The Path of Discipleship - On Worship

You wake up on Sunday and you come to a community of faith.  Maybe it is a traditional church building with a steeple on top designed for the specific purpose of worship and ministry.  Maybe it is a more modern worship space with stage lights and projection screens; a storefront in the city, just a large room with chairs and an overhead projector; a park or camp, where the outdoor space becomes worship space; in someone’s living room, where a small community gathers in simple worship.

                What happens in worship?  In many communities you might be handed a bulletin that serves as an instruction manual for the time.  You could point at the list of events from prelude to postlude and say, “Here is what happens.”  Yet I have been to communities where the order is less formal.  Songs are sung until it feels right to stop.  Preaching is a shared action, a discussion with a smaller group.  That is also worship.

                At a basic level, communal worship is an intentional turning toward God.  We carve out a time and place to be together and agree to dedicate that time and place to the living God.  Note that at this base level, I am not talking about praise or thanks because, while these are elements of most worship services, they may not be elements of all.  A funeral service for a child is a worship service but one that might ask for songs of lament rather than songs of praise.  Worship in the context of protest may call for songs and prayers of justice. 

                In many and various ways and styles and moods, we are turned toward God.  We listen to God speaking in scripture, preaching and discussion.  We speak to God in prayer.  We sing to God, often in praise, thanks and adoration.  We stand before the table and are fed, receiving Christ in bread and wine.  Through these actions we are reminded of the constant nature of God’s presence.  We are reminded that although we may pick and choose the times when we pay attention to God, God is constantly and lovingly aware of us.

                This is the grace of worship.  We may come to worship with the attitude that we are doing this action to please God only to discover that God is already pleased.  We may come to worship wanting to show our love for Jesus only to encounter the overwhelming love of Christ that is already present.  We come to do something for God and we encounter what God is doing for us, implanting us in the story of the good news.

                 Worship becomes an act of faithfulness, both a sign of our faith in God, but a reminder of God’s faithfulness toward us.  Worship is the opportunity to connect to this reality before we go out into a world where God’s presence is not always clear and God’s love in not always celebrated.  We are surrounded by the love of God in worship, and we respond with love, both in the act of worship itself and the acts of service that follow in our daily lives, sharing love with the world. 

                The measurement of true, faithful and good worship is not a matter of style or the feelings evoked as much as we like to talk about such things.  The measurement of faithful worship is how we meet God once we have entered and what sort of people we are when we leave.  It is fine if worship makes you feel happy or feel good about yourself for having done it.  It is faithful if worship sends you to live and share the good news in word and action.  

The Path of Discipleship - Sabbath Practices

What is Sabbath? 

                The Sabbath tradition connects people who observe it to God’s gift of rest, as illustrated at the end of the seven-day creation cycle in Genesis 1.  It also serves as a reminder of God’s liberation.  Israel had the opportunity to rest because God had set them free from slavery in Egypt.  We rest because human beings need to rest.  We rest because it honors God who created time and space.  We rest because it is a gift to be able to rest.

How can I observe the Sabbath?

                Traditionally, the Sabbath was a day set apart each week.  For Israel, the Sabbath lasts from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday.  This was a day for worship, study and rest.  Emergencies should be handled.  Livestock should be fed.  No one else should be made to work so you can rest.  As Christians transitioned to worship on Sunday, the Sabbath day for most Christians became Sunday.

                If you have never observed a full-day Sabbath, recognize that it takes work and preparation.  Household chores that might have been done over the course of a weekend are done on a single day.  Work-related emails and texts should be handled ahead of time.  These days, for a real Sabbath, you probably need to turn off your phone and shutdown your computer.  You might also consider simply taking a Sabbath from particular activities.  Perhaps you need to spend a day without screens, or a day without commerce, or a day without chores.  This is not supposed to be the kind of fasting that some people do in Lent, giving up something as a discipline.  Sabbath is giving up work to create space for something else, something new; the God who dwells in peace and silence.      

   

                Although it has a different feel, you might explore the Sabbath idea by creating Sabbath spaces in your day.  Can you create a hour of Sabbath, a time that might be marked by the lighting of a candle in acknowledgement of the presence of God?  A deliberate time of prayer and study or, if the body needs it, a simple rest.  Can you get outside for a 10-minute Sabbath walk, just taking all creation in?

                My favorite personal Sabbath practice is three, deep and prayerful breaths.  Sometimes when too many ideas are flying around or too many priorities are calling, it is helpful to stop where I am and take three deep breaths to remind me that I am alive, that I am in God’s love, that peace is already near. 

                Remember that Sabbath is a gift.  It is not intended as a punishment but as a celebration of the God in whom we find peace, rest and life itself.

The Path of Discipleship - Sabbath, Loyalty and Faithfulness

One of the places where Jesus runs into conflict with the religious experts of his time is the observance of the Sabbath.  For one thing, he heals on the Sabbath.  It was acceptable to heal someone on the Sabbath if it would save a life.  In our day, it would be acceptable to perform CPR on someone even though it is a great deal of work, because the work is saving someone from death.  But Jesus was healing people who were not at death’s door, who suffered from chronic conditions that would still be there the next day.  He also allowed his disciples to gather grain on the Sabbath when they were hungry.  Facing criticism over these actions he declares himself “the Lord of the Sabbath” but also makes another important declaration, “The Sabbath was made for humanity and not humanity for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

                In thinking about Sabbath observance it is important to think about the origins of the Sabbath.  We can look at the beginning of Genesis, where a day of rest is built into the order of creation.  “And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation.”(Genesis 2:2-3).  We can look at the 10 Commandments where the third commandment on the Sabbath is given as a reminder of Israel’s life of slavery in Egypt.  Everyone rests (including animals, slaves, and foreigners) in honor of the freedom that God had given Israel in the Passover story.

                And yet a common theme in most religions is that a practice that is given as a gift is turned into a law.  Over time, the freedom which the Sabbath was supposed to celebrate was replaced with a sense of obligation.  The rest that the Sabbath was supposed to offer was turned into duty.

                To be fair, the Sabbath was a practice that was also a sign of Jewish loyalty.  Not every culture in the ancient world took a weekly day of rest, especially a day of rest for servants and slaves and a day free from commercial activity.  The wealthy might rest but only because they had people below them to do the work.  In Israel, everything and everyone, as much as possible, was supposed to stop.  Doing so was a sign of loyalty toward God, honoring God’s work of creation and salvation for Israel.

                Jesus does not renounce the Sabbath.  Observing the Sabbath is still a sign of loyalty and devotion.  Instead, Jesus reestablishes the Sabbath as a gift, a practice that is not only faithful but is also wise.  Human beings need to rest for health and well-being.  Human beings need a pause from all the noise and commotion of life, the buying and selling, the constant call to do more and to obtain more.  From the beginning, God proclaims the value of simply being, resting in divine love.

                For me, the idea of Sabbath is a great comfort.  It implies that beneath all the noise, the confusion and the stress of life, there is peace and rest inherent in the universe.  God offers it, free for the taking.  Jesus points to it.  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)   We are invited to step into it.  We honor God by stepping into Sabbath.

                Importantly, we show loyalty to God’s vision by stepping into Sabbath.  Turning toward the Sabbath means turning away from other visions, visions that define our worth by productivity or accumulation.  The Sabbath is the good news that we do not have to do more, be more or get more to be loved by God.  The peace of God is already here and we are already worthy of it.

                In my next article, I will suggest that how one observes the Sabbath can have a measure of freedom.  Certainly the tradition is a Sabbath day, but I believe that the way that Jesus frames the Sabbath opens the possibility for other ways of observance: Sabbath hours and Sabbath moments sprinkled throughout our days.  In our modern context, we might consider taking a Sabbath from screens (for the sake of our sanity) or a Sabbath from constant availability (for the sake of our humility).  The Sabbath is God’s gift to humanity.  May we use that gift to honor and rest in the One who is peace itself.

The Path of Discipleship - Faithfulness and Loyalty

At the beginning of this series I described the path of discipleship as one that seeks to develop a number of virtues and ideals.  For the past few weeks I have been writing about compassion and the works of justice and mercy that flow from compassion.  This week I want to start by talking about the virtue of loyalty and faithfulness.

                Earlier in this series, I wrote several posts about the virtue of love; how the love of God, especially for Christians the love of God as seen in Jesus, can inspire love within us, a love that extends from us back to God and to the world around us.  The important realization is that this love begins with God.  A common image is the Christian life as akin to the moon, shining with a light that is not of our origin, but a reflection of the love of God. “We love God because God first loved us.” (1 John 4:19).

                For many decades we have used the language of love as the primary description of our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us.  However, for much of the Hebrew Scriptures, the primary description of our relationship with God is not about love but about loyalty and faithfulness. 

                There is a phrase that is used several times in the Hebrew Scriptures as a formulaic description of God.  For instance, in my congregation, during Lent, we prepare to hear the gospel text with a quotation from the prophet Joel:

                “Return to the Lord your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”  (Joel 2:13)

                When I was in seminary I had a Hebrew professor who strongly disagreed with the translation, “steadfast love.”  He told us that the Hebrew word (chesed) is related to loyalty and faithfulness.  He translated it with the fancy phrase, “covenant fidelity”.  Chesed is more about the nature of God keeping God’s promises than it is the warm, fuzzy feeling that sometimes gets associated with love.  Joel presents a God who will be faithful to Israel, not because Israel is great or perfect or loving, but because God is a God who makes and keeps promises.  This is a significant idea because the covenants that God makes with Israel are often one-sided and unconditional.  God does not say to Abram, “If you are good, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.”  God simply says, “I will make of you a great nation.”(Genesis 12:2)  God is and remains loyal and faithful.

                In his letter to the Galatians, Paul lists faithfulness as one of the fruits of the spirit.  It is more than simply holding a set of beliefs.  Faithfulness is an attitude of being invested in those beliefs.  This is not an argument for blind faith, accepting things without question.  My understanding of faithfulness is the ability to stand in faith despite questions and struggles.  For me, the image of faithfulness is the image of Jacob wrestling with the divine and refusing to let go. (Genesis 32:22-32)

                Faithfulness in practice is also well-described by many of the Christian mystics.  The 16^th century Spanish nun, Teresa of Avila speaks of periods of dryness in prayer.  At the beginning of the new practice, the disciple is thrilled and comforted by the action of contemplative prayer, but one day she sits in prayer and discovers nothing: no feeling of warmth, no sense of nearness to God.  Faithfulness is what continues the practice through such dry spells.  For John of the Cross, a dear friend of Teresa, faithfulness is what allows Christians to endure the “dark night of the soul,” a period when all the trappings of faith lose their meaning.  It is the virtue of faithfulness that turns the dark night into a transition period to a deeper relationship with God.

                Unfortunately, the church moved from a message of faithfulness to a message of guilt.  Rather than saying that we take part in the practices of discipleship out of a sense of loyalty to God, the church taught that we observe these practices out of a sense of guilt or fear, avoiding an angry God.  In some ways I think we overcorrected when we then put all of our focus on love, often arriving at a place of saying, “Take part or don’t; God loves you anyway.”

                I hope that we can find a way to hold loyalty and love in balance.  Growing in loyalty and faithfulness can be a powerful way to deepen our relationship, helping us grow in disciplines which in turn help us spend more time paying attention to God.  I believe that an emphasis on faithfulness can also help create a realistic faith practice, one that does not assume that we should always feel great or we should never have doubts or things will just get better and better.  Faithfulness and loyalty are what can carry us through the troubling times.

                But love is also constantly present when we do slip up or slip away.  God’s love is always there to sustain us, comfort us and welcome us.  Like love, our faithfulness is not our own, but a reflection of the faithfulness of God, who stands waiting to receive us when we turn away and to welcome us when we rediscover the beautiful relationship that is faith. 

The Path of Discipleship - Justice and Freedom

“…with liberty and justice for all.”  So ends the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States, a pledge I said every morning in elementary school.  If you are looking to take a stance that America is shaped by Judeo-Christian values, that could be a place to begin.  Freedom and justice.  Unfortunately, most often when people make the claim of America as a Christian nation it is more about an appeal for prayer in school or some form of biblical literalism to shape our discussions.

                Again and again in the prophetic texts of the Bible, calls for religious purity are overshadowed by calls to justice.  Again and again, Jesus chooses to set people free: free from hunger, free from illness, free from religious restrictions, free from guilt, free from death.  One can argue that the narrative line of scripture is all about being set free to set others free.

                It seems our natural impulse is like that of Jesus’ story of the unforgiving slave (Matthew 18:21-35).  He is the one who is set free from an overwhelming debt to his master only to go out and find another slave who owes him something and demands to be paid in full, even throwing the other person into prison.  Too often in our history, we have celebrated freedom by looking for someone else to bind.  In American history, we can look back to the treatment of African slaves (and African-Americans after slavery), Native American nations or even current discussions of immigration.  Too often we have used bad science, bad theology and bad scholarship to treat different groups as less than human, and if less than human, not equally deserving of freedom or justice.

                The 19^th century poet Emma Lazarus, author of “The New Colossus,” the sonnet that appears on the base of the Statue of Liberty once wrote, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”  At the time, the United States was struggling with the implications of European immigration.  This idea was rediscovered a little more than half a century later by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, “No one is free until we are all free.”  It was a sentiment that applied to the quest for racial equality for which King is remembered, but also applied to his stance against the Vietnam War and his work to end poverty at the end of his life. 

                Freedom without justice is imaginary.  Freedom without equality is imaginary.  Freedom without peace is imaginary.  If the Church is meant to continue Christ’s vision of setting the world free, the Church must be involved with justice, peace and equality in society.  We are missing the point of the gospel if gospel only leads us to is Sunday morning worship or a few devotional practices.  The cross and resurrection are symbols of the ultimate freedom, freedom from the fear of death itself.  We have been set free to set others free.

                What does mean in our daily lives?  There are few people who can spend all their time traveling from protest to protest or who can wholly devote themselves to people in need in Mother Theresa fashion.  First, seek to grow in compassion.  Compassion is where the work for justice begins.  Earlier articles in this series point to prayerful ways to develop this virtue.  Second, pay attention to your local situation.   Who is experiencing poverty?  Who is left out of local decisions?  What services are available and who is helping?  Perhaps there is someplace where you can volunteer some time.  Perhaps there are needs that you can help supply.  Third, pay attention to where and when decisions are being made.  There is a power in writing letters, being present and asking questions.

                Finally, do all this in love.  It is too easy to let anger at a situation turn into enmity towards a person.  All people are worthy of God’s love and our love.  The call to justice demands that we treat all people as people, even the ones we are frustrated by, even the ones who disagree with us.  It is the inability to treat people as people that leads to inequality and other forms of injustice.  In Christ we are called to share a different way, one that embraces all people in love.

The Path of Discipleship - Conservative, Liberal and Progressive Churches

Many books could be and have been written about trends that shape the church.  When I look at my own congregation, I see people who have been affected by many of them.  In this post, I am going to talk about three major strains within the modern, American church: conservative, liberal and progressive.  All three see themselves as faithful.  All three have strengths and weaknesses.  All three are represented in the pews of our congregations.

              The Conservative Church – The Power of Tradition.  Unfortunately, much of the conservative movement has been co-opted by conservative politics in recent years, giving political opinions an anchor among ideas of faith.  Yet the main thrust of conservative religion is an appeal to tradition.  For Christians, it is the idea that the faith which Jesus taught is a constant.  The things he said to first-century Jews are just as relevant to twenty-first century Americans.  Conservatives are much more likely to embrace a literal interpretation of scripture, believing that the text only makes sense if the whole book is true.  While this may put conservatives in conflict with modern science, their faith is strengthened by having a sense of concreteness through appealing to the text.  However, a weakness of this movement is the inability to recognize that the way we think is fundamentally different from first-century Israel.  In spite of the odd “flat-earth” movement, there are few conservatives who think the sun goes around the earth or that the earth is flat as is implied by scripture.  There are far fewer shepherds and peasants in our midst.  Conservatives often miss the fact that they are not the original audience, and even their “traditional” understandings are shaped by 2000 years of study, interpretation and progress.

              Another trend in the conservative movement that is both a strength and weakness is the tendency to focus on personal faith over outward action in society.  It is a strength because such Christians are much more willing to examine their own lives and actions in light of faith.  They are more likely to be shaped by traditional daily disciplines such as scripture-reading and prayer.  At the same time, these traditions can be less likely to be involved in the prophetic calls of scripture, those that push the church toward engagement with people who are poor or those who are weakest in society.

              The Liberal Church -Working for the Reign of God.  Liberalism is where many mainline traditions can be found.  The liberal church tends to give greater weight to passages of scripture that encourage an outward view, noting Christ’s care for the poor and the prophetic call to care for the orphan, the widow and the stranger.  In my own Lutheran tradition, which like many churches has experienced decline for the past view decades, some have argued that as our congregations begin to disappear, our tradition will continue in the many social service organizations that those congregations started.  Liberal mainline churches have been involved with social justice work, hunger relief, and peace work.  They have started hospitals, orphanages, and worked with refugee settlement efforts. 

              The common weakness for these traditions is the failure to share why these actions should be done.  No one will argue that feeding the hungry is a bad thing.  Yet liberal Christians cannot always give a faith-centered reason as to why Christians specifically should be doing them.  As part of a mainline tradition, I can say it sometimes feels like we are feeding others while neglecting to feed ourselves.  Or as one my colleagues put it, we are serving ourselves to death.  No wonder the number of “dones” (folks who used to be part of a church but have walked away) is increasing.

             

              The Progressive Church  - The Reign of God Has Come Near.  The progressive movement is a newer movement within Christianity that seeks to be a middle way between liberal and conservative.  Its critique of the mainline, liberal tradition is that they have made themselves largely irrelevant by forgetting the personal nature of faith, ignoring the call to personal commitment and devotion.  Their critique of the conservative tradition is both its general ignoring of social justice issues and its inability to define itself apart from power (the religious right) and money (televangelists, multi-million-dollar buildings and the prosperity gospel).  Author Roger Wolsey describes progressive Christianity as "Christianity for people who don't like Christianity."

The progressive church emphasizes the radical nature of the gospel message both in terms of how it impacts one's personal life as well as society at large.  Progressive Christians will take on environmental stewardship as a spiritual discipline.  They may take on simplicity as a way of Christian living.  They also seek to be intentionally inclusive, for instance, asserting that the radical nature of Christ's love and inclusion is more important than any texts that would exclude people in same-sex relationships or the LGBTQ community in general.

This leads to some of the weaknesses of the progressive movement.  While most progressive Christians agree on the spirit of the scriptures, there is not a united interpretation of what that means.  Some progressives emphasize radical community, especially with the poor; others, radical inclusion; still others, radical environmental stewardship.  There are several mini-progressive movements, each with something interesting to say, but not necessarily speaking with a united voice.

Perhaps those unique voices can have impact on the liberal and conservative traditions.  Perhaps progressive conservatives can challenge their church bodies to become more focused on the church's calling to care for those in need.  Perhaps progressive liberals can encourage mainline churches to grow in personal acts of devotion.

Where do you see yourself in the scheme of things and how is the Spirit calling you to grow?

The Path of Discipleship - Working for Justice

Working for Justice

And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God? – Micah 6:8

                In talking about discipleship, it is very easy to get caught up in the work of the  individual.  Many traditional acts of discipleship are about a single person establishing habits and practices: pray every day, meditate, say a grace at meals, read scripture.  Even as this series has sought to think of modern acts of discipleship, whether it is stewardship of the body through diet and exercise or determining a faithful way to deal with money, it is still often about the individual making decisions and creating habits, habits which other people may rarely see.

                Compassion begins at an individual level but expands outward.  I have suggested some practices for deepening compassion, but compassion is about the individual getting over him or herself and paying attention to other people.  Likewise, seeking justice pulls Christians from private observance to public witness.  Certainly we can talk about praying for justice as Christian communities, but the prophetic voices of scripture and history and the witness of Jesus himself challenge us to get out of the building and into the world.

                There are a variety of ways to work for justice.  My experience has been that some assume that justice work only involves placards, protests and demonstrations.  Sometimes this kind of action is important and necessary.  There needs to be a physical presence that both supports the one in need and visibly challenges the one in power.  To be completely honest, as a strong introvert, these kinds of events are personally draining.  I am not discounting their importance, just saying that they are not my personal first impulse.  Thankfully, I have many extroverted colleagues who are ready to assembly on the town green at a moment’s notice (and provide the nudging that will drag me along).

                But nonviolent protest or civil disobedience are not the only actions necessary to work for justice.  One of the first things that needs to happen is compassionate listening to the one who has been harmed.  If you want to confront racism, you should probably be listening to people of marginalized races.  If you want to confront sexism, you should probably be listening to women.  If you want to confront homophobia, you should be listening to people in the LGBTQ community.  If you want to confront poverty, you should be listening to people who are affected by poverty.  Not only does this give you the opportunity to hear the stories of how people have been affected by injustice, you may also get a greater sense of where and how you might be called to help.  I am a middle-aged, straight, white guy.  It would probably be inappropriate for me to be the primary face of a group advocating racial equality but it would be appropriate to help as I am asked and to stand as far in the background as necessary.

                It is also appropriate to contact people in power.  Letter-writing, phone calls and emails may feel like a minor gesture, but they can bear a cumulative weight, challenging leaders to pay attention to their constituents.  My advice is always to write in Christian love.  Compassion begins with acknowledging that every person you interact with is a child of God.  The senator from the political party from which you disagree is a child of God just as the person you are advocating for is a child of God.  Communicate honestly, but not smugly.  Acknowledge your anger or sadness, but not through personal attack. 

                Recently there has been a discussion of the need for a return to civility in speech.  Much of the discussion has been heavy with irony as neither side has been particularly civil or kind.  It turns out that when incivility is matched with incivility, both sides end up frustrated and angry.  As Christians, we can choose to be kind in the face of unkindness.  We can choose to be civil in the face of insult.  We can choose to be loving in the face of hate.

                This is not meant to temper the call to advocate for justice.  Rather I am thinking about justice with the voice of Paul in the background who wrote (quoting Proverbs 25) “’If your enemies are hungry, feed them; it they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:20-21).