Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Are we too busy doing the right thing to allow God to be God?

We're busy. All of us. Especially pastors. Talk to the average pastor (if you can get him or her to slow down long enough to have a substantial conversation) and you'll generally hear from a hamster on a wheel. They have lots of strategies for getting things done. Use the the daytimer well. Prioritize. Delegate. Don't sweat the small stuff. But most of them are headed for a major burnout or they are so busy trying to do God's work that it's impossible to hear God or see God in what they do.

Eugene Peterson offers a unique brand of help. In a recent lecture, he said "Show me a busy pastor and I'll show you someone who is lazy. Unwilling to deal with the mystery which is God and the mess which is humanity, these pastors fill up their datebooks with worthy activitities so that they don't have to contemplate what God is doing and really wants God's people to be involved in." Peterson went on to say that this is why churches love programs. Programs give them something to do so that they can feel like they're doing important work and don't have to deal with the discernment of waiting for God to be revealed or to try and see what God is doing so they can get in on it.

Peterson's advice to pastors was to take the "Pastor's Office" sign off of the door and replace it with "Pastor's Study" and then to block out a few hours of undisturbed time in the study each day to meet God in prayer and scripture and meditation so that the words they speak on Sunday actually reflect something of "Word." He suggested that they trade in some of their busywork for a nap or reading a novel.

One troubled, overworked pastor who took his suggestion found that his out-of-control life as a minister suddenly had focus and balance and peace and that he managed to get all of his work done and felt like his ministry actually had validity and reflected God's purpose for he and his congregation.

Maybe more of us should take this advice. "He [or she] who has ears to hear, let them hear!"

Friday, April 21, 2006

How do we discern what Christ is doing now so that we can get in on it?

What is Christ doing in the world here and now? How do we discern this and how does knowing what Christ is doing enable us to participate in the ministry of Christ? With Professor Andrew Purves of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, I think the answers to these questions can best be found by examining the work of Athanasius, whose wide view of atonement helps us to more fully understand the work of Christ and, hence, participate more fully in his ministry.

To that end, I will attempt to briefly sketch Athanasius’ thought on atonement and the implications of this view for those who would follow Christ. Based in part on reading Athanasius and drawing heavily on lectures by Dr. Andrew Purves at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, it makes sense to adopt a wider understanding of atonement which sees not only the cross as redemptive but the incarnation, the life and teaching and healing and ministry, and the resurrection and ascension of our Lord as well. Much of the thought and character of this examination of Athanasius is drawn from Purves and his mentor, Tom Torrance.

Incarnation, Word becoming flesh, means that Jesus is both the Word of God to us and the response to the Word which humanity was incapable of making but which Emmanuel, both fully human and fully divine, was uniquely qualified to make on our behalf. In his ministry of obedience to the Father, and in his discernment, teaching, and healing, Jesus demonstrated for us the ministry which he then invited us to be a part of.

On the cross, Jesus demonstrated the depth of God’s love for us, exemplifying the denial of self and the obedience to God to which we can aspire with the help of Spirit and demonstrated the power of living a life powered by Spirit rather than a desire driven by law to do the right thing as best we can in our human frailty.

In His resurrection, God vindicates the life lived in the power of God, ultimately defeating the power of both sin and death to hold sway in our lives and opening up the possibility for an eternity lived in and through God. And in his ascension, Jesus returns to the side of God, carrying into the communion of the trinity our very flesh so that we are no longer separated from God by our flesh but Jesus in the flesh, glorified as the Christ, sits at the right hand of God making intercession for us, dispelling once and for all the Gnostic heresies of evil flesh and true spirit and the existence of a true God of spirit who stands over and against the flawed God of flesh and creation.

In His ascension in the flesh, Jesus proves indisputably that God loves all of Creation, both adam and adamah, the creature created in God’s image from the dust of creation and the creation whose stuff contributed to our substance. God is an earthy God who delights in creation. And now, no longer separated from God, the presence of Jesus’ flesh in the Godhead serves as a concrete invitation for us to participate in the communal interactions of the Trinity. The ascension is, in a sense, the enfleshed invitation through which we are invited into the perichoresis which exemplifies life in the Trinity. And, invited into close communion with the very Trinity, into a mystical union with Christ, we are then called to share in the ministry which Christ is doing in the world. So all of Christian life is sharing in the ministry of Christ and should be entered into after prayerful contemplation and discovery on who Christ is and what he desires to do in the situation which is the context for our ministry.

Calvin’s thought on mystical union is critical here. According to Calvin, as long as Christ remains outside us, all he has done is of no value to us. Dr. Purves points this out with a wonderful bit of scripture--Christ within us, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27) Since Christ lives within us, we are grafted into his life and work. In other words, living in Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are able to receive what Christ has done for us and can truly participate in his life and ministry. If there is no union with Christ, all the work Christ has done on our behalf comes to naught.

So may we seek to know and commune with the Christ who calls us into the work of the Trinity and may we give up any idea of "our" ministry so that we may enter fully into the ministry to which Christ invites us.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Time to Celebrate!

Now we can celebrate! Christ is risen! Hallelujah! We don't have to hold back any more. But I confess I have already been celebrating earlier in Lent.

It’s hard to forget that we are “Easter people.” Even in the midst of the solemn observance of Lent, knowing the end of the story makes it hard for us to keep from celebrating sometimes. Is this desire to celebrate inappropriate?

Is there something wrong with us when even on solemn days like Maunday Thursday we just want to embrace our Christian friends and rejoice in the communion that we share?

Maybe not. After all, we have much to celebrate! And even as we fast and pray and observe the solemnity of seasons such as Lent and Advent, we can’t deny the unspeakably good news—Jesus Christ is risen from the dead! Hallelujah! I know that we are told to avoid that word during Lent. But sometimes our hearts are so full of the joy of the risen Christ that no other word will suffice.

Maybe you were successful in containing your celebrations and your hallelujahs during Lent. I confess that I slipped a few times this year. But I hope now, post-Easter, when there is no need to restrain our unbridled passion for our risen Lord, that we will raucously shout and celebrate the amazing news that “Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more!’

Jesus told the bewildered disciples that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will abide in Him, and He in them. We have an abiding relationship with the one who came down from heaven to live as one of us, teaching us, healing us, loving us, and dying for us. And God vindicated his perfect life by raising Jesus from the dead, so that he could ascend in our flesh back to heaven to intercede for us and to invite us to participate in the ministry of God.
Thanks to the good news of resurrection, we are forever an “Easter people”—even at those times when we focus on sin and suffering. It is right and good to reflect on the sorrow and sacrifice associated with the cost of sin and the passionate embodied response of our Lord on Good Friday. But may we ever remember that we have fellowship with God because of the completion of God’s salvation for us accomplished on the first Easter morning. And may we ever raise our hallelujahs, today and always.

Christ is risen! Hallelujah!

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Reflections on Body and Blood

Nearly 2000 years ago, Jesus sat down at table with his friends, with people who had been with him through thick and thin, people who had heard him speak hundreds of times on God and God’s kingdom and on his relationship to the father who sent him.

But at this meal, despite all of the history, his words about the bread being his body and the wine being his blood caught them off guard and left them in confusion. The familiar landscape of the Passover ritual gave way to new territory they were not prepared to deal with. What does he mean? This is my body, broken for you? This is my blood, shed for you?

And nearly 2000 years later, we’re not sure we understand these words any better. We know there’s something sacred here, something deeply meaningful. And we know Jesus tells us that we should “do this in remembrance of Him.” But we come to the meal like the disciples, aware that something important is happening but that it is wrapped up in mystery. Like the disciples, we know something really big is going on, but we don’t understand all of the implications of the meal.

Not quite 500 years ago, the Reformation forced church people to take a hard look at communion. Now that it wasn’t a mysterious act carried out by priests in a magical ritual, now that church people were allowed to handle the elements and have Christ brought close to them through the Eucharist, they had to come to terms with what it meant to hold Christ’s body and blood in their hands. Some of them, especially the Anabaptists, were so afraid of profaning the sacrament, so afraid they might spill a drop of Christ’s blood or inadvertently dip their beards in the cup, that they shied away from taking communion, electing to participate in the Sacrament only three or four times a year.


Surprisingly, John Calvin, From whom we Presbyterians draw much of our theological heritage, wasn’t too concerned with that. In fact, he said that even sinners could eat the communion meal. Of course, says Calvin, all they will get from it is bread and wine. They will get calories but no spiritual content.

As we remarked in an earlier blog, Calvin picks up on something we heard Jesus say. "It is the spirit that gives life." The elements are important and are an integral part of the mystery of the feast that Christ instituted with his disciples in the Upper Room. But it is the spirit that gives life. Calvin goes so far as to say that unless we come to the communion table already feeding on Christ, already being fed by his spirit through prayer and meditating on scripture and praise and worship, we too will get only bread and wine. If we are not already in communion with Christ, feasting on his love and depending on his spirit to sustain our lives, then there is no spiritual food for us in the Eucharist. Only empty calories for empty souls.

So it is my prayer for us today, that as we come to the table of our Lord, we come asking the Holy Spirit to guide us and fill us and transform us so that we may recognize the presence of our Lord in the bread broken and the wine poured. May we be fed by the spirit so that Christ is truly present to us in communion. May we truly abide in Christ and he in us, as we share together in the feast, anticipating the time when people from every time and place will come from East and West and North and South and sit at table in the Kingdom of God, as we behold our host, the one whose body and blood has fed us and has called us to be children of God.

Amen.

Monday, April 10, 2006

How does our concept of Word add to suspicion of spirituality?

Reformed Theology's view of scripture has played a role in making spirituality something of a dirty word. Our theology posits that scripture is not the Word of God but scripture functions as words that point to Christ, the true Word. So if someone wants to "hear a word from the Lord," this cannot be accomplished simply by reading the Bible, although most people of Reformed faith would admit that the Spirit can reveal Christ, the Word, to us if we ask for the Spirit's help in understanding the scriptures and thus comprehending something of the Word.

But for those of the Reformed faith tradition, Word "happens" best for us in the context of worship when preaching on scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit reveals the Word to us. Although some of you sitting in the pews each Sunday may have trouble believing it, we do affirm that somehow the Spirit works through the preacher so that the words of the sermon preached are the Word of God revealed. The Word is given to the community in the context of worship.

Brad Kent speaks to the communal understanding of Reformed Spirituality in an article from the Spring 1999 issue of Hungry Hearts entitled Reformed Spirituality at the Millennium. (A link to Hungry Hearts can be found in the links at the right of this column) Kent says that reformed spirituality as it comes from John Calvin can only be understood in light of Calvin's desire to make the human kingdom conform to God's kingdom, as much as possible. Kent's view of Calvin's influence on reformed spirituality is summed up in the following paragraph.

Reformed spirituality takes its distinctive stampfrom the ethical and the social. It is never removed from the realities of the world. It is rightly skeptical of any spiritual experience that cannot be authenticated in community. While we may “come to the garden alone” to be with Jesus, we also expect to find him on crowded city streets. Calvin would counsel that the goal of any spiritual practice is not “self improvement” but the welfare of one's neighbor.

Word and Spirituality

Howard Rice in his book, Reformed Spirituality, says that the majority of people from the reformed tradition aren't comfortable talking about their personal experience of God outside of communal worship. Given our reticence to focus on individual experience of God and our insistence that our understanding of God must be examined in a communal context, it is not surprising that people in the reformed tradition have not historically been comfortable with any discussion of individual spirituality. And since much of what other people of faith would traditionally characterize as "spirituality" happens not in community but in an individual's personal experience of God, people from the Reformed tradition have shied away from many of the classical spiritual disciplines practiced by members of the Catholic or Eastern Orthodox traditions. It seems very possible that this fact can account for the reputation of Presbyterians as the "frozen chosen" and a correspondingly small percentage of Presbyterians in recent polls who characterize themselves as having a "passionate spirituality."

And yet, if we take seriously the notion that Jesus' incarnation and the carrying of his human flesh into the Godhead at ascension serves as an invitation to Calvin's notion of "mystical union with Christ" and to take part in the ministry of Christ and of the Trinity, then it seems that we need some ways of discerning our particular call to participate in those ministries. And, since preachers seldom go through the congregation addressing each member individually and sharing God's particular vision for their lives, it would seem that daily devotion to the prayer and scripture and silence and contemplation of classic spiritual disciplines can probably serve to inform people of reformed faith about the ministry to which we are invited and which Christ longs to share with us as we are empowered by Spirit. It may just be that people of the reformed tradition will have to begin to get comfortable with spirituality after all. Of course, in good reformed fashion, we'll have to compare notes with members of the community on our perceptions of God at work in our lives and allow the community to guide our understandings of God's will for our lives in view of our relationship to God and neighbor and the historical witness of scripture and the faith community.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

The Spiritual Journey Is Best Walked One Step At A Time

Catherine of Genoa reminds us why it is good that we are taught by God "little by little."

"But the creature can know nothing but what God gives him to know from day to day, nor can he comprehend beyond this, and at each instant remains satisfied with what he receives. If the creature knew the height to which God is prepared to raise him in this life, he would never rest."


"At times I thought my love [of God] was complete. But as my vision grew clearer, I beheld in myself many imperfections. In the beginning they were hidden from me, for it was the purpose of God to accomplish his work by little and little, in order to keep me humble, and enable me to remain among my fellow creatures."

As Catherine so ably points out to us, although we may desire to know God deeply, this is a journey that is taken one step at a time. She reminds us that if we suddenly knew everything we wished to know of God and knew clearly what God desired for us, we would either be so full of ourselves that noone could stand us (so heavenly-minded that we're no earthly good) or we would be so saddened by knowing God's expectations for our lives and seeing how far short of those expectations we fall that we would be paralyzed, unable to accomplish anything. So it is good that we ask each day for the one grace, the one bit of knowledge that God wills to impart to us in order that we may move closer in relationship with the Divine.

The complete text to Catherine's Dialogues, from which the quotes are drawn, can be found at www.ccel.org/ccel/catherine/dialog.html

Friday, April 07, 2006

False Spirituality

Not every path leads to God. Cloistering ourselves away from life is not God's intention.

I'm sure all of us who practice any spiritual disciplines hope that in doing so we will move into a closer walk with God. But we have to examine our choices carefully so that we don't go down a "way that seemeth right" only to find that it leads us away from God, or worse, down the path to destruction.

As we seek to move deeper in our spiritual relationship with God, a new universe of possibility opens before us. Our experience of life and our attitude toward everything around us is subject to change. In fact, the underlying assumption behind setting out on our spiritual journey and the impetus for beginning the journey in the first place is driven by the nagging feeling that things aren’t quite right and that something needs to change.

But this assumption can easily lead us down the wrong path. While it is quite certain that noone who truly opens him or herself up to an authentic encounter with the living God will not be affected by that encounter, the outcome of such an encounter is unclear and may not be the one that we expected. The goal of our spirituality in its most fundamental form must be a mystical union with God, our Creator. And that mystical union may not resemble the vision of relationship to God which we created and which we have carried before us as a banner on the journey. Authentic spirituality means that we open ourselves up to the work that God wills to do in our lives. Authentic spirituality means submission, allowing ourselves to be reshaped and our will to be bent to God’s purpose. If we truly desire to be molded into the shape God intended when creating us, we must give up our expectations of what it means to be related to God and allow God to show us what the outcome should be.

One of the dangers implicit in our journey is that we may begin to devote ourselves so entirely to the enterprise of loving God that we forget entirely the other great commandment which Jesus says completes the law and the prophets. It is not enough to love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds and strengths. Even if that goal could be reached by mere mortals, that love must necessarily reach out to those around us. Otherwise, our spirituality is just a narcissistic endeavor to secure a “me and Jesus” connection, oblivious to those others whom God might wish to bring into our conversation.

So a spirituality which cloisters one away in an ivory tower, lavishing love and praise and devotion on God while ignoring those around us, is a false spirituality. Devotion to God which is not rooted in love for others is a pretense. As Merton puts it “Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life.” Contemplative Prayer (p. 39) That is not to say that we do not need time apart from others, where we can focus our energies on God and gain strength from being in the presence of the divine. Without time set apart for meditation, scripture, prayer and contemplation, our Christian walk is doomed to superficiality and our relationship to God will continue to exist only on the most surface level. But that which we glean from our encounters with God is not to be encased in the museum of mystical experience inside our hearts. It is to be poured out in grateful sharing as we give and receive of God’s grace given to us all.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

To participate in or to imitate Christ? That is the question.

Many people have been heartened by reading Thomas a Kempis' book, The Imitation of Christ. And, at first blush, imitating Christ seems like a very good idea. Ghandhi, while he obviously would never accept Christ's claim as Saviour of the world, believed that the world would be a better place if everyone read Jesus' teachings and sought to live a life based on them.

The problem is that God wants to be the actor. And our insistence on being people who imitate Christ makes us the actors instead. Eugene Peterson says that when we seek to imitate Christ, we become the actors and move God to the sidelines in the role of judging our performance--giving us scores as if we were participating in a cosmic Olympic Games. Professor Andrew Purves of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary puts it another way. He says that rather than ask "What would Jesus do?" we need to ask "What is Jesus doing?" When we ask the latter question, we are seeking to know the ministry that Christ is doing here and now and looking for ways to to get in on it, rather than looking at the actions of christ in the past and seeking to imitate them as best we can.

When we accept the invitation to participate in the ministry of Christ, it is God who acts through us, directing our actions and empowering us with Holy Spirit. So God is the actor and we move in tandem with the one "through whom we live and move and have our being." In fairness to Thomas a Kempis, he gets much of this and, despite the title of the book, much of what he advocates in it is about participating in Christ, though not all.

We would all do well to focus on the fact that participation in Christ means that our ministry does not belong to us. It belongs to God. And that is as it should be.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

The Markan Secret and flying under the radar

Several times, as I have stood before groups in a variety of settings, the same question has come up in the discussion--"Why do you think Jesus told people not to talk about the miracles and about being healed?"

For me the answer can be found in John 12.

9 Then a large crowd of the Jews learned that He was there. They came not only because of Jesus, but also to see Lazarus whom He had raised from the dead.
10 Therefore the chief priests decided to kill Lazarus too,
11 because he was the reason many of the Jews were deserting them and believing in Jesus.

Jesus knew that once the word of all the miracles and healings had spread far enough, he would be perceived as such a threat to the religious authorities and would be so beleaguered by hangers-on, that his ministry would effectively be over. In fact, he was perceived as such a threat that they not only wanted to get rid of him, but also the evidence of his ministry--in this case, Lazarus.

The events in this passage took place six days before Passover. Even though the disciples failed to hear and understand what Jesus had tried to tell him about the coming days, Jesus knew for certain that his days were numbered and that his ministry was about to come to a violent end. Like the opening of Pandora's box, once the secret was out, there was not stuffing it back in. The journey was fast approaching those final steps to the cross and Jesus was pretty sure that cup would not pass him by.

So we can understand why Jesus tried to keep a low profile. But why do we do it? We're not Jesus. Why do we fly under the radar--play down our devotion to God and our sense of mission and call? Is it because we fear the crucifixion that often comes to those who deign to get close to God? Certainly, we've seen people who speak unpopular truths in this country be killed for speaking out--Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and Malcolm X to name a few. Often their detractors are people whose understanding of God is narrowly drawn and who cannot seem to grasp that God may be doing something new in ways that move beyond the boundaries of their comfortable understandings. Do we play down our association with Jesus, as Peter did, because we fear that the next cross is ours?

Or is it that we are afraid God will take us places we don't want to go or call us to do things we don't want to do? Is it that we want to call the shots in our lives, to have some say in what our future is going to be? Charles Stanley says that in his seminary days, many of his fellow seminarians refused to go to mission conferences for fear that God might call them into the mission field. Is our view of God one that has God forcing us into roles we don't want to play?

Well, a certain amount of that may be true. God is in the business of tranformation and God's call for us may not always fall in line with our vision of what the outcome should be. Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane shows us that he sensed God's call for him to continue down a path that would lead to a violent death on the cross. Jesus asked that he be spared this end if there was any other way. But he pledged to obey God no matter what, saying "Father, not my will but thine be done." And he did go to the cross. But the good news is that God prepared him for what would come and gave him the strength and resources to do what he had to do. And God didn't let the suffering of Jesus be a meaningless death. Out of the horror and tragedy of the cross, God fashioned grace and forgiveness, vindicating Jesus' sacrificial life by raising him from the dead, making what first appeared as a total loss become the ultimate victory.

And so it is with us. If we are, indeed, called to go places that we don't really want to go, we can be sure that God will give us the strength we need and "equip us for every good work." And as God did not forsake Jesus but made even his death a victory, so God will be with us each step of the journey, even in the valley of the shadow of death.

So, with the grace and help of God, let us tell the wonderful news, keeping it secret from no one. We may not always be popular with good religious folk and we may suffer for the sake of the truth we share. Jesus tells us, in fact, that we can expect to have serious problems. "In the world, you will have tribulations." But he closes that thought with his personal assurance that God, who is is charge of this world, will make it all work out in the end. "But be not dismayed, for I have overcome the world."

Thanks be to God.

Harvard Prayer Study doesn't understand the Community of Faith

There's been a great deal of handwringing concerning the Harvard Prayer study that found that having a group of people pray for heart patients whom they didn't know from a distance didn't help their recovery.

From a scientific point of view, that may seem like a fair test of prayer. And, indeed, most of us would think and hope that having individuals from three congregations pray for strangers would have a measurable positive effect.

But the study fails to comprehend the communal aspect of Christianity. Early christians met in each other's home and broke bread together and were intimately acquainted with each other's joys and sorrows. When these people prayed for one another, it was a company of Christian friends uniting in prayer to voice concerns for a beloved brother or sister. And, to a lesser degree, this is still somewhat characteristic of how prayers are raised by churches today. Sure, we also pray vague prayers for the world and for people we've never met, and sometimes we hear details later of how our prayers were answered. But generally, our prayers are more personal, more involved, more heartfelt.

Reformed theology says that the Word isn't given to individuals to use as they please but comes to the community of faith as Scripture is preached in the context of communal worship. If this is our understanding of revelation of the Word,then it would seem that our conceptions of prayer may also be more communal.

This is not to say that praying alone in your prayer closet isn't valid and that these prayers are of no account. But it may be that there is a benefit to praying as a community of faith. Maybe blind prayers from strangers aren't of such benefit to the recipients because they don't "feel" prayed for. I know one goal of the study was to isolate the positive effects of touch which often accompany prayers. Studies have shown that patients who are touched by doctors, nurses, and acquaintances generally heal better. So care was taken to avoid contaminating the data by allowing people to be touched by those who prayed for them. But perhaps prayers are more consequential when people have someone hold their hand or lay hands on them or anoint them with oil when praying because people really "feel" that they have been prayed for. I know personally that on Ash Wednesday, when someone physically touches and marks my forehead with the sign of the cross, I take more seriously the notion that I am but dust and will return to the dust. Maybe people take prayers for them more seriously when they are touched in the process.

Of course, another problem with the study is that it tries to measure the effectiveness of prayers in terms of the percentage of prayer recipients whose health improve while it fails to consider ( though it could not be measured) the effect of these prayers on God. The outcome assumes that by praying for people, their health should improve. But we are not promised in this life that all of our afflictions will be healed. The scriptures tell us instead that "It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement" and that God makes the sun to rise and set on the godly and the ungodly alike. Good people and wicked people have blessings and curses and so do people who are prayed for and those who are not. The only thing we can be sure of is that we will live and die and account for our lives to God. Certainly God answers prayers, many of them in the affirmative. But what percentage get a "yes" and who are we to ask such a question? Check out the last couple of chapters of Job if you want to hear God address our sense of holding God accountable to such things.

Yes, random prayers for strangers should do some good. I believe they do--whether or not the strangers even know that people are praying for them. But in the end, I would guess that prayers are most powerful for people who experience the prayer as well as the answer.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Spirituality in search of content

In his book, Christ Plays in 10,000 Places, Eugene Peterson picks up on a trend that many of us have probably noticed. He says that he hears people over and over tell him something on the order of "I don't go to church. But I consider myself to be a very spiritual person." I know that I personally have heard people tell me this dozens of times.

And perhaps this is why the term "spirituality" is seen by many as suspect and by others as vacuous. What do people mean by "a very spiritual person?" What spirit? It seems that for many, the content of spirituality is not well-defined.

But here is an area where we Reformed folk are prepared to shine--that is, if we have a spirituality at all. While we have often erred by ignoring any sense of personal spirituality, focused as we are on receiving Word as it is preached in the context of worship in the community of faith, most Reformed christians also practice "private worship" or "secret worship" as some earlier people called it, in which we read and reflect on scripture and pray in our prayer closets, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal the truths of Scripture to us and to help us understand what God is calling us to do in response to Christ the Word as he is revealed to us. Our spirituality has a content. Our prayers, our reflections, our meditations (if we are faithful to our Reformed heritage) draw their substance from scripture. If God speaks to us in silence, it is because we have entered into that silence under the influence of Scripture as it attests to Word preached to us and reflected upon in the quiet spaces of our lives.

If our spirituality is to be substantial, then the substance comes from Scripture as revealed by Spirit. That is the essence of Reformed spirituality. If we practice an openended spirituality, waiting for some nameless cosmic connection, we are like the people the Apostle Paul preached to on Mars Hill in Athens in Acts 17. Paul noticed that in the pantheon of Greek gods who were represented by statues and monuments in Athens, there was one dedicated "to the unknown God." Seeking political correctness and to avoid offending any God whose acquaintance they had not met, the Greeks left to door open for spiritual encounters with a nameless deity. Paul took advantage of the opportunity to introduce the Greeks to his God and proceeded to tell the people about Jesus, part of the Trinity that defined the one God Paul wished everyone present to know.

I am not saying we should go to every non-Christian place of worship in the world and yell, "Hey, you guys are deluding yourself. If you want to know God, you need to be talking about Jesus here." But, like Paul, in the company of other religions, all I can say is that, for me, if I am to speak about God, I must "preach Jesus, and him crucified."

I do consider myself to be a deeply spiritual person. But, drawing on the Reformed understanding of spirituality my spiritual practices have content in the scriptures and the Spirit I serve has a name.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Reformed Folks: Not So Fasting

Why is it that many people in the reformed tradition have no experience with fasting? This is especially ironic in light of Calvin's views on the Christian life. Ronald Wallace points out that in his writings on repentance, Calvin espouses a sort of "rule for Holy living" which includes self-denial, mortification of the flesh, and meditating upon the Holy life. (Calvin's Doctrine of the Christian Life, p. 94.)

The call for self-denial is so foreign to our culture, it's no wonder we don't often go there. And yet Calvin says that self-denial is essential if we are to put aside our self-centeredness and move to a place that is centered on God and neighbor. He says that self-denial creates the stage on which our old self may be crucified so that we can take on the new nature of Christ. And while mortification of the flesh can be taken to extremes, (Ignatius decries mortification as something to be avoided because in the zeal of his early christian walk, he damaged his body permanently by severe fasting and privation which injured his health) sensibly denying even our essential bodily needs for a short time causes us no harm and the discomfort can remind us to focus all our attention and energy on God. The purpose of fasting is to give us a bodily reminder to pay attention to the things of God--each time our hunger pangs rise up they become a call to prayer, a physical tolling of a bell within us that causes us to think of hungering for God rather than mere bread. If "giving something up for Lent" is to have any meaning for us at all, this lack or privation must call us from within to move us in a Godward direction.

We must be careful not to lapse into Gnosticism in our treatment of our bodies, however, thinking that flesh is evil and only spirit is good. If God truly hated our flesh, then Jesus would not have become incarnate to redeem our flesh and all of the stuff of creation from which it was fashioned. The fact that Jesus carried human flesh into the Godhead at his ascension once and for all declares that God loves all of us--not just our spirits but our flesh as well. And Jesus, glorified but in the flesh, reminds us that our flesh does not stand as an obstacle between us and God.

That being said, it seems we reformed types should be using our bodies through fasting to periodically remind us of the hunger that no food can satisfy. The Presbyterian Church (USA) does put out a few materials to aid in this. One great suggestion is to fast for a couple of meals prior to taking Communion, using our physical hunger to intensify our yearning for Christ present in the Eucharist.

It is my prayer during the remainder of this Lenten season, that we might experience a new hunger for Christ and that those of us who have never known true physical hunger might use fasting as a tool to remind us how full of ourselves we are and how little room we leave in our lives for God to enter in and transform us into the likeness of Christ.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Spirit, Silence, and Prayer in the Reformed Tradition

We have earlier demonstrated that there is support for individual spirituality in the Reformed tradition as long as one's meditation is focused on scripture. But is there room for silence in which to listen to God and are the insights gained during such experiences the work of the Holy Spirit? Again, Robert Ramey, Jr. and Ben Campbell Johnson would answer in the affirmative. They quote Calvin on Romans, chapter 8, saying that it is not the Spirit that "actually prays or groans but arouses in us assurance, desires, and sighs, to conceive which our natural powers would scarcely suffice." Institutes 3.20.5. They take this passage of Calvin to mean that the Spirit directs our prayers and instructs us to pray in the manner that God desires.

But they go one step deeper, moving into areas of spirituality some of the reformed faith might not agree with fully, musing that "if the Spirit so directs our petitions and intercessions, can we not rely also on the Spirit to speak in our silence? When we listen the Spirit may flash new insight and guide our imagination as a form of God's speech to us." Living the Christian Life: a Guide to Reformed Spirituality (p. 50)

Careful fellows. If we go there we might have to believe that God still inspires people today--even Presbyterians! It may just be that there is a place for a contemplative spirituality in our private worship and prayer that complements and completes our emphasis on revelation of Word through preaching in the context of the Christian community.

But, to keep our prayers and silence properly grounded, Ramey and Johnson go on to say that "God provides scripture to ground and shape our prayer." (p.50) They quote Ronald Wallace's statement about the relationship of prayer to scripture: "In order to be a genuine exercise of faith, prayer must be founded upon the Word of God. The faith that gives rise to prayer is created by the Word and is ever aroused to fresh life and vigour by listening to the promises of the Word." Calvin's Doctrine (p. 276) Ramay and Johnson conclude the section with the strongest possible association between prayer and scripture: "Scripture should do more than precede and inspire our approach to prayer; it should also govern the direction and details of our prayer. When we pray according to God's Word, our prayers echo God's promises in our hearts.(p. 51)

So, if these authors are to be believed, the Spirit speaks to us and instructs us in prayer and our silence, even as our prayer is shaped by reflection on the Word of God. So prayer and silence can both be vehicles which God uses to communicate with us through the Spirit, so long as our thoughts are guided and directed by reflection on the Word of God. It seems that for folks of the Reformed ilk, inspiration is quite accessible--but only if we look to the Word of God to guide our hearts to God's promised desire to fill them.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Meditation in the Reformed Tradition

Meditation is not a new age concept foreign to Reformed Spirituality. In fact, as Robert Ramey, Jr. and Ben Campbell Johnson point out in Living the Christian Life: a Guide to Reformed Spirituality, meditation is an essential part of the Christian life. But what makes our meditation Reformed is the subject. Our personal worship or "secret worship" as it is called in the Westminster Confession of Faith: Book of Confessions, is that it "centers uponScripture as one reads and listens for God's s Spirit to speak. (Presbyterian Book of Worship)

According to Ramey and Johnson, augmenting our Scripture reading with meditation "helps us hear God speak through Scripture." They say this may be done in a variety of ways, from meditating on a single word in Scripture to the "intellectual, reasoned system of Calvin." (p. 63)

Indeed, the Book of Worship suggests a number of ways of meditating on scripture including imaginatively entering into Scripture (see my earlier post on Ignatius' use imagination as a way to hear God in scripture) as well as journaling on insights gained in reading and meditating on scripture. But Ramey and Johnson caution that we need to avoid practicing meditation as an empty repetitive mantra to chant or to meditate merely by clearing the mind of all thoughts. However, based on the section in their book on prayer, we must not misinterpret their caution as a prohibition of prayers such as the Jesus prayer or other prayers earnestly prayed to Christ and not meant as empty repititions. Similarly, the caution to not allow meditation to be just a clearing of one's thoughts should not be seen as speaking against the concept of "centering prayer" in which the aim is to put aside earthly concerns in a prayerful desire to concentrate only on Christ and being in his presence.

So, as radical as it may sound on its face, meditation and Reformed faith are not strange bedfellows. In fact, the lack of meditation on scripture and devotion to truly hearing God speak through the Spirit's revelation in scripture probably has a great deal to due with a problem large numbers of presbyterians have complained about in recent surveys--a lack of passionate spirituality.