One of my favorite (perhaps most favorite) stories or scenes in C.S.Lewis' powerful book The Great Divorce is that of the lady in the grand procession. The narrator sees a glimmering like a river flowing his way; yet it is not a river of water, but a stream of saints, angels and animals that form an elegant train around a beautiful and revered lady. Thinking that a person of great renown has drawn near, the narrator asks his guide to identify her. The teacher replies, "'It's someone ye'll never heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green...Aye. She is one of the great ones."
On earth she was an ordinary woman. Her face was plain and she was poor. Her accomplishments were few and she was not well known. In the everyday course of events, she was insignificant, forgotten and even belittled. Even her faith was small. But... she was redeemed, she had been "bought with a price." When she was "yet a sinner, Christ died for [her]", and that made all the difference. For in the eternal now of Heaven, she had become extraordinary, beautiful, rich beyond all telling, and known by God!
This tale leapt into my memory last month, as I was writing a eulogy for my stepmother, who died three days short of her 90th birthday. Her life, though filled with a variety of experiences, was ordinary. Her influence, though kindred with that of the Greatest Generation, was limited. Her contributions, though many, were limited to her small circle of friends, family and church members. My Mom was intelligent, but not thoughtful, a hard worker, but not industrious, friendly, but not intimate. She was firm in her faith, but not deep in her theology. She made plenty of mistakes, which, thankfully, I learned to let go of long ago. But all of that is now but a shadow of the greater redeemed reality that she has become.
You see, when we exit this body with its crushing limitations of old age or disease or suffering, we are set free to be not only all of what we could have been without sin, but also all that we shall grow be in the world to come. The Apostle John wrote (vaguely) of this: "...and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1Jn.3:2) Ordinary people may enter Heaven, but they will not stay that way. The truth behind this, one that defies all explanation, is that the soul of the Christian is now fully redeemed, but our other faculties -- our minds and bodies and relationships -- await a greater redemption that will only find fulfillment in the life eternal with God. And this will be the journey, the telos, of Heaven.
After the narrator in The Great Divorce is introduced to the Lady, and learns of her paradoxical story, he witnesses a dramatic encounter between her and someone she knew on earth. Although she is radiating joy and goodness, she stoops to ask for forgiveness from this individual, who now looks ghostly and dwarf-like. We would think that in her holy state she would have forgiven him, and not the other way round. Yet this is the picture of the true process of redemption, the occupation that will fill our heavenly days -- every relationship that we have here on earth will be slowly, deliberately and thoroughly redeemed, conforming us continually into the likeness of Christ, who forgave us all our sins.
No Christian, however well-known or revered is immune from the ordinary life. We all have failures and broken relationships as well as negative life experiences that we cannot control. But God has placed us on a trajectory that will sweep all of those things away as we enter the resurrection life of the Kingdom. We are destined by grace to be victorious over sin and death. Jesus said, "I am making everything new!...He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son." (Rev.21:5,7)
But in spite of the certainty of the wonder of the redemption to come, we are given the opportunity to begin this journey in the here and now. In the passage mentioned above, after the Apostle John marvels at the future possibility of our transformation into the likeness of Christ, he urges us to seek the present formation of our life in Christ: "Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure." (1Jn.3:3) Although we are so ordinary, we are given with each new day the invitation to do something extraordinary -- if we will only surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit, who enables us to do (more often than not) the greater works of the kingdom in humble, almost insignificant, ways.
Thus the Christian creed confirms the transforming power of the resurrection: "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." The Apostle Paul likewise declared: "...the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed." (1Cor.15:52) But the power of that change is not merely the body reborn and impervious to illness and decay, it is as well the reality of the soul liberated from sin and evil, so that our entire being, body and soul, will finally live fully and completely as the true humanity we were meant to be.
For the Christian, this change begins the moment we die. "It is sown a natural body, it is raised an spiritual body." Death is the beginning point of eternal redemption. Through physical death we enter into a new and greater life made possible because the death of Christ defeated soul-death and his resurrection guaranteed our everlasting life. So, if we understand death this way, it should change the way we prepare for our own passing, because we will want to see to it that our redemptive actions (done to the best of our ability) begin today and lay the groundwork for who we shall become and all that we must redeem in the world without end. We must live every day with a view to dying well. As Paul reminds us: "For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body." (2Cor.4:11)
A favorite song of mine says, "We the redeemed, hear us singing, You are holy, you are holy!" Although we often sing it now as looking back at the Cross, we sing it forward,too, as we anticipate Heaven. And sometimes when I sing that song, I almost see it; I, trembling, touch the boundary of knowing... I, too, along with so many saints in my family, am an ordinary person with an extraordinary future.
Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce, HarperOne, c1946, 1973. Print.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Friday, January 23, 2015
Evangelicals missing the boat, pt.2: Forgotten past
In many ways, evangelical Christians are all about the here and now. (this Sunday and the next series, but rarely, last year or, our former pastor said) We are always looking ahead to the next great thing that we wish to accomplish for God, forgetting or belittling our prior endeavors or accomplishments. As the wise Yoda said to Luke, "All his life has he looked away...to the future...Never his mind on where he was...Hmm? On what he was doing." So we, too, are paralyzed by our present and enraptured with our plans.
And when we're not eagerly looking ahead, we're wistfully looking back, way back, to the early church of the N.T., and wondering how we can be just like them -- when that will never happen. We live in an entirely different world, where we should be applying the timeless truths of Scripture to our day and age and not applying the dichotomy of a former age to our own. This is not to say that the N.T. churches no longer have anything to teach us; their stories were recorded so that we may learn many things from them, but we cannot mimic everything they did. Our story is not theirs.
But story is very important here. Throughout Scripture, God's people are instructed to remember God's work in the past, the people who have participated in that work, and to see ourselves as co-participants in that work. In Deut. 7:18,19, Moses both reminds the Israelites of God's great act to deliver them from Egypt and informs them that this same great power will be given to them to defeat their enemies in the days to come. The members of the honor roll of faith listed in Heb. 11 (Noah, Abraham, Sarah, etc.) form the great cloud of witnesses who cheer us on in our own pursuit of God's will in his kingdom. (Heb.12:1) Remembering the past ties our stories together with theirs. As our stories intertwine, the great story rewrites itself; in fact, it always will, because the kingdom story is all about the interactions formed by the communion of the saints, both now and in the world to come.
The biblical word "saints" means holy, or sacred ones. The ancient Hebrews were set apart or sanctified as God's people or nation. The New Testament gives the same designation to those who have come to know Christ and have been baptized into his body, the Church. The Apostle Paul readily points this out in the salutations to most of his letters -- "called to be saints," "sanctified in Christ Jesus," and "to the saints...the faithful in Christ Jesus," he writes. So, all Christians are, or have been, saints.
Indeed, some have been given a special designation of "Saint" by the Catholic or Orthodox Church; not necessarily a wrong thing, but more, I think, of a human thing. They have been singled out for a certain kind of honorable designation. These people are certainly worthy of great honor and respect. We, as evangelicals, should learn and, in turn, tell their stories, for their lives of faith have, whether we realize it or not, impacted us all. We should also learn from the lives of the great Protestant reformers who labored to bring the gospel back to the forefront of the church's mission. In more recent times, Catholic, Protestant and evangelical church leaders, writers and missionaries have lived exemplary lives deserving of our contemplation. Even our ordinary, everyday fellow believers, those we sit next to and passively greet on a Sunday morning, have stories that, if they were told, would amaze and edify us profoundly.
Writing in the book I mentioned in my last post, Stanley Hauerwas says that "sainthood is power." He reminds us that we are engaged in a cosmic war between good and evil, and as the saints of God we, along with the angels, are continually fighting this war. We cannot think that being a saint is merely about being a nice, good or "saintly" person, when it is really about being a warrior who, through the power of our Lord, destroys evil forces and conquers ground for God's kingdom.
It is odd to think that we can fight in these battles using the power of memory. Hauerwas writes, "God gives the Church the power through our remembering of the saints to wrench their lives from the tyranny of the oppressor's history so they triumph over the forces of death. In God's memory the saints triumph." (p. 103)
We desperately need to establish forums for telling the stories of the saints, so that we may remember their courageous role in the great cosmic battle. By remembering them, their lives take on renewed power to help us fight beside them for all that is right and holy. Instead of hurrying on to the next best thing, or thinking we can ignore church history, we would do well to stop and remember the saints of old and now, and in remembering, join our resolve with theirs to pray, "thy kingdom come."
Hauerwas, Stanley. Unleashing the Scripture. Abington, 1993. Print.
And when we're not eagerly looking ahead, we're wistfully looking back, way back, to the early church of the N.T., and wondering how we can be just like them -- when that will never happen. We live in an entirely different world, where we should be applying the timeless truths of Scripture to our day and age and not applying the dichotomy of a former age to our own. This is not to say that the N.T. churches no longer have anything to teach us; their stories were recorded so that we may learn many things from them, but we cannot mimic everything they did. Our story is not theirs.
But story is very important here. Throughout Scripture, God's people are instructed to remember God's work in the past, the people who have participated in that work, and to see ourselves as co-participants in that work. In Deut. 7:18,19, Moses both reminds the Israelites of God's great act to deliver them from Egypt and informs them that this same great power will be given to them to defeat their enemies in the days to come. The members of the honor roll of faith listed in Heb. 11 (Noah, Abraham, Sarah, etc.) form the great cloud of witnesses who cheer us on in our own pursuit of God's will in his kingdom. (Heb.12:1) Remembering the past ties our stories together with theirs. As our stories intertwine, the great story rewrites itself; in fact, it always will, because the kingdom story is all about the interactions formed by the communion of the saints, both now and in the world to come.
The biblical word "saints" means holy, or sacred ones. The ancient Hebrews were set apart or sanctified as God's people or nation. The New Testament gives the same designation to those who have come to know Christ and have been baptized into his body, the Church. The Apostle Paul readily points this out in the salutations to most of his letters -- "called to be saints," "sanctified in Christ Jesus," and "to the saints...the faithful in Christ Jesus," he writes. So, all Christians are, or have been, saints.
Indeed, some have been given a special designation of "Saint" by the Catholic or Orthodox Church; not necessarily a wrong thing, but more, I think, of a human thing. They have been singled out for a certain kind of honorable designation. These people are certainly worthy of great honor and respect. We, as evangelicals, should learn and, in turn, tell their stories, for their lives of faith have, whether we realize it or not, impacted us all. We should also learn from the lives of the great Protestant reformers who labored to bring the gospel back to the forefront of the church's mission. In more recent times, Catholic, Protestant and evangelical church leaders, writers and missionaries have lived exemplary lives deserving of our contemplation. Even our ordinary, everyday fellow believers, those we sit next to and passively greet on a Sunday morning, have stories that, if they were told, would amaze and edify us profoundly.
Writing in the book I mentioned in my last post, Stanley Hauerwas says that "sainthood is power." He reminds us that we are engaged in a cosmic war between good and evil, and as the saints of God we, along with the angels, are continually fighting this war. We cannot think that being a saint is merely about being a nice, good or "saintly" person, when it is really about being a warrior who, through the power of our Lord, destroys evil forces and conquers ground for God's kingdom.
It is odd to think that we can fight in these battles using the power of memory. Hauerwas writes, "God gives the Church the power through our remembering of the saints to wrench their lives from the tyranny of the oppressor's history so they triumph over the forces of death. In God's memory the saints triumph." (p. 103)
We desperately need to establish forums for telling the stories of the saints, so that we may remember their courageous role in the great cosmic battle. By remembering them, their lives take on renewed power to help us fight beside them for all that is right and holy. Instead of hurrying on to the next best thing, or thinking we can ignore church history, we would do well to stop and remember the saints of old and now, and in remembering, join our resolve with theirs to pray, "thy kingdom come."
Hauerwas, Stanley. Unleashing the Scripture. Abington, 1993. Print.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Evangelicals missing the boat, pt. 1: Incomplete worship
I guess several years of attending a "megachurch" has made me a bit cynical about many of the strange goings on that abound in evangelical churches today. I'm going to try to discuss some of these issues in this and forthcoming blog posts, if for no other reason that to get some things off my chest. I shall begin with "worship."
Its not that evangelicals don't care about worship; they care about it incessantly. Thousands of websites, blogs, sermons and twitter feeds are passionately devoted to addressing the subject. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody has a solution. Everybody is uncomfortable in some way or another. Everybody cares.
I've recently been reading a book by the gifted, astute and quintessentially confusing theologian Stanley Hauerwas. (I think he comes across as confusing because his amazing mind gets ahead of himself and he thinks we know what he's thinking when what he says has left us quite befuddled! As the friend who loaned me the book often wrote in the margins -- "What does he mean by this?!") But Hauerwas has also long been both a friend and a critic of evangelicalism, therefore, he has a great deal of wisdom to offer us, and we would do well to heed it.
Let me just start this discussion of worship with a couple of intriguing quotes from Hauerwas. 1.) He begins his 1993 book Unleashing Scripture with: "No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America." 2.) And from a 2010 interview with Christianity Today: "I sometimes worry that evangelicals have a kind of privacy about how they understand their relationship with God that is destructive to the church." These two statements seem to strike at the very heart of what evangelicalism stands for; that the Bible is a book to be known and read by each individual Christian, and that personal piety is essential for Christian life and growth. Once again, what does he mean?
I think that Hauerwas is criticizing the particularly North American tendency to privatize Christianity; that is, to ascribe to a faith that is very personal and less corporate. Evangelicals tend to favor a "just Jesus and me" mentality. We are taught to read our Bibles and pray -- on our own. Discipleship training is a series of lessons on what an individual should do to become a better Christian. This is engrained in us from our Sunday school days onward. Hauerwas is reacting to this in that he believes that the Church is fundamentally the body of believers who constitute the Bride of Christ. What we do as Christians should be done together in the context of a unifying pretext, the meeting-points of the Church where and when the Gospel is proclaimed and the sacraments are received. We must sing, pray and declare the Word together as the Church, which is one in our Savior. And certainly this is a view of worship that is lost on many evangelicals, because we are so busy trying to be good, yea, even pious Christians on our own.
In an interview with Al Mohler, Stanley Hauerwas further addresses this issue: "Evangelicalism doesn't have enough repetition in a way that will form Christians to survive in a world that constantly tempts us to always think we have to do something new."His choice of the word "repetition" is certainly quite interesting, especially since evangelicalism has focused so strongly on trying to get rid of repetition rather than on keeping it. In liturgical Christian traditions, (S.H. is now Episcopalian), repetition is, if not everything, essential. In fact, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer was designed by Thomas Cranmer to take the Church body through a yearly repetition of truth through repeated prayers (collects), Scripture readings that cover the entire Bible, and reflections centered around annual Christian holidays and seasons. Although he compiled it hundreds of years ago, it is still a fact of life that what is repeated and familiar is remembered and practiced.
So, in light of this, when we look at evangelical worship today, we must ask questions about what we are doing and if we are faithfully doing all that needs to be done. I believe that robust Christian worship should contain five elements -- singing, prayer, scripture reading, sermon and sacrament. (If you want all 'S's," you could say "supplication!") But in many evangelical church services, only two of these are consistently practiced -- the singing and the sermon, and even then not everyone sings and the sermon may be little more than pop psychology. This makes for incomplete worship.
We desperately need to reacquaint the body of believers with prayers for the body; prayer that addresses the true needs of the congregation and not brief breathless appeals for Jesus to come and be with us. After all, he is with us and we need to speak to him as if we believe this.
We need to read Scripture as if it is central and not incidental to the faith we are proclaiming. We need to show respect for the Word by standing when it is read. We need to read substantial portions of Scripture from both the Old and New Testaments. Why? Because, going back to what Hauerwas said, Scripture must empower the Church as a whole, and we together must proclaim, affirm and practice it.
In spite of the fact that various evangelical groups look at sacrament or communion in different ways, we should never think that it is insignificant. It is, instead, essential to the life of the body. Even symbolically interpreted, taking food in implies receiving life-giving nourishment. When taken literally, it is the life of Christ received into our souls. Nothing can sustain the Christian like receiving the bread and wine. Jesus said, "For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink...the one who feeds on me will live because of me." (John 6:55,57) And we eat this together only as we meet together.
In light of all this, the message of Christ to the church at Sardis (Rev. 3) takes on a reaffirmation of meaning: "Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God." Neglecting important things in any arena of life leads to degeneration and death. Deficiencies lead to indifference. As evangelicals we need to reclaim the importance of what we do in worship and do it. What is old must be made new again. Yet, worship is not old or new; it is eternal, and as such, when truly practiced, it becomes, through the power of the Holy Spirit, whole and living and everything about which we should truly care.
Hauerwas, Stanley. Unleashing the Scripture. Abington, 1993. Print.
Its not that evangelicals don't care about worship; they care about it incessantly. Thousands of websites, blogs, sermons and twitter feeds are passionately devoted to addressing the subject. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody has a solution. Everybody is uncomfortable in some way or another. Everybody cares.
I've recently been reading a book by the gifted, astute and quintessentially confusing theologian Stanley Hauerwas. (I think he comes across as confusing because his amazing mind gets ahead of himself and he thinks we know what he's thinking when what he says has left us quite befuddled! As the friend who loaned me the book often wrote in the margins -- "What does he mean by this?!") But Hauerwas has also long been both a friend and a critic of evangelicalism, therefore, he has a great deal of wisdom to offer us, and we would do well to heed it.
Let me just start this discussion of worship with a couple of intriguing quotes from Hauerwas. 1.) He begins his 1993 book Unleashing Scripture with: "No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America." 2.) And from a 2010 interview with Christianity Today: "I sometimes worry that evangelicals have a kind of privacy about how they understand their relationship with God that is destructive to the church." These two statements seem to strike at the very heart of what evangelicalism stands for; that the Bible is a book to be known and read by each individual Christian, and that personal piety is essential for Christian life and growth. Once again, what does he mean?
I think that Hauerwas is criticizing the particularly North American tendency to privatize Christianity; that is, to ascribe to a faith that is very personal and less corporate. Evangelicals tend to favor a "just Jesus and me" mentality. We are taught to read our Bibles and pray -- on our own. Discipleship training is a series of lessons on what an individual should do to become a better Christian. This is engrained in us from our Sunday school days onward. Hauerwas is reacting to this in that he believes that the Church is fundamentally the body of believers who constitute the Bride of Christ. What we do as Christians should be done together in the context of a unifying pretext, the meeting-points of the Church where and when the Gospel is proclaimed and the sacraments are received. We must sing, pray and declare the Word together as the Church, which is one in our Savior. And certainly this is a view of worship that is lost on many evangelicals, because we are so busy trying to be good, yea, even pious Christians on our own.
In an interview with Al Mohler, Stanley Hauerwas further addresses this issue: "Evangelicalism doesn't have enough repetition in a way that will form Christians to survive in a world that constantly tempts us to always think we have to do something new."His choice of the word "repetition" is certainly quite interesting, especially since evangelicalism has focused so strongly on trying to get rid of repetition rather than on keeping it. In liturgical Christian traditions, (S.H. is now Episcopalian), repetition is, if not everything, essential. In fact, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer was designed by Thomas Cranmer to take the Church body through a yearly repetition of truth through repeated prayers (collects), Scripture readings that cover the entire Bible, and reflections centered around annual Christian holidays and seasons. Although he compiled it hundreds of years ago, it is still a fact of life that what is repeated and familiar is remembered and practiced.
So, in light of this, when we look at evangelical worship today, we must ask questions about what we are doing and if we are faithfully doing all that needs to be done. I believe that robust Christian worship should contain five elements -- singing, prayer, scripture reading, sermon and sacrament. (If you want all 'S's," you could say "supplication!") But in many evangelical church services, only two of these are consistently practiced -- the singing and the sermon, and even then not everyone sings and the sermon may be little more than pop psychology. This makes for incomplete worship.
We desperately need to reacquaint the body of believers with prayers for the body; prayer that addresses the true needs of the congregation and not brief breathless appeals for Jesus to come and be with us. After all, he is with us and we need to speak to him as if we believe this.
We need to read Scripture as if it is central and not incidental to the faith we are proclaiming. We need to show respect for the Word by standing when it is read. We need to read substantial portions of Scripture from both the Old and New Testaments. Why? Because, going back to what Hauerwas said, Scripture must empower the Church as a whole, and we together must proclaim, affirm and practice it.
In spite of the fact that various evangelical groups look at sacrament or communion in different ways, we should never think that it is insignificant. It is, instead, essential to the life of the body. Even symbolically interpreted, taking food in implies receiving life-giving nourishment. When taken literally, it is the life of Christ received into our souls. Nothing can sustain the Christian like receiving the bread and wine. Jesus said, "For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink...the one who feeds on me will live because of me." (John 6:55,57) And we eat this together only as we meet together.
In light of all this, the message of Christ to the church at Sardis (Rev. 3) takes on a reaffirmation of meaning: "Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God." Neglecting important things in any arena of life leads to degeneration and death. Deficiencies lead to indifference. As evangelicals we need to reclaim the importance of what we do in worship and do it. What is old must be made new again. Yet, worship is not old or new; it is eternal, and as such, when truly practiced, it becomes, through the power of the Holy Spirit, whole and living and everything about which we should truly care.
Hauerwas, Stanley. Unleashing the Scripture. Abington, 1993. Print.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Announcing my two books!
For those few of you out there who are actually reading this blog -- first of all, thank-you, and second, I'd like to let you know about the two books I have written about Christian apologetics/doctrine. They are, admittedly, self-published, but I have been both challenged and blessed in the process of writing them, and I hope that what I have said will both challenge and bless others.
My main purpose in writing was to take some spiritual truths and unpack them, so that the reader could gain a greater, more complete understanding of the topics. In churches today, some "controversial" topics are either only explained one way (according to the dogmas of a particular church group) or they are glossed over, so that very little is really explained and the resulting viewpoints are very shallow. I wanted to look at Christian doctrines a little differently by defining what the doctrine states and how it has been historically treated, what it means to the individual Christian, and carefully detailing the Scriptural basis for the doctrine. I am trying to set forth Christianity in terms of what I call "little 'o' orthodoxy," so that one may step away from denominational/philosophical boundaries and clearly see spiritual truth for what it really is.
For example, I wrote a great deal about the topic of Creation, because, as the daughter of a scientist and the wife of a science teacher, I have been confronted by this subject for my entire life, and many people have asked me and my husband about it. But I did not want to just repeat a "canned" response to the issue. So I approached to topic from three angles. Chapter 2 of Christ at the Center looks at Creation from the Biblical viewpoint; what the Bible has to say about it. Chapter 3 of the same book addresses to biggest question Christians raise about Creation -- how should we approach the controversy between creation and evolution? And the Creation section in All Things in Christ looks at this topic from a theological point of view; detailing the truths we should affirm about the doctrine of Creation.
I hope that if you decide to read the books that you will be informed and blessed. And please remember that I do not think that I have learned everything there is to know about Christian apologetics/ doctrine, or that I have given the best possible explanation for every subject. I am just trying to help you on your journey with Christ, a journey that leads, as we all know, to the place where "we shall know, even as we are known."
Christ at the Center paperback and e-book
All Things in Christ paperback
All Things in Christ e-book
Friday, December 12, 2014
Off the Grid -- Sunday sermon devotional -- 2
(This post is based on the 12/7/14 sermon at Covenant Grace Church -- the text is Acts 15)
It's early in the first century AD, and the predominantly Jewish church in Jerusalem has a problem: Gentiles are getting saved. Not only that, they are beginning to live a distinctively Christian lifestyle, one that has never, or just barely, heard of the lifestyle imposed for so long on the Jews by the Mosaic Law. Some of the church leaders are disturbed by this inequity, and are demanding that the Gentiles start observing the Law; in fact, they stubbornly affirm that no one can be truly saved unless the Law is kept.
So the leaders of the Jerusalem church did a wise thing -- they decided to get together to talk about the issue. They listened to arguments on both sides. They heard the voice of the Holy Spirit. They agreed, not to disagree, but to conform to the will of God, which had declared that the Gentiles would become co-heirs with Israel of the promises of God and their fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God. (Rom.10, 11) James summed it up well by saying, "It is my judgement, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God." (v. 19)
But isn't it curious how, down through the centuries, how all sorts of people and groups have kept making Christianity difficult for their fellow believers? This rule, that requirement, my formula, his idea, a program, an agenda, etc. etc. and on and on it goes... In so many ways, at so many times, a grid has been superimposed on Christianity, a grid that tries to regulate how Christians should act or feel; a grid that stipulates what they should declare or believe or promote.
I grew up under one such grid -- separatist fundamentalism. My church/denomination believed that we had a corner on the truth and that we alone were interpreting the Scriptures correctly. Therefore, we did not associate with any other Christian groups. We were also very legalistic about lifestyle rules and regulations. But this group made one very costly mistake when it came to preserving the ranks, at least among those of us who took it to heart. We were taught to read, study and interpret the Bible as it stands on its own, which is of course, outside of the grid. Once we heard the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking through the Word, the holes in the grid opened up, and we were set free to embark on the great pilgrimage that is the Christian life.
I'll never forget the relief that flooded over me when I realized that I didn't have to keep all those rules or adhere to all those picky points of dogma any more. I could learn the truth that Jesus came to reveal to us, for "all truth is God's truth." (1) I could find remnants of beauty in things that were once forbidden, and come to appreciate the true beauty that energizes the universe. I learned to find the goodness of God in the myriad of places where it hides.
But grids are slippery things, and they try to capture us unawares. They try to convince us that its safer to stick with a formula than to "test everything." (2) They lure us to sleep with the comforting thought that we're ok and on the right track. The grid can take over and give us a pseudo-spirituality that makes us feel like we're better that everybody else. But that is the sin of pride, the original sin, that takes us far from God.
Jesus gave us the secret for escaping the tyranny of the grid: "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31,32) The secret lies in discovering the truth of the gospel as we grow in our understanding and application of the teachings of Christ. His life, words, death, burial, resurrection and ascension -- the Gospel -- is the key that unlocks the door onto everything that is true and real. When we walk through that door, we enter a life that is truly liberated.
This freedom, however, does not mean that we can do or think whatever we want. That is just slavery to another grid -- selfishness. The freedom found in the Gospel of Christ is the freedom that chooses to do what is right, because we know what is right. It is the freedom that allows us to let go of ourselves in order to embrace the burdens of others. It is that freedom that instructs us to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ," that is to say, we are able to learn about many things and see it all through a godly, biblical perspective.
In Psalm 91, the psalmist says that the Almighty will "save you from the fowler's (a birdcatcher) snare." A trapped bird cannot fly; it is not free. Grids are not imposed by God, instead he tears them away. When we "dwell in his shelter" and "rest in the shadow of the Almighty," we find ourselves in the quiet center of his will. Even though unrest and terror rage around us, as the Psalm describes, we find the peace that frees our souls. "'Because he loves me, says the Lord, 'I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.'" Delivered from the grid, we are freely loved by God and set free to to love and accept others with that same great love.
(1) quote from Frank Gaebelein (2) 1Thess. 5:21
It's early in the first century AD, and the predominantly Jewish church in Jerusalem has a problem: Gentiles are getting saved. Not only that, they are beginning to live a distinctively Christian lifestyle, one that has never, or just barely, heard of the lifestyle imposed for so long on the Jews by the Mosaic Law. Some of the church leaders are disturbed by this inequity, and are demanding that the Gentiles start observing the Law; in fact, they stubbornly affirm that no one can be truly saved unless the Law is kept.
So the leaders of the Jerusalem church did a wise thing -- they decided to get together to talk about the issue. They listened to arguments on both sides. They heard the voice of the Holy Spirit. They agreed, not to disagree, but to conform to the will of God, which had declared that the Gentiles would become co-heirs with Israel of the promises of God and their fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God. (Rom.10, 11) James summed it up well by saying, "It is my judgement, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God." (v. 19)
But isn't it curious how, down through the centuries, how all sorts of people and groups have kept making Christianity difficult for their fellow believers? This rule, that requirement, my formula, his idea, a program, an agenda, etc. etc. and on and on it goes... In so many ways, at so many times, a grid has been superimposed on Christianity, a grid that tries to regulate how Christians should act or feel; a grid that stipulates what they should declare or believe or promote.
I grew up under one such grid -- separatist fundamentalism. My church/denomination believed that we had a corner on the truth and that we alone were interpreting the Scriptures correctly. Therefore, we did not associate with any other Christian groups. We were also very legalistic about lifestyle rules and regulations. But this group made one very costly mistake when it came to preserving the ranks, at least among those of us who took it to heart. We were taught to read, study and interpret the Bible as it stands on its own, which is of course, outside of the grid. Once we heard the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking through the Word, the holes in the grid opened up, and we were set free to embark on the great pilgrimage that is the Christian life.
I'll never forget the relief that flooded over me when I realized that I didn't have to keep all those rules or adhere to all those picky points of dogma any more. I could learn the truth that Jesus came to reveal to us, for "all truth is God's truth." (1) I could find remnants of beauty in things that were once forbidden, and come to appreciate the true beauty that energizes the universe. I learned to find the goodness of God in the myriad of places where it hides.
But grids are slippery things, and they try to capture us unawares. They try to convince us that its safer to stick with a formula than to "test everything." (2) They lure us to sleep with the comforting thought that we're ok and on the right track. The grid can take over and give us a pseudo-spirituality that makes us feel like we're better that everybody else. But that is the sin of pride, the original sin, that takes us far from God.
Jesus gave us the secret for escaping the tyranny of the grid: "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31,32) The secret lies in discovering the truth of the gospel as we grow in our understanding and application of the teachings of Christ. His life, words, death, burial, resurrection and ascension -- the Gospel -- is the key that unlocks the door onto everything that is true and real. When we walk through that door, we enter a life that is truly liberated.
This freedom, however, does not mean that we can do or think whatever we want. That is just slavery to another grid -- selfishness. The freedom found in the Gospel of Christ is the freedom that chooses to do what is right, because we know what is right. It is the freedom that allows us to let go of ourselves in order to embrace the burdens of others. It is that freedom that instructs us to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ," that is to say, we are able to learn about many things and see it all through a godly, biblical perspective.
In Psalm 91, the psalmist says that the Almighty will "save you from the fowler's (a birdcatcher) snare." A trapped bird cannot fly; it is not free. Grids are not imposed by God, instead he tears them away. When we "dwell in his shelter" and "rest in the shadow of the Almighty," we find ourselves in the quiet center of his will. Even though unrest and terror rage around us, as the Psalm describes, we find the peace that frees our souls. "'Because he loves me, says the Lord, 'I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.'" Delivered from the grid, we are freely loved by God and set free to to love and accept others with that same great love.
(1) quote from Frank Gaebelein (2) 1Thess. 5:21
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Do you know?
I've been sick lately, so I've been listening to a lot of Christian "this-and-that" on the internet. (May I interject here that being sick is a wonderful excuse for not writing posts for this blog; and I'm certainly invoking it here!) I like to listen to and learn from the many voices that speak to our confession of faith and the great tradition, particularly those that are participating in conversations on topics related to science and faith.
So, one morning I listened to a dialogue between a Christian science professor and an atheist science professor about whether or not morality is possible with or without God in a world that has come about through evolutionary processes. Both professors agreed that evolution has happened and that science should view human responses in light of evolutionary theory. Both gave credence to the idea that people can do good things with or without an appeal to God or religion. Both saw morality as a result of evolutionary effects in both humans and animals. Both professors kept saying the exact same things. I kept waiting for the Christian to say something significant, something challenging, or something thought-provoking about God. But, every comment he made just blended in with his opponent's with a sort of holistic niceness.
Now, in all fairness, I do not know how the Christian professor was approaching this debate. Maybe he thought that religious questions should be left to religious debates, and since this was a scientific discussion, he stuck with the science alone. (And I'm ok with his assent to theistic evolution.) He admitted to having had dialogue with the other professor in the past, so one can only hope they dealt with theological concepts at that time. But, after listening to this banal give-and-take for over an hour, the thought that struck me was: as Christians, can we ever be passive about matters that are informed by our faith? When given the opportunity, should we not always stand up for God? If God has truly transformed us, should we not readily give way to transcendence?
At the end of the discussion, during the Q &A, a man stood up and asked one of the hard, hard questions -- the one about outrageous suffering in this world and what we, or God, should do about it. And I thought, Oh, so now we're getting somewhere; now it's time to talk about who God is and what he so positively has done and is so incredibly able to do... But no, they only agreed that "religion" can be part of the problem, and we tend to mainly concern ourselves with the situations closest to us and shy away from addressing problems of staggering intensity. Having had my fill of this pathetic display of non-commitment, I decided to listen to something else.
And then I had one of those Psalm 73 moments -- "...till I entered the sanctuary of God..."
I listened to Penatonix' stunning arrangement of the contemporary classic Christmas song, "Mary, did you know?"
...walk on water
...deliver you
...the face of God
...the Lord of all Creation
...the Great I Am!
Once again and mercifully, I encountered the astounding miracle of the Incarnation: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." And every year this miracle waits to be discovered anew, as Christmas rushes at us with thousands of frantic, glittery messages, tugging at the selfish desires of our millions of solitary hearts. It whispers on the busy streets and in the crowded stores and, most persistently, in the faithless heart, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
In this world where the aching magnitude of Christmas has been reduced, blow by blow, to self-centered reductionism, Christmas still shines with the blinding light of transcendence. God became a baby boy. God walked on this planet, the one he has made. God encountered sorrow and wept. "'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'"
The fierce light of the Incarnation calls us who have been made in his image and remade by his precious grace, to face the dark questions posed by this world with this radical declaration of Scripture: though it seems hidden and hopeless, God is redeeming his world. You see, although we so very much long to do so, we cannot give an explanation for the sin and evil that haunts our existence, because it did not come from here. Satan, the first created being to turn away from God, did so in the spiritual realm, far beyond our physical world in every way. The battle for earth was first fought in Heaven. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
You see, Satan hijacked earth. He introduced an evil that is not terrestrial, a horror we will never understand, though we sinfully embraced it. This brand of evil can only be opposed by God himself who set aside his garment of glory only to be wrapped in swaddling clothes. Only God could conquer the sin that came from the darkness without, but in order to do so he had to come into our world as one of us."This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him."
Just as the sin that seized us is otherworldly, so is the glory that has embraced us, "He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." Therefore, we are called to a radical faith, one that reflects the light of heaven, our eternal destiny; so whatever we think or do or talk about should manifest that greater light. We must express a forward-looking point of view. We must yield ourselves to the self-less journey of spiritual formation. The things that concern us on earth must be the very things that will consume us in heaven.
If this is our goal, if this becomes our earthy obsession, if we like Mary know and treasure the incarnation in our hearts, we can face a world of the hard, hard questions with one resilient, miraculous answer -- God knows and he cares and he loves. He died on the cross for every hardhearted and brutal sin ever committed. He embodied every pain of every tortured soul --"for the joy set before him he endured the cross!" And every time we tug on the curtain that separates the knowledge of this answer from the reality of this answer, a little light escapes; it is the light of the Incarnation, of Christmas.
Mary knew, as she stood before both the manger and the cross.
For the sake of all who walk in darkness, do we?
(Scriptures (NIV) -- 2Cor. 5:21, John 10:10, 8:12, Eph. 6:12, 1John 4:9, 2Cor. 5:15, Heb. 12:2)
So, one morning I listened to a dialogue between a Christian science professor and an atheist science professor about whether or not morality is possible with or without God in a world that has come about through evolutionary processes. Both professors agreed that evolution has happened and that science should view human responses in light of evolutionary theory. Both gave credence to the idea that people can do good things with or without an appeal to God or religion. Both saw morality as a result of evolutionary effects in both humans and animals. Both professors kept saying the exact same things. I kept waiting for the Christian to say something significant, something challenging, or something thought-provoking about God. But, every comment he made just blended in with his opponent's with a sort of holistic niceness.
Now, in all fairness, I do not know how the Christian professor was approaching this debate. Maybe he thought that religious questions should be left to religious debates, and since this was a scientific discussion, he stuck with the science alone. (And I'm ok with his assent to theistic evolution.) He admitted to having had dialogue with the other professor in the past, so one can only hope they dealt with theological concepts at that time. But, after listening to this banal give-and-take for over an hour, the thought that struck me was: as Christians, can we ever be passive about matters that are informed by our faith? When given the opportunity, should we not always stand up for God? If God has truly transformed us, should we not readily give way to transcendence?
At the end of the discussion, during the Q &A, a man stood up and asked one of the hard, hard questions -- the one about outrageous suffering in this world and what we, or God, should do about it. And I thought, Oh, so now we're getting somewhere; now it's time to talk about who God is and what he so positively has done and is so incredibly able to do... But no, they only agreed that "religion" can be part of the problem, and we tend to mainly concern ourselves with the situations closest to us and shy away from addressing problems of staggering intensity. Having had my fill of this pathetic display of non-commitment, I decided to listen to something else.
And then I had one of those Psalm 73 moments -- "...till I entered the sanctuary of God..."
I listened to Penatonix' stunning arrangement of the contemporary classic Christmas song, "Mary, did you know?"
...walk on water
...deliver you
...the face of God
...the Lord of all Creation
...the Great I Am!
Once again and mercifully, I encountered the astounding miracle of the Incarnation: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." And every year this miracle waits to be discovered anew, as Christmas rushes at us with thousands of frantic, glittery messages, tugging at the selfish desires of our millions of solitary hearts. It whispers on the busy streets and in the crowded stores and, most persistently, in the faithless heart, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
In this world where the aching magnitude of Christmas has been reduced, blow by blow, to self-centered reductionism, Christmas still shines with the blinding light of transcendence. God became a baby boy. God walked on this planet, the one he has made. God encountered sorrow and wept. "'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'"
The fierce light of the Incarnation calls us who have been made in his image and remade by his precious grace, to face the dark questions posed by this world with this radical declaration of Scripture: though it seems hidden and hopeless, God is redeeming his world. You see, although we so very much long to do so, we cannot give an explanation for the sin and evil that haunts our existence, because it did not come from here. Satan, the first created being to turn away from God, did so in the spiritual realm, far beyond our physical world in every way. The battle for earth was first fought in Heaven. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
You see, Satan hijacked earth. He introduced an evil that is not terrestrial, a horror we will never understand, though we sinfully embraced it. This brand of evil can only be opposed by God himself who set aside his garment of glory only to be wrapped in swaddling clothes. Only God could conquer the sin that came from the darkness without, but in order to do so he had to come into our world as one of us."This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him."
Just as the sin that seized us is otherworldly, so is the glory that has embraced us, "He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." Therefore, we are called to a radical faith, one that reflects the light of heaven, our eternal destiny; so whatever we think or do or talk about should manifest that greater light. We must express a forward-looking point of view. We must yield ourselves to the self-less journey of spiritual formation. The things that concern us on earth must be the very things that will consume us in heaven.
If this is our goal, if this becomes our earthy obsession, if we like Mary know and treasure the incarnation in our hearts, we can face a world of the hard, hard questions with one resilient, miraculous answer -- God knows and he cares and he loves. He died on the cross for every hardhearted and brutal sin ever committed. He embodied every pain of every tortured soul --"for the joy set before him he endured the cross!" And every time we tug on the curtain that separates the knowledge of this answer from the reality of this answer, a little light escapes; it is the light of the Incarnation, of Christmas.
Mary knew, as she stood before both the manger and the cross.
For the sake of all who walk in darkness, do we?
(Scriptures (NIV) -- 2Cor. 5:21, John 10:10, 8:12, Eph. 6:12, 1John 4:9, 2Cor. 5:15, Heb. 12:2)
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Apologetics 101-3 -- The Gospel
While some may think it strange to classify "the Gospel" in the category of apologetics, I wish to do so here because if anything at all is foundational to the Christian faith, if our core beliefs must be defended in each and every contingency, we must know what the gospel is and why it plays such an important role in understanding our faith. We must, as well, be convinced that the gospel needs to permeate everything that the church does; as it is proclaimed, how it is explained, and by the way it is lived out. Without a thorough grasp of the gospel, the Christian experience rapidly disintegrates into a hollow shell, for what is vaguely known soon becomes greatly undervalued.
The gospel is the "good news" of the Christian faith. It is the declaration that while our souls were dead in sin, Christ died on the cross to pay the debt for that sin and to bring us back into relationship with him. He was buried in a tomb, proving that his death was real and not an illusion. He came to life again on the morning of his resurrection, for he is the God who gives life and is ever alive.
The gospel is the story of the life and work and passion of Christ the Messiah as told by the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is the account of his coming, or incarnation, his life of love in deed and word, and of the extraordinary events surrounding his last days on earth -- betrayal, agony, death, burial, resurrection, appearances, and ascension. It is the story of Christ and his Kingdom.
The gospel is the eternal, present revelation of these accounts to our souls by the ministry of the Holy Spirit as he works through the Word to teach us God's truth. In Eph. 6, the gospel is described as a suit of armor that defends us against the negative onslaught of evil, which assaults us from all sides. 1Cor. 9 pictures the gospel as a message that must be proclaimed; a message that is so central and vital that preaching it must become the primary task of a believer's life. In Gal. 1, Paul begs us the preserve the purity of the gospel message. It must remain true to its original telling, for if it is changed or watered down it will lose its supernatural power. And in 1Thess.2, Paul emphasizes the fact that the gospel springs up and flows from God through us. He may appoint us to preach the message, but the mechanism that changes hearts is not what we say but what the Holy Spirit does.
The first and primary task of the church is to proclaim the gospel, or good news of Christ. Just before his ascension, Jesus gave this charge (known as the Great Commission) to his followers: “Go [everywhere] and preach the gospel to [everyone].” The account of this commissioning is found in three New Testament passages, each one carrying a slightly different emphasis.
It’s interesting that the gospel writer who chose to use this word (Luke) may not have been a direct observer of the actual day-to-day ministry of Jesus. We know that he gathered information from many sources when writing his two books. He also received input from Paul, who also did not directly hear and know Jesus when he lived on this earth. This teaches us that we are all witnesses about Christ through the timeless channel of his Word. We may proclaim and teach the truth about the gospel because his Word has been given to us. The Holy Spirit, who indwells us, makes the Word real and living in our hearts and lives.
When we think about our mission to proclaim the gospel both as individuals and as the church, we need to take care that it motivates everything that we say and do. We must ask ourselves these types of questions: 1.) Does this clarify the good news of Christ? 2.) Does this help a Christian to proclaim the gospel? 3.) Are Christians learning to live the good news in their daily lives? 4. Do the activities we do other than preaching also proclaim the gospel?
A beautiful example of the centrality of the Gospel may be found in the Anglican tradition of bringing by procession a beautifully bound copy of the four gospels to the center of the church. There, a passage from the gospels is read, in the midst of the congregation. The gospel is glorious and awe inspiring, it is true, but it is also for us and meets us right were we are. It comes from God's heart to ours, and from ours to others. In every heart, in every Church, the gospel must come into the center of all that is done and be proclaimed as the truth upon which everything else is based.
The gospel is the "good news" of the Christian faith. It is the declaration that while our souls were dead in sin, Christ died on the cross to pay the debt for that sin and to bring us back into relationship with him. He was buried in a tomb, proving that his death was real and not an illusion. He came to life again on the morning of his resurrection, for he is the God who gives life and is ever alive.
The gospel is the story of the life and work and passion of Christ the Messiah as told by the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is the account of his coming, or incarnation, his life of love in deed and word, and of the extraordinary events surrounding his last days on earth -- betrayal, agony, death, burial, resurrection, appearances, and ascension. It is the story of Christ and his Kingdom.
The gospel is the eternal, present revelation of these accounts to our souls by the ministry of the Holy Spirit as he works through the Word to teach us God's truth. In Eph. 6, the gospel is described as a suit of armor that defends us against the negative onslaught of evil, which assaults us from all sides. 1Cor. 9 pictures the gospel as a message that must be proclaimed; a message that is so central and vital that preaching it must become the primary task of a believer's life. In Gal. 1, Paul begs us the preserve the purity of the gospel message. It must remain true to its original telling, for if it is changed or watered down it will lose its supernatural power. And in 1Thess.2, Paul emphasizes the fact that the gospel springs up and flows from God through us. He may appoint us to preach the message, but the mechanism that changes hearts is not what we say but what the Holy Spirit does.
The first and primary task of the church is to proclaim the gospel, or good news of Christ. Just before his ascension, Jesus gave this charge (known as the Great Commission) to his followers: “Go [everywhere] and preach the gospel to [everyone].” The account of this commissioning is found in three New Testament passages, each one carrying a slightly different emphasis.
Matthew 28:18-20, the focus is on teaching the gospel. The
disciples were instructed to “make disciples;” to be the teacher to others that
Jesus had been to them, to instruct new believers in the message and meaning of
the kingdom of God. The Greek word used here (matheteuo) means to make a disciple by thoroughly and personally
training someone in a way of life governed by the knowledge and information
they are receiving. The instruction is rooted in the sacrament of baptism,
which imprints the heart of the gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of
Christ, upon the Christian's soul. It is Trinitarian in its aspect, connecting us
to the entirety of the work of God in our lives and in the world. It is
centered on teaching that brings about obedience to the commands of Christ, not
merely the accumulation of intellectual knowledge.
In Mark 16:15, Jesus tells the disciples to preach or
announce the gospel. This word means to proclaim, declare or assert a particular
message publicly. We generally think of this aspect of the Great Commission as
the preaching ministry of the church, as Sunday after Sunday pastors preach
their sermons or homilies. This is why the sermon is so central to our worship,
for in all that is said the gospel must be lifted up, woven in, or clearly
delineated in each and every presentation. If a pastor neglects or minimizes
the gospel in his or her sermons, a red flag must go up in our hearts, for only
the gospel, not good advice, or trendy platitudes, will transform us into the
people God wants us to be.
Another New Testament word used for preaching is “euaggelizo”, from which we get our word
evangelize. It means to give an explanation of the good news of salvation,
particularly to those who do not yet know it -- namely, that Christ died for
our sins and rose again for our redemption and that one may be saved by placing
faith in him. Evangelism is done through any means that proclaims this core
message; audibly in sermons, visually in media, or informally in one-on-one
conversation.
It’s interesting that the gospel writer who chose to use this word (Luke) may not have been a direct observer of the actual day-to-day ministry of Jesus. We know that he gathered information from many sources when writing his two books. He also received input from Paul, who also did not directly hear and know Jesus when he lived on this earth. This teaches us that we are all witnesses about Christ through the timeless channel of his Word. We may proclaim and teach the truth about the gospel because his Word has been given to us. The Holy Spirit, who indwells us, makes the Word real and living in our hearts and lives.
When we think about our mission to proclaim the gospel both as individuals and as the church, we need to take care that it motivates everything that we say and do. We must ask ourselves these types of questions: 1.) Does this clarify the good news of Christ? 2.) Does this help a Christian to proclaim the gospel? 3.) Are Christians learning to live the good news in their daily lives? 4. Do the activities we do other than preaching also proclaim the gospel?
A beautiful example of the centrality of the Gospel may be found in the Anglican tradition of bringing by procession a beautifully bound copy of the four gospels to the center of the church. There, a passage from the gospels is read, in the midst of the congregation. The gospel is glorious and awe inspiring, it is true, but it is also for us and meets us right were we are. It comes from God's heart to ours, and from ours to others. In every heart, in every Church, the gospel must come into the center of all that is done and be proclaimed as the truth upon which everything else is based.
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