The Catholic Diocese of New York recently put up this rather entertaining YouTube video to encourage folks to go to Confession, and there’s something about it that strikes me as “getting it right,” even though confession as a sacrament isn’t a Protestant thing. I think that most of us have been taught at some point or another that we should confess our sins to God on a daily basis. Speaking for myself, this is not something that comes easily to me — once I’ve gotten past the obvious ones, it’s pretty difficult for me to sort out the subtle sins that are having a significant impact on my relationship with God and my fellow believers. But on those occasions when I can lay it out before a trusted brother, I find it much easier to pinpoint those areas of sin that I really need to be dealing with.
So while sacramental Confession may not be an option for us as Protestants, we should avail ourselves those options that we have: the sympathetic and encouraging ears of our brothers and sisters.
As part of the Saturday morning theology class, I’m putting up the four great ecumenical creeds: The Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Definition of Chalcedon, and the Athanasian Creed. These four texts are marvelous in that they summarize many key doctrines of our faith in relatively few words. Read and savor the wisdom the leaders of the early church.
Apostles’ Creed (written mostly in the early 2nd Century; originally used as a profession of faith during baptism)
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting. (more…)
This will be yet another Pastor Scott-sponsored Big Al post. You may recall at the congregational meeting in July, Scott mentioned that he wanted each family to get into the practice of celebrating the Lord’s Day at home, and that Katie and I would be teaching the Church how to do it. I’ll start by suggesting that folks download the booklet Celebrating the Lord’s Dayhere. It’s only 30 or so pages, and it gives a lot of the background information, plus a complete ceremony for a festive Lord’s Day meal. In fact, since Lamb of God will be having a church-wide Lord’s Day meal together on Saturday evening September 13, try to download and read the booklet before then.
A comment on the image: It looks pretty bleak and not particularly joyful, but consider this: you’re looking at a poor laborer who has probably exhausted himself during the past six days in his efforts to provide for his family. By modern thinking, he could probably get a bit ahead of the game if he were to work an extra day. But he would never do that, because the Sabbath belongs to the Lord and was given for rest. This is the high point of his week.
OK, here’s some background on the celebration of the Christian Sabbath or Lord’s Day. In the 1970s and 80s, Katie and I were members of a Christian community that had the practice of inaugurating the Lord’s Day with a home/family service. All households in the community were expected to gather together on Saturday nights, pray together using a set liturgy, eat a festive meal, and in general make the evening a time of fellowship and enjoyment. The practice was based on the Jewish tradition of inaugurating the Sabbath with nice meal and a home service on Friday nights. Since our family is Jewish, we have kept the Friday night Sabbath tradition and have celebrated the Sabbath home service continuously (missing only the occasional Friday night here and there) for the duration of our marriage, 28 years. It’s part of our life together, and we guard it very carefully — we almost never attend Friday evening events, for example, because they would interfere with our consecrated family time. The meal is the nicest dinner we eat over the course of the week, and we make an effort to make things special. It’s the only meal that we have a dessert with, for example, and we spend a bit more money and time on the meal’s preparation. We even try to dress a bit better for it (our pastor when we lived in Michigan used to say that you shouldn’t dress like a schlump for the Lord’s Day). In doing so, we honor the Lord for His goodness to us during the past week — the meal is a sacramental activity. (more…)
I’m currently reading the accounts of Paul’s missionary journeys, starting in Acts 13. I noticed that one of the themes that consistently comes up is spiritual jealousy. It’s pretty clear from these accounts that Paul almost always initiated his missionary efforts in a given city with a visit to the local Jewish congregation, where he proclaimed that Jesus was the Messiah. It also appears that most synagogues at that time had a number of Gentiles in their congregations. You can tell that Paul was speaking to these Gentiles as well as the Jews: in Acts 13:16, he says “Men of Israel and you that fear God”. This phrase “you that fear God” refers explicitly to Gentiles who believed in the God of Israel but who had not undergone full conversion.
So here’s the situation: Paul enters a synagogue and preaches the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles. They clearly receive the Word gladly — they invite him to return the next Sabbath, and a number of the congregants follow Paul and Barnabas after the worship service and encourage them. The following Sabbath, it’s clear that the news has spread: “almost the whole city gathered together to hear the word of God”. This time, the response of the Jews isn’t so positive: “But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with jealousy and contradicted what was spoken by Paul…” This negative reaction pursues Paul and Barnabas for the rest of their journey. Jump ahead a few chapters to Paul’s next journey and we see a similar pattern: in Acts 17, the Jews at the local synagogue initially respond positively, then become jealous when non-Jews start coming to faith, and pursue Paul and make trouble for him when he moves on to the next city.
It occurred to me as I was reading that it’s very easy for us to fall into the same trap with regard to the exercise of spiritual gifts. When we witness someone manifesting a spiritual gift, particularly one that we don’t have, we can easily respond negatively. This can especially be the case when (1) you’re a long-time Christian/member of Lamb of God, and (2) the person exercising the gift is relatively new — a recent convert or someone who has recently started worshiping with us. Such spiritual jealousy can promote divisiveness and thoroughly quench the actions of the Spirit in our midst. Rather, we should rejoice in the gift of God to our congregation and the demonstration of His presence in out midst.
I was chatting with my daughter about Bible translations, and in the course of the conversation she mentioned something that I hadn’t been aware of (she took an OT Hebrew class in college). There’s a phrase that opens many of the OT prophets: “The word of the Lord came to…” Pretty much all of the common English translations use some variation of these words. But the thing is, that’s not what the Hebrew words really say. The literal translation is something more like this: “The word of the Lord was, (or happened) to…” To my mind, that has a very different meaning — it carries the sense of the prophet not just hearing or seeing but actually experiencing with his entire being the words that God has given him to say. No wonder Jeremiah said:
But if I say, “I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot.
In fact, it’s pretty clear that many (most?) of the OT prophets didn’t really have much choice in the matter — a number of them didn’t want to be prophets. Moses and Jeremiah come immediately to mind, and Amos refused to let people identify him as a prophet. But God placed His word in or on them, and that was the end of the discussion. Now, I’m pretty sure that our experience of prophesying or otherwise sharing God’s word during our gatherings is not necessarily going to mirror the experience of Jeremiah or any other OT prophet. I know that this isn’t my experience on the occasions when I share or (rarely) prophesy. Maybe this kind of stuff happens only to people who wrote the books of the Bible…
Today’s NY Times (3 Feb 08) has an outstanding op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof (go here to look at it) entitled “Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love”. While making it clear that he’s no friend of orthodox Christian theology, nor does he hold with the political conservatism of the typical American evangelical, he at the same time speaks of the great things we have accomplished for the poor, especially abroad. By way of background, Kristof is the “international” columnist for the NY Times — he often visits and writes from the world’s hot spots, such as Darfur, North Korea, Afganistan, etc. In any case, read the column — it’s one of a very few positive evaluations of evangelical Christianity by a liberal columnist.
One of the things that’s been on my mind a lot over the past month or so is the Incarnation and what it means for us. Some of this is not new — Scott has preached numerous sermons over the years addressing these matters — but I recently re-read a few discussions of the Incarnation (or Incarnation-related topics) that I found very insightful and helpful.
The first text that I came across is from Calvin, writing about the Lord’s Table. I’ve heard a lot of teaching on Communion, I’ve studied it pretty intensively, and I’ve read this text many times, but this time around Calvin’s comments really struck me as expressing a deep truth about living the Incarnational. He states:
Rather, it [the Table] was ordained to be frequently used among all Christians in order that they might frequently return in memory to Christ’s Passion, by such remembrance to sustain and strengthen their faith, and urge themselves to sing thanksgiving to God and to proclaim his goodness; finally, by it to nourish mutual love, and among themselves give witness to this love, and discern its bond in the unity of Christ’s body. For as often as we partake of the symbol of the Lord’s body, as a token given and received, we reciprocally bind ourselves to all the duties of love in order that none of us may permit anything that can harm our brother, or overlook anything that can help him, where necessity demands and ability suffices.
What I think Calvin is getting at is that when we partake of the Table, we commit ourselves to personify Christ to one another. To fail in being attentive to one another’s physical and spiritual needs is to strip the Table of a large part of its meaning; it’s to fail to discern the Lord’s Body and Blood.
The other text that I read was the first few pages of Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in which he contrasts cheap and costly grace. He closes his discussion of each with a statement about the Incarnation:
“Cheap grace is a denial of the Incarnation of God”
“Costly grace is the Incarnation of God”
Bonhoeffer basically describes how Christians behave when their lives are characterized by cheap grace (uncommitted, unchanged, and weak) and by costly grace (sold out and strong). When he says that cheap grace is a denial of the Incarnation, I think that he’s telling us that lives lived under cheap grace make Christ invisible, while lives lived under costly grace clearly portray Christ both to the world at large and to other believers.
Brothers and sisters, I want to see the face of Jesus when I come to church on Sundays, but I also want to see Him when I hear about and participate in service opportunities. I want to hear about how a bunch of folks had a great time helping someone move. I want to be with a group of guys remodeling the church office space to make it usable for ministry, counseling, and other activities. These are the things that enflesh Jesus in our midst.
DISCLAIMER: Pastor Scott DID NOT ask me to write this — I got the idea for it before I read his blog entry, and I wrote most of it before hearing his sermon on 12/16.
I just read a fascinating article about what happens when relatively like-minded people get together (go here if you’d like to read it). Someone took a bunch of people who didn’t know one another and grouped them together according to whether they identified themselves as conservative or liberal. Before they were put into their groups, the participants each completed a short anomymous survey identifying their positions on a number of issues, like taxes, civil unions, climate change, and the like. The folks were then placed in their groups and encouraged to discuss the issues. After fifteen minutes, everyone repeated the anonymous survey. The result of the fifteen minutes of hanging out with like-minded folks was that nearly everyone became more extreme in their views. Those who opposed civil unions opposed them all the more, those who support action to reduce climate change became more strident in their support, and the like.
The point of the article was to indicate that in the early 21st century, it’s very easy to find your own niche group and to find folks who will draw you to the extremes. It’s almost impossible to find support for the middle position. This got me thinking about how this phenomenon ought to work in Lamb of God. I’m not really talking about political or social views, extreme and otherwise, although it seems to me that the input of our brothers and sisters ought to have a significant impact on how we form our own opinions.
But there’s one thing about which we should be extremists, and that’s the area in which we should be encouraging extremism in one another: we should be extremely, insanely, incredibly in love with Jesus and His people, and we should be extremists about furthering the Kingdom of God, whether we do so though evangelism, or prayer, or good works, or whatever the Lord has given us to do.
Terry Mattingly is a religion columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service — his column “On Religion” appears in about 350 American newpapers. He has also taught journalism at several major Christian colleges and universities. I find that he always has something interesting to say. This week’s column, which is concerned with charitable giving seems particularly appropriate in light of one the Black Dwarf’s recent posts:
It seems to me that failure to provide adequate financial support falls under at least three of the eight “things that grieve the Holy Spirit and hinder Him in revivals”. Also, it’s clear from our brother Vinny’s recent report on the state of our building that availability of financial resources — ours or those of the Diocese — will play a major role in maintaining St. Marks in a usable state. Thus, I commend to your prayerful consideration this week’s On Relighion column: http://tmatt.gospelcom.net/column/2007/11/21/.
Please understand that I’m not accusing Lamb of God of failure in this area — we probably do better than most congregations. It’s just that we occasionally need a nudge in the right direction…
It’s comparatively easy to take shots at public figures or famous folks from the past. But if we’re going to talk about our day-to-day life, I think we can all agree that the sin that we experience the most in our own. 2 Samuel 11 and 12 is instructive here. Like David, we are seldom aware of our sin until someone else points it out to us, and usually we’re not very interested in hearing the news that there is a lot of darkness yet in our hearts, even though we know that it’s true.
Consider this: the primary means through which God speaks to us are the Bible, the preaching and teaching of the word, and the wise, biblically-informed counsel of our brothers and sisters. Most of us understand how the first two work, but the last of these may be a challenge to us. We have to learn how to give and receive correction from one another. The scriptures are explicit: we are repeatedly instructed to give correction, particularly in cases when we are the offended party. And Proverbs is loaded with stuff on the importance of receiving correction. So if your brother or sister comes up to you and points out to you an area of your life that needs attention and reformation, you are obligated to carefully consider what he or she says, whether or not you think that they’re right, and especially if the person correcting you is an Elder or similarly mature person in the congregation. In closing, remember Proverbs 12:1: Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid. stupid! STUPID!!
