-ing to pass the time.

After a period of no response from my sister (not an unusual thing) I asked if she watched it yet? She replied that she hadn't and thus I exhorted her to watch "now." I told her it was great and gave her a few reasons to watch it. After prodding her to watched it I began thinking about the youtube phenomenon and blogging and things of that nature.

I began to wonder how much of this is more the desire for shared experience than actually just the dissemination of cool videos and ideas. I'm sure it's a bit of both, but it seems that one of the driving forces behind youtube and really all the internet fads is shared experience.

As I think about this I wonder if this is need or craving for shared experience has helped to feed into the various popular Christian movements over the past few years. Think about the Emergents. What do they emphasize? They build upon a need for experience and collective-ness at the expense of Christian orthodoxy, even to the point of holding heretical views and ignoring essential Christian tenets. I personally am absolutely dismayed that the emergent movement continues to thrive. This is a cancer growing through protestantism that is causing us to forsake the Christian faith all for some sort of collective experience and liberal idealism. In my mind many of the emergents are no better than the heretics of old such as Arius, Nestorius, Montanus, etc.

I also wonder if desire for shared experience helps to contribute to the Rob Bell craze. While I'm still working on reading through some of this guy's books, I do have to say that I'm not a big fan. His nooma videos are junk and I think they are mostly fueled by this desire for a shared experience or a desire to be 'timely' (see my post: Current? and yes I do realize that I'm being a bit contradictory by posting these thoughts so quickly)

The students here crave Bell and the Emergents. They get all starry-eyed when someone mentions their names and quickly bristle when someone like me says that they're not that great and may indeed hold heretical beliefs (emergents). I find it disturbing that students champion these people and drink the proverbial Kool-Aid so quickly. Why must our shared experience be found in the latest fad and not the timeless beliefs of classic Christian orthodoxy? Why do we champion these new thinkers for innovative ecclesiologies when they lack the substance of the faith and are doing nothing more than leading people down the path to hell with their watered down theology and absence of anything genuine?

If these men and women teach something contradictory to classic Christian Orthodoxy and they cease to become "nice" and "slightly misguided" people that we should learn from and they become impious God-haters (to use some of the phrasing for those anathematized at the ecumenical councils).

Just so I don't get misunderstood and get a ton of backlash let me be clear: I am not calling Rob Bell a heretic. I am also not calling ALL of the Emergents heretics. I have, however, had a conversation with one high-profile Emergent leader in which he claimed the Trinity was just Greek philosophical ideals and not really Christian and thus not a necessary or even important doctrine. I also think that Emergent theology down plays Christian orthodoxy to a dangerous extreme and thus runs fearfully close to falling into heresy (like the aforementioned leader).

My concern is that Asbury Seminary students and undoubtedly students, ministers, and lay people across the country and buying into these faulty paradigms because they desire a shared experience. This is absurd. The shared experience should be the Holy doctrines of the Church which help us to partake of the divine essence of God as St. Peter says. I am absolutely disgusted with the hero worship the students around this campus give to folks like Rob Bell and the emergents.

While the same charge of hero worship could be thrown at me and the way I read the saints of the church, I will just say that my hero's have lasted the test of time, and were actually building up and codifying Christian orthodoxy not ignoring it and leading people astray.

- Ben

In Response to a Weekend at a Monastery

I just spent my weekend (Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday until lunch) at St. Gregory Palamas Monastery in OH with a few guys from church. Although I came out of the weekend very tired, I also think that it was a great 'retreat' and would do it again in a heartbeat.

We arrived at the monastery around 11:30pm on Friday. As we settled ourselves we noticed a sign that informed us that the monastery practices silence from 8:00pm - 9:00am and thus we finished getting settled in silence.

In order not to bore you all with a lengthy more detailed account of the days let me just list our general schedule:

Friday:
11:30pm - Arrive

Saturday:
4:00am ~ 8:30am - Prayers, Matins, Liturgy at the Chapel.
Noon - Prayers and then lunch (in silence)
5:00pm - Prayers and then dinner (in silence)
7:00pm - Compline
8:00pm - 9:00am - Silence throughout entire monastery

Sunday:
6:00am ~ 11:30am - Prayers, Matins, hours, Liturgy
Noon - lunch (in silence)
1:30ish - depart in peace.

So that's the basic schedule. Since the three major emphasis of monasticism are Prayer, Work, and Silence even during the times that were not specifically designated as silent times we tried to remain quited and respectful. We were, however, able to have a few sit-down conversations with the Abbot of the monastery. Father Joseph (the Abbot) was an amazingly wise man and he said some very simple yet profound things to encourage us in our walks with the Lord.

Aside from the general tiredness from the early hours, I think the hardest part for me was the silence. It was wonderfully meditative, but it was also very hard. So often I just wanted to talk to one of the guys I was with, but had to remain silent. I think it was a good practice and it helped me to realize how much "idle talk" comes out of my mouth. It was particularly hard to eat in silence, though to be fair it wasn't complete silence. During the meals there was one monk who was assigned to read from a commentary, a sermon, or another spiritually edifying book. While everyone ate in silence he read. Even though I didn't grab everything that was read, I still caught bits and pieces of it and I thought the practice was healthy. Despite this, I still longed to just have a conversation during the meal. Maybe I'm just entrenched in the practice from society, but it seems like talking with the others one is eating with is only natural. I appreciated the vast amounts of silence. The Silence was really good, and I should probably focus on curbing my speech and talking less, but it was also really hard (though I guess that might be the point).

Another thing I struggled with was keeping my mind focused on the Lord during the long services. This was especially hard given the fact that I was very tired. Even while my thoughts during those hours were not sinful they still were unfocused and tended to stray towards football, lunch, and other randomness. When one of the guys from our group asked Father Joseph if he had any suggestions to help us focus more attentively on the Lord during the longer prayer vigils and liturgies, he said that people can focus on two things at once, but seldom three. Thus ,while listening to the liturgy (or the long sermon) it may be helpful to pray the Jesus prayer, or the Lord's prayer while listening in order to drive the distracting and/or sinful thoughts from our mind.

Another thing that Father Joseph said that I thought was very profound was that the goal of the monastic is to quench the passions which means in part being equally non-reactive to both compliments and insults. He told us a story of a young monk who struggled in not reacting to the insults hurled at him. The Abbot of this monk told him to go to the grave yard and hurl insults at the monks buried there. When the young monk returned the Abbot asked him what reaction he received. The young monk told him that they did nothing. The Abbot then told the monk to go cast compliments at the monks buried at the cemetery. When he returned the Abbot again asked him what reaction he received, and again the young monk said that the monks buried there gave no reaction. The Abbot then told the young monk that he should express the same reaction when confronted with both insults and compliments saying that we should neither be offended or angered by insults, and neither should we swell with pride at compliments.

While this isn't a full synopsis of the weekend I think it is a good representation. The weekend was great, though short and tiring. The monks were incredibly kind and what few conversations I had with them were enlightening. Like I said, Father Joseph was a very wise and holy man and his insight into spiritual things was full of great wisdom brought forth from the experience of walking closely and intently with the Lord for many years. I think it may be a very sad thing that Protestantism doesn't have a form or monasticism which could serve as pillar and exemplar of truth and piety.

- Ben

Coming up: A few book reviews from the semester and maybe some advent thoughts.

Christmas Break Reading List

I can't believe I just made it through the semester! I think 14 credits of graduate level work (if you can call some of it that) is a little much for me, but I made it through and I only had to pull about 4 or 5 all/most-nighters.

Now that I'm done with the semester (after I turn in the paper I just finished) I've got a little time on my hands to do some reading that I want to do. While I plan to fill my break with hanging out with friends and playing a good amount of video games I also hope to get through at least two if not three books that aren't required reading.

Thus, in typically Ben fashion I'm going to create a giant book list for my next post and probably only get one book from the list read. So, what suggestions do you all have for me to read over Christmas break?

Either email me or post your suggestions in the comments and in a few days, probably after I get back from the monastery I will post a book list I hope to read over break. I would really love some suggestions so post away.

Well it's time to get some sleep, I have to be up to turn in my paper by 9:00am and then I have to bake something for our student services party before noon.


Though I haven't posted about it, it is Advent.

Happy Adventing,

Ben

The lighter side

I mentioned last time that I would try to post something that is a little lighter and possibly not as theological just for a change of pace. Out of a sense of obligation I post this knowing that it may be equally boring, but nevertheless I continue.

Since I have a ton of work to do and there is no end in sight for the amount of papers I have to write before the semester ends, Luke and I figured the best way for us to start reading week would be to watch college football and then rent a couple movies. The football game was a bust as the evil Ohio State beat Michigan. Not that I was particularly cheering for Michigan, I just loathe Ohio State. The Penn State game followed but that game was quite boring so we opted to begin the movies.

We started with Amazing Grace which chronicled William Wilberforce's effort to abolish slavery in the British Empire. This was a wonderful movie. I didn't set my expectations too high coming into this movie since the driving force behind it was the Christian sub-culture and we all know how lame Christian movies are. This movie, however, greatly exceeded all my expectations. The dialogue and the plot kept me interested in the movie from start to finish. I think that the writers did an excellent job with this movie, except for a few cheesy lines. I would reccomend this movie to you all. As far as "Christian movies" go, I would place this slightly above Luther for one of the best Christian movies of all time. Though I must confess that I haven't seen Carmen's The Champion (that's a joke, I bet that move sucks) and I still have a warm place in my heart for Extreme Days (thanks to Josh Hazelton) despite all it's cheesiness.

Our original plan was to watch Amazing Grace first so as to not spoil it with our second movie choice: Spiderman 3. Despite the bad reviews that I read of Spiderman 3 I have wanted to see it for quite a while. I confess that I am a nerd and I loved watching the cartoon every Saturday morning as a kid, I mean, uh, teenager. I love comic book movies and thus I was excited for this one to come out in theaters. Although this move is exciting because it develops the Venom plot line, it is awful in so many ways that it almost makes me wish I hadn't seen it. The writing was poor and cheesy, there was too much of an emphasis on the CGI fight scenes, rather than plot, there were too many bad guys (3), and thus too little time was spent developing all of them. Sure I enjoyed seeing the plot develop, but I would have preferred that it stayed true to the comics/cartoon, and spent more time developing one or two villains rather than three. I think I almost would have preferred to let the cartoons fill me in on the plot instead of the movie butchering it.

So there is my obligatory, not-so-theological post. Not much else is going on other than I have a ton of school work to do and not a lot of time in which to do it.

Have a great thanksgiving.

- Ben

Quick Update

If you were wondering how the reader situation described the post below ended up I got an email today that said they were opting to strike the Nestorian Liturgy quote but keep the Origen quote.

I'm not thrilled with this option, but it's a little better and I have to live with it. Personally I think that both should have been taken out of the reader, but I'm not in charge and I can't make those decisions.

So if you're at Asbury and you are using the 2008 Lent reader for your devotions please know that I had nothing to do with that. Also know that I can only place my wholehearted endorsement on the Lent/Easter Day section of the reader. The other half may be great, but I still feel uncomfortable with Origen in the mix. I can appreciate the major contributions that Origen made to biblical studies and I can agree that it sucks that he was condemned a heretic posthumously, but I cannot agree with including him in a devotional reader knowing that he was condemned a heretic by people much wiser and knowledgeable than we are.

I'm sure these last two posts have bored almost all of the 5 people that read this blog so I'll try to post something light and/or funny next time around. Though I'm not making promises.


- Ben

Does anyone care about Christian orthodoxy anymore?!

I should be reading for class right now so I'll try to make this quick. As a few of you probably know, I have spent my last few semesters here working on a couple devotional readers for the seminary for use during the seasons of Lent and KingdomTide (a season created in the 60s or 70s during the season commonly called Pentecost or proper time). I recently finished the Lent/EasterTide reader for 2008, of which I was responsible for all of Lent and Easter Sunday. The EasterTide section was taken by a student down at the Florida campus. In case you're wondering a typical day in the reader would consists of the following:

Opening Prayer - from the Book of Common Prayer, a Psalm or a Saint.
Gospel Reading - We segmented out the Gospel of John for each day on this one.
Historical Reading - A reading form a major figure in Church history. I use mostly cannonized saints (east and west) and John and Charles Wesley.
Prayer of Response - from the Book of Common Prayer, a Psalm, a Saint, or often I will write this to bring more cohesion to the above elements.

Some days will also include an OT reading, or be missing either an historical reading or prayer of response, but you get the idea. The woman with whom I am working at the Florida campus also uses roughly the same format, though I've noticed she likes to bring cohesion by writing more of her own material other than prayers.

Now to the issue that leads to my thoughts:

At the end of the reader we usually write short biographies to help the readership know more about the figures we use. As I was compiling the biographies I noticed that she used two sources that seemed suspect to me: "The Nestorian Liturgy" and Origen.

I took contention to these to figures because both Nestorius and Origen were condemned by the Church (back when it was unified) as heretics. I debated on whether or not to say anything because there is some debate whether Origen actually was a heretic (he was condmned posthumously) and it is popular to quote him. I was going to let Origen slide but I could not remain silent about including part of a heretical liturgy for our campus community to read devotionally. Nestorius (and thus the Nestorians) held that Jesus existed in two persons: Jesus the Son of God and Jesus the man. This means that it was not Jesus the Son of God who died on the cross, but that it was just the man that suffered.

Nestorianism is problematic because, as I believe it was St. Athanasias (though I could be wrong) said, "that which has not been assumed cannot be redeemed." In other words only God could free us from our Sin and thus Jesus Christ who was indeed fully man must be fully God in order for their to be any merit in his death and resurrection. I am aware that this is a truncated argument, but it will have to suffice.

After an exchange of emails she said that she was aware that these men were heretics but that they were condemned under "shady" circumstances and that we can still learn from them because they got "sidetracked." I'd be willing to allow her argument that his condemnation was "shady" to hold a little weight as Origen was dead when this happened, but not Nestorius. And she is dead wrong that Nestorius "got sidetracked" he was confronted by the Church and he refused to deviate his teaching. Nestorius' view strikes at the heart of the incarnation and devalues the entire Christ event. This is not a little slip up, this is huge!

To be fair the readings she included were not in and of themselves heretical. In fact, the small phrases she used were very orthodox, but that is not the point. While it may be important to read these things and talk about them in the classroom to help firm up our foundation on orthodox Christian teaching I do not agree that even the seemingly orthodox statements of heretics should become devotional material. I know that I am dangerously close to separating that which feeds the spirit from that which feeds the soul (something I don't like to do), but we cannot just openly endorse heretics.

I am also confused as to how one can be "open to exploration [of heretics] (as long as it is not teaching heretical stances)." We cannot think that one's heretical beliefs can be fully separate from the rest of one's beliefs. I argue that it is impossible to dichotomize a major belief unit from the rest of one's beliefs. How can one speak praise to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (which is what her Nestorian quote consisted of) while holding that the Son - Jesus Christ is two persons. To whom are you giving praise? The Son that is born of Mary and thus fully human or the Son that is only fully God and thus did not really die and rise for our transgressions?

I'm not intending to get on her case, but I do see this as problematic and didn't know how else to discuss it. She means very well, but in my opinion this is a major issue. I think the part that bothers me the most though is the reaction to many of those whom I've shared this with. People just don't care. I know that I'm a church history nerd and I know that I am very excitable when it comes to the doctrines of the faith, but am I really barking up the wrong tree here?

Why are these heresies that strike right at the heart of our faith suddenly open for discussion? Why is it ok to exalt these heretics to such high levels? Do we not care about the Faith?

We fight long and hard about moral issues, but yet we are not willing to fight for the substance of the Faith? The early church fathers saw little to no distinction between right belief and right practice. It is right belief in who Christ is that as Paul teaches is the basis for our right belief. Maybe, just maybe if we worried a little bit about what our faith is saying we would begin to put together correct Christian morality.

Maybe for us (though I think it's a long shot) we need to worry about other things more than doctrine. But even if that is so what kind of faith will we have to pass on to the next generation? If we continue to ignore the substance of faith and allow heretics to pass as Saints we will have no substance to pass on to our children and to their children. I don't believe it's an accident that the earliest Christian hymns and creeds embedded in the New Testament are very doctrinal and Christ focused - the doctrines of right faith are the soil out of which right morality grows.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not arguing for immoral behavior. I am just wondering why no one cares about the substance of the faith.

Frankly it just makes me sad.

The issue with the reader is just symptom of what is going on in the Church. We must read heretics as heretics and saints as saints. Heretics have no place in our devotional life and must be read cautiously. We can examine them to help inform as to how we got where we are, but we cannot just flippantly include them in communal devotional reading. Especially reading that as my friend Anna pointed out is inherently not conversational with the work or others. In my opinion the inclusion of a figure in the reader implies their endorsement for those who don't have the time or desire to read a lot of these figures. These quotes may get used in sermons, bible studies, and youth group lessons. These quotes may get googled and used within the context of the whole. My biggest fear with the quote form the Nestorian liturgy is that some student hoping to do a nice 'emergent' liturgical service will Google the liturgy and unknowingly have his or her parishioners partake in a heretical liturgy. For what we practice will slowly become embedded in us and become part of our belief system. This is one of the reasons why we must continue to celebrate the creeds in our services. But that's another post for another time.

As always I'd appreciate your thoughts on this matter even if you disagree with me, as I'm sure many of you will given the reaction I've gotten so far from some friends.

Flippancy with Orthodoxy

I'm writing a paper this semester on the addition of the "Filioque" clause (for a more detailed explanation click here) in the Nicene Creed. While this may seem like a really nerdy project, and indeed it probably is, the reason I've elected to write on it is because this is a topic that is historically important but also one that I find to be very important for personal piety - especially if I am going to lead a congregation in saying the creed some day.

One may think that this is just a creedal variant and thus it only makes a difference in the deep realm of theology and not in that of the average church. Let me say that I agree with the early church fathers when they often argued that godliness (holiness) were one and the same with correct belief. They taught that out of correct belief comes correct action. While I don't want to get into the deep ramifications of the Filioque insertion, I do believe that it affects our view of the Trinity and thus it effects our view of God. Since I believe we should try to think rightly about God I also believe that I should be concerned with this issue, especially since I hold the Nicene Creed close to my heart as a definitive statement of Orthodoxy.

Since I'm not sure how this inserted statement lines up with scriptural orthodoxy I have chosen to err on the side of not saying "and the Son" when I recite the Nicene Creed. Please know that I'm not saying all this to condemn those who don't think about this, I simply bring it up for two reasons: 1. it's something that I've been thinking through for the past year or so and 2. I catch a lot of crap for thinking this way.

The second reason is the one that I would like to address. Most of the crap that I catch for thinking so intently on this subject are from good friends who joke about it in good fun. I have no problem with this. I don't think it's sacrilege and I can take a joke. I'm sure I've probably been more sacrilegious than all of them combined. However, I am concerned with the number of people who flippantly don't care about this issue and joke about it based on that.

I don't want to be condemnatory toward the laity but I very disappointed in the seminarians who openly mock the notion that one would seriously think about this issue. This is seminary, this is the place where we are suppose to think on these sorts of things and I find it extremely disheartening that there are people on our campus that will argue about our ethos statement against drinking but will not think seriously about the creed we recite and what is says about our God. I am even more depressed when I think about being on chapel team last year. I was on a team that was supposed to lead the community in worship, of which the creeds were occasionally a part, and I was openly mocked by the team for declining to lead the congregation in the recitation of the Nicene Creed because I didn't want to lead them astray one way or the other.

I am amazed with the flippant nature Orthodoxy is treated with among the student body. I allow that this may be a "small issue" (though historically it may be the largest) but there is also a great deal of contempt that is shown toward historic orthodox doctrines in an effort to be creative and think outside of the box. While it is ok to think critically I find it disturbing when we treat historical Christian orthodoxy as chains from which to be freed. This even occurs among the faculty at times. I was in class the other day with a highly published professor and he closely approached the Arian line as he openly pondered if there was a point in eternity before creation at which Christ was unbegotten. He was very careful to say that there was always a Trinity (and thus avoided complete Arianism), but that there may have been a point in eternity when Christ was not begotten of the Father.

I shudder when i think about the generation of Pastors this seminary is training. We are neglecting the substance of the faith in an effort to create pastors that are able to memorize their sermons, use good illustrations, and learn how to be 'relevant'...and for what? So that they can recite sermons without substance from memory? So they can illustrate and perpetuate a form of weak Christianity? So they can lead people away from the Holy Faith and straight into nominal Christianity, in a nominal way?


Lord Have Mercy!!
May God save his people and bless his inheritance!!

The Feast of All Saints Day

For those of you in the west today is All Saints Day, the day that we remember the dead in Christ who will rise first at the coming of our Lord.

It is good for us to remember those in the faith who have gone before us and to remember that death has no power over those who are in Christ Jesus.

This is my first All-Saints Day since I first experience the death of some one close to me. And so the Spirit testifies just as boldly now as He did the day I found out my grandfather died, that Death has been conquered and has been trampled down by death!

Here are some words from St. John Chrysostom's Paschal homily that I had the privilege to preach at my Grandpa's funeral.

Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed [death] by enduring it.

He destroyed [Hell] when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O [Hell], where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

So take heart and joy with the Church in celebrating not merely the lives of the cloud of witnesses that have gone before us, but the glorious reality in which we live - a reality in which Death has been trampled down by death!!

Glory to Jesus Christ, Glory Forever!!

Amen.

On the Eucharist

I'm lying in bed tonight and I just can't sleep until I post this so it'll be quick. As I was lying in my bed I couldn't help but think about the day and how it was a great day. While it may be the great weather, the fact that I didn't do anything, or any combination therein, I firmly believe it is because today I had the Eucharist for the first time since the summer in Duluth.

Surely God must meet us in this Holy Sacrament. I can't explain it fully, but my countenance is lifted, my heart is more joyous, and my outlook is more positive than it has been in weeks (a much needed thing). Glory to God forever for giving us this Holy Gift - for giving us himself in this glorious actions.

Oh, that I could avail myself of this grace more often than once a week!!

I know that I'm firmly alienating myself from most of protestantism with these thoughts, but I can't deny the clear teaching of the Church for centuries and I can't deny my experience today.

Glory, praise, and thanksgiving to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!! Amen.

Misappropriating the Incarnation?

I'm not really in the mood to blog right now, so this post (as have so many others) may be lacking in coherence and a well formulated argument, but I will post it nevertheless because it helps me to process things verbally (or in this case through typing).

We recently had Kingdom Conference on campus which is basically the Seminary's attempt at a four day mission conference nestled in the "church season" they like to call KingdomTide. (We'll avoid my soapbox diatribe against KingdomTide for now).

The topic of this conference was rethinking short-term missions and how we can do them well. I think this is a very important topic because so often short-term mission trips turn into vacations with just enough 'ministry' to ease the guilt of taking a vacation. We also want to avoid what my friend Eric Iverson from Youthworks calls "pimping poor people," or in some cases 'pimping the nationals' we go to work with. We want to make sure we do some good and we want to make sure that we are not only sticking a band-aid on the infection, but that we're treating the cause as well. We want to make lasting changes and almost work ourselves and our missionary friends out of a job. I'm not sure if I explained that well, but either way it's more of an aside and not the topic I wanted to discuss. (Don't you just love my flow of consciousness writing style?)

Given the topic we had a speaker in chapel that lectured on improving short-term missions. Our speaker was Dr. Miriam Adeney, a professor at Seattle Pacific, who was a fairly good speaker. I liked most of her points but during one of her lectures she said something that I remember thinking was a very poor analogy at best. In her effort to emphasize making long-term connections through short-term missions she said "What if Jesus had dropped in on earth for only two weeks?" This seemed to me to be an odd analogy and I remember taking some issue with it when she said it. I didn't really get too worked up over her comment until I saw it listed as the "Heard Around Campus" quote of the week from last week. I guess it seems that someone (and since they put it in there, I'm assuming multiple someones) thought that it was a very profound statement.

While it is a good point in that Jesus didn't just "drop in" and we should cherish that because the incarnation is absolutely essential to our salvation and for knowing the mind and the heart of God. It seems to me that she is just citing an extreme case to make a small point about missions. Maybe this is just a type of logical fallacy (and as I type this I think it is, but I can't remember it) or maybe this could be a form of Godwin's Law. To be sure, I have been guilty of such errors (regrettably too often in conversation) but this analogy just seems wrong to me and I'm having trouble articulating it. Maybe I'm not making sense but it just seems to me that placing relationship building in short-term missions (or in any sense) on the same level with the Holy Incarnation is just too extreme of an analogy. It bothers me even more that students (or at least one student) thinks this to be worthy of the quote of the week. Doesn't it bother anyone else that we just use the incarnation as a means to justify almost anything. The incarnation is one of the most glorious things and we treat it as though it were just an example that we should draw from when we want to make our argument fool-proof.

I'm not saying that I disagree with Dr. Adeney's points, I'm just disagree with her argument style/example. Maybe I wouldn't be so quick to point this out if I didn't think that we deified community here at Asbury. Maybe you're thinking that that last statement may indeed be the exact same fallacy that I'm arguing against, but I don't think it is, because I've heard some discussions (many of which come out of the chapel office) that make it seem (and I really think it is the case) that the seminary is more concerned with making sure our students value community than it is that they value and rightly think on the incarnation, the Trinity, or a plethora of other essential doctrines of the Church.

Maybe I'm making a bid deal out of nothing, but maybe these comments by Dr. Adeney and their glorification by the student(s) is just the tip of a bigger problem that is well entrenched in Western Christendom.


- Ben

Cynical?

Given my (and a few of my housemate's) cynical attitude toward the seminary one of them posed the question.

"Is it cynicism if we're right?"

So that's the question I offer up to you. If our percieved cynical attitude is right are we really cynics or just the only ones that can see reality?

I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments. Have at it.

Christ Our God?!?

Over the past few weeks there has been one phrase from church that has been constantly on my mind - the phrase "Christ our God." This phrase is repeated numerous times during the Divine Liturgy and is very clear in it's meaning - namely that Christ is our God and we worship him.

For some reason over the past few weeks this phrase has stuck out to me more than usual and thus I have been forced to wrestle with it's profundity and simplicity. I have been forced to realize what it means to truly say that Christ is our God. To say that in a seemingly nonsensical sense that we worship a man, but not just a man, we worship a person who is both fully God and fully man.

God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.

- Athanasian Creed

This truth is something I will die for and yet it is something that although I try, I cannot fully understand and so I am forced to stand in the paradox of confident humility.

While this is indeed is a good meditation, it was not where I had planned to go with this post, so let me get back on track.

As I have thought and have been forced to meditate on this phrase I have been equally dismayed by it's absence from Protestant services. I think I first noticed this because when I first started to think on this phrase I felt slightly uncomfortable and began to analyze why. I then realized that I don't usually hear the phrase Christ our God in worship. As I thought I realized that while I may have conversations about Christ's divinity and would defend it in a theological debate any day, I never have really experienced protestant worship that verbalized Christ as God and the object of worship in a doxological sense.

Now, I realize that I am opening up myself for a great critique here as I'm sure one could find a few counterexamples and will believe that to suffice for a refutation of my assertion, but I disagree. Think about our worship services, for you Asburians think about our Chapel services (which, though they should be the exception are likely to fail even more than our churches) when was the last time that the service was thoroughly Trinitarian? When was the last time that a service was Christo-centric in the sense that it drew your worship toward Christ and caused you to bless, worship and affirm Christ as both God and man? Are our services Trinitarian - rarely. Are they Christo-centric - mostly, but this Christo-centrism seems to be a thin veil in front of bland and vague affirmations about God, rather than a specificity that is uniquely Christian and prayerfully meditative of Christ as the object of our worship - the fully divine, fully human , God-man.

Now, I am not fully opposed to songs of worship that are very concerned with the intimacy to be had between the Christian and Christ (love songs with Jesus, if you will), but these are not a proper starting place. We must start with the foundational faith and then allow room for mystical expression and intimate experiences.

We must do a better job at teaching our people the faith and for most this will not effectively happen in the classroom or the pulpit, but my making these truths essential parts or our worship both in song and prayer. If we continue on the path of only emphasizing the essential truths of the faith in classrooms and teaching them only to pastors then the faith will cease to be passed down to the coming generations.

The early fathers closely linked godliness with correct theology and action. We wonder why our people don't live righteously- could it not be that it is because they are not grounded in the Truth?

Unitarian Universalists

I went to a Unitarian Universalist Church the other day and it was an interesting experience. No, I am not converting, I had to go to another religious movement/cult for a class and they were the easiest to figure out when they met. I would write a total review, but I'm kinda lazy so I won't. I did however run into my friend Ed at the church (surprising because he goes to St. Athanasius as well) and Ed wrote a good review of the church on his blog.

I think Ed does a great job describing the UU church. His thoughts almost exactly echo mine especially when he mentions the service being boring. Oh my goodness, it was the most boring thing I've ever been to - even more boring than a Dr. Gould greek class.

The only thing I would add onto his post is that I agree that it looked much like the protestant/emergent services. In fact I would argue that it is a lot like so much of protestantism. A great deal of the service reminded me of seeker churches and even a bunch like the chapel services here at the Seminary. This, however, is not a good thing. I'm not making this point to say: "yay, look how close they are to the truth." rather it is surprising how far so much of weak protestantism (including so many of our chapel services here at the seminary) have strayed from boldly proclaiming the truth with any amount of urgency. This service really reminded me a lot of Quest Community Church which I have recently blogged about. That may be a cheap shot, but I really think(from what little I've seen) that Quest is a far cry from proclaiming the gospel and is so afraid at alienating people that they might as well be Unitarian Universalists.

I suppose that's it for now since my cults class is almost over. I had an idea for a post in class today but it may take some time to develop as I feel I should attend some services at Quest before I try to use our class paradigm to qualify them as a cult. But it should be a fun try.

- Ben

When paradigms collide

As most of you know I spent the summer living in Duluth, MN working for an organization called Youthworks. While you probably know from a previous post that I spent the summer facilitating short-term missions for Jr. High students, I do believe that I forgot to mention that every Tuesday we would take the groups that came to our site to a 'soup kitchen' to dine and fellowship with the people who ate there. While not everyone was homeless (though some were) most were among the poor of the city. This was a great stretch for me this summer. It made me uncomfortable and it pulled me out of my comfort zone (just like so much of the summer) but by the time the summer ended I looked forward to Tuesday nights and the people that I would meet.

Last week, about 3-5 weeks after my meals at the Mission had come to an end, I found myself working on the sound crew for an very prestigious show here in Lexington. The artist was Aretha Franklin, but the event was the TOBA (Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association) annual award ceremony. So while I'm use to seeing a ton of money dropped on concerts I don't know if I've ever seen money like this before. The event was in a large tent on a beautiful horse farm here in KY. The tent, however, was floored, carpeted and air-conditioned. Aside from the regular light trussing for the concert there was a light truss that ran the entire length of the tent on which hung three giant chandeliers (maybe about 7' tall x 3' around). I also heard rumors, which I wasn't able to verify, that the event was about $3,000 a plate.

I was both awed and disgusted by the money put into this event. To make matters worse the event was opened with an invocation which was prefaced by the reading of Jeremiah 29:11 "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" I love it when bible passages are taken out of context to justify gross amounts of wealth and self-indulgence (this is not to say that I'm 100% innocent of this).

As the awards went on I began to think that just a few weeks before this event I was eating dinner with the poor and neglected and now I was sitting in the background amongst the wealthy, powerful, and oppressive. As I sat in the disbelief of this realization one of the presenters gave an impassioned speech about how everyone in attendance needs to be aware of the sad reality that the thoroughbred industry is not considered agricultural by the US government and thus they still have to do horrible things like pay taxes on horse food and whatnot. I just sat in disbelief, could this person even be arguing that thoroughbred breeding and racing should be a tax-exempt industry?!

I pretty much just sat in the numb and saddening reality of the smash-up of my two worlds until Aretha came on stage and I had to do work.


After tearing down from the concert and getting a solid 4 hours of sleep I woke up the next morning (Sunday) to go run sound for Questapalooza an event held by one of the Lexington churches (a C&MA church I might add) where Toby Mac was the headliner. I knew from working this show last year, that the day would be full of chaos, poor event management, and very bad theology, but I was still saddened and angered by what I saw.

Not only did I see the huge stage, sound equipment and lighting that my company provides, but I also saw carnival rides, a motocross jump, carnival food vendors, and swimming pools for baptism. While things such as the fake-ness, the foundational concepts that church is built on, the re-baptizing, the 'worship' music, and many other things bothered me greatly I would like to focus on one small part of the larger whole that I think will tie into the discussion above - namely the theme of the event.

The theme for Questapalooza as best as I could understand was "Loving our city through Questapalooza!" It seemed to me that what they meant by this is that they were giving the city a party so they could relax and enjoy (at about a $20 entry fee mind you), but also that they were going to give away things to people such as a Wii, an iphone, and a new car. To be honest I think they may have also collected food or raised money for some shelters or organization in Lexington but this was only mentioned once (very briefly) compared to the party terminology and the give-aways being mentioned a countless number of times. In fact the point was hammered home by the senior pastor (who was, to my shame, both a Houghton College and Asbury Seminary graduate) that Quest likes to give gifts because God likes to give us gifts. After giving away the car the pastor also said: "Just know that that's Jesus, that car is from Jesus." While this oozes with heretical prosperity theology tendencies, I am not going to rule out that God does provide for our physical needs. He may have indeed prompted this person to buy a raffle ticket and guided the pastor's hand to that ticket so she could win a car. What, however, I will react definitively against is a church and a concept of God that ties love so closely to material things and goods.

With a theme like "Loving our city through Questapalooza!" I can only assume that the people of the church and maybe even the pastor are being deceived. I can think of so many more worthy places to spend what was likely over $100,000. Just so you don't think I'm totally making this figure up let me explain how I get it. Last summer our mobile stage usually rented out for $10,000 a show not including audio and lighting (maybe another 10 grand or so?). When I was in college I inquired about booking Third Day ($70,000 at the time) and since Toby isn't as big as Third Day I'd estimate about $30,000. So at a rough estimate we're talking about $50,000 (with very conservative estimates) which doesn't include the two opening bands, food for all the volunteers, the carnival rides, the moto-cross riders (and building their jump), renting port-a-johns, hotel for the bands, and the fireworks amongst other expenses.

On top of the expense of the event it was also interesting to note that when I stood on stage and looked out I primarily saw the green volunteer t-shirts. So i'm baffled as to how Questapalooza is an example of love to the city of Lexington. It seems to me that at the very least a church shows love to a city by discipling believers to live lives full of God and at the most by serving the poor and needy of that city. I thought loving a city was doing things like I did this summer: meeting people, loving on them, eating with them, serving them and not throwing them a concert that many of them don't have interest in and don't want to spend $20 to go to. $100,000 could do a lot of things and help a lot of people and I am truly ashamed that a church in the denomination I grew up in is the force behind Questapalooza.

With that said let me make it clear that the people I met at quest were very kind even if they did have some sort of cultish affection for Quest. I also know that many other churches do this on both larger and smaller scales. Yes, they do it, but that does not make Quest any more right and these churches any more shameful.

So there is my story as to how my paradigms collided last weekend. I still have a hard time believe that just a few weeks ago I was eating with some homeless people and teaching kids about being part of a church that serves in love and last week I was sitting at a $3,000/plate dinner and part of a church event that somehow implicitly teaches (heretically so) that the love of God is best displayed by throwing cash around and having a big party.

May all of us better learn how to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.


- Ben

Final thoughts from a great summer

Let me start this post by saying that the summer I had in Duluth working for Youthworks was wonderful. I loved the work that we did and even more I loved the 3 people that I worked with every day. If I was guaranteed having a staff like the one I had this summer I would sign up for Youthworks again in an instant.

With that in mind I've been wanting to post for a while what I think is the most significant thing I feel I've learned this summer. As I talked to my staff at the end of the summer they expressed that this was a summer of growth for them. While I think that I grew this summer, I realize that my growth was less traditional than I would have anticipated. I think that my growth was through a few realizations I had this summer about my personality and about ministry in general.

The most profound thing that I realized was something that I already knew in part but nevertheless something that became part of a fuller realization. Throughout the summer I struggled a lot with feelings of loneliness and thus times of depression. While my staff was wonderful there were still countless times that I didn't quite feel that I fit in for various reasons but the most significant being merely the fact that I was the Site Director and thus I was, for lack of better description, "their boss."

Being the introspective person that I am, I thought about this for the summer and realized that this loneliness is, and will ever be, part of my life. While I have great friends and will likely make friends wherever I go, I will never fit in entirely. If I continue to pursue the calling that God has placed on my life (which I fully intend to do) I will perpetually be "Pastor Ben" and will never just be "Ben," just as during the summer it was not possible for me not to always live as "Site Director Ben." There will always be this sort of not fitting in as part of my life. Given this knowledge and my personality I also can infer that there will always be some form of loneliness in my life.

While I don't want to make the case that this is a part of ministry for all people, I do believe that this is the case for me. Does it suck? Yes! But, in my opinion, it's part of what I'm called to. While I don't believe that I'm called to loneliness and depression, I do believe that I am called into full-time ministry and for me and my personality it may just entail perpetual times of loneliness and hints of depression. And with this realization I still gladly say, "so be it, Lord have mercy."

Even in this the Lord has given me peace and still know without a doubt that I am called into ministry and it is good. This is what the Lord was speaking into me through the summer. He was allowing me to realize bits and pieces of the ramifications of the service into which I'm being called. Maybe this won't be the case my whole life but it seems to be part of who I am and how my personality deals with being in ministry.

I penned this in my journal this summer:

...I will always be "Pastor" and not just friend, just like now I am perpetually Site Director and not Ben. I have lost my identity...Is this the loneliness to which I am condemned? or rather not condemned, but called to rejoice in.

It seems to me that this was an essential realization of part of the cost for me of the ministry to which I am called into. While I learned a lot through these thoughts one of the best things was being able to end my time as Site Director and just relate to my staff as their friend. I can't wait until I can see them again and be able to just be friends and not have to be their Director. True, I will never be able to fully lay aside my heart for their spiritual growth as I saw myself as a Pastor to them this summer, but it will still be nice to have some of the baggage removed.

So I'm not sure if any of this makes sense. Maybe it's just hard to articulate since it's been a while since I was in Duluth, but either way it makes sense in my mind.

I dialogged a lot with Ryals on this issue over the summer. He has a few posts concerning foreseeable Pastoral loneliness on his blog. There are a few posts specifically about this issue and then some thoughts weave through his other posts.

Blessings,

Ben

The Crucifixion

I've been meditating on the cross of Christ a lot lately, especially in light of leading weekly short-term mission trips that are primarily social action initiatives. I think upon the cross because I believe it is in the cross that Christian servanthood is defined. As the Holy Apostle Paul says in Philippians:

do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for you own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Paul then particularizes this exhortation by quoting an early Christian hymn that describes the 'actions' of Jesus and thus shows what he means by having the attitude that was in Christ. This attitude Paul says, is exemplified in Christ who:

although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

It is this attitude and action of Christ that I believe shows us what true humility and true service looks like. It is this action of Christ that opens for us the door so that we may truly love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. With Christ as our archetype and his Spirit as our empowerment we are enabled to live the selfless live that Christ did. Thus it seems to me that it is in the Cross where we see what real service looks like, and it is in the cross that we see what real humility looks like.

With this in mind I was sharing a devotion with my adult leaders a while ago in which I explained my thoughts that the cross is the center for a Christian understanding of service. I also shared that my hope for the week is that the kids and all of us (staff and adults) would be shaped in the cross for as St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

I also shared Paul’s thoughts on the cross immediately preceding this verse in 1 Corinthians where Paul says:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wider than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

After sharing these verses I exhorted the adult leaders to realize that service is truly cruciform, and that our goal here this week is that the kids may indeed know Christ and him crucified so that they can more fully love God and thus more fully love their neighbor as themselves.

After the meeting one of the adult leaders came to me and gave me a comment card with the following written on it.

If we focus on the death on the cross, rather than on Jesus’ life of loving and afterlife of the community of Jesus followers, we keep people away from Christianity rather than draw them in. The majority of students in my classroom, new arrivals to USA, are Muslims. I try to show God’s love to them each and every day. My impression of Allah is not of a loving, forgiving God, but of an angry, rule-bound God. The God of Jesus is the big difference for us to show. Jesus, the crucified, is very awful to a non-Christian (“God would kill his own son! I could never love this God!”) So to me the most important thing to me about Jesus is not his crucifixion, but his life and the things he taught all of us while he was here.

Are you kidding me?! It seems to me that this statement encapsulates what is wrong with so much of western protestant Christendom. How have we ever differentiated the cross from the love of God?? This is absurd. It seems to me that the failure to comprehend that the crucifixion is one of the most wonderful acts of love stems from the lax teaching on the Trinity within much of Protestantism. If our churches were teaching their congregations the deep doctrines of the faith rather than fluffy nonsensical story-time sermons we would never be able to conceive of the death of our Lord and an atrocious act committed by the Father. If we truly taught about the Trinity so that our parishioners understood it, we would quickly realize that there is no room for any concept of a disjuncted Godhead in which the Father cruelly condemns his son to suffer.

If we taught more doctrine in our churches, not as stale dogma but as life-giving water, we would also realize that the life and teachings of Jesus cannot realistically be separated from who Jesus is – namely – true God of true God. It is who Jesus is that separates him from the Ghandis, the Martin Luther King Jrs. and the other great moral teachers of the world. Jesus is God and that is what gives his teachings and life weight. It is also his being fully God that makes the crucifixion and selfless act of giving and love rather than a reluctantly followed harsh command from a cruel father.

Yes, this may be hard to conceive, but if we decide (as this adult leader has) that the cross to mean or disturbing, then what have we to gain? We have just thrown our faith away by trying to cater to our pluralistic ‘let’s love everyone’ society. Does this person not realize what the cross accomplished? Does she not realize by his death our Lord made life possible? Does she not comprehend that because of our Lord’s death and resurrection the curse has be overturned and new life has been given in the new Adam? How can one look at the crucifixion and say ‘what a horrendous act’? How can one even begin to think about not talking about the crucifixion because it doesn’t have to do with love? The crucifixion changes everything!! Love is now free to reign because Christ has died and risen.

What kind of gospel are people accepting if they are not embracing one of Christ and his death and resurrection. To proclaim a gospel that does not include the crucifixion is paramount to condemning these people. It is as if we are turning and trying to proclaim another gospel. We cannot tolerate this breakdown of the gospel. Just as Paul says to the Galatians: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!”

So with all this as the foundation I still wonder why I am questioned when I tell people that we need to have Trinitarian worship services and that we need to speak about the Trinity in our churches. If we neglect the doctrine of the Trinity then we are bound to develop faulty views of the working of the Godhead and thus we will come up with kooky and zany ideas of how the Father relates to the son and will end up with proposed scenarios, such as we have here, where the Cross is a mean, viscous, and evil rather than what it truly is – life-giving, wonderful, and the epitome of love and service.

I know this post didn’t have much coherence, but this has been brewing for a few weeks and I needed to get it out. I am still awestruck by how easily this woman discarded the cross in the name of ‘evangelism.’ I can’t believe it!!

Summer Thoughts part II

For church on Sunday I decided to go visit the Greek Orthodox Church of the 12 Holy Apostles across town. While I love the church I'm staying at and will attend there most of the time during the summer I wanted to check out this Orthodox Church across town. Although some of the service was different from what I'm use to (a lot more Greek) it was pretty much the same liturgy. Despite saying and singing the same thing every Sunday for over a year I am still amazed every time God shows me another aspect of beauty in the liturgy. This Sunday was one of those occasions.

As we were going through the Liturgy we came to a line that I know I have sung many times, but this time it struck me as so profound and beautiful. The line simply says:

Let us love one another, so that with one mind we can confess: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It's amazing how this small phrase ties together correct confession and worship with loving one another. It almost seems to be saying that if we do not love one another then we are indeed unable to truly confess the essential belief of the Christian faith - The Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one in essence undivided.

How often have love and doctrine been divided? How long have we thought that we can correct affirm believe without living in love? This seems like a perennial issue for much of the Church and yet we have been confessing since the earliest times that without love we cannot truly make the Christian confession.

Praise the Lord and let us live in love having the mind of Christ who considered equality with God not something to be grasped but he humbled himself even to death on a cross!


Glory to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit! Amen.

Summer thoughts

Before I jump into the heart of the post (which as usual will be an assortment of randomness) allow me to do a quick update on my life. I'm not four weeks into my summer job with Youthworks (www.youthworks.com) in which I am the Site Director for their Duluth, MN site. This means that I manage a site staff of three college students (who are all awesome by the way) and together the four of us facilitate groups of about 60+ junior high kids and chaperones on week long missions trips into Duluth. While I don't get a lot of time to relax my job isn't that hard because my staff is incredible. While in Duluth we are living at a Lutheran Church which has been more than welcoming. They have lavished us with love and hospitality since the first day we stepped in the door. I will finish up with Youthworks on the 14th of August and then will leave MN after spending a couple days with my cousin Tony.

Now to the randomness.

Concerning the Eucharist:

I guess this sort of jumps off my last post. Since I am currently living in a Lutheran Church (ELCA not Missouri Synod) I have had the delight of attending three Lutheran liturgies (two traditional and one contemporary). In all three of these liturgies the Eucharist was served and in each one I noticed that the prayer of epiklesis was not said. For those unfamiliar with this term the prayer of epiklesis is the prayer which is prayed before the elements are recieved in which the Holy Spirit is asked to change the gifts and also us. I'm sure there is a better text book definition but I don't want to take the time to look it up. From what I understand historically concerning the development of liturgies the prayer of epiklesis is pretty much and essential part of any eucharistic liturgy. While the words may be nuanced this prayer is included in the Eastern Orthodox rite, the Catholic rite, the Methodist rite and I'm sure in many others. It appears in some of the earliest eucharistic traditions. Since the Lutheran liturgy has many similar phrases to the Catholic liturgy I assumed that I merely missed this prayer the first Sunday. After it was omitted the second Sunday I though the pastor forgot it and then after the third Sunday I resolved that it must not be part of the liturgy. I thought this to be extremely odd since Lutherans traditionally have a high view of the Eucharist. I didn't get a chance to talk to the pastor of the church in which we are staying, but this past week we did have a Lutheran Pastor come with his group. I asked this pastor and he informed me that the prayer of epiklesis is indeed not part of the Lutheran liturgy.

While I do not know Lutheran theology enough to comment on the inclusion or omission of this part of the liturgy I do think that it is hard for one to have a eucharistic theology of real presence (which I think Lutherans do) without a prayer of epiklesis. I suppose one could still hold this theology without invoking the Holy Spirit to make the change (or bring the presence), but I struggle to comprehend how this would look. I also wonder why it was taken out of the Liturgy during the reformation era.


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A couple days ago I was asked by my supervisor what God was showing me through devotions. I thought for a second and came up with nothing. I thought some more and then provided some generic answer to avoid any possible shame that may be seen in the lack of an answer to that question. I didn't really think much of this until the other night I was down on the banks of Lake Superior with my staff and I wandered off by myself to think. The above conversation came to mind and I thought about how awful I felt for not having an answer. I felt awful not because God isn't working in my life and not because he hasn't been showing me something, but because I couldn't sufficiently meet the paradigm out of which the question was asked. Let me explain.

Has God been working in my life? YES.
Have I been growing closer to God? YES.
Have I learned to love God more over the past few weeks? YES.
Has God spoken to me in significant ways? YES.

Even with a resounding 'yes' to all of the above questions (which weren't asked in our conversation) I still feel as though I was unable to provide an appropriate answer to the question asked me. Why? Well it seems to me that the question that was asked begs for an answer that is significant. For example I think a good answer to that question is: "well, God has been teaching me that I'm self centered and here are 10 ways for me not to be" or "God has shown me that I need to do X, Y, or Z." These answers (and thus the question), while realistic at points in time, do not seem to do the Christian life justice. Sometime one cannot articulate what they are learning about God or what God is showing them. Sometimes growth happens in such a matter that we know we are growing but we are not sure how to articulate it. This is the process of the Christian life.

It seems to me that so much of protestantism focuses on the cataclysmic moments in one's faith and thus tends to error into heaping shame upon individuals or causing them to feel like no growth is occurring if there is not a moment of crisis. Will moments of crisis happen? Undoubtedly, but it seems that if we only look for crisis moments then we end up being blind to the working of God in all the normal moments of life.

All that to say that in retrospect I didn't like the question I was asked. God has been working in my life, but I'm not sure how to articulate it. I guess mostly I'm just learning obedience through the process and learning how to love him more and to partake in the divine essence.

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One thing that I've noticed over the past few weeks is that I am slowly losing my longing for Sundays. Over the past few years I have come to love Sundays, not as sabbath, but as the Lord's Day. As a celebration of our Lord's resurrection. I have come to shift my eating and living happens to make Sunday truly a feast day that helps remind me that 'He is Risen.' While I still go to church and while I still celebrate Sunday, much of my Sunday is spend thinking about the group of kids that will arrive at the church at 4:00pm instead of thinking on Christ's Resurrection. Now I must be honest here over the past year some Sundays I just relaxed and didn't do much meditating and others I actually did homework, but on the whole I did at least consider one way or another to mark Sunday off as a celebration - as a mini-Easter. I find that since our Sunday schedule is packed I am not able to either relax or think about ways to celebrate his resurrection other than by attending church. I take joy in going to church but it seems that everyone around me perceives church differently than I do. I just heard one of my staff say that since she went to church tonight she doesn't need to go tomorrow (Sunday). While there is not much of an argument that can be built against that logic it makes me very sad that we have lost the meaning of Sundays. Why do we go to church on Sunday? To celebrate the resurrection with our primary family - the family of faith. Just thinking about Sunday in it's theological context gets me excited and makes me want to go to bed right now just so that when I wake up I can go to church. I'm not sure where I'm going with all this except that I'm sad that I don't get to enjoy Sundays as much anymore and I'm very sad that so much of the church (especially protestantism) has no clue what Sunday is even about or why we even do church or have it on Sunday.

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Well I think that's it for now. I hope I'll be able to blog a bit more this summer, but I can't promise anything.

May God bless you all,

Ben

One for the Road

I don't' know when I'll get the chance to post again and since it's 1:20am and I leave for the airport at 3:45am I thought that I would write a post instead of getting some sleep. As is usually the case with my longer posts, you'll have to forgive a lack of structure as I just string together a bunch of things I've been thinking about lately.

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Today in church we sang a hymn that said "As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." That is really apropos of nothing, except for the fact that it was really cool. I may have been going somewhere with that, but I'm not sure now so we'll move on.

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A while ago I attended a training seminar for my summer job and they constantly emphasized that they do what they do because they "love the church." While I support their foundation of love for the church (because I do love the church) it started me thinking about what it means to really be the church. This is an issue I've been wrestling with for a while. I think I started to think about this during my time at Houghton and then it really started to take off since I started going to St. Athanasius. I know that many of my Orthodox friends will have ready answers for these questions as their tradition has a well developed ecclesiology, but I'm sure I'm not the only protestant who lays awake at night and thinks these thoughts (don't laugh because I really do lay awake and think stuff like this).

So here are some of the thoughts I jotted down while in my seminar.

1. Is the church primarily institutional?
   
   
2. If the church is institutional is that institution contingent on a constant line of Apostolic Authority (i.e. The apostle Peter lays hands on Jim, who lays hand on Bob, who lays hands on Jeffy, etc.) or is it primarily tied to the apostolic tradition and teaching?
   
   
3. How big of a role to authority play into where the church is? If Apostolic succession and authority are necessary for one to be in the church then are all of us in the west outside of the church because of the rebellious act of inserting the Filioque ('and the Son') clause into the Nicene Creed?
   
   
4. To be part of the visible church does one need to celebrate the sacraments? If so then are we forced to eliminate the Salvation Army and other non-sacramental groups from "church" status?
   
   
5. Does one need to affirm all 7 ecumenical councils to be part of the church? If so what about the groups that are ignorant of the councils or don't accept one or more of them, but are still orthodox in their teaching?
   
   
6. Is the church primarily visible or invisible? If it is invisible then what is the point of visible sign acts like the Eucharist and baptism?
   
   
7. Does one need to be baptized in order to be accepted into the church? (Necessary for salvation? - Talk amongst yourselves).
   
   
8. If we assert that celebrating the sacraments are a necessary action for the visible church (and I think they are) does authority then also become essential? (cf. St. Ignatius of Antioch [ca. 150AD] - "Do nothing without the Bishop")
   
   
9. If the sacraments are given to the visible church can they be celebrated and acted outside of the church? (i.e. can they be separated from the Liturgical and Authoritative acts of the Church proper?)
   
   
10. What doctrines are essential for one to be the church? Is Trinity (I think yes)? What view on predestination or other disputed theological matters?
    
    
11. If correct doctrine is essential then is correct action essential? Can action and doctrine (orthopraxy and orthodoxy) even be separated? (I doubt they really can.)

One may ask how we can truly love the church if we have so many "if" statements. I content that even if we're not sure (as I'm still working through this) we can still love the church by loving the people of God, or rather, loving those who call upon God in Trinity and profess to be the "church."

So there are some thoughts on the church. I hope this doesn't cause anyone to have an ecclesiological crisis but these are some things to think on for sure. I'm sure we could even add more to the list, but we'll let that simmer for a while.

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Laying aside my questioning I will not turn to some asserting. But first...a back-story.

When I went home for my Grandpa's funeral a few weeks back I was outside with my 10 yr. old cousin and we were talking away. He asked me if I was seriously going to be a Catholic priest like I had told him I was a day or two prior (I like to mess with him like that). I told him no, but asked him why he cared. Oh and I should note that he's a fairly smart 10 yr. old. He proceeded to tell me that all the problems with the Catholic church and how they didn't believe like "we" (i.e. protestants) believed and thus they probably weren't Christians.

Now, I don't want to pick on my little cousin, because he is after all only 10 and that's not really a fair fight (he'd probably own men). But I am fairly certain that these thoughts didn't originate within himself. In fact, to be honest, I had many of the same thoughts in myself before I went to Houghton.

I tried to tell him that Catholics really don't believe some of the things that he claimed, but the big question that came to my mind is why protestants have such a beef with Catholics. I'm sure they'd have beef with Orthodox too, if they actually knew what they were. As I thought about this I came to a few conclusions. I think that many of the protestants who rail against catholics have had very minimal interaction with catholics, catholic services, and catholic writings. I also think that protestants have unfairly characterized catholics. I believe this characterization stems from not knowing what they believe, but also from being intimidated by the authority structure that is in place within Catholicism. I am willing to contend (and to be fair I would need to do much more research) that much of the negative reaction to Catholics by protestants is not really concerning beliefs (because most protestants don't really know what Catholics believe) but because they don't understand authority and have been taught that to have any priest other than oneself is of the devil.

I say this because one of the most common critiques of Catholicism that I hear is against confession. I am absolutely befuddled by the number of protestants who will go to their small group meetings and share that they are struggling with "sin A, B or C" and ask for prayer to help them, and then turn around and condemn Catholics for seeing a priest and confessing to him. What an absurd hypocrisy.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that much of protestantism has a sever problem with submitting to authority. It's sort of appropriate considering we still define ourselves as "protest-ant" (i.e. one's who are protesting against something - namely authority). Yes, authority can be taken too far. Yes, there have been some bad Popes, Bishops, and Priests. But there have also been some very godly and saintly Popes, Bishops, and Priests. In fact, one of the most saintly men that I have ever had the chance to meet was Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa. Fr. Cantalamessa visited Asbury in the fall and is the preacher to the Papal Household. Yes, that means he preaches to the Pope. Granted my interaction was limited, but I could tell from my limited interaction that this was a Saintly man who loved and served the Lord with great zeal. It was my delight to receive a blessing from him before he left.

So all that to say that I hope my cousin and most of protestantism will come around and appreciate the good that Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) has to offer. I think that this move has begun, but let us hope that it continues as good dialogue with Christian traditions and doesn't move into dialogue with non-Christian religions such as Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses.

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Book Review:

I finished St. Cyril of Jerusalem's Lectures on the Christian Sacraments a few weeks ago and it was great. The lectures are relatively short and one could easily read them all in one setting. Cyril writes his lectures around 348AD and so these lectures are a great insight into early sacramental thought. Cyril writes on beginning Catechism, The Eucharist, Baptism, and Holy Unction (not in that order).

There were so many good things allow me to just quote a few passages:

Speaking to catechumens concerning preparation for Baptism:

And what Solomon spoke of others will suit you also; for he said, There is a time to bear and a time to die; but to you, on the contrary, the time to die is also the time to be born; and one and the same season brings about both of these, and your birth went hand in hand with your death.
O strange and inconceivable thing! We did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again, but our imitation was but in a figure, while our salvation is in reality.

Concerning the Eucharist:

Since then He Himself has declared and said of the Bread, 'This is My Body,' who shall dare to doubt any longer? And since He has affirmed and said, 'This is My Blood,' who shall ever hesitate, saying, that it is not His blood?
He once turned water into wine, in Cana of Galilee, at His own will, and is it incredible that He should have turned wine into blood?...
Therefore with fullest assurance let us partake as of the Body and the Blood of Christ: for in the figure of Bread is given to thee His Body, and in the figure of Win His Blood; that thou by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, mightest be made of the same body and the same blood with Him. For thus we come to bear Christ in us, because His Body and Blood are diffused through our members, thus it is that, according to the blessed Peter, 'we become partakers of the divine nature.'...
Contemplate therefore the Bread and Wine not as bare elements, for they are, according to the Lord's declaration, the Body and the Blood of Christ; for though sense suggests this to thee, let faith stablish thee. Judge not the matter from taste, but from faith be fully assured without misgiving, that though has been vouchsafed the Body and Blood of Christ.

I'm not sure what else to say concerning the book, except that it is a good read and sheds some very good light on early liturgical practice and belief in the early church in Jerusalem.

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St. Cyril serves as a nice transition into the next (and likely the last) topic: the Eucharist.

Since my senior and maybe junior year at Houghton I have been rethinking and reforming my sacramentology. Much of this formation has occurred in my view of the Eucharist since it is one of the most important things the church does. Since Houghton my view of the Eucharist moved from a strictly Zwinglian/memorialist view of Communion that holds that it is just a time where I remember Christ, to a more Lutheran/Methodist view of 'real presence' meaning that God is truly present in Spirit and imparts some sort of grace during the act.

I have continued to think on this over the past year and have pursued the issue in my research into early Church history. Although I am not sure if I am 100% committed, I do believe that I am leaning toward a sacramentology that posits not only real presence, but also real Body and real Blood. You may be asking why I believe I am coming to this conclusion. Here are a few reasons:

• As Luther wrote on the table when arguing with Zwingly: "hoc est corpus meum" or "It is my body." Jesus Christ said in the Gospel accounts that it was his body. While this could be metaphoric it seems to me that the evidence points that it is not.
• The evidence in the earlier sources suggests a very high eucharistic view and probably that of literal body and blood. We saw above that this view is fully articulated in St. Cyril in 348AD, but I believe we can see traces of this in St. Ignatius, and other second century saints.
• There is no biblical argument against it.
• There is no reason why we should not accept it. A paradigm that rejects the transformation of bread and wine into body and blood is likely entrenched in modernism and in the enlightenment emphasis on the scientific method. This worldview leaves no room for miracles and thus one might as well reject the resurrection if one rejects the miracle that is the transformation of the elements in the Eucharist.
• The emphasis in the earliest liturgies is that the Holy Spirit is the agent of change within the elements. This places the emphasis off of humans and back onto the gracious action of God for his people.
• Receiving grace in the eucharist is not juridical grace (i.e. salvific) but rather the grace of God's presence. A view that posits all grace as juridical is highly Anselmic and is not founded in the biblical worldview of grace.
• Even though it doesn't taste like it, as St. Cyril says, we must believe in faith. To help address this 'problem' one of my Orthodox friends says that it is more of a revealing than a changing. That is: Is it still bread - Yes. Is it still Wine - Yes. Is it real body - Yes. Is it real blood - Yes. It seems that this view posits that it is body and bread, and blood and wine all at the same time.

The reasons given above are why I am very close to believing that it is literal body and literal blood. I say 'very close' because it is a big move to change a whole paradigm and changing my mind to this is quite a task.


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Today was Pentecost Sunday. How many of your churches celebrated that instead of memorial day? Probably not many. That makes me sad. Just FYI.

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Well I think that is it. I can't think of anything else to write. I am leaving for Minnesota tomorrow to work for Youthworks for the summer. I will be living in Duluth, Minnesota and will return back to KY on August 17th. I will try to blog throughout the summer, but I'm not sure how much time I'll have. If you need to get a hold of me just call my cell (if you have it) or post a comment and I'll get it when I check my email.

Concerning the reading list: Kung, Dostoyevsky, JND Kelly, and Witherington aren't going to make the flight because the first three are too big and the last one is low on the priority list. Maybe I'll get at these during the time between the end of youthworks and the beginning of school.


Blessings to you all in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!,


Ben