A Thinking Reed

Category: Church

  • Lord, teach us to pray

    This weekend we were visiting my family in my ancestral homeland of Western Pennsylvania. As is our habit, we attended the early service at the ELCA congregation in my hometown. This is a gem of a church and we always receive a warm welcome when we worship there, even though we don’t have a particular connection to the parish.

    Anyway, the pastor was on vacation but in his stead the ELCA bishop of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod, Ralph E. Jones, presided and preached. The Gospel lession was the story from Luke 11 where the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and he responds by giving them the Lord’s Prayer as well as by telling them that their Heavenly Father is always ready to give them the gift of the Spirit.

    Bishop Jones’ sermon began with recounting a message he’d heard on a Christian radio station against the practice of “rote” pre-written prayers. God, the speaker suggested, wants prayers that come spontaneously “from our hearts.”

    However, Bp. Jones, good Lutheran that he apparently is, suggested, the problem with prayer “from the heart” is that our heart’s desires are often self-centered and misaligned with God’s will. What prayers like the Lord’s Prayer do through repeated use, he said, is form us in such a way that our thoughts and desires gradually come to be aligned with God’s will.

    As he put it, if I pray from my heart, I’ll spend a lot more time asking for things than praying for others or offering praise or thanksgiving. But the prayers of the Bible (and the tradition of the church) help us to readjust our vision and our priorities in line with God’s kingdom. C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere that pre-written prayers keep us in touch with “sound doctrine” and prevent our religion from becoming wholly privatized. I’m also reminded of Bonhoeffer’s dictum that our prayer should be rooted in God’s word, not in the poverty of our hearts.

    He also pointed out that, according to the Gospel text, the gift that God is always ready to give us when we ask in prayer is the Holy Spirit. Some Christians have been misled into the view that God will literally give us whatever we ask for if we have sufficient faith (this seems to be the root of some “prosperity gospel” preaching). But in this story at least, the gift of the Spirit seems to be chiefly what is promised. And the role of the Spirit is to form us into new people who love God and our neighbor.

    I don’t think this should be taken as an argument against “spontaneous” prayer or to say that we should only use pre-writter prayer forms. Personally most, though not the entirety, of my prayer life (pitiful as it is) consists of traditional prayers. I tend to think of prayers as tools for helping me to focus on God, and the great prayers of our tradition seem to me to do this best. This isn’t to say that Christians shouldn’t have recourse to spontaneous prayer, but I do think that Bp. Jones is right that those prayers need to be formed and directed by God as we believe he has revealed himself to us.

  • My mama told me, “You’d better shop around”

    We’ve been in DC now for over two weeks, and in that time have visited two different churches. Last week we went to a nearby ELCA congregation. It seemed like a nice place – the service was pretty straightforward Lutheran, if a bit low church (very little liturgical singing/chanting, e.g.). The folks we met were friendly, the sermon was decent, etc. Yesterday we attended a small historic Episcopal parish that was also quite low church (is this a DC thing?) and as far as I could tell, quite liberal (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I’m not sure we really “clicked” with either one, though we’ll probably go back to the Lutheran church again. I think we’re also going to visit St Paul’s on K Street, which is a well-regarded Anglo-Catholic parish in the Episcopal Church.

    Having moved several times in the last few years, it’s always daunting to try to find a new church home. Summer in particular seems like a tough time, because most churches don’t seem to be in full swing in terms of programs and ministries, a lot of people are on vacation, etc., making it somewhat more difficult to get a feel for the life of the congregation.

    But beyond this you face the problem of “church shopping” – you try and identify a list of desiderata and then find the church that best approximates what you’re looking for. I have only a few “deal-breakers”: that there be communion offered every week, that the sermons not be out-and-out heretical (e.g. denying the resurrection), and that it not be too overt or heavy-handed about pushing a political agenda, whether of the Left or the Right. Second tier considerations include things like liturgy, the diversity of the congregation (age, race, class), the size of the congregation, the programs and ministries, etc. And, one of the more important, but also more intangible, considerations is the general “vibe” you get from the people.

    Obviously this raises the specter of a consumerist approach to finding a church. In the olden days you went to whatever church was geographically closest to you. And even after the advent of Protestantism most people probably attended the local church of whatever denomination they identified with. But in our age of greater mobility and diminished denominational loyalty these can no longer be taken for granted. Other things being equal I’d like to attend a church in our neighborhood, but I’m not prepared to rule out going somewhere farther away. And while I still have a loyalty to Lutheranism I could just as easily see us attending an Episcopal parish (as we did for the past year in Boston). So, church-shopping becomes somewhat inevitable.

    Interestingly, there’s a bit of a tension in contemporary Christian approaches to this. On the one hand, most Christians have welcomed, or at least accepted, the demise of the “Christendom” model that simply assumed that everyone with a particular geographic boundary was a member of the local church. Our alleged postmodern condition has highlighted the importance of a more intentional approach to church membership and discipleship. On the other hand, there is also a strong backlash against the consumerist model of choosing a church, rooted partly in a criticism of the encroachment of market forces into the religious sphere and a wariness of a certain idea of liberal individualism that valorizes the autonomous chooser. The new fashion in a lot of theology emphasizes the importance of being rooted in community and the “tradition-constituted” nature of our capicity for reasoning and choosing. How this avoids falling back into the discredited Christendom model of the organic church isn’t entirely clear to me.

    Anyway, my sense remains that there’s something a little troubling about shopping around for a church that seems to fit my preconceived needs or desires. Maybe the right course of action is simply to attach oneself to one’s local congregation. On the other hand, why should geographic proximity be elevated to the highest importance? It may be that any ranking of criteria inevitable involves individual preference and personal judgment, so best just to get on with it and muddle through the best you can.

  • Home in DC and Back to Wittenberg?

    We’ve successfully made the move from Boston to Washington DC! Actually, we’ve been here since last Saturday. Our place is a scant seven blocks or so from the Capitol and in a very cool neighborhood. My wife is starting a new job next week, hence the move. Yours truly has now joined the ranks of the “telecommuting.”

    I’m looking forward to getting to know DC, a city I’ve always enjoyed visiting. And as someone who has a bit of a love-hate relationship with politics it should be stimulating to live here during the next year or so.

    This Sunday I imagine we’ll start visiting churches. Despite our good experiences over the last year with the Anglicans I think we’ll probably initially scout out some of the local ELCA congregations. I don’t think Anglo-Catholicism quite “took” for either one of us, though I do feel like I’ve benefited greatly from certain aspects of Anglo-Catholic spirituality. In particular I’ve developed a budding devotion to the Blessed Virgin, not something that Lutheran churches tend to be very big on!

    Still, the Christ-and-gospel-centeredness of Lutheranism at its best, along with the distinctive Lutheran themes of justification by faith, simul justus et peccator, and the Law/Gospel dialectic still seem to me to best capture a lot of what I think Christianity is all about. Of course, most people don’t find a church home based exclusively or even primarily on theology, but I’m hoping we can find a sound Lutheran community here.

    Finally, we are, alas, still running on a dial-up connection until next week, so no Friday metal today.

  • On almost being liturgically indifferent

    See here for a well-informed (my comment excepted) discussion on things liturgical in light of the rumored forthcoming liberalization of the use of the pre-Vatican II Mass in the RCC. Obviously Protestants don’t directly have a horse in this race, but as Derek points out what the RCC does tends to affect Protestant bodies.

    I admit that I am still quite the liturgical philistine. As a parishoner at what is widely considered to be the flagship parish of Anglo-Catholicism in America it’s still very much a matter of casting pearls before swine in my case. 😉

    We still gravitate toward the Rite II Sung Mass rather than the High Mass in Rite I, due to the greater prevalence of congregational singing and participation. Maybe the sign of a true Protestant is that you have a hard time imagining a church service without lots of hymn-singing! I’ve certainly met some people whom I affectionately refer to as “liturgical fascists” – they genuinely seem to believe that the High Mass is objectively superior to any other possible service.

    For my part I think C.S. Lewis’ self-description fits me pretty well:

    [M]y whole liturgiological position really boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever, if only it will stay put. But if each form is being snatched away just when I am beginning to feel at home in it, then I can never make any progress in the art of worship. You give me no chance to acquire the trained habit — habito dell’arte. (Letters to Malcolm, p. 5)

    Of course Lewis didn’t live to see some of the more banal, not to mention heretical, liturgies that have been inflicted on long-suffering Christian people in the last thirty years or so. Still, I can’t get too excited about arguments over liturgy, though of course I want worship to be reverent, reflect sound doctrine, etc. I definitely have my preferences – I probably feel most at home in a highish traditional Lutheran service that many Anglicans would probably consider pretty middle-of-the-road. But it’s not a hill I’m particularly willing to die on.

    I am glad that there are smart people like Derek, et al. who give this stuff serious thought since they’ll be the ones influencing the shape of worship for the rest of us in the future!

  • Visitation of the BVM

    ghirlandaio_visitation2.jpg

    (click for larger image)

    From John Paul II’s Redemptoris Mater:

    When Elizabeth greeted her young kinswoman coming from Nazareth, Mary replied with the Magnificat. In her greeting, Elizabeth first called Mary “blessed” because of “the fruit of her womb,” and then she called her “blessed” because of her faith (cf. Lk. 1:42, 45). These two blessings referred directly to the Annunciation. Now, at the Visitation, when Elizabeth’s greeting bears witness to that culminating moment, Mary’s faith acquires a new consciousness and a new expression. That which remained hidden in the depths of the “obedience of faith” at the Annunciation can now be said to spring forth like a clear and life-giving flame of the spirit. The words used by Mary on the threshold of Elizabeth’s house are an inspired profession of her faith, in which her response to the revealed word is expressed with the religious and poetical exultation of her whole being towards God. In these sublime words, which are simultaneously very simple and wholly inspired by the sacred texts of the people of Israel, Mary’s personal experience, the ecstasy of her heart, shines forth. In them shines a ray of the mystery of God, the glory of his ineffable holiness, the eternal love which, as an irrevocable gift, enters into human history.

    Mary is the first to share in this new revelation of God and, within the same, in this new “self-giving” of God. Therefore she proclaims: “For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” Her words reflect a joy of spirit which is difficult to express: “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Indeed, “the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man is made clear to us in Christ, who is at the same time the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.” In her exultation Mary confesses that she finds herself in the very heart of this fullness of Christ. She is conscious that the promise made to the fathers, first of all “to Abraham and to his posterity for ever,” is being fulfilled in herself. She is thus aware that concentrated within herself as the mother of Christ is the whole salvific economy, in which “from age to age” is manifested he who as the God of the Covenant, “remembers his mercy.”

    See also here.

  • Wright on the radio

    Via a friend who is a Calvin College grad, here’s a link to a lecture N.T. Wright gave there recently.

    Also, the lectures Bishop Wright gave at Harvard Memorial Church when he was here last fall are now available online.

    I haven’t listened to any of these yet, but thought I’d draw folks’ attention to them.

  • Jesus the Jew and Christian practice

    UPDATE: Welcome, readers of Theolog! I have responded to Jason Byassee’s comments here.

    Lutheran Zephyr and Derek the Ænglican already have good comments on this article by Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Professor Levine argues for a stronger recognition of the essential Jewishness of Jesus by the Christian community, and sharply criticizes practices and rhetoric that define Jesus over against Judaism.

    She is certainly right, I think, that a lot of Christian talk still lapses into a lazy caricature of “Judaism” as Jesus’ foil. And, as Prof. Levine points out, progressives, feminists, and liberation theologians aren’t exempt from this. It’s obscene, for instance, when extreme anti-Israel rhetoric, which at times borders on the anti-Semitic, is served up in the name of Jesus.

    However, I also think LZ and Derek are both right that she seems to focus on the “Jesus of history” as normative for Christian faith in ways that are far from problem free. For instance, what are we to make of the claim that “preserving the fact that Jesus wore fringes [symbolizing the 613 commandmetns of the Torah], the New Testament mandates that respect for Jewish custom be maintained and that Jesus’ own Jewish practices be honored, even by the gentile church, which does not follow those customs”? Early on the church decided, for better or for worse, that keeping the Torah was not mandatory for Christians. So, it’s not clear what “mandting respect” for that practice would entail within the Christian community, apart from respecting the practices of our Jewish elder brothers and sisters in the faith.

    Or take Prof. Levine’s contention that “as for Jesus’ Jewish identity, neither he nor his Jewish associates would have mourned the loss of a herd of hogs—animals that are not kosher and that represent conspicuous consumption in that they cost more to raise than they produce in meat”? Does this mean that Christians, to take one of my personal hobbyhorses, are free to treat pigs and other un-kosher animals as having no dignity as creatures of God?

    What all of this gets at – and Derek, following Luke Timothy Johnson, highlights this point – is how difficult it is for Christians to simply take the “Jesus of history” (itself a problematic notion) as normative for their faith and practice in any straightforward way. First, as Derek also points out, the church has never confined Jesus’ influence to the example set by a historical figure 2,000 years ago, much less to the latest scholarly reconstruction. For Christian faith Jesus is first and foremost the living Lord whose Spirit continues to guide the church. Of course, that faith would be a mirage if the Jesus of history didn’t do and say the kinds of things recorded in the gospel accounts. But Christians aren’t committed to slavishly imitating all the details of Jesus’ life, even the religious details. That much was made clear at the Council of Jerusalem.

    This doesn’t mean that Jesus’ Jewishness is unimportant, and Prof. Levine is correct to warn against the kind of crypto-Marcionism that seems to be a recurrent temptation in the church. The Jewish tradition and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament constitute the matrix out of which Jesus came and out of which our faith comes. But the ongoing tradition and experience of the church isn’t necessarily bound by the details of the Judaism of Jesus’ day, anymore than contemporary Rabbinic Judaism has to ape the Judaism of the 1st century.

    But, to say this also presents a challenge for contemporary Christians. Often the imitatio Christi is thought of in terms of simply copying the lifestyle of the historical Jesus (usually one favorite particular version), and this is sometimes presented as a superior alternative to the life of the institutional church. Or the Jesus of the gospels is treated as having ready-made answers to all of our moral dilemmas. If Christians believe in a risen Lord, though, attempting to mimic a 1st century Jewish rabbi, or wonder-working sage, or cynic philosopher, or whatever the Jesus du jour is, rather misses the point. One follows Jesus precisely by being incorporated into his body through partaking of the holy mysteries and hearing the Lord’s word. By being part of that body, we believe that we gradually, if haltingly, come to be formed according the pattern of Jesus, his life of self-giving service and love (again, I think L.T. Johnson is very good on this – see The Real Jesus and Living Jesus; both of these books had a big impact on me). In other words, why chase after a historical reconstruction when the living Jesus makes himself available to us here and now?

  • Against keeping Christmas to ourselves

    Two worthy Christmas posts. First, from Siris:

    And so we see the significance of Christmas. Annunciation is the Feast of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh; Epiphany is the Feast of His manifestation to the world as flesh. But Christmas grabs us, seizes us, because it is the Feast of His Humility, that he did not regard equality with God something to hold tight, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, coming in human likeness, found in human appearance, humbling himself. God wrapped in a blanket, lying in a trough in some cave in a tiny little town because no one had room for him elsewhere; unheralded and unsung except by angels in the heavens and shepherds coming in from the fields. Luke knew what he was doing; what he wrote down was one of the most memorable religious images in all of history. It seizes the mind, overwhelms it, sets it alight, and moves it to action.

    This is why, incidentally, I am always wary about Christians criticizing people for celebrating Christmas, which we often do. We should not do this — no, not if they put up their lights and tree ten weeks early, nor if they listen to inane songs, or whatever other random fits of daffing with which they may go crazy. They are caught in the grip of an image that cannot be shaken; it inflames them with a fever that they can hardly bear. It grabs their hearts by their handles and pours them out until they are half-mad and all irritable from the strain of it. And, absurd as some of the festivities may be, the fire that lights them is a little bit contagious; even on the fringes, where people isolate themselves as much as possible from the religious side, one still feels its influences. It’s not always the healthiest madness, but it is a forgivable one. When Dionysius descends, can people not be caught up in the bacchanal? How can they hold back, and not romp in reverence? Is there nothing to be enthusiastic about in the celebration of God’s own humility, rich in giving, unashamed to be poor? By one gift beyond all expectation, we are inspired in our own myriad little ways, however faulty, however absurd. But if God was so humble that he did not shirk being a poor baby boy laid in a trough, we are called to the same humility; to humble ourselves in giving, and, failing that, to humble ourselves to those things others do that we deem foolish or absurd or tacky. God had to put up with your own folly and absurdity and tackiness, but He did not hesitate to endure it, and, more than endure it, associate Himself with it, if that’s what it took to bring you to light. And that’s what it took. We should all let the humility rub off on us a bit.

    And one from Connexions:

    The commercialism and materialism of Christmas is such a soft target, I almost wonder why we bother. If everyone agrees it’s wrong (At last! Something the whole church can agree about!) why do we bother talking about it? I want to suggest that even in the materialism of a modern Christmas, there’s a lesson for God’s people if we are willing to hear it.

    Christmas is a supremely materialistic festival. We celebrate the fact that God took human flesh — became incarnate — and lived among his people. He did not enter the world as a glorious heavenly being. He came as a baby, doing all the things that babies do. Forget the sentimental carols and Christmas cards. If the Christian gospel means anything at all, it is that “God is with us”. Through the incarnation, God takes fallen human flesh and makes it holy. I think it was Irenaeus who put it this way: “He became what we are, that we might become what he is.” So if ever there was a time to celebrate our flesh with eating, merrymaking and music — this is it! Christians should not be on the sidelines looking po-faced. We should be showing the world how to party!

    The real trouble is not with Christmas, but with the rest of the year. In the west we live every day as though it were a party. The reason we over-indulge to such excess at Christmas is that we over-indulge the rest of the year. The target of the church’s complaint should not be the materialism of Christmas, but the materialism of a lifestyle in which excess is not only lauded, it is practically compulsory.

    When I went through my thoroughly anti-religious phase, I still retained a love for Christmas, with its sense that, at least one night of the year, something magical and transcendent was possible. Maybe it was just sentimentality, but presumably God can take natural sentiment and transpose it into something more significant. For a lot of people, that little spark may be all they have, but surely part of the job of the church is to fan those sparks into flames of faith and love whenever that’s possible.

    I’m not really in favor of the attitude that simply asks secular people to leave religion to “us” religious people and stop co-opting “our” holidays. For one thing, secularism is, at least in part, the offspring of Chrstendom, and Christians can’t simply disown it and disavow any responsibility for it. If nothing else, a society thoroughly purged of its Christian residue is likely to be far worse than what we have now, with all its compromises and half-measures. And secondly, doesn’t the church exist for the world rather than to provide a religious club for like-minded members? I’ve always liked the parable of the sower, who promiscuously spreads his seed to take root where it will. And that has always seemed to me like a pretty decent image for what the church should be up to.

    I’d wager that it’s when Christians really celebrate Christmas with the joy appropriate to the occasion, rather than acting like sour-faced scolds, that non-Christians, marginal Christians, half-Christians, and “cultural” Christians will be drawn into the fullness of life that we believe is possible when God comes near us, as he did in the Incarnation of his beloved Son.

    Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

  • Miscellaneous Advent notes

    Sunday, as we all know, was the first Sunday in Advent, a season of penitence and hope as we await the coming of the Lord. This has dual connotations in that the coming of the Lord can refer both to the Nativity and to the Second Coming, which is why you get apocalyptic texts like last week’s Gospel reading in Advent. In church on Sunday we got to process not once, but twice! The second time was out into the churchyard to mark the parish’s Feast of Title & Dedication. I really like when we process in church. No larger point there.

    Also, and I hope I don’t get flogged by the Advent Puritans for this, we put up our Christmas tree on Sunday. I briefly wondered if it’s appropriate to have both Holy Family ornaments on your tree and Darth Vader and Yoda ornaments (The Darth Vader ornament plugs into a light and says “The Force is with you, young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet” when you push its button), but I like to think of Yoda as a kind of honorary wise man.

    I also just joined one of our parish’s local community groups where small groups meet during the week to study and discuss the Gospel text for the coming Sunday. Last week was our first meeting, and my takeaway point was that people (including your scribe) have trouble with apocalyptic texts like the aforementioned one from Luke. No surprise there, I guess. I think many mainline churches are so afraid of sounding like devotees of Left Behind that they tend to ignore those passages. But this leaves their members not really knowing what to do with them.

  • Evangelism in the mainline and the loss of transcendence

    Chris at Even the Devils Believe has a good post on birth rates and evangelism in mainline Protestantism, jumping off from the recent comments from Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori about how Episcopalians aren’t incresing their numbers due to the low birth rates among “better-educated” people who care about preserving the earth.

    Leaving aside the condescending tone of those remarks toward our Catholic and Mormon friends, Chris correctly points out the whistling-past-the-graveyard nature of this attitude. He also notes that Christianity is not exclusively, or even primarily, a religion that propagates itself by inheritance, but by evangelism, which is where mainline Protestantism has been falling down on the job. And it needn’t be a matter of “liberalism,” narrowly defined as churches who have centrist-to-liberal stances on the usual litany of issues.

    While I try to resist sweeping generalization about “postmodernism” or what “postmodern” people are supposedly like, I think that one thing that can be said is that postmodern people, outside of a relatively small band of committed secularists, are open to an experience of the transcendent. The closed clockwork universe of high modernism probably never had much of a hold on most people’s minds, but it’s also lost much of whatever intellectual justification it once had. I’ve argued before that “supernaturalism” is not what keeps people away from religion. When theologians decry rampant “secularism” I sometimes think that’s because they are taking their academic colleagues as representative of the population as a whole.

    But, however important it may be to engage secularist or hard-core “naturalist” thought, that’s simply not where most people are coming from (the same might be said of “postmodern” thought, which is still largely confined to the academy, but that’s a topic for another day). So, if there is a “liberalism” (or maybe “modernism” is a better word) that’s at fault here, I think it might be the variety which downplays the transcendent, or “vertical,” aspect of faith in an attempt to appeal to “modern” people.