New Wine

Our Worship Pastor, Ted Yuen, preached this morning. "Fasting, Feasting, and Fermentation." Hmmm, sounds like a Good Friday/ Easter Vigil juxtaposition. The long and short of it is this: We all yearn for more in a church experience.

When I was younger I often heard that Christians were hypocrites: saying one thing and doing another. I now do not think that most Christians are hypocrites, or at least the vast majority of those in my congregation, but I do think that most of us only go just so far in our Christian walk. We are timid Christians. A bit more than Sunday-only-Christians, but not radical Christians. The word 'radical' comes from the Latin root 'radicalis' and 'radix' that means "root". To be a radical means to get to the root of a problem, an issue, the core of humanity. So we shy away from radical Christianity. A radical faith. It would demand too much. And I share that fear.

Pete Walker, a friend of mine, gave me the honor one day of calling me a radical. I only wish I deserved the accolade. Perhaps I may be becoming one. I think that my problem (that stops me short from becoming at my very roots the truest of Christ-followers) is fear and my sense of propriety. As our worship pastor preached and talked today, I wanted to stand up (literally!) for him, stand beside him and invite others to stand up beside him when he was preaching about new wine in new wineskins. But I remained in my seat, voicing a muted "Amen" at times because I didn't want to stand out or be conspicuous.

We have a very basic problem as Christians in America: Comfort. We want to be comfortable and we like being comforted. One of the congregations in town invites people to its services with the promise that they will find it 'fun, relaxing and inspiring.' Now when I saw this invitation (that one may guess might include an espresso bar in the foyer, and an upbeat band weaving harmonies together on the front stage) I thought that I never recalled hearing that discipleship, as presented by Jesus or any of His apostles, was supposed to be "fun." Fun: we worship it. Every kid in school will lament and deem their cause just that what's wrong with school is that it isn't fun enough. Fun has become the chief contemporary virtue: indeed the litmus test of a viable and valid experience. If something isn't fun, it isn't okay.

You see, fun is something that happens outside of us. It happens to us. Like Disneyland: we pay an admission and want to experience fun: entertainment, diversions, surprise and excitement. And in our church experience we desire the same thing. So much of worship has become performance based. We come into the sanctuary to the uplifting beat of drums, strumming of guitars and the jingle of tamborines. It's a love-in. It's groovy. It's comfortable. Everyone pours themselves a cup of java, saunters in with their blue jeans and polo shirts, relaxes in their cushioned pews, laughs and chats with their neighbor and then has the worship team do music to them and for them. One song flows seamlessly into another song, even prayers have background music. It's nice, no denying it. And very comfortable. And...maybe...just maybe too comfortable.

I don't know. What am I arguing for? Less comfort? Wooden pews within drafty, cold sanctuaries where hellfire-and-brimstone sermons are pounded (not expounded) from the pulpit? No coffee, no praise band, and a cappella hymns? No. I'm not. I'm not saying that contemporary praise songs deaden a living faith. But I believe I am saying that a performance based worship (that is increasingly more pervasive throughout evangelical churches) may be more insidious, or at least dangerous to our maturation as Christians, than has been heretofore granted.

Our problem is that we want things outside of us to change and improve. But change only really occurs if it takes place within us. We want more out of the church, but too often we refrain from putting more into the church. We want to receive, but withhold our whole-hearted giving.

We want God to perform or change things, but would really rather not be the instruments of his transformation. We want to be "done to" but not "done through." Too often our cry is this: "Do something to me, Lord, but please don't try to do something through me."

Fermentation

Jesus is putting new wine into new wineskins. The new wine is His Spirit, His sovereign salvific will. New wine is too potent for old wineskins. If the new wine is His Spirit, indeed, Himself, what are we to say is meant metaphorically by wineskins? Jesus cautioned about old wineskins, by which we can guess He meant the old way, the old rituals, the law and its rigid structure, or perhaps the traditions of the Pharisees that kept people oppressed. But what do old wineskins mean for us today? Century old rituals? Rites and Creeds? or perhaps church structures, hierarchy and organization? Are these old wineskins outside of us, or are they us ourselves? Are the old wineskins the church or religion at all? Perhaps all these things need renewal...most importantly ourselves. Nonetheless, unless I am renewed and consent to His making me a new creation, I will burst once His Spirit dwells within me. Perhaps I must burst and be destroyed. Every old wineskin must be discarded for a new wineskin.

God wishes to ferment within us His Spirit and Power and Purposes. He doesn't so much want to do His will to us, act on us, but wants to use us as New Wineskins to hold His fermentation process (called sanctification) in and through us. He wants to expand us and transform us. Our problem is we don't really want enough. We don't want God to go far enough. We've placed humility in the wrong location. It should be in our egos, but we've placed it in our wills: the place of our volition. We aspire too little. Instead of desiring to have ferment within our oaken souls the choicest of Pinot Noirs we settle for Welches grape juice cocktail: not even 100% unfermented juice.

And so I am reminded of some lines from T. S. Eliot's poem, "Little Gidding":

The one discharge from sin and error,

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre--

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

We must burst. We MUST be destroyed. WE MUST DIE. And be consumed by the Fire that is Inexorable. There can ultimately be no comfort in that, or at least at first. Death precedes Life Eternal. "For our God is a consuming Fire." All that is shakeable MUST be shaken so that only the unshakeable can remain. (Hebrews 12: 27--29) We are called to a much more dangerous, exciting, upsetting and resetting life of discipleship. To follow Jesus is a summons to war, to battle the forces of evil and redeem the people of God. To follow Jesus is the challenge of a lifetime, the mountain unscaleable, the depths unfathomable. Jesus demands, extols, admonishes, exhorts, woos, confuses, upholds and lays low, revolts and redeems, and only when we need it, comforts. But only He knows if we need comforting. Most times, I think we don't.

New wine in new wineskins. Yes. Amen.

Christian Unity: More thoughts

One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism…
Is this only wishful thinking, a pipe-dream, or is it an eternal truth, a reality that is grounded in the eternal nature of the Logos? The question that makes many Christians blush is this: When will there be Christian Unity?

I believe that questions about Christian Unity are intricately tied to questions and responses to Christian Community. There can be no Christian Unity without a Christian Comm(on)-unity. Our unity as Christians arises out of our ability and calling to enflesh and practice Christian Community. In his book, Gemeinsames Leben (Life Together) Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

“Christiliche Bruderschaft ist nicht ein Ideal, das wir zu verwirklichen haetten, sondern es ist eine von Gott in Christus geschaffene Wirklichkeit, an der wir teilhaben duerfen.”
(Christian brotherhood is not an ideal that we must somehow make happen, but rather it is a reality, created by God in Christ, that we are allowed to participate in.)

Christian Unity, like Christian Community, exists in and through, because of and for Jesus Christ as the Living Logos and Son of God. He is the mediator of all our lives. He is the purpose and end of our hoping and striving, discipline and worship. Though outwardly we have signs that present evidence to the contrary, yet there exists out of time as well as couched within time One Lord, One Faith and One Baptism. There is not one Jesus for the Church of Rome, and another that visits Canterbury. There are not many Jesuses, one each for the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and Assemblies of God. No, He is whole and not split into pieces. He is the Only One through whom we relate to each other and love each other. “Der einzige Mittler” (the only mediator)

What we need to do, therefore, if doing is the proper perspective, is to allow Jesus to do in us and through us all that He has planned for us. The One-ness of the Body of Christ, the Universal Church through all ages, exists although we close our eyes to it, or act against it.

There is One Body, but as Thomas Merton pointed out: It is a Body of Broken Bones:

“As long as we do not permit His love to consume us entirely and to unite us in Himself, the gold that is in us will be hidden by the rock and dirt which keep us separate from one another.
As long as we are not purified by the love of God and transformed into Him in the union of pure sanctity, we will remain apart from one another, opposed to one another, and union among us will be a precarious and painful thing, full of labor and sorrow and without lasting cohesion.
His physical Body was crucified by Pilate and the Pharisees; His mystical Body is drawn and quartered from age to age by the devils in the agony of that disunion which is bred and vegetates in our souls, prone to selfishness and to sin.
As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish, without some pain at the differences that come between them.” (New Seeds of Contemplation)

Visible and viable Christian Unity is thwarted by sin that comes in a multitude of forms: arrogance, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, among others. Christian Unity is also being thwarted by our reluctance to really listen to each other, hear each other’s words, liturgy, theology, concerns, music, prayers, hopes and frustrations. We also are failing to value the same things. There are numerous issues on which we have not come to agreement: abortion, capital punishment, involvement in war or pacifism, environment stewardship, economic responsibility and which system of economics is most just. Obviously, we also haven’t come to agree on the essentials of theology: doctrine about the Trinity, about Christ, His atonement for our sins, how he saves us, whether we need saving, how depraved we are, or whether we can speak of an original blessing. We disagree on baptism, whether we think one can be baptized in the ignorance of one’s infancy or must wait for a personal decision as a youth or as an adult. We don’t even agree on the amount of water! (Thankfully we are not concerned with its temperature or its clarity!) We disagree on the rest of the sacraments as well, or even if they are sacraments. Some of us refer to them as ordinances. What about Communion/ the Lord’s Supper/ the Eucharist/ the Breaking of Bread? We find no consensus on its name, let along the mystical nature of the Event. How is Christ within the Elements: are they transubstantiated, consubstantiated, or just blessed by human hands and remain a memorial to His vicarious suffering? In the baking of the bread, must we use wheat flour or may a wafer of rice suffice? Should we pour wine into the chalice or stick to grape juice? These are just some of the issues that divide us, and push us away from embracing more fully our Christian Unity.

But there are things that we can do, and ways to broaden our understanding of what other Christians value. We must each endeavor to begin an ongoing dialogue with as many brothers and sisters of other denominations and expressions of Christianity as possible. We must talk with, worship with, pray and sing with Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants of all traditions: Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Fundamentalists, among the many I could name. Dialogue is essential. All sides sharing, desiring to understand and grant that other persons may have legitimate differences that are based on taste, past experiences or viewpoints that do not exclude them from membership in the Kingdom of God. Each of us may hold a particular belief or doctrine that falls within the boundaries of orthodoxy that our brother or sister does not understand or find necessary to embrace.

I would propose that each of these areas of concern be included in our ongoing dialogue, a dialogue that will resemble increasingly less a debate:

Abortion: Is abortion immoral in all cases, or are there some instances that would make it allowable. Is it a matter of choice of a woman’s sovereignty over her body and womb, or is it a matter of God’s sovereignty over all our bodies and the bodies that we carry within our bodies?

Capital Punishment: Do we further violence or discourage violence by killing someone who has killed someone? Are we consistent in our message? Does the execution of a notorious murderer, rapist or traitor help bring about the Kingdom of God, or help the greatest number of people? Does it perpetuate a culture of violence? Does it teach forgiveness, or does it teach natural consequences of one’s actions? Or can it do both?

Environmental Stewardship: The Psalmist proclaims that the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. What is our responsibility to the conservation of earth’s natural resources, the environment, the land and soil that we farm, cultivate, plant and harvest from? What is our responsibility to preserving species, do as little harm as possible and preserve the habitats to as many creatures as God has created? Are creatures created that can justifiable be driven to permanent extinction so that we may harvest more forests just so we can have bigger houses or more land for temporary crops? What about our insatiable need for oil and other fossil fuels? Can we do without SUVs and Hummers, vans and monster pickups and seek out others to carpool with in order to save gasoline and keep costs in line for each other?

Consumption, Economics, Materialism, Capitalism or Socialism: Most of this issue comes down to concerns about needs and wants and how those are supplied.

Wendell Berry upholds and practices what I would call a Pro-Creation philosophy. This Pro-Creation ethic and practice includes elements from what are commonly called Pro-Life, Social Justice, Environmental Conservation, and Agrarian/Rural-based values. His approach, boldness, wisdom and depth as an authentic American statesman and philosopher give us a model towards bridging the issues that separate and bifurcate our society.
Wendell Berry writes in Citizenship Papers:

“The confusion between needs and wants is, of course, fundamental. And let us make no mistake here: This is an educated confusion. Modern education systems have pretty consciously encouraged young people to think of their wants as needs. And the schools have increasingly advertised education as a way of getting what one wants; so that now, by a fairly logical progression, schools are understood by politicians and school bureaucrats merely as servants of ‘the economy.’…. How do we know when we have passed from needs to wants, from necessity to frivolity?”

Such a statement serves as only a springboard for further thought. As the Body of Christ we are obligated to seek answers, not so much to definitively describe a lifestyle that uniformly will dictate needs and wants to all individuals, for that would be socialism at its best, and totalitarian communism at its worst. Uniformity is not Unity. Community leads to Unity, and Community embraces diversity. Differences of taste and of aesthetics. But Community also expects, even necessitates, sacrifice, sharing of resources, generosity, and interdependence.



These thoughts must suffice for now. Beginning thoughts in the dialogue towards Christian Unity.

Christian Unity: Some Beginning Questions

And they will know that we are Christians by our love. And so we used to sing during church camp song times, linked arm in arm, swaying to the rhythms of love and solidarity.... But we were all United Methodists.

What is Christian Unity? Why are there so many denominations within Protestantism? Why do so many of us "shop around" for a new congregation when the one we are in doesn't quite suit us? Why do we switch? Why are some Protestants becoming disillusioned with the results of the Reformation and heading to Rome (converting to Roman Catholicism)? Is there a true Church? Is there a difference between the church I attend and the Universal Church, the Body of Christ that transcends two millenia? What makes a Christian? What is the basis of our belief? Our faith? What is meant by one Lord, one faith, one baptism? Is there a mother church/Mother Church? What do I mean by sometimes capitalizing, sometimes leaving in lower case, the word "Church/church?" Why isn't there just One Church...or is there? Why are there many churches within the One Church? Should there be, or should there not be? Is God offended? Grieved? Relieved? Peeved?

Okay, those are some beginning questions....

Feel invited to write some reflections. More will follow......

Sermon Notes, chiefly on Forgiveness

Here are some sermon notes from John Notehelfer’s sermon, Sunday, May 8th, 2005:

What are the telltale signs of someone who is faithful, that is, full of faith? (Check out Luke 17: 1—19)

Those who are faithless are also prayerless.

One of the telltale signs of faith, is a life of prayer. Those who pray daily with power and conviction are those rooted in God. What is faith? It is trust in God. A handing over to Him all that we are, hope to be, and have been. It is a radical trust that reaches to the roots of our being that says: “No matter what happens to me, I trust that God wills the absolute best for me. This doesn’t call for me to alter, correct or meddle with that will. I believe that God desires only and profoundly good for me, no matter the pain, the confusion, the ‘not-knowing’ I may experience as I walk in faith.”
To be faithful we acknowledge that God rewards those that diligently seek Him. That is what is meant by Him willing only our absolute good. He doesn’t care if we are successful, only that we are faithful. “Success” (in the world’s idea of success) slips like dry sand through His fingers. It flows fleetingly. No house can be built upon it.

The Apostles asked: “Increase our faith / Give us more faith.” This sounds as if they perceived that it was a commodity. It was stuff: quantifiable and multipliable. Yet this is not so. Faith more properly mirrors only our relationship with God: the degree in which we trust ourselves to God and His purposes on the earth.
We always want more faith, but we must be willing to trust more. Faith isn’t a case of shouting more loudly: I believe! Faith consists in turning your life, your plans, your wealth and means of making wealth, decisions, likes and dislikes, free time, entertainment, career, relationships, hobbies, interests and politics all over to God, placing those things in His hands, increasingly without reservation or retrieval: what is handed over to God remains with God.

Another telltale sign of someone who is faithful lies in one’s ability to forgive and receive forgiveness. John Notehelfer asked: “What is harder: to repent and ask for forgiveness, or to continually forgive those who sin against you: seven times, seventy times or even seventy-times-seven?”
Those who are faithful are forgiving persons. If we fail to forgive and continue to harbor bitterness we can become icy and paralyzed inside. If we are forgiving and we don’t nourish or nurture grievances we find ourselves free.

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This reminds me of one of the maxims I gleaned from George MacDonald: Don’t take offense even if it is given.
One of the problems with humanity is our over-extended notion of “rights.” We think we have a right to this and a right to that, and if our rights are abridged or taken away, or infringed upon, then we have a “right” to be offended. So we find each other offensive, we are offended, people give us offense and we take offense at remarks and actions directed towards us. We don’t forgive because we have a “right” to be injured: After all, the other person OFFENDED us.
But it is this very idea of taking offense that betrays us. You see, we are not obliged in the least to TAKE offense, even when it is GIVEN. And think of how often we take offense when none was intended! We imagine our right to be offended, that indebts the other to us….We imagine they “should have known better.” Oh, really? How in the world do we think that keeping a score of wrongs, a ledger of offenses is anyway remotely linked to the Kingdom of God? It surely is not. No, quite on the contrary, we are called to forgive each other. We are called NOT TO TAKE OFFENSE no matter what the intention of the other person. We should begin dismissing the long list of “rights” we have mistakenly imagined were granted to us as our birthright. Thomas Jefferson kept his list of inalienable rights to a minimum in the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps, changed and humbled by the message of grace, we too, should shorten our list, and see that life, health, happiness, hope, family, career, location, food and drink, and a host of other things are GIFTS, not rights.

Forgiveness cannot be underestimated. Not only are we commanded to forgive, but we find out that forgiveness enlarges and blesses us, allows us to breathe more deeply, run faster, laugh more heartily, sleep more soundly, smile more broadly and enjoy the antics of children more eagerly. Even food and drink taste and satisfy more completely when we forgive others, and live out of a state of mutual forgiveness.

Forgiveness grants liberty. We are freed from our self-built prisons of resentment and self-deception. If we don’t take offense at or from others, we add no burden to our shoulders. Instead we discover gratitude.

Gratitude transforms our attitude.

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