Tuesday, July 31, 2007

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!!

Thursday, July 05, 2007

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.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

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