No Hope? Really?!?

Perhaps you've seen this picture floating around the interwebs bewailing our nation's condition on the basis of our president and our economic situation. I apologize in advance if what I'm about to write comes across as harsh to some of my friends who may have posted such a picture, but I think this needs to be addressed.

There are several things that truly bother me about this clever retort, especially given that most of the people I see posting it are confessing Christians.

1) Extreme Censure of Our President

I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, we who call ourselves subjects of the Divine King need to keep things in perspective. Our ultimate allegiance is to no earthly government but is to the Kingdom of God Almighty. Just as Abraham was a sojourner and alien looking forward to the land promised him by God, so too are we sojourners and aliens on this earth as we await the full consummation of God's kingdom in the new heavens and earth. If we have this outlook then we should be less distraught over the political mechanizations of our present dwelling.

In addition, let us not forget that we are to submit to our earthly leaders. Hebrews clearly states:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (13:17)

Holy Scripture does not give Christians much leeway in having respect and honor for those who are in positions of leadership over us. This doesn't mean we have to push aside all political opinion, but it does mean that care must be taken when expressing harsh and flippant criticism.

2) No Cash

I promise you that I fully recognize the financial hardship that has come upon many of us in this economy. I could give you a laundry list of challenges my wife and I have faced and continue to face due to difficulty securing gainful employment, bills accumulating from school and medical expenses, and the struggles that come with rising fuel and commodity prices. Without even mentioning the financial security we in America have when compared to the majority of the world's population, there is an even greater reason to not fret. In Matthew 8:20, when presented with a man who wanted to follow Him, Jesus warned the man that, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." If the one to whom we swear allegiance did not consider financial security to be the upward calling of life, what right do we have to gauge our own sense of worth and safety in it?

3) No Hope

The hope we have as Christians is not found in political systems, financial gains, familial protection, or any other finite thing. Our hope is based solely and completely on our Almighty God and the work done by Christ on the cross. It is hope in the Divine Person that brings the psalmist to compose:

In you, LORD, I have taken refuge;
   let me never be put to shame.
In your righteousness, rescue me and deliver me;
   turn your ear to me and save me.
Be my rock of refuge,
   to which I can always go;
give the command to save me,
   for you are my rock and my fortress.
Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
   from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel.
For you have been my hope, Sovereign LORD,
   my confidence since my youth.
From birth I have relied on you;
   you brought me forth from my mother’s womb.
   I will ever praise you.
I have become a sign to many;
   you are my strong refuge.
My mouth is filled with your praise,
   declaring your splendor all day long.
                                                 (Psalm 71:1-8)

No matter the perceived difficulties we face we should be able to declare the splendor of our King all day long. We are not a people without hope, and if we are to be a light to a darkened world we need to be a light that shines the hope that can be found through Christ and that supersedes all other circumstances.

Liturgy: Every Church Has One

One of the reasons my wife and I were drawn to the Anglican church was the liturgy. I will be writing more about this in an upcoming post, but before I write about what drew us to the Anglican liturgy I want to write briefly about liturgy in general. The reason I feel this is important is that there is a general bias against the concept of ritual for many within the modern American church.

In short, liturgy is a set of agreed-upon and prescribed rites or rituals. Every church has a liturgy. I know some of you are already starting to compose an email to me proudly arguing that your church is liturgy-free. Most arguments against liturgy are fueled by a general bias that liturgy is a stodgy, antiquated monstrosity that either destroys any opportunity for a truly dynamic relationship with God or disrupts the promulgation of a relevant church that will welcome the present culture. Despite your objection, I will reiterate that every church has a liturgy. Not convinced? Here’s how you can test it:

(1) Convince the leadership of you church to completely change the order of service for the upcoming Sunday without telling anybody in the congregation ahead of time.
(2) Convince the music team/leader/organist/pianist/drummer/chanter to use songs that your congregation has never heard before.
(3) Convince the preacher to use a version of the Bible from the opposite end of the spectrum from your church’s usual version (instead of NIV, use KJV; instead of NASB, use the Message).
(4) Make a large sign with the words “Tell Us What You Think of Today’s Service” and include your own cell phone number. Hang this sign from the front of the pulpit or project it onto the plasma screens hanging on either side of the stage.
(5) Turn your cell phone on five minutes after the service starts.
(6) Record the number of angry or frustrated calls you receive before the battery in your phone goes dead.

Yes, I admit I’m exaggerating... a little. If you’re honest with yourself and those with whom you worship you will likely conclude that it may not be as much of an exaggeration as you may want it to be.

What’s the point? The point is that when we enter into community worship we settle into a set of prescribed and expected rites and rituals no matter how informally they are presented or casually the are held. My point is not to argue for one style or type over another, but rather it is to highlight the fact that to function successfully in community a set of community values and practices must develop over time. In relation to this general concept, there are only two basic differences between liturgical and non-liturgical churches:

(1) Liturgical churches have a formally established and prescribed set of rites to which they intentionally adhere, while non-liturgical churches have informal expectations that are casually followed.
(2) Liturgical churches share their prescribed set of rites among a large group of local churches, while non-liturgical churches aren’t typically concerned with the specific rituals of other local bodies.

Before you respond with “we’re not under law, we’re under grace” as a way of arguing for the dangers of ritual in the church, let me leave you with this thought. Jesus, in His earthly ministry, and the apostles, during the early years after Jesus’ death did not deny themselves participation in Jewish ritualistic worship in the temple.

Jesus, The Good Samaritan

The Gospel reading for today, the Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity, was from Luke 10, the story of The Good Samaritan. Bishop Sutton preached a tremendous sermon on our Lord Jesus as that Good Samaritan. Jesus did what the religious leaders could not or would not: He descended into the ditch and brought the wounded man to safety, paying for that man to be nursed back to health. What the Good Samaritan did in the parable Christ did on the cross. Christ descended into the ditch of humanity so that we could be restored.

I was convicted. This parable is told in response to the question of what it means to love our neighbors. If my love for my neighbor can only be limited by Christ’s love for humanity, then is there really any boundary to the love I am to have? Christ went to the cross with full knowledge of the rejection He had already endured and would endure through the centuries. In fact, He promised His disciples that they would be persecuted for His sake. Despite that knowledge He entered the ditch for us. To truly follow Christ I also must be willing to endure rejection and persecution for the sake of loving my neighbor.

I’m struck with how often we out-source our love, though. What is our typical response when confronted with a person on the street who is hungry and in need of help? Our typical response is to point them in the direction of the nearest shelter while we wipe our hands of the encounter and go about our day. We justify it by convincing ourselves that the individual would have just used any monetary support we provide for booze or that it’s too dangerous to invite him or her into our car or home to help get them where they’re going or feed them ourselves. Granted, it is a dangerous world full of dishonest people, but that does not remove our responsibility. 

Remember what Hebrews 13:1-6 teaches:

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. 

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. 

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say,

"The Lord is my helper; 
I will not fear; 
what can man do to me?”  

If we remove the love of money and the fear of what man will do to us from our default outlook of life, how much more will we be able to love our neighbors as Christ loves us?

Finding the Anglican Way - Part 2, Reverence for Our King

I suppose I should include a disclaimer at the beginning of this post (and this disclaimer could probably apply to all of the posts in this series). When I speak of the evangelical church in America please realize that I'm speaking in purposefully general terms. I typically don't have a particular church in mind, nor am I necessarily referring to churches I have attended. I am also not writing for apologetic purposes; I'm not trying to persuade anyone to jump into the Anglican tradition. In the end I hope you take two things from my articles. The first is an understanding of why my wife and I have made the decision we have made. The second is that you contemplate the concepts I'm presenting so as to strengthen your own relationship with our Father Almighty and our Lord Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to have reverence for God? I'm concerned that if you ask many within our Christian culture, the concept of having reverence will be boiled down solely to the word respect without further explanation or consideration. If you ask those same people to describe the nature of their relationship with God or Christ they will say that God is their daddy and Christ is their buddy. Further, if you bring up the concept of "fearing God" they will boldly assert their eternal position before God due to the atonement and continue to exclaim that since we are not under law but under grace we need not be overly concerned with such matters.

To begin I must first address the concept of fearing God. Holy Scripture provides us with two seemingly conflicting statements. One is the command to fear God. The other is the command to not have fear. Some have answered this dilemma by restricting the term fear, when it references the fear of God, to be a mere synonym of respect. Unfortunately for them the Old Testament doesn't seem to support such an approach.

Throughout the Old Testament the same Hebrew term is routinely used for fear. It is the term yārēʾ (ירא) which in short means "to fear" or "to be afraid." It doesn't matter if one is referring to God or other objects, the term retains that meaning and doesn't seem to be restricted to the concept of respect. When God's chosen people are concerned over the strength of an enemy or some other calamity, they are urged to say as the psalmist said, "The LORD is for me; I will not fear; What can man do to me?" (Ps 118:6). Yet when humanity's position before God Almighty is addressed, even His covenant people are said to fear Him and those who have such fear are lauded.

Christ provides a helpful description of this principle:

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matt 10:28-33)

Christ proclaims that we are not to fear earthly things because those earthly things cannot touch our souls. We are known by God and valued by Him, therefore we do not need to fear that which is temporal. What we do need to fear is the power and authority of God over the very essence of our being. While those who have been bought by the blood of Christ will be acknowledged by Christ before our Heavenly Father, there is still a sense that the proper posture of the created is to fear the Creator for the just authority He has over us. This posture includes respecting Him, but it goes much deeper than that.

Someone may respond that the New Testament teaches us about the courage and confidence we can have before God. Holy Scripture does indeed teach that we can boldly come before the throne of grace to receive mercy (Hebrews 4:16), but let us not forget that we are still coming before a throne. The writer of Hebrews is not proclaiming our access to the recliner of righteousness, the sofa of sanctification, or the lounge of love; rather he uses royal language to describe the throne room as a place from where a sovereign ruler reigns. No matter the confidence we can have when coming before God, let us not forget that we are coming before a king. No matter how fully Christ's atonement has covered our sin and guilt, let us not allow ourselves to become too casual in our consideration of our position before the Creator.

Allow me to paint a mental picture. Imagine you are sitting in your living room and a man runs up to you, gasping for breath with a look on his face that is a mix of chilled fear and passionate joy. The words tumble out of his mouth as if he could speak them all at once, "God just showed up outside your front door, and He's asking to see you!" What would you do? Would you run out the door with a grin on your face, slug Him on the arm and exclaim, "Dude, it's so good to see you"? Would you run out the back door out of sheer terror? Or would you get up slowly with an alloy of longing and terror in the pit of your stomach, fall to your knees before you even make it to the door, and crawl to His feet with an almost physical inability to lift your face due to the magnitude of your realization of your true position before Him? 

I firmly believe that the totality of Holy Scripture presents God in such a way that the latter should be our response, yet I think many imagine something more akin to the first, more casual response. God is the creator of all that is seen and all that is unseen, He rules and reigns, and even Jesus, though He himself is God, deferred to the Father and revered Him throughout His earthly ministry. Just because we have the opportunity to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ due to His atoning sacrifice for us doesn't mean that our position as the created has changed. We are still the creature while God is still the creator, and although we can call Him father we have no right to consider our relationship with Him to be one of equal substance. He is our Lord, our King, our Master. There is a real sense in which we cannot be casual about how we relate to Him.

Window above the altar at Church of
the Holy Communion in Dallas, TX.

This concept of reverence is probably what my wife and I found most striking when we began attending Anglican churches, and something we were struck with after just one visit to an Episcopal church. In many independent, non-liturgical churches the concept of truly revering God is occasionally taught on some academic level (primarily through Bible studies or sermons) but is seldom actually lived. Instead, Jesus is just my buddy and God is just my daddy; these relational descriptions are not lofted outside of the mortal realm but are mired in the fetters of finite creation.

In contrast, the various anglican or episcopal services I have attended have left no room for a casual consideration of my position before God. The architecture and imagery, the change of posture when bowing, kneeling, or genuflecting, the vestments of the clergy, and the solemn approach to the eucharist all work together to make it obvious that I am interacting with One who is greater than I, and One for whom I must have true and deep reverence. No sermon needs to be taught nor Bible study scheduled to bring this realization to the forefront of the mind; it is woven into the fabric of the liturgy. Simply attending the service teaches volumes about who I am when compared to the Almighty.

Does one have to be Anglican to achieve this? No, but my wife and I have found it a helpful place to experience it. Let me be clear yet again, my prayer for you is not that you blaze a path to the Canterbury Trail, but rather that you consider the necessity of reverencing the One who is in every way our King. If we are to truly worship God then we must reverence Him as our King!

From the Order for Daily Morning Prayer from The Book of Common Prayer (1928)

THE LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him. Hab. ii. 20. I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the LORD. Psalm cxxii. 1. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be alway acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. Psalm xix. 14.O send out thy light and thy truth, that they may lead me, and bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy dwelling. Psalm xliii. 3.Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Isaiah lvii. 15.The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. St. John iv. 23.

More Vinyl

Shanna and I had an enjoyable trip to Half Price Books this evening. It was our bi-weekly, payday weekend date night to browse their wide assortment of vinyl records. For those who don't know, my wife got me a record player as an early birthday present this year. We are slowly growing our collection of vinyl albums.

Today's finds include:
* Verdi's Requim
* Showboat
* Bing Crosby: A Musical Autobiography
* Louis Armstrong: Hello, Louis!

Add these to the Creedence Clearwater Revival, Perry Komo, Beatles, and U2 we have found in past excavations and our small collection is becoming quite eclectic. Our favorite find is still the U2: Joshua Tree album still new in the shrink wrap. It's definitely fun browsing through our culture's musical history.

Any other vinyl collectors out there? If so, I'd love to hear about some of your finds.

Finding the Anglican Way - Part 1, Unity in Diversity

This is the first of what will be several installments that attempt to explain how and why my wife and I have made the journey from independent evangelical churches into the Anglican church. I don't know how many of these I'll do in total, but I hope to give a sense of the breadth of this decision. There was no one element, single event, solitary theological ideal, or particular point of polity that brought us to this crossroad. Rather, it is the culmination of many diverse factors which I hope to address through this series of posts. To begin with I suppose I should explain why I even allowed myself to think outside the tradition of my upbringing.

I had been taught at various times through various means a certain way of looking at the ecclesiastical landscape not only in America but around the world. This teaching happened not only formally through lectures and varied assignments, but also through books I was encouraged to read, blogs I was asked to follow, pod casts I was sent, sermons I heard, and the casual conversations I shared with church leaders, fellow students, and other random people. Although one might think that such a varied assortment of brushes would create a multicolored vista of the church, I've come to realize that the landscape that was painted was actually rather monochromatic.

Here's the crux of the matter. There is a tendency for American evangelicalism (which was my upbringing) to consider itself to be uniquely correct in its biblical interpretation, ecclesiastical structure, and moral consideration. I'll concede that confidence in one's view of Holy Scripture is to be applauded, but trouble brews when non essentials are propelled to the forefront and people with other views who should be considered equally brothers and sisters in Christ are questioned as to the status of their relationship with Him based on these non essentials.

I find this troubling particularly because of Christ's impassioned prayer the night before He was betrayed. The Gospel of St. John records that prayer as it reads,

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. (17:20-23)

Christ prayed for a church that would be unified. Paul wrote of a church that has one Lord, one faith, on baptism. He also wrote of the mystery of a church in which Jew and Gentile can share table fellowship together around the cup of the New Covenant. Jesus instituted this covenant while the one whom He knew would betray Him partook of the same bread as Him. Unity is not a foreign concept in Holy Scripture, yet it is my experience that in the 21st century church in America it is anything but one. The more time that elapses from the reformation to today the more denominations are established which can't seem to get along with the others. The church fractures, splinters, and dissipates. As it stands currently there is a flavor of church for nearly every moral preference, musical style, rhetorical method, ethnic group, economical class, generational mentality, and ministry trend. I don't think that variety is the issue, though, for as we allow ourselves to grow in our relationship with God through the Holy Spirit we may find a certain attraction to certain subsets of society, but so often these subsets become reclusive and vindictive of the others.

You may ask what the value of theological education or doctrinal study is, or whether I'm advocating the watering down of all our beliefs to one common denominator. My answer would be that God is honored by our pursuit of knowledge about Him, but we need to tread with care in what we choose to consider as dogmatic truth and what we choose to hold loosely as we pursue Him. There is value in arriving at different conclusions in this pursuit when we maintain the unity of the church universal (or "catholic church") and allow those differences to further mature us. In short, it comes down to this. You can have two God-honoring individuals who cherish the worth, power and reliability of Holy Scripture, desire to serve God, and are open to being moved by the Holy Spirit to better understand Him, yet they arrive at different conclusions about some interpretational issue, moral dilemma, or doctrinal nuance. Who is correct? For if they arrived at mutually exclusive results then surely only one can be correct and the other must be wrong. Perhaps both are capturing a facet of the infinite truth of our infinite God so that we as the church understand Him better yet have not exhausted the mystery of Him. The value of such a realization is that multiple theological traditions and viewpoints can work in harmony to contemplate God in a way that no single tradition could do on its own. While there are limits to this concept (for heresy is a legit danger of which we must be wary), suffice it to say that in a general yet profound sense the church is strengthened and bolstered by the unification of diversity.

As I observed this through my own various experiences I began to look outside my own tradition to see if I was alone in my musings on unified diversity or whether there were others like myself. What I found was the Anglican church. One facet of the Anglican church is its concern for unity. It is a refreshing ecclesiastical trait and one I am learning to greatly appreciate. You don't need to leave your own church tradition to foster this mentality, though. My wife and I are confident it was the obedient choice for us given the moving God in our lives, but I believe all theological and ecclesiastical traditions would benefit from a dose of unity and hopefully God uses you to foster this value in your own church.

Allow me to close with the prayer for the church from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer:

O GRACIOUS Father, we humbly beseech thee for thy

holy Catholic Church; that thou wouldest be pleased to

fill it with all truth, in all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify

it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is

amiss, reform it. Where it is right, establish it; where it is

in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for

the sake of him who died and rose again, and ever liveth to

make intercession for us, Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord.

Amen.

A Season for Everything, A Season for Change

This is an exciting time for us--new church, new job, new baby on the way--so it seemed appropriate to continue my personal crusade to become something of a regular blogger. Some of you reading this may have known me (and my wife) for a long time, others I may have just met, still more may yet be strangers whom I would never recognize if we encountered each other on the street. Regardless, allow me to highlight some of the events that have transpired over the last months.

Baby Inbound

One of the most thrilling highlights is that God has seen fit to bless us with another pregnancy. Those of our friends and family reading this likely mourned with us this past January as we were confronted with the miscarriage of our twins. While no new child can replace the loss of another child, the joy of life seems sweeter for the experience. We can say with certainty we have grown closer to our Heavenly Father and to each other through the experiences of both death and life and are eager for the opportunity to meet the child God has entrusted to our care and guidance. As of the writing of this post we are 15 weeks along with a due date around February 29, 2012 (yes, we may have a leap year baby)!

Transposing Work and Seminary

We came to Dallas from Juneau, Alaska, so that I could train for future ministry through study at Dallas Theological Seminary. The initial plan (the one that was birthed from our own logic) was for Shanna to work as our primary wage earner while I took classes full time and worked part time. God is not limited by our own finite logic, though, and saw fit to use various events in our lives to teach us to more fully depend and rely upon Him for our daily bread. Due to a variety of circumstances, not the least of which is an incoming child and Shanna’s battle with viral meningitis this past Spring, my wife is no longer working. As a result I have been licensed as an insurance adjuster and am now working full time. Seminary, while still the reason we moved to Dallas, is something that I will complete on a part time basis. This is actually a relieving situation since it will allow Shanna and I to think through the many changes currently taking place in life.

The Anglican Way

Almost as exciting for us as the expectation of a child is the transition we are making into the Anglican church. This may come as a surprise to many of you as for my entire life I have been part of independent churches. We are now members of Church of the Holy Communion, a Reformed Episcopal Church, and are being blessed and challenged by the ministry of Bishop Sutton, the rector of our parish, and the other ministers and parishioners there. We are eager to continue learning and growing with this community. I will be explaining more about how we came to find ourselves stumbling onto the Anglican Way in subsequent blog entries over the next weeks and months, but for now I hope these summary sentences have sufficed. 

Ultimately, we are growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and drawing closer to each other as a married couple. Though Shanna and I walked through the valley of the shadow of death at the beginning of this year, we are now more than ever able to say that we fear no evil. For our Lord is with us and has guided us through those shadows; His rod and staff comfort us.

O Heavenly Father, thou understandest all thy children; through thy gift of faith we bring our perplexities to the light of thy wisdom, and receive the blessed encouragement of thy sympathy, and a clearer knowledge of thy will. Glory be to thee for all thy gracious gifts. Amen.