People come to us all the time wanting to see Jesus. Some of them are regulars in the pew going through difficult times. Some of them are new to the faith and bubbling over with excitement. Some of them are cynics who won't believe anything they cannot feel or touch. Some of them are the strangers just darkening the church door and not sure what they will find.
And where is Jesus? Where do we point them? To heaven as we have taught the children? To the heart as the pietists and evangelicals have taught us? To the world (Mother Nature) as the green folks would have it? Where is this Jesus that Scripture talks about so much?
It should be instinctive to us. We point to the Word of Scripture, to the voice of absolution, to the water of baptism, to the bread of the Eucharist, to the cup of salvation in the Sacrament, and to the fellowship of those who gather around the means of grace. This is where Jesus is, where He has promised to be, where His Spirit reveals Him, where faith sees Him, and where all that He has accomplished for us is accessible to us.
Are we disappointed? Were we hoping for something more -- more dramatic, more mysterious, more profound, more other worldly???? Are we thrilled that God comes to us where He has placed His promise (Word and Sacrament) OR are we disappointed because we were hoping for something a little different?
Sadly, too many Christians today are disappointed in the means of grace and so their focus is somewhere else (on music with a beat or worship shaped by technology or preaching that fixes today without mentioning the eternal tomorrow or a church of how to's to teach everything from parenting to sex, financial prosperity to happiness... We have a Church which is increasingly in tune with the wants and needs and culture of the people around them but increasingly out of touch with the God who comes to us where He has attached His promise (Word, water, bread, wine...).
If we are disappointed, it is not because we have looked for Jesus in those places and He was not there... no, it is because we did not want the Jesus who placed Himself there and who gave us access to His grace through these ordinary means. If we are disappointed, it is not because the means of grace failed but because we failed to acknowledge them, to glory in their gifts, to rejoicing in what blessing they bestow, and to see with eyes of faith the Christ who is always hidden there (just as He has promised).
I would challenge us all to think long and hard about the challenges and opportunities facing the Christian Church today. Is it that we are failing to keep up with the folks outside the Church or is it that we are failing to capitalize on the sufficient grace that comes to us through the means that He has appointed (Word and Sacrament)? Are we confident that this is where Jesus is... or have given in to the false idea that Jesus is either up there or in here (heart) or out there (world)?
Ask a Christian where Jesus is and you will find out a great deal about the source of their confidence in the real presence... and maybe find out more than you want to know about the real absence of Jesus except for the passing thought, occasional warm feeling, and all too infrequent tingly moment... And that is why we are having problems reaching the folks outside with the Christ who is inside... we are either too disappointed in where Jesus has chosen to place Himself or too blind to see Him there and so the Jesus we have to offer to the world is a Jesus absent of history, present in thought or feeling, and mostly content to live outside of our lives instead of with us (the Emmanuel who keeps the meaning of this word by giving us the Word and Sacraments)...
Dear Rev. Peters: In my advanced age I have come to the conclusion that the most important words in Scripture are: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him." The problems in the Church are always, without exception, caused by not listening to Him. In Luke 4:46 He says: “"I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose."
ReplyDeleteWe refer to this “good news” as the Gospel. But we do not follow our Lord’s example, because, although we preach the Gospel of the cross, and of the resurrection, we seldom do what our Lord said He was sent for: we seldom proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom. Thus our people do not find the joy that the Gospel promises them. Our people tend not to know that (Colossians 1: 13), “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” They do not know of all of the joys that He has prepared for us in this Kingdom. We are brought into this Kingdom through the sacrament of Baptism, we are sustained in it by the sacrament of Holy Communion, and by constant reminders of what it means to be a member of God’s Kingdom. We hear enough about our shortcomings, and how undeserved we are of this Kingdom, but we very seldom hear that our Father delights in us, that His Son has set us free, that the Holy Spirit dwells in us as a seal of our salvation and to give us His wondrous gifts.
Every time, whether from the pulpit, from an authority in the Church, or even in our Confessions, we hear the word “real” or “true” appended to “faith”, “repentance”, “child of God” doubt is raised in the hearts of our people whether they are truly children of God, or if there is something more they need to do to earn that adjective “real.” Pastors either do not understand the freedom we have received in the Gospel, or are afraid to proclaim it, because they do not believe the Holy Spirit will guide His people into living their faith, without constantly being reminded of how bad they are. They are afraid that chaos will ensue. But our Lord said: (John 8:36) “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed,” which is echoed by St. Paul: (Gal. 5:1) “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
The Russian Orthodox church is the best example I know of, that shows what happens to a church when it limits itself to the performance of the Liturgy, and the administration of the Sacraments without proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom. There is no doubt we will wind up the same way if we do not fully proclaim the Kingdom of God with all of the freedom and joy our Savior wanted us to have when He “opened the Kingdom to all believers.”
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart
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ReplyDeletesorry, second posting due to electronic blip.
ReplyDeleteGeorge
Mr. Marquart,
ReplyDeleteThe Divine Liturgy IS the proclamation of the Gospel, the entire Gospel. I fail to see how you can come to that conclusion. I furthermore cannot fathom how celebrating the Divine Liturgy, which in many Orthodox churches, happens EVERY DAY (how many Lutheran churches can claim that? Probably next to none), is somehow a limitation. It is the entire economia of our salvation and I would just normally conclude that you are insufficiently acquainted with Eastern Orthodoxy. However, I know such is not the case. If I remember correctly, I understand that you have some relationship to the Meyendorff family which produced one of our best known and articulate theologians this past century, the late Fr. Peter Meyendorff. I would strongly suggest you consider reading his chapter on Liturgy in his seminal magnum opus, Byzantine Theology. I grant that reading about the Liturgy is a far cry from celebrating the Liturgy, but I fail to see how you have come to that conclusion celebrating the Liturgy where the Word and Gospel is proclaimed every time is somehow less than what you have in the Lutheran churches, unless you are merely engaging in anti-Orthodox polemics.
Mr. Marquart,
ReplyDeleteApologies to your kinsman. I have no idea why I wrote "Peter Meyendorff" instead of John Meyendorff. One of those evenings, I guess. May his memory be eternal.
Dear Chris: Life is full of ironies, and I will write about a few.
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago, I commented on a Lutheran blog on which someone had contributed an item in praise of the liturgy. My comment was, “And it is all Gospel!” Immediately responses from several unhappy men poured in that could be summed up with, “But there is also Law!”
Father John Meyendorff was probably the greatest scholar in Russian Orthodoxy during the last century. Beside that he was also an extraordinarily loving, caring, and humble individual. Now for the irony: his paternal grandfather converted to Russian Orthodoxy from being a Lutheran. He did not do so out of conviction, but because Russian law prevented him from marrying the woman he loved unless he did so. After his conversion, he put up a more than life-size statue of Luther at the entrance to his estate in Estonia. Strangely enough it stood there, bearing silent witness, even during the Soviet occupation, collapsing sometime in the mid-fifties. This does not prove the “correctness” of either Orthodoxy or Lutheranism, but I promised you irony.
The women Father John’s grandfather married survived her husband by almost 25 years. Toward the end of her life she was occupied in translating the King James version of the Bible into Russian. She did that because she knew that there was no Bible available to Russian speakers. The only Bibles for Russians (who were discouraged from reading them) were written in Church-Slavonic, a language which very few Russians understood. It is the same language in which the liturgy is celebrated. The Gospel that the liturgy proclaims was therefore not accessible to most Russians.
Aside from that, the words of the historical Liturgy, whether Orthodox or Lutheran (as inherited from the traditions of the Church before Luther) focus on the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord, and His atonement for our sins. It has little to say about who we are as citizens of that Kingdom which our Lord proclaimed to exhaustion during His days on earth.
In 1978 I walked into a Russian church in Leningrad. For the first time in my life I unexpectedly became witness to something that had developed in the Soviet Union, and nowhere else in Russian Orthodoxy: the entire congregation joined in the singing of the Creed. If you had seen my tears of joy, you would not think that I do anti-Orthodox polemics for their own sake. It pains me to criticize any church, my own most of all. But sometimes the love for the Gospel gives you no choice.
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart