You may or may not have noticed that down and over there to the right, there are some links. Beacon now has a Facebook fan page! If you are on Facebook, just search for us after you log in, and when you find our page, just click "Become a Fan" at the top of the page. If you are not on Facebook, get with it and get a Facebook!!!
Also, you will find a link to a great blog called "Misseo Dei", check it out and let me know what you think.
Jeff
Friday, October 30, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
Spiritual Practices(Prayer)
So, this blog will simply be me doing a couple things
1-getting out what i have been taking in about some of this Liturgical worship stuff I've been hearing(specifically about public prayer) recently and over the last couple of years
2-purposely rattling cages when it comes to pre-scripted prayers
Ok, so I have been thinking a lot lately about using some prayers for us corporately from the "Book of Common Prayer"(Episcopal). I know, I know we at Beacon don't like to put God "in a box", and while I completely agree with that train of thought(and so does scripture, i should mention. Throughout it, specifically the OT we see God as being untamable, and uncontainable) I also think that we are crippling ourselves and not seeing our own "box" when it comes to these kinds of prayers. We seem to have this mind-set that if prayer is pre-scripted, it cannot possibly be useful, and certainly not worthy of our speaking to God. It seems to me that we are blind to our own systems faults when it comes to this area. The very thing that we say we hate (which is basically: legalistic treatment of a certain form to be used in corporate worship) we do when it comes to this. We (maybe not in words, but certainly in practice) assume that because a prayer is pre-scripted it INHERENTLY cannot have meaning, and cannot be from the heart. Hmm...this sounds a bit "boxy"...
This train of thought brings up questions about Spiritual Formation. How are we going to learn to pray? Is this not the same question the disciples themselves asked in Luke 11:1? Jesus did not turn to them and say "whatever is on your heart at the moment". He gave what we know as the Lords Prayer. Now, was Jesus giving them the perfect prayer that they should recite everytime they pray? No, He seems to understand their humanity and understand that it takes us time to learn the practice of anything. He was giving them something formative to work with. Dont forget, we believe that Jesus Himself was fully-human, so how did He learn to pray? He practiced...a lot. How many times do we read about Him going somewhere to pray. He was also a Rabbi, and there are a lot of pre-scripted prayers that He would have learned in His Jewish training, not to mention all of the Psalms.
It seems that we don't mind making things into habits in other parts of our Spirituality, and we dont seem to get so bent out of shape about them. Do we not teach our children to basically say a pre-scripted prayer before they eat every meal? We practice our music making for God and don't seem to think of it as meaningless because we have songs written down. Do we not practice being attentive to hear from God when we are listening to a sermon every week? We seem to be ok with making spiritual habits in all of these areas....as long as we don't call it "Spiritual Practices"
Am I saying that we should abandon un-scripted prayers in our corporate setting? Of course not! But I am asking that we begin to think about how a beautifully written prayer might be something that we can do as a body to help us to practice this area of our spirituality, and when it says something that can resonate with all of us.
One area of our corporate prayer in particular is the area of confession. I believe that we have some work to do in this area. While I fully believe that we are sons and daughters of God, and are fully redeemed before the Father, confession seems to be more for us than God. So much healing can come from us being able to corporately vocalize our doubt, our guilt, and our need for God's love and care. This prayer is a good example:
"Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent, for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name.
Amen"
It seems that we always want to put on this face that we are always happy, and never deal with real life sin, and guilt. A prayer like this gives us a chance to see that we are not alone in these issues, and that we can confess them to each other, and find healing in that act.
I hope that this can be a starting point for us to realize that there are treasures hidden in Christendom outside of our tradition of no tradition. I hope that we can begin to "steal" from these traditions to deepen and enrich our own.
Grace and Peace,
Jeff
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Its been a while....
Ok, so I know its been a bit since I have posted anything of substance here, but I was just browsing the web and was looking for some good podcasts on the subject of worship. As some of you may have heard me talk about, there is an institution in Jacksonville knowN as the Robert E Webber Institute for Worship Studies. This is the place where the worship pastor that I interned under did his masters and Ph.D. work on worship studies. I was lucky enough to go to an alumni seminar with him a while back, and so when I began my quest for the elusive worship podcast, I thought I would check their website. Well, as it turns out they have a treasure trove of free downloadable mp3's from their alumni seminars and chapels from the past few years. Right now I am listening to the Brian McClaren alumni seminar stuff, and its very, very provocative stuff. Anyway, I thought I'd share it with you guys, and I'm hoping that maybe sometime in the near-ish future we can perhaps do some kind of dialogue on a wed night on these topics?
So, go over to the "resources" tab and click on "media". Basically any of the highlighted text is either an audio file or some kind of text that goes with the audio files. Just right click them and save them to your computer, or just click on them and listen.
Enjoy!
Grace and Peace,
Jeff
Monday, July 20, 2009
Read This!!
ok, so we need to know asap who is out of town and when so that we can make up the schedule for the next month or so. Please comment this post or e-mail Pat and let us know!!!
This weeks team is above, so comment if you are up there and cant make it. If you are listed above for this week and i don't hear from you, i am assuming you are coming.
Thanks,
Jeff
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Your God Sucks....
I thought this was a good article, so comment away!!!
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/columns/church-today/17220-your-god-sucks
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/columns/church-today/17220-your-god-sucks
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
New Schedule!
Click over there to the right to see it, and comment if there are aby issues with dates etc....
Also, I will be starting to scale back my leading every week to give some of you the chance to lead. I will still play, but i might not be leading that week, so if you see a * by your name under the "This Weeks Team" section, your leading!
Hope this is ok! :)
Jeff
Also, I will be starting to scale back my leading every week to give some of you the chance to lead. I will still play, but i might not be leading that week, so if you see a * by your name under the "This Weeks Team" section, your leading!
Hope this is ok! :)
Jeff
Monday, May 11, 2009
Word and Flesh
In commenting on the Evangelical church’s love affair with the spoken word over and against image, icon, and sacrament, theologian Thomas Howard writes:
“[Jesus] spoke words of such power and glory that they burned into the hearts of men and kindled all of the skill and creativeness that was in them. His words did not spread a frost over human potential. They roused and vivified us and set us free to do all of our work for the glory of God, whether that work meant cups of cold water, prayers, building, baking, or typing. The Word became flesh. The word always becomes flesh. What is true in a man’s heart will take on the mantle of good works, or of stone, or of gilded illuminations around the border of a manuscript, or of well-baked bread.” (Evangelical is Not Enough, p. 64.)
This reminds me of an observation by a professor at Regent College. Loren Wilkinson noted that we’re told the Word became flesh. But in our religious practice so often our efforts focus on turning that flesh back into word.
I thought that we might do some work on these thoughts over the next couple of weeks as we head towards Pentacost Sunday(May 31). Pentacost was the day that the Spirit descended and the Church officially came into being, so the statement "The Word became flesh, the Word always becomes flesh" has great meaning to us at this point in the Church year. I know that we dont normally think in terms of the Church year, but it can be a helpful tool for us.
Questions?
Comments?
"Your a Catholic" remarks?
leave some thoughts.... :)
Jeff
“[Jesus] spoke words of such power and glory that they burned into the hearts of men and kindled all of the skill and creativeness that was in them. His words did not spread a frost over human potential. They roused and vivified us and set us free to do all of our work for the glory of God, whether that work meant cups of cold water, prayers, building, baking, or typing. The Word became flesh. The word always becomes flesh. What is true in a man’s heart will take on the mantle of good works, or of stone, or of gilded illuminations around the border of a manuscript, or of well-baked bread.” (Evangelical is Not Enough, p. 64.)
This reminds me of an observation by a professor at Regent College. Loren Wilkinson noted that we’re told the Word became flesh. But in our religious practice so often our efforts focus on turning that flesh back into word.
I thought that we might do some work on these thoughts over the next couple of weeks as we head towards Pentacost Sunday(May 31). Pentacost was the day that the Spirit descended and the Church officially came into being, so the statement "The Word became flesh, the Word always becomes flesh" has great meaning to us at this point in the Church year. I know that we dont normally think in terms of the Church year, but it can be a helpful tool for us.
Questions?
Comments?
"Your a Catholic" remarks?
leave some thoughts.... :)
Jeff
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sacred Actions...dont be scared :)
Well, I know this may seem kind of "academic" but this text seems to articulate well some of the ideas that we have been implementing a little bit lately. Please leave some thoughts....
Rituals are part of every human culture. Judaism was no exception. Jesus chose the setting of a Jewish ritual meal to express explicitly the meaning of his impending death as a sacrifice for the "life of the world" (John 6:51). After his resurrection, his followers took over the ritual structure of that meal together with the new meaning with which Christ had filled it: Christ’s sacrifice once and for all put an end to the need for bloody animal sacrifice (e.g., Heb. 9). As Christianity ceased to be a persecuted Jewish sect and moved into the center of the late Roman culture, Christian liturgy and ritual incorporated elements of Roman public ceremony. The meaning Christians attached to these ritual actions was, however, purely Christian: In his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ fulfilled God’s hidden yet revealed (mysterious) plan for the salvation of the world. In Christian ritual worship, members of Christ’s body participate in the life of Christ
An Introduction to Ritual in Worship
All Christian communions, from Orthodox churches to charismatic congregations, participate in ritual when they worship. Whether one makes the sign of the cross or raises hands in worship, a ritual action takes place. Why some rituals are important and how we can deepen our worship through them is a matter of concern among those engaged in worship renewal. In the following paragraphs, a Roman Catholic writer addresses some of these issues.
In the late twentieth century, in many different religious circles, we hear the cry, “Our religious rituals are not working.” From both the right and the left the cry is the same. Yet from outside the Roman Catholic circle our Christian brothers and sisters have begun to recognize our deep ritual heritage. Why is this cry all too true? What shall we do?
Some of our present rituals (notably the Eucharist) have been robbed of their power and depth. In an attempt to clarify and purify our rituals to return them to their simplicity and integrity (a noble project), we threw away too much. We made them understandable rather that performable. We cut out the duplication of ritual which allowed for depth response and substituted an excess of words (so that we might more clearly understand the rites). We are left with superficial cerebral rites that can’t bear the weight of true worship, rites which can’t communicate at the level of faith, rites which educate more than appeal for devotional response.
On the other side, our present rituals, even those which have structural depth, often lack faith commitments. We as a community don’t seem to understand our role in worship, and as a result, we don’t know what to do with the ritual we have. At worship, people must pray and share their faith. Ritual will not pray for people. Without human spirit, ritual is meaningless or a lie. In the past, ritual has been used to bolster weak faith or supply it (as in the later stages of the early catechumenal development). Ultimately this has not worked! It will work no better today! The renewal of ritual must be accompanied by the renewal of faith and the renewal of faith must become a strong criterion for ritual adaptation. As part of this renewal, special ministers of worship, from presider to greeter, must learn their roles well. They must learn how to communicate through the ritual and not around it.
As a result of the lack of structural depth and the lack of faith content, some people have turned to substituting their own ritual creations, but the results have generally proven no better. Historical connection is often sacrificed while faith content still remains minimal. The congregation’s attention is focused on the novelty, and the congregation might seem satisfied for a time, but the new quickly grows old, the entertainment subsides, and the central point is missed: The congregation does not adequately respond with faith.
A move from the left might suggest that since our present rituals don’t work, there might not be a real need for any ritual. This side sees the importance of faith content, but fails to see the value of ritual structure. What will hopefully be learned soon is that without religious ritual, worship becomes ethical behavior, interiorized but also intellectualized, which quickly ceases to be worship.
Concluding Guidelines
The insights to be kept in mind as we approach ritual are:
(1) There is a tremendous need for good religious ritual, and this ritual must be related to an awakening of faith among the worshipers.
(2) We need to take another look at what was “thrown out” in the revision of our present rituals. Perhaps some of this might be reintroduced (e.g., ritual repetition, movement, and gesture).
(3) We need to move toward ritual adaptation that preserves the simplicity of the ritual, rather than creating a screen of secondary rituals that diffuse the central mystery. The fullness of sign, the fullness of gesture, and the fullness of faith response must be given attention.
(4) We need to study the church’s ritual history to find out what has worked and what has not, to discover central Christian dimensions behind the ritual activity we do.
(5) We need to study our cultures to find the naturally symbolic structures for faith response in them and to discover the important Christian needs in today’s world. At the same time, we must remember that religious ritual does not merely mean Christianized culture, but it always stands in critique of our culture.
(6) We need to understand ourselves as symbolic people, as ritual people, as people with a history and a destiny, and as people who march in the middle of a long procession of saints and sinners on our way home.
Good religious ritual is born, not made. Its content is renewed in Christian commitment; its structure is discovered on the level of faith. It critiques itself from the inside, reflecting on its own historical development. It adapts itself to the culture and society in which it lives. Treat it carefully: the future of the church depends on it.
[1]
[1]Webber, Robert: The Sacred Actions of Christian Worship. Nashville : Star Song Pub. Group, 1994, S. 65
Rituals are part of every human culture. Judaism was no exception. Jesus chose the setting of a Jewish ritual meal to express explicitly the meaning of his impending death as a sacrifice for the "life of the world" (John 6:51). After his resurrection, his followers took over the ritual structure of that meal together with the new meaning with which Christ had filled it: Christ’s sacrifice once and for all put an end to the need for bloody animal sacrifice (e.g., Heb. 9). As Christianity ceased to be a persecuted Jewish sect and moved into the center of the late Roman culture, Christian liturgy and ritual incorporated elements of Roman public ceremony. The meaning Christians attached to these ritual actions was, however, purely Christian: In his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ fulfilled God’s hidden yet revealed (mysterious) plan for the salvation of the world. In Christian ritual worship, members of Christ’s body participate in the life of Christ
An Introduction to Ritual in Worship
All Christian communions, from Orthodox churches to charismatic congregations, participate in ritual when they worship. Whether one makes the sign of the cross or raises hands in worship, a ritual action takes place. Why some rituals are important and how we can deepen our worship through them is a matter of concern among those engaged in worship renewal. In the following paragraphs, a Roman Catholic writer addresses some of these issues.
In the late twentieth century, in many different religious circles, we hear the cry, “Our religious rituals are not working.” From both the right and the left the cry is the same. Yet from outside the Roman Catholic circle our Christian brothers and sisters have begun to recognize our deep ritual heritage. Why is this cry all too true? What shall we do?
Some of our present rituals (notably the Eucharist) have been robbed of their power and depth. In an attempt to clarify and purify our rituals to return them to their simplicity and integrity (a noble project), we threw away too much. We made them understandable rather that performable. We cut out the duplication of ritual which allowed for depth response and substituted an excess of words (so that we might more clearly understand the rites). We are left with superficial cerebral rites that can’t bear the weight of true worship, rites which can’t communicate at the level of faith, rites which educate more than appeal for devotional response.
On the other side, our present rituals, even those which have structural depth, often lack faith commitments. We as a community don’t seem to understand our role in worship, and as a result, we don’t know what to do with the ritual we have. At worship, people must pray and share their faith. Ritual will not pray for people. Without human spirit, ritual is meaningless or a lie. In the past, ritual has been used to bolster weak faith or supply it (as in the later stages of the early catechumenal development). Ultimately this has not worked! It will work no better today! The renewal of ritual must be accompanied by the renewal of faith and the renewal of faith must become a strong criterion for ritual adaptation. As part of this renewal, special ministers of worship, from presider to greeter, must learn their roles well. They must learn how to communicate through the ritual and not around it.
As a result of the lack of structural depth and the lack of faith content, some people have turned to substituting their own ritual creations, but the results have generally proven no better. Historical connection is often sacrificed while faith content still remains minimal. The congregation’s attention is focused on the novelty, and the congregation might seem satisfied for a time, but the new quickly grows old, the entertainment subsides, and the central point is missed: The congregation does not adequately respond with faith.
A move from the left might suggest that since our present rituals don’t work, there might not be a real need for any ritual. This side sees the importance of faith content, but fails to see the value of ritual structure. What will hopefully be learned soon is that without religious ritual, worship becomes ethical behavior, interiorized but also intellectualized, which quickly ceases to be worship.
Concluding Guidelines
The insights to be kept in mind as we approach ritual are:
(1) There is a tremendous need for good religious ritual, and this ritual must be related to an awakening of faith among the worshipers.
(2) We need to take another look at what was “thrown out” in the revision of our present rituals. Perhaps some of this might be reintroduced (e.g., ritual repetition, movement, and gesture).
(3) We need to move toward ritual adaptation that preserves the simplicity of the ritual, rather than creating a screen of secondary rituals that diffuse the central mystery. The fullness of sign, the fullness of gesture, and the fullness of faith response must be given attention.
(4) We need to study the church’s ritual history to find out what has worked and what has not, to discover central Christian dimensions behind the ritual activity we do.
(5) We need to study our cultures to find the naturally symbolic structures for faith response in them and to discover the important Christian needs in today’s world. At the same time, we must remember that religious ritual does not merely mean Christianized culture, but it always stands in critique of our culture.
(6) We need to understand ourselves as symbolic people, as ritual people, as people with a history and a destiny, and as people who march in the middle of a long procession of saints and sinners on our way home.
Good religious ritual is born, not made. Its content is renewed in Christian commitment; its structure is discovered on the level of faith. It critiques itself from the inside, reflecting on its own historical development. It adapts itself to the culture and society in which it lives. Treat it carefully: the future of the church depends on it.
[1]
[1]Webber, Robert: The Sacred Actions of Christian Worship. Nashville : Star Song Pub. Group, 1994, S. 65
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
An Introduction to Lent
The history of Lent reveals traditions rich with meaning. Lent deepened the experience of early Christian community as new believers were baptized and as the events of Christ’s death and resurrection were celebrated.
In the liturgical rites of most churches, there is a pastoral exhortation to the people at the beginning of the Ash Wednesday liturgy that expresses well the focus of Lent. One such elocution is the following from the Book of Common Prayer (1979) of the Episcopal Church:
Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time for those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful and were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith. I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.
The current experience of Lent in many churches begins with the Ash Wednesday liturgy that often includes the imposition of ashes as a sign of our mortality, and moves slowly and methodically through five weeks of preparation coming to a climax in the liturgy for Palm Sunday. The blessing and procession of palms, the singing of the great Hosanna, and the Gospel proclamation of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, combine to create a brief festal interlude in the discipline of Lent. This same rite, however, intensifies our focus upon the sufferings and death of our Lord in the days of Holy Week. Toward the end of our paschal fast, we experience the quiet tragedy of the acts of Friday, the solitude of the Great Sabbath, the quiet joy of the Paschal Vigil, and the blasting ecstasy of the first Eucharist of Easter. It should come as no surprise that this progression of our Lent-to-Easter season, with due allowance for details, is the reverse of the actual pattern of development. The early Christians placed the resurrection of the Lord at the very center of their religious observance.
The Passover was deeply ingrained in the lives and traditions of the early Jewish-Christian community. Such a significant event in the life of a community of faith is not easily dismissed, even in the face of another event of redemptive significance. While the resurrection of our Lord had immediate and far-reaching impact upon the Jewish-Christian community, there is no reason to assume that it immediately supplanted the annual observance of Passover. The great and mighty act accomplished by God in the death and resurrection of Jesus in no way detracted from the earlier act of God that brought their ancestors out of bondage into freedom. Indeed, the blending of the two traditions in the Jewish-Christian community added richness to the meaning of both.
The celebration of the Passover in customary fashion was preceded in some places by fasting on the day of preparation for the Passover, the day, according to the chronology of John’s gospel, that Jesus was crucified. The rich content of Passover was certainly in the mind of Paul when he wrote, “Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival” (1 Cor. 5:7–8). The early Christian communities of Jewish background did not quickly or easily give up the annual Passover observance. As late as the end of the second century, the paschal controversy was being waged with vigor. The controversy was centered on a dispute between the Christians in Asia and those in Rome (and the other major Western centers of the church) over the date of Easter. The Asians, led in their position by Polycarp of Smyrna and Polycrates of Ephesus, pleaded for an annual celebration of Pascha on the fourteenth day of Nisan, the anniversary of the Crucifixion, regardless of the day of the week upon which it would fall. Rome, as the center of the Western churches, led by Anicetus and Victor I, supported the view that Easter should always fall on the Sunday next after the fourteenth of Nisan. Each side of the controversy claimed to be preserving the practice and understanding of the apostles, but it is worthy to point out that each group appealed to different apostles. In the fourth century, the Council of Nicea settled the issue, declaring that Easter would be celebrated on the Sunday after the first full moon of spring. That declaration, while making it impossible for Christians to celebrate Easter on the same day as the Jewish community would celebrate Passover, in no way succeeded in eliminating from the Christian celebration the rich imagery of Passover.
It is not unreasonable to assume, then, that in the earliest years the Christian community celebrated the unitive commemoration of the death and Resurrection on one day. The power and impact of that salvific event, however, could not be contained in one day. By the fourth century, the annual commemoration took on a more programmatic, historically oriented nature. The one day was expanded into three holy days, the paschal triduum. The original triduum was, as the word suggests, three days: Friday, a remembrance of the Crucifixion; Saturday, a sabbath of rest in commemoration of the Lord’s rest in the grave; and Sunday, the festal celebration of Resurrection.
The practice of the earliest years of the church varied widely. In some places, due to the understanding that the liturgical day began at sundown of the previous calenderical day, the Eucharist of Holy Thursday was soon considered part of the paschal triduum. In other locales, the Eucharist was celebrated several times on Holy Thursday, while in Rome the day took the reconciliation of penitents as its content and did not include Eucharist as a regular part of its liturgical observance until the seventh century.
The expansion of the paschal fast behind the “three holy days” can be noted in the third-century document Didascalia Apostolorum. Here we find that the fast has been extended to a full week with provisions for water, bread, and salt for the first four days. The expansion of the one-week fast into the six-week fast has normally been explained by the suggestion that it was to parallel the expansion of the one-day fast into the six-day fast. While there is some evidence of truth to that, it is not universally that simple. The notable exception to this pattern is the Byzantine tradition, which keeps its Lenten fast for six weeks before Holy Week, making seven in all. At the end of the liturgy of the six weeks is sung: “Now that we have fulfilled the forty-day Lent which is profitable to our souls, we beseech Thee to behold the Holy Week of Thy Passion.” It is clear from this that the “keeping of the fast” did not have identical dimensions in every place.
What does appear to be constant was the desire that the Lenten fast be forty days. The number of weeks before Pascha varied depending upon whether Holy Week was included and upon the number of days in a week that were reckoned to be fast days. Sunday, for example, was not a fast day because it is always the Lord’s Day, the day of resurrection. In some places, Saturday was also not a fast day, except for the fast of Holy Saturday. The reason for the desirability of a forty-day fast is scriptural: Moses, Elijah, and particularly Jesus fasted for periods of forty days. This tradition continues to be preserved today in the pericopes for the first Sunday in Lent. In all three lectionary years, the gospel reading is a synoptic account of Jesus’ forty-day fast and temptation in the wilderness.
The character of Lent is twofold. The forty days give us the opportunity to make preparation for the celebration of the major event of the liturgical year and for the central event of our lives: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the same time, Lent has an integrity all its own. It can be argued, of course, that everything the Christian is or does should be approached in light of the paschal event. While this may be true, the searching examination of one’s life, one’s prayerful “in-reach” and one’s struggling with the demands of discipleship need not always be focused toward “getting ready” for Easter. Christ is risen and the power of his Risen Spirit will make himself known to us whether or not we are prepared. The powerful promise of resurrection is not dependent upon our readiness to receive. We can keep Lent for its own sake. We are freed to interact with God and with each other for spiritual examination and growth in our daily pilgrimage in life, not just in our annual pilgrimage to the cross.
Many churches are finding new meaning in the keeping of Lent. Even those churches that are historically nonliturgical in their orientation are finding that a renewed sense of the Lenten journey in preparation for the great celebration of Easter is a welcome enrichment to the late winter/early spring months. In planning for Lent, it is well to consider any number of possibilities give intensity to the meaning of this liturgical season. The traditional Shrove Tuesday celebration, carried on in some congregations by a pancake supper and in others by their own version of the Mardi Gras, commends itself as a final opportunity for celebratory fun and feasting as the people of God before solitude is imposed on Ash Wednesday. Congregations that are unable to gather for festivities on Tuesday might consider a “farewell to Alleluia” as part of the liturgy for the last Sunday after the Epiphany or a Sunday night parish activity built on a Shrove Tuesday theme.
The arrival of Ash Wednesday should be blatantly noticeable. The entire church facility should reflect the nature of Lent. Visually, a drastic change should be apparent in the worship space. The imposition of ashes is a vivid reminder of our personal and corporate need for God. Clergy and other worship leaders insecure about introducing what appears to be a conflict between the imposition of ashes and the Gospel for the day might look upon that struggle positively. There are few liturgical assemblies in the year at which the real crux of discipleship can be so powerfully addressed.
The Sundays in Lent present the next problem and opportunity. Noting that the Sundays are in Lent and not of Lent, the question must be raised concerning how they should be handled liturgically. One could, no doubt, argue that since every Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the weekly Sunday gathering for Word and Sacrament should proceed ahead unimpeded, celebrated as usual, in all its fullness. There is much that commends this position. But such a stance is not wise because it does not take into account the needs of the people to express liturgically their Lenten disciplines. If every congregation had a full cycle of daily prayer and other liturgical expressions during the weekdays of Lent, then the normal eucharistic liturgy would be fine. But given the fact that for the most part such conditions do not exist, the major time the people gather for worship is still Sunday morning. Therefore, Sundays in Lent should reflect that reality. Trimming down the liturgy, cutting back on the flamboyance of the music, even changing the style of the preaching can aid in making the Sunday liturgy reflective of the more ascetical focus of Lent.
On Ash Wednesday we are invited to begin our journey toward Easter and to live disciplined paschal life. Thomas J. Talley has written,
To do this is to enter for the time upon a different sense of who I am, a more profound sense of who I am, achieved by disengagement from preoccupation with the structure which normally defines me. It is a matter of rediscovering ourselves by forgetting who we are and this forgetting, this turning in a new direction, is metanoia, conversion, repentance. Repentance is not preoccupation with an unsavory past, but the very opposite of that. It is the positive embrace of our helplessness as a moment of transcendent truth. It is the exciting discovery of humility, of poverty, of nakedness, and of the utter seriousness of our life in God.
Neil Alexander
Webber, Robert: The Services of the Christian Year. Nashville : Star Song Pub. Group, 1994, S. 225
In the liturgical rites of most churches, there is a pastoral exhortation to the people at the beginning of the Ash Wednesday liturgy that expresses well the focus of Lent. One such elocution is the following from the Book of Common Prayer (1979) of the Episcopal Church:
Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time for those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful and were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith. I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.
The current experience of Lent in many churches begins with the Ash Wednesday liturgy that often includes the imposition of ashes as a sign of our mortality, and moves slowly and methodically through five weeks of preparation coming to a climax in the liturgy for Palm Sunday. The blessing and procession of palms, the singing of the great Hosanna, and the Gospel proclamation of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, combine to create a brief festal interlude in the discipline of Lent. This same rite, however, intensifies our focus upon the sufferings and death of our Lord in the days of Holy Week. Toward the end of our paschal fast, we experience the quiet tragedy of the acts of Friday, the solitude of the Great Sabbath, the quiet joy of the Paschal Vigil, and the blasting ecstasy of the first Eucharist of Easter. It should come as no surprise that this progression of our Lent-to-Easter season, with due allowance for details, is the reverse of the actual pattern of development. The early Christians placed the resurrection of the Lord at the very center of their religious observance.
The Passover was deeply ingrained in the lives and traditions of the early Jewish-Christian community. Such a significant event in the life of a community of faith is not easily dismissed, even in the face of another event of redemptive significance. While the resurrection of our Lord had immediate and far-reaching impact upon the Jewish-Christian community, there is no reason to assume that it immediately supplanted the annual observance of Passover. The great and mighty act accomplished by God in the death and resurrection of Jesus in no way detracted from the earlier act of God that brought their ancestors out of bondage into freedom. Indeed, the blending of the two traditions in the Jewish-Christian community added richness to the meaning of both.
The celebration of the Passover in customary fashion was preceded in some places by fasting on the day of preparation for the Passover, the day, according to the chronology of John’s gospel, that Jesus was crucified. The rich content of Passover was certainly in the mind of Paul when he wrote, “Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival” (1 Cor. 5:7–8). The early Christian communities of Jewish background did not quickly or easily give up the annual Passover observance. As late as the end of the second century, the paschal controversy was being waged with vigor. The controversy was centered on a dispute between the Christians in Asia and those in Rome (and the other major Western centers of the church) over the date of Easter. The Asians, led in their position by Polycarp of Smyrna and Polycrates of Ephesus, pleaded for an annual celebration of Pascha on the fourteenth day of Nisan, the anniversary of the Crucifixion, regardless of the day of the week upon which it would fall. Rome, as the center of the Western churches, led by Anicetus and Victor I, supported the view that Easter should always fall on the Sunday next after the fourteenth of Nisan. Each side of the controversy claimed to be preserving the practice and understanding of the apostles, but it is worthy to point out that each group appealed to different apostles. In the fourth century, the Council of Nicea settled the issue, declaring that Easter would be celebrated on the Sunday after the first full moon of spring. That declaration, while making it impossible for Christians to celebrate Easter on the same day as the Jewish community would celebrate Passover, in no way succeeded in eliminating from the Christian celebration the rich imagery of Passover.
It is not unreasonable to assume, then, that in the earliest years the Christian community celebrated the unitive commemoration of the death and Resurrection on one day. The power and impact of that salvific event, however, could not be contained in one day. By the fourth century, the annual commemoration took on a more programmatic, historically oriented nature. The one day was expanded into three holy days, the paschal triduum. The original triduum was, as the word suggests, three days: Friday, a remembrance of the Crucifixion; Saturday, a sabbath of rest in commemoration of the Lord’s rest in the grave; and Sunday, the festal celebration of Resurrection.
The practice of the earliest years of the church varied widely. In some places, due to the understanding that the liturgical day began at sundown of the previous calenderical day, the Eucharist of Holy Thursday was soon considered part of the paschal triduum. In other locales, the Eucharist was celebrated several times on Holy Thursday, while in Rome the day took the reconciliation of penitents as its content and did not include Eucharist as a regular part of its liturgical observance until the seventh century.
The expansion of the paschal fast behind the “three holy days” can be noted in the third-century document Didascalia Apostolorum. Here we find that the fast has been extended to a full week with provisions for water, bread, and salt for the first four days. The expansion of the one-week fast into the six-week fast has normally been explained by the suggestion that it was to parallel the expansion of the one-day fast into the six-day fast. While there is some evidence of truth to that, it is not universally that simple. The notable exception to this pattern is the Byzantine tradition, which keeps its Lenten fast for six weeks before Holy Week, making seven in all. At the end of the liturgy of the six weeks is sung: “Now that we have fulfilled the forty-day Lent which is profitable to our souls, we beseech Thee to behold the Holy Week of Thy Passion.” It is clear from this that the “keeping of the fast” did not have identical dimensions in every place.
What does appear to be constant was the desire that the Lenten fast be forty days. The number of weeks before Pascha varied depending upon whether Holy Week was included and upon the number of days in a week that were reckoned to be fast days. Sunday, for example, was not a fast day because it is always the Lord’s Day, the day of resurrection. In some places, Saturday was also not a fast day, except for the fast of Holy Saturday. The reason for the desirability of a forty-day fast is scriptural: Moses, Elijah, and particularly Jesus fasted for periods of forty days. This tradition continues to be preserved today in the pericopes for the first Sunday in Lent. In all three lectionary years, the gospel reading is a synoptic account of Jesus’ forty-day fast and temptation in the wilderness.
The character of Lent is twofold. The forty days give us the opportunity to make preparation for the celebration of the major event of the liturgical year and for the central event of our lives: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the same time, Lent has an integrity all its own. It can be argued, of course, that everything the Christian is or does should be approached in light of the paschal event. While this may be true, the searching examination of one’s life, one’s prayerful “in-reach” and one’s struggling with the demands of discipleship need not always be focused toward “getting ready” for Easter. Christ is risen and the power of his Risen Spirit will make himself known to us whether or not we are prepared. The powerful promise of resurrection is not dependent upon our readiness to receive. We can keep Lent for its own sake. We are freed to interact with God and with each other for spiritual examination and growth in our daily pilgrimage in life, not just in our annual pilgrimage to the cross.
Many churches are finding new meaning in the keeping of Lent. Even those churches that are historically nonliturgical in their orientation are finding that a renewed sense of the Lenten journey in preparation for the great celebration of Easter is a welcome enrichment to the late winter/early spring months. In planning for Lent, it is well to consider any number of possibilities give intensity to the meaning of this liturgical season. The traditional Shrove Tuesday celebration, carried on in some congregations by a pancake supper and in others by their own version of the Mardi Gras, commends itself as a final opportunity for celebratory fun and feasting as the people of God before solitude is imposed on Ash Wednesday. Congregations that are unable to gather for festivities on Tuesday might consider a “farewell to Alleluia” as part of the liturgy for the last Sunday after the Epiphany or a Sunday night parish activity built on a Shrove Tuesday theme.
The arrival of Ash Wednesday should be blatantly noticeable. The entire church facility should reflect the nature of Lent. Visually, a drastic change should be apparent in the worship space. The imposition of ashes is a vivid reminder of our personal and corporate need for God. Clergy and other worship leaders insecure about introducing what appears to be a conflict between the imposition of ashes and the Gospel for the day might look upon that struggle positively. There are few liturgical assemblies in the year at which the real crux of discipleship can be so powerfully addressed.
The Sundays in Lent present the next problem and opportunity. Noting that the Sundays are in Lent and not of Lent, the question must be raised concerning how they should be handled liturgically. One could, no doubt, argue that since every Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the weekly Sunday gathering for Word and Sacrament should proceed ahead unimpeded, celebrated as usual, in all its fullness. There is much that commends this position. But such a stance is not wise because it does not take into account the needs of the people to express liturgically their Lenten disciplines. If every congregation had a full cycle of daily prayer and other liturgical expressions during the weekdays of Lent, then the normal eucharistic liturgy would be fine. But given the fact that for the most part such conditions do not exist, the major time the people gather for worship is still Sunday morning. Therefore, Sundays in Lent should reflect that reality. Trimming down the liturgy, cutting back on the flamboyance of the music, even changing the style of the preaching can aid in making the Sunday liturgy reflective of the more ascetical focus of Lent.
On Ash Wednesday we are invited to begin our journey toward Easter and to live disciplined paschal life. Thomas J. Talley has written,
To do this is to enter for the time upon a different sense of who I am, a more profound sense of who I am, achieved by disengagement from preoccupation with the structure which normally defines me. It is a matter of rediscovering ourselves by forgetting who we are and this forgetting, this turning in a new direction, is metanoia, conversion, repentance. Repentance is not preoccupation with an unsavory past, but the very opposite of that. It is the positive embrace of our helplessness as a moment of transcendent truth. It is the exciting discovery of humility, of poverty, of nakedness, and of the utter seriousness of our life in God.
Neil Alexander
Webber, Robert: The Services of the Christian Year. Nashville : Star Song Pub. Group, 1994, S. 225
Monday, January 26, 2009
God's Story
What is this story that we are all a part of? What role does this story have in our corporate worship?
Lets begin by briefly covering what this story is. The Father, in His infinite wisdom and love, created. He created "all that is, seen and unseen"(Nicene Creed), He created us. He created all of creation to be in perfect communion with Him, that includes both us and the rest of all that we have seen, and all that is ,but will never be seen by human eyes. Adam and Eve had everything that we long for, they had perfect union with both God and the rest of creation. Yet, these first two failed, they failed and all was lost. Sin entered and creation was cursed. We being a part of creation were cursed with sin and death as well. Our bodies age, and eventually we die.....
But of course, the Father had something else in mind.....Christ.
This is the part of the plan that looks, well.....crazy and stupid to us before we are awakened to it. Christ, fully Divine, came as a human, He entered a real womb, gestated for nine months and came out as any other human...and infant. This part of the story is so vital to us, Christ was FULLY human and FULLY God. He was not some sort of Hercules-ish mix of God and man, He was the God-Man. Christ live the life that the first Adam lost. He lived sinless, and this is also so essential for us to remember. When Christ went to the Cross to satisfy the wrath of the Father, He bore OUR sins....otherwise the terrible death He suffered would not have worked. Sin is what causes death, our sin is what caused His death.
But again, this is not the end of the story. As we know so well, Christ conquered death....but what did this redemptive act do? Yes, most certainly it redeemed us to the Father, but that's not all. It also redeems us to creation, and to each other. In Romans 8 Paul speaks of the freedom from bondage that the Cross brought, and he speaks of Creation being set free from the curse it is under. Creation(yes this includes our bodies) is never spoken of as "evil" in scripture, it is spoken of as being under the curse, or bondage of sin.
It seems that perhaps God is asking us to be Christ...that is He is asking us to fulfill what Romans speaks of when it says that "all of creation groans for the day when the sons and daughters of God will be revealed". God is revealing Himself to creation, and to us....we are, not literally, but truly, Christ to those around us and to Creation itself. This goes so much deeper than the idea that we simply "represent Christ" to the world....we are Christ, He lives in us, again, not literally, but truly......
Our corporate worship "does" this story, not just in words, but in action. For instance, the greeting handshake is a beautiful picture of the redemption God has brought to His people. This greeting is but a "sub-symbol" for the symbol of our Gathering itself. God has not called one individual, but a people, and we get to see a picture of that every week, when all of us individuals decide to not sleep the morning away, but to gather as His people under one roof and recount His story, the story....
This recounting of God's story will hopefully never grow old to us. In the Old Testament God tells His people to "remember so you don't forget". This idea holds true for us today, we need to remember the grace and redemption we have seen, so we don't forget it in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. When we think that some element of our worship is "old and stale", perhaps we should remember that God never tires of beauty....He makes flowers bloom on hillsides that no-one will ever see. As one theologian put it, He never grows tired of making the sun rise, or flowers bloom because He is not old with sin, like us. Perhaps it is us who are "old and stale" and not His story.....this is not to say that we cant refresh and enliven our corporate worship with new things and forms, but it is to say that we shouldn't abandon forms of worship that we may not have seen, or been a part of before, just because they come to us from the past...
Well, I think I have gone on long enough for now.....
Hopefully this will be good fodder for further discussion
Peace be with you,
Jeff
Lets begin by briefly covering what this story is. The Father, in His infinite wisdom and love, created. He created "all that is, seen and unseen"(Nicene Creed), He created us. He created all of creation to be in perfect communion with Him, that includes both us and the rest of all that we have seen, and all that is ,but will never be seen by human eyes. Adam and Eve had everything that we long for, they had perfect union with both God and the rest of creation. Yet, these first two failed, they failed and all was lost. Sin entered and creation was cursed. We being a part of creation were cursed with sin and death as well. Our bodies age, and eventually we die.....
But of course, the Father had something else in mind.....Christ.
This is the part of the plan that looks, well.....crazy and stupid to us before we are awakened to it. Christ, fully Divine, came as a human, He entered a real womb, gestated for nine months and came out as any other human...and infant. This part of the story is so vital to us, Christ was FULLY human and FULLY God. He was not some sort of Hercules-ish mix of God and man, He was the God-Man. Christ live the life that the first Adam lost. He lived sinless, and this is also so essential for us to remember. When Christ went to the Cross to satisfy the wrath of the Father, He bore OUR sins....otherwise the terrible death He suffered would not have worked. Sin is what causes death, our sin is what caused His death.
But again, this is not the end of the story. As we know so well, Christ conquered death....but what did this redemptive act do? Yes, most certainly it redeemed us to the Father, but that's not all. It also redeems us to creation, and to each other. In Romans 8 Paul speaks of the freedom from bondage that the Cross brought, and he speaks of Creation being set free from the curse it is under. Creation(yes this includes our bodies) is never spoken of as "evil" in scripture, it is spoken of as being under the curse, or bondage of sin.
It seems that perhaps God is asking us to be Christ...that is He is asking us to fulfill what Romans speaks of when it says that "all of creation groans for the day when the sons and daughters of God will be revealed". God is revealing Himself to creation, and to us....we are, not literally, but truly, Christ to those around us and to Creation itself. This goes so much deeper than the idea that we simply "represent Christ" to the world....we are Christ, He lives in us, again, not literally, but truly......
Our corporate worship "does" this story, not just in words, but in action. For instance, the greeting handshake is a beautiful picture of the redemption God has brought to His people. This greeting is but a "sub-symbol" for the symbol of our Gathering itself. God has not called one individual, but a people, and we get to see a picture of that every week, when all of us individuals decide to not sleep the morning away, but to gather as His people under one roof and recount His story, the story....
This recounting of God's story will hopefully never grow old to us. In the Old Testament God tells His people to "remember so you don't forget". This idea holds true for us today, we need to remember the grace and redemption we have seen, so we don't forget it in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. When we think that some element of our worship is "old and stale", perhaps we should remember that God never tires of beauty....He makes flowers bloom on hillsides that no-one will ever see. As one theologian put it, He never grows tired of making the sun rise, or flowers bloom because He is not old with sin, like us. Perhaps it is us who are "old and stale" and not His story.....this is not to say that we cant refresh and enliven our corporate worship with new things and forms, but it is to say that we shouldn't abandon forms of worship that we may not have seen, or been a part of before, just because they come to us from the past...
Well, I think I have gone on long enough for now.....
Hopefully this will be good fodder for further discussion
Peace be with you,
Jeff
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