Reformed Spirituality

Nervous Laughter and Confession

2008-10-04T15:24:00.001-04:00

I think one of my favorite moments in doing comedy is when you get that nervous laugh from the audience. It's a laugh of recognition--recognition of the fact that you've spoken an uncomfortable truth and that the audience is worried about just how far you'll take this line of thought.

Comics of every stripe, whether Irish or urban or redneck or borscht belt, have all recognized the power in uncomfortable laughter. Some stand-up comedians make their whole careers about pushing audiences out of their comfort zones and into the funny but uncomfortable truths about their lives that they would rather not admit.

Part of being human, I guess, is dealing with those parts of ourselves that we can't ignore and may not be able to change in significant ways but wish we could hide or forget. But I think when we can at least laugh about those "less than wonderful qualities" in ourselves in the company of other people, we acknowledge our common foibles and frailties and begin to take some power over them. The laughter is an admission of our imperfections and maybe a bit of a challenge to deal with them better. Laughing about our faults and sharing in the laughter with others keeps us from feigning perfection or taking ourselves too seriously but challenges us in a way that doesn't make us feel guilty or despicable.

This type of laughter is a bit like going to confession without being slathered with guilt. And, not surprisingly, admitting our flaws, even by laughing about them, gives us the opportunity to begin to deal with the truths that have now been exposed for all the world to see.

21st Century Friendship, Facebook, and Incarnation

2008-07-14T14:10:00.003-04:00

I was invited to be someone's "friend" on Facebook. So I decided to join and filled out all the obligatory profile stuff. Maybe it's just me, but something about this strikes me as strange. All of my explorations of spirituality lead me toward being vulnerable and willing to accept and interact with the vulnerable other in order that we may both experience a fuller participation in life and the divine dance.

But posting pix and profiles and trading news doesn't seem very intimate and vulnerable. I suppose it could be if you're willing to risk really putting your interior out there on the web for all the world to see. Still, call me old-fashioned but I like talking face-to-face and being able to hug a friend or give them a pat on the back or a back rub when they need encouragement. But, given how mobile we are and how spread to the four winds, this may have to suffice for much of friendship in the modern context.

So is prayer and worship more than asking to be God's friend? Is prayer embodied and thus more vulnerable and intimate? Or is God so "other" that the best relationship we can have is something akin to Facebook? I know incarnation helped us see God's love more clearly and made it more personal. But even with Jesus sitting at God's right hand and sending the Holy Spirit, sometimes I wish I could experience God with flesh on. In the here and now. Or is that the role of the church? If it is, I think we're not doing a very good job sometimes of putting flesh on God's love and reaching out to people who are lonely and detached from everyone.

Let me know what you think.

Frank

Upcoming Workshops

2008-03-31T11:17:00.005-04:00

Frank will be presenting at two conferences in the Pittsburgh area in April, 2008.

On April 8th, Frank will lead a workshop entitled Spirituality for Youth and Young Adults in a Post-Modern Context at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. The focus will be on how to invite young people into a spiritual relationship with God and how to take advantage of the desire/need of post-modern youth to enter into mystery and to reject the absolutes of modernism. This workshop looks at a variety of spiritual disciplines, engaging ways to teach them, and approaches to introducing subjects that are new and unknown to young people without talking down to them.

Also, on April 26th, Frank will be a co-presenter at the Conference
Toward Religious Inclusivity: Beyond ADA to Full Participation at Southminster Presbyterian Church. Frank's topic will be Helping People Find Their Voice When Speech is a Challenge.

Email me if you need registration details or more information.

http://www.pts.edu/CE%20Flyer%20JiJo%20Spring%202008.pdf

http://www.spchurch.org/tri-information.pdf

Incarnation--The Ultimate Christmas Gift

2006-12-14T10:22:00.000-05:00

The amazing thing about Christmas is that it demonstrates God’s desire to play in our back yard. We are at once God’s playground, God’s playmates, and God’s children. God is parent, companion, and Creator. God wants to act in us, through us and with us.

And the cost of this incarnation is unimaginable. Think about having infinite possibility at your disposal and deciding to limit yourself to our mere human capacities, our frailness, our fallenness, our death. God knew the cost of incarnation was pain, suffering and death. But God also wanted to see Creation through our eyes--to revel in a sunset, to feel the touch of a warm breeze on bare skin, to know the love of family and friends. And so God came to us, and became one of us-the babe, the son of Mary.

In our flesh, through the God/Man Jesus, God accomplished perfect love and compassion in a way that we could never have done and removed the barriers that stood between God and humanity. Jesus managed to hear and understand God through and in spite of his humanity and to live God’s will in spite of an incomplete knowledge limited by human capacity, saying of certain things that he did not know the answer but only the Father knew. Jesus demonstrated for us the power possible within the limits of human life when that life is united with God’s spirit. And he invited us to live such a life, one powered by Holy Spirit.

Prior to the coming of Christ, the Spirit was not a constant presence in human life, not the ever-available tether to God which came to us and for us at Pentecost. But thanks to God’s self-sacrificing incarnation, we now have the ability (although attenuated by our sin-tainted natures) to live lives constantly connected and united with God. That is the awesome consequence of incarnation-the priceless gift of Christmas.

On Spiritual Direction

2006-09-25T16:37:00.000-04:00

After such a long hiatus, fueled by a call to a new church and the need to attend to my new duties, I would love to offer something pithy and real, some words of great import.

But words will, no doubt, fail me when I try to describe the events of last week. I spent last week in a training session on spiritual direction and the immense honor and the awesome responsibility of sharing someone's most intimate experiences of God is all but indescribable.

I can think of nothing more sacred than employing this art of listening with the aid of Holy Spirit as individuals or a small group describe their experience of God for the purpose of helping them to better see the presence of God in their lives and to listen for the next step to which God is calling them. To sit with someone as they relate their experience of the Holy and to try and help them discern where and how God is at work in their lives is a wonderfully daunting task. But fortunately it is God's Spirit who is actually the spiritual director and we who are privileged to witness the work of God in the lives of others.

So many of the things mentioned in earlier writings here come into play in spiritual direction--paying attention to God-given desires, discerning what God is up to and how to get in on it, listening for an indication of that next step God gives us, making space in our busy pursuit of religion to actually have a conversation with God--all of these things are brought into play as directees and directors enter into the presence of the Holy together.

So what is to keep Spiritual Direction from just being escape into our imagination? If it's just about people sharing their experience of God from their point of view, how do we know if any of it is real? Basically, it is up to both the director and directee to listen for the voice of Spirit as the stories of one's life are related, grounding them in scripture, theology and tradition while still being open to the new thing that God may wish to bring forth. The difference here is that we are not just talking about God but relating details of our personal experience of and relationship with God.

So spiritual direction avoids the realm of talk about God which often enters into discussions of theology, belief systems, dogma and tradition. Spiritual direction is about entering into a relationship of sharing deeply one's actual experiences of God for the purpose of learning more about ourselves and the desires of the one who created us as we are.

As such, this is a daring adventure that cannot be entered into without significant investment of one's self and a willingness to reveal what lies at the depths of one's soul. The rewards are great but the risk is ultimate in that one who truly desires to know God and to be completely open to God can hold nothing back in the end. Of course, no one starts out at such a level of complete openness and honesty and often much time is required in order to reach the point of being so vulnerable and so completely transparent. This level of transparency can only happen when one comes to know the sheer depth of God's grace and when one understands the cross as a measure of the willingness of God to do whatever it takes to be in relationship with us.

The advantage of spiritual direction is that trained directors (and even novices like me) can often observe things about the way you tell your story that remain hidden to you. These little revelations are often the keys to opening up deep, hidden pockets of self-knowledge and ways of being with God that would otherwise remain obscured.

If you sincerely desire to know God more intimately, spiritual direction may be worth considering as a way of getting beyond your own limits of understanding God and becoming open to the ways God seeks to be present in your life.

Desire can be a good thing!

2006-07-27T15:57:00.000-04:00

You'd think we were Buddhists! In meditating, Buddhists often "vow to extinguish desire," believing that attachment to wants, cravings, and our will creates suffering. So many Christians I encounter in classes and retreats think it is wrong to have desires. In a misguided attempt to "deny themselves and follow [Christ]," they attempt to live a life with no desires and as a result lead passionless lives.

Contrast that with Scriptures which declare that God longs to "give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed." (Psalm 20:4) Now I'm not suggesting, with some Christians, that if you just follow God, you will soon be healthy, wealthy, and wise. After all, the Lord we follow was homeless and died a horrible death. But there are many references in Scripture that lead me to conclude with Augustine and Ignatius that our deepest authentic desires are God-given and reflect who we were created to be.

To this end, Ignatius has retreatants explore and ask for what they desire while making the Spiritual Exercises. In her book, Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings, author Janet Ruffing maintains that by praying for what we think we desire, we come to find out what we truly desire. In the beginning, some of the things we may ask of God don't reflect who we truly are in God. But as we examine and receive the things we think we desire, and find that some of those things have meaning for us and others don't, we find out more about who we are. Praying for what we think we desire helps us to sort things out until we find out what we truly desire. And as we find out our deepest authentic desires, we learn more about who we are, who we were created to be, and about the God who made us that way.

So let us live lives full of passion for Christ, desiring him whose desire for us led him through the cross and the tomb to an eternity where all may feast with him at the kingdom banquet. Let us, despite our sin, our dimness of sight, and our human frailty, petition Heaven with our desires until we come to know our deepest desires and our deepest selves and hence desire the one who made us thus.

Amen.

Grounded spirituality can be very earthy

2006-07-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was not turning out to be a great day. Although I always enjoy the conversations and musings of the Spirituality and Prayer Group which I lead each Thursday morning, I was immediately brought down by news of my father's continuing health problems. Despite all of the new insights gained in our discussion of Eugene Peterson's Christ Plays in 10,000 Faces, I was really bummed out by the phone call I received right at the end of our discussion.

So, after praying for the group and sending them out in God's name in the power of the Holy Spirit to see what ministry God would have them participate in, I tried to discern what it was that God would have me do in that time and place.

My prayers turned to lament. Like David of old, I opened the pain in my heart to God, figuring that God is big enough to handle my anger and woundedness and disappointment. And the prayers helped as I sensed that God did indeed hear just how troubled I was. But my mood did not brighten. There was no lifting of burdens. Just a heavy silence in the presence of a God who understands and cares for me.

But then I walked into one of the bathrooms in the church and noticed that the toilet was clogged. Fortunately there was nothing smelly or yucky about the sight that greeted me. Just a toilet that refused to flush and was therefore not useful to me or the kids attending a daycamp at the church this week.

It occurred to me that I couldn't do anything about my father's health or any other of a number of problems I had taken to God in prayer. But I could fix this toilet. That was a difference I could make.

So I walked down the hall and found a plumber's helper in the janitor's storage closet and I did the one thing I was empowered to do at that particular time and place. And as the water swirled down in a satisfying gush, I laughed at the discovery that my burdens had seemingly been flushed away as well.

In that moment, I rediscovered something I knew but which needed to be reinforced for me in a very concrete way--that spirituality is a mixture of prayer and reflection coupled with down to earth actions that God puts before us.

If we seek to know God's will for our lives and do the simple things that God puts before us--no matter how simple, unlikely, or even detestable--God will then show us the next step to take toward an eternity of love.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Unreflective Lives

2006-07-10T16:05:00.000-04:00

Can any of us blessed with the gift of sight imagine going through our entire lives without looking in a mirror? Most of us make sure to catch sight of ourselves before we would ever even conceive of venturing out where others can see us. We want to make sure we’ve addressed the horrors of a “bad hair day” or that we don’t go off to a meeting or interview with something green stuck between our teeth. Chances are we check ourselves out in the mirror several times a day, at least every time we venture into the rest room. Some of us have a mirror hanging in our offices or keep a compact mirror in our desk or purse. And yet many people go through life without ever stopping to reflect on who they are, why they are here, what their relationship is to God or the universe. They live unreflective lives.

In his book Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton wrote that “there is no greater tragedy in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relationship with realities outside and above us.” (p. 17) In other words, we need to reflect on our lives, our relationships with God and others, and how we spend our time, in order to be sure that we don’t live lives devoid of meaning spent focusing our attention on things that are of no real consequence.

Spirituality, then, is that process by which we converse with God and seek to discern God’s presence and God’s intentions for us so that we don’t spend a lifetime in empty pursuits that are not grounded in God’s purpose for creating us in the first place. To fail to look in the mirror and, worse yet, to fail to regard the life of Christ and to see what it means to live a life that is both fully human and fully divine, is to doom ourselves to spend a lifetime marooned, adrift on a sea of emptiness, and to never truly be grounded in the One who is the ground of all being.

Let us live lives of reflection, not spent endlessly admiring our own image like Narcissus, but rather seeking through Christ to begin to discern the image of God in which we were created.

Come away to a quiet place: Being responsible by going on retreat

2006-07-05T11:43:00.000-04:00

Mark 6 details how Jesus took his disciples on a retreat.

6:30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.
6:31 He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."
For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.
6:32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Apparantly, Jesus saw that the disciples were as busy as Martha in her kitchen in Luke 10 and offered them a needed respite so that they could rest, recharge, and reflect on their work so that they wouldn't just be going through the motions. Perhaps Jesus saw that, like Martha, the disciples were "distracted by [their] many tasks." He invites them to sit at his feet and rest and listen, as Mary did in Luke 10.

Taking time to be in God's loving presence and to evaluate our relationship with God and other people and to reflect on the talents and gifts we have been given and how best to put them to use for the sake of the kingdom is time well spent. Yes, some things might have to wait a bit and some things which seem rather important to us may have to be dispensed with all together. But by being rested and by having our work be informed by spirit, the things we do will be meaningful and will be carried out with purpose. As professional basketball palyers can attest, by taking time to aim for the goal rather than just trying to slop the ball into the basket, they have a much greater chance of hitting the mark. In the same way, by taking time to rest and reflect on God and God's purpose for our lives, we insure that our kingdom work has a greater likelihood of pleasing God and hitting the mark.

Jesus himself frequently went away to pray and to seek God's counsel in order to be sure that his ministry was in line with God's aims for his time on earth. If the Son of God needs time apart, who are we to soldier on and deny ourselves the opportunity to rest and to be grounded and centered in God?

Although taking time off from our daily tasks may seem to us a bit irresponsible, Jesus invites us to rest and reflect so that we can be rested and informed participants in God's ministry, rather than Christian hamsters running on the wheel.

How do you know it's God?

2006-05-31T14:35:00.000-04:00

As I lead groups and talk about spirituality, there's one question that comes up over and over again. The question is "How do I know it's God?" It's a fine question. How do I know the little voice I heard while praying or waiting or listening was God and not something I ate?

There I some tests I use to help distinguish the leading of God's Spirit from my own desires or rationalizations or from other influences.

1. Is it consistent with Scripture? I find that Scripture bears consistent witness to God's desires and actions for humanity and that these dominant themes are outlined very well in Micah 6:8. "He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." So if the answer I seemed to get from God is just and kind and involves my humbly seeking to walk with and follow God, I tend to trust it. Obviously, it is easy for someone to lift out a few verses of Scripture and justify almost any position. But I find the overarching themes outlined in Micah to apply to the broad sweep of God's dealings with and desire for humanity and I tend to trust interpretations of Scripture that are about justice, lovingkindness and seeking God in humility.

2. Does this word or answer lead me to a place of peace? If God desires something of you, even something difficult, I find that you will have a sense of peace about it. That is not to say that we will always like what God asks of us. But if God is truly leading us down a difficult path, we will have the peace of God's presence with us on that journey and will know that God has prepared us and has prepared the way for us. Paul prayed several times to be delivered from his "thorn in the flesh." But ultimately he learned to deal with it and to acknowledge that God's grace was sufficient to get him through. God doesn't promise us an easy life. But God promises to go with us each step of the way and that even the most awful things that happen to us can be used for good if we love God and are called according to his purpose. Just don't let that position be used to let someone use you as a doormat. There is a difference between being willing to be poured out for God's kingdom purposes of healing and allowing ourselves to be abused for no good reason.

3. Does God's community bear witness to the truth of the message you have received? Notice I didn't say "Does your church agree with you?" Jesus, the disciples, countless saints and martyrs, and voices of dissent such as Martin Luther, Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King all found themselves on the wrong side of religious authorities from time to time. But the beloved community, the true Christian witnesses, stood against narrow interpretations of religion that kept people in oppression and that used God to force people into molds that denied the shape God would have them take. If what you hear from God bears witness with the faithful throughout the ages and speaks to the freedom Christ offers from narrow, negative religion, then it is probably trustworthy.

4. Does this idea you think is from God harm other people? When Pastor Jim Jones thought God was telling him to poison his flock with bad Koolaid, that idea was not consistent with Scripture or the witness of the Community of God. And, sick as he was, I doubt it brought him any peace. If the Lord who allowed himself to be broken knowing that our wholeness would be the result tells us to turn the other cheek rather than strike back at others, I think he meant it.
Despite the bloody history of people killing other people in the name of God, I don't believe God calls us to harm each other. Notice that prior to the flood in the Genesis account, even the killing of animals was not allowed. Surely God doesn't mean for us to kill or harm one another in God's name.

These are just a few ways of seeking to know if the voice we hear is trustworthy and of God. We need to test our notions of God's will for our lives against Scripture and community, discerning if our ideas are consistent with the loving and giving God who chooses to give us grace rather than the hard justice we sinful folk deserve. If the little voice tells us to offer grace to one another, there's a pretty good chance God is behind the voice.

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

2006-04-26T10:56:00.000-04:00

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!"

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

2006-04-21T14:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Time to Celebrate!

2006-04-16T08:25:00.000-04:00

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!

Reflections on Body and Blood

2006-04-13T15:00:00.000-04:00

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.

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

2006-04-10T14:45:00.000-04:00

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.

The Spiritual Journey Is Best Walked One Step At A Time

2006-04-09T20:11:00.000-04:00

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

False Spirituality

2006-04-07T13:01:00.000-04:00

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.

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

2006-04-06T18:09:00.000-04:00

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.

The Markan Secret and flying under the radar

2006-04-05T22:35:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-05T13:50:00.000-04:00

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.

Spirituality in search of content

2006-04-04T08:55:00.000-04:00

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.

Reformed Folks: Not So Fasting

2006-04-03T09:29:00.000-04:00

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.

Spirit, Silence, and Prayer in the Reformed Tradition

2006-04-02T21:10:00.000-04:00

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.

Meditation in the Reformed Tradition

2006-04-01T18:27:00.000-05:00

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.

Words about "The WORD"

2006-03-31T18:12:00.000-05:00

At the risk of alienating half of the Christians who post on the internet, I feel the need to raise an obvious point. John Chapter One, that amazing chapter on incarnation says this:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

Now, we hear lots of talk about the "Word of God." A lot of the time, people use this phrase in conjunction with the Bible. But I don't think John is referring to a Bible here. Seems to me he's talking about Jesus Christ, the true Word. So when I use the phrase "Word of God," I'm talking about Jesus. And with many other people of the Reformed faith, I refer to the Bible as a testament to Christ, the True Word Incarnate.

So for me, scripture consists of inspired words that attest to the true Word--words about the Word. I suppose, in a very convoluted and obtuse way, I could be seen as being in agreement with all of the religious folks who insist that people believe in the inerrancy of the Word, since I absolutely affirm the inerrancy of Christ the Word. The scriptures say he was tempted in every way but did not sin. I think that qualifies as inerrant.

As to the inerrancy of scripture, well, I respect these words as the best and most reliable account of God's workings in the world and the best witness to Jesus' inerrant life and ministry.
I believe these inspired words to point us to the perfection of God's use of incarnation to save us fallen humans who cannot help but err. But if you don't mind, I'm going to lift up Jesus as the Word of God--rather than scripture.

Can Ignatius give us a way of experiencing scripture that is Reformed?

2006-03-31T12:09:00.000-05:00

In order to decide, you'll need to be brought up to speed on how Ignatius uses scripture in a prayerful, meditative way. And to understand that, you need to know some history.

Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits, came to understand that God could be found in all things. The former soldier to the royal court of Spain, while recovering from wounds sustained in battle, reflected on two books: The Life of Christ and the Lives of the Saints. Through his reflections, he came to see that he was called not to be a soldier at court but a "Soldier of Christ." Over several months, Ignatius developed a series of principles, prayers, and meditations which over time would come to be what we now know as "The Spiritual Exercises." As he took his college buddies through these exercises over the course of 2-3 years, they too became inflamed with love for Christ and became with Ignatius the founders of the Jesuit Movement.

So what does the founder of the Jesuits offer us that is unique? One of many significant contributions Ignatius made to Christian Spirituality was the practice of imagining oneself within the biblical passage one is studying. In other words, while praying and meditating on a passage such as the story of the Prodigal Son, you allow yourself to be placed in the heart of the story and may be a bystander or perhaps the Prodigal, the older brother or the father. In reflecting on the lessons learned in these encounters, a person is frequently able to discern movements of the spirit and learn what God is trying to say to you. At the end of the scriptural encounter, Ignatius has participants engage in a colloquy or conversation with the characters or directly with God or Christ.

Since for Ignatius, God can be found in all things, it is quite alright to enter into these scripture encounters through one's imagination. And while for Ignatius, the encounter will not function as "Word" to you, it can, nonetheless, be used by God to help you understand areas in your life that are problematic or which the spirit seems to be moving you to pay attention to and thus help you move closer to God's will for you. While using the Spiritual Exercises, which are often done as a 30 day silent retreat with a minimum of 5 hours spent each day in prayer and contemplation, Ignatius would have us seek to know the grace that God wishes to impart to us each day (the gift or problem God wishes to make us aware of that can in turn become a focus of our prayers) and pray for God to grant us that grace. Then, during the nightly Examen (a prayerful examination of one's conscience and the movements of the day) one seeks to discern the next grace that God desires for you, prays for God to impart that grace and makes a resolution concerning how the participant will act on the next day in light of the particular grace God has given and the new graces one discerns that God wishes for their life.

The problem for those of us who are reformed is that all of this is done alone in our own spiritual bubble with God. Two safeguards would make Calvin much happier. (1) We should share our insights and experiences of scripture with the community of faith in order that they may help us see where we may be in error when compared with tradition, theology and the corpus of scripture and with Word as we receive it with the community in the form of preaching in the context of worship. (2) We may need to work with a spiritual director, someone whose expertise and experience in walking faithfully with god we trust and, ideally, someone who is trained to listen to our experience of God and see trends both good and unhealthy and suggest ways that we can explore our experience of God through scripture, reading of theology and classic works on Christianity, and the use of various forms of prayer and spiritual disciplines. By acknowledging our need for other members of the Christian community to help keep us from stepping too far off the path in our walk with God, we can grow in our faith and perhaps help others grow as together we explore how God is at work in the world and in our lives.

A Brief How-To

So if you believe that Reformed folk might actually be able to benefit from Ignatius method of meditation on scripture and attention to the urgings of Spirit, how does this actually work? To actually use this practice in prayer, it is good to read the passage first, preferably even the night before praying on the passage so that it is already working in your subconscious mind. Begin the actual prayer by asking God to grant you the grace that you associate with this passage--the thing that God will want you to receive in order that you may move to a closer and deeper walk with God. Then focus on your breath as a gift of God and let the slow rhythm of each breath help prepare you to truly meditation on the passage of scripture. Then ask God to speak to you in the passage and allow your mind and spirit to take you into the story. Notice the details presented to you. Which character are you or are you just a passive observer? What is happening? Is this event identical to the scriptural account? How does it differ? How do you feel during the encounter? Are you anxious, or peaceful? Allow the story to play out. Then engage the characters in conversation. Or speak directly to God or to Jesus, asking what it is they would show you. This whole encounter generally takes at least 30 minutes. When one is actually making the 30 day spiritual exercises, retreatants generally engage in five sessions daily, each lasting up to one and one half hours with additional time spent in reflection and spiritual direction. This is a tremendous way to discern how and where God is leading you at times of transition in your life.

In summary, through Ignatian prayer and the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius teaches us to use imagination, prayer, contemplation and reflection to learn the desires that God has for each of us and to help us learn to allow God's desires for us to become our own. Maybe this is something even we of the Reformed stripe can find useful and edifying.

The full text of the exercises is available at http://www.jesuit.org/images/docs/915dWg.pdf

Calvin and Eucharist: nourishment requires union

2006-03-30T09:32:00.000-05:00

I guess you know you're truly reformed when you spend hours reading Calvin on Eucharist just for fun. But the area of Eucharist in Calvin's theology is fascinating and enlightening as it says so much about his view of what the Christian life should be.

Among other things, Calvin says that we can get none of the benefits of Christ's work on our behalf unless we "own him." If we are not in Christ, participating in his work and ministry as we are empowered by spirit, then all the things Christ has done on our behalf are useless to us. Similarly, he says that unless we have already been "feeding on Christ," being nourished by him, there is nothing available to us in the Communion meal but bread and wine. He says sinners may eat the meal but all they will get is bread and wine. In other words, without our being united to Christ and drawing our spiritual nourishment and substance from him, Eucharist is an empty ritual and the elements are just so many calories.

When I read this, I was immediately reminded of John Chapter 6. Jesus feeds the 5000 and the people are following him--but for the wrong reasons. The author tells us that the people believe Jesus is sent by God because of the miracle and that Jesus discerns that the people wish to force him to be their earthly king.Jesus tells them that they haven't understood what he has been trying to teach them. That they are only there because of the bread in their bellies. He says they don't understand that the food he wishes to offer them is eternal. That he is the "bread of life come down from heaven" and that unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood, there will be no life in them. At this, the people argue and say "How can this guy say he's from heaven? Isn't that Joe and Mary's boy from down the street?" And since they refuse to see Jesus on God's terms and insist instead on plugging him into their categories, they can't hear his message and end up walking away from him by the thousands. Verse 6:66 (Ironic numbering) says "From that moment many of His disciples turned away and no longer walked with Him."

Jesus, no doubt feeling rather dejected and rejected, turns to the twelve who remain and ask if they, too, will desert him. But Peter, who sometimes really gets it and at other times fails miserably, gets it right in this case. He tells Jesus "Lord, where else could we go? Only you have the words of eternal life." The twelve realize that Jesus is offering eternal nourishment and that there is no other source. Without Jesus, there's only bread and wine and the constant nagging hunger that carbohydrates and alcohol can't begin to assuage.

Calvin and Peter remind us that Christians starve themselves unless they are continually drawing from the eternal food of Christ. And unless we are truly participating in him, ever seeking his Word and counsel and comfort, spending time in his presence, praying without ceasing, we condemn ourselves to starvation and empty ritual, taking in dry bread and sour wine in a fruitless attempt to fill what Augustine calls the "God-shaped hole in our souls."

So let us eagerly come to the Lord's table, feasting daily on the abundant love and grace he longs to feed us, grafted into his body and engaged in the ministry that he would do in the world. And, like beggars who have hit the mother lode, let us tell all the world of the abundance which we have shared in Christ and invite those starving for meaning and substance and true life into the feast Christ has prepared for the whole world.

Does it have to be "either/or?"

2006-03-29T12:16:00.005-05:00

Blogger Jason Stellman posted this morning:

"Evangelicals love Christ the Head, but they're ambivalent about his Body, the Church (except when seen as a place where individuals can gather to encounter God in the same room)."

"Reformed spirituality, on the other hand, cannot abide such decapitation. It is in the Church's ministry of Word and Sacrament that the believer finds the grace that he needs to continue trudging through this wilderness on his way to glory."

"For my own part, all the quiet time in the world cannot replace the faithfully preached Gospel, the bread and the cup, and the communion of saints each Lord's Day."

While I think Stellman's derogatory stereotype of Evangelical worship is certainly not universally true, I agree that quiet time cannot replace the elements of reformed worship that Stellman names. But I don't see why it has to be an either/or situation. Jean Calvin spoke about "mystical union with Christ," the way each believer is called into the ministry and life of the trinity as a result of Christ's incarnation. By taking our very flesh into the Godhead in the ascension, our flesh serves as an invitation to participate in this mystical union. Each us us is called to participate in the ministry of Christ.

Certainly, we can't just go off and have our separate "God experience" without any regard to corporate worship with the rest of the body of Christ. And I certainly affirm the fact that for those of us who are reformed, our chief mode of revelation is in the Word preached in the context of community as we worship together. But that doesn't mean that we check our spirituality at the door after worship.

Calvin, Luther, Bucer, Zwingli and other reformers would certainly call us to a rigorous life of prayer and devotion outside of the context of worship but always informed by it.

Call me crazy, but I think a lively personal relationship with God and participation in the community of faith fed by worship and fellowship and preaching and Eucharist are not imcompatible.

The Jesus Prayer: Even reformed folk should approve

2006-03-29T10:35:00.000-05:00

For more than a millenia, Christians, especially those of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, have been praying a simple and effective prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Can there be any harm in such a prayer? The elements of the prayer are certainly in keeping with reformed theology. It affirms the lordship of Christ, affirms that we cannot depend on our own goodness to save us but are ever in need of God's grace and mercy, and acknowledges that even though Christ has accomplished salvation for us all, we still sin and need forgiveness. We reformed Christians (Calvin's miserable worms in need of God) are like the apostle Paul in that we know what we should do and don't do it and know what we shouldn't do and do that very thing. The content of this prayer is hopelessly reformed in nature.

So, if noone of the reformed faith can object to the content, why haven't we taken to this prayer? Two reasons come to mind. First, this is generally a prayer said by Christians outside of the context of community and worship. Since reformed folk ascribe to the view that God's revelation generally comes to us in the context of worship as the Word is rightly preached to the community, we have shied away from individual spirituality. We understand the wisdom of such a view in light of David Koresh and Jim Jones and others who have thought they received a word from the Lord that led to disaster as no community held them accountable or insisted that they examine their revelation in the context of worship, scripture, and tradition. But Jesus himself affirmed the rightness of this prayer when he condemned the self-righteous prayer of the pharisee and upheld the virtue of the tax collector's simple prayer: "Lord, have mercy on me a sinner." In this story, each of these figures was coming to pray to God individually and not in the context of communal prayers. So, surely we can pray such a prayer to God on our own in our prayer closet, whether it be our car on the way to work or in a magnificent cathedral.

The second reason reformed people might reject the use of this prayer is that it is generally said as a "breath prayer," repeated over and over with each breath as a way of entering into God's presence in an embodied way. Reformers rejected much of the formulaic prayer of the Catholic tradition and questioned ritual for ritual's sake, taking seriously Jesus' injunction against the use of "vain repitition" in prayers. But how can calling on the name of the Lord, asking for mercy, and acknowledging our place before Christ and our need of Him be a vain repition? Certainly, at the very least, it is no worse than the weekly thoughtless repitition of the Lord's prayer many in our congregations engage in. And, at best, it serves as a grounding, a spiritual centering in Christ that over and over asserts in our very souls the need for Christ, "in whom we live and move and have our being."

On a personal note, this prayer has gotten me through some tough times. When I received news that my father had suffered a heart attack and jumped in the car to drive the 250 miles between us, I recognized that all things are in God's hands and that I personally was powerless to affect the situation save through prayer. I needed my Lord desperately and depended on his mercy and care in the same way I depend on him for my salvation. So when something inside me prompted me to pray, it was quite natural that much of my prayer for those 4 hours in the car took the form of the Jesus prayer. The result of praying in this way for me was a deep sense of peace, a sense that God was in control, and that whatever I would face on my arrival at the hospital would be alright because Christ would stand beside me.

Fortunately, my father ended up being fine. But I was transformed by that time in prayer and have come to include the Jesus Prayer as a frequent part of my own devotional life in God. Each time I pray this prayer, I experience the peace of knowing that "in life and in death, I belong to God." And I am reminded that we are called to participate in God's ministry in the world through Christ and to get in on what God is doing rather than coming up with our own ministries and hoping God will approve.

Isn't that an oxymoron?

2006-03-27T09:36:00.000-05:00

Many would agree with T. Hartley Hall of Union Seminary that reformed spirituality is an oxymoron. It is certainly true that people of reformed faith have historically been very suspicious of any sort of individual spirituality. In his book Reformed Spirituality, Howard Rice says that we are reluctant to even talk about our experience of God. But since we are all called into relationship with God, I think we of the reformed persuasion still have a responsibility to provide seekers with tools to enhance their walk with God. So one of my major goals in ministry is to provide my congregation with meaningful information on spirituality which is grounded in the Reformed Theological tradition reflecting our belief that we are called to participate in the ministry of Christ and that through His incarnation, life and ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension in the flesh, Christ invites us into the very life of the Trinity.

The problem with spirituality

Spirituality is a word that has come to mean all things to all people. But by spirituality, I mean the experience of relationship with God through interraction with God's Spirit in our lives. The whole testament of the Bible and all of the history of God's interraction in our world demonstrates God's desire to be in relationship with us, both personally and in community. Although I agree with the need for community and share some of the traditional suspicion of individual spirituality which has ever been a part of our tradition, I think the reason why Presbyterians are often called "the frozen chosen" is that we have neglected for too long the personal aspects of relationship with God. God really wants to be in relationship with us. Indeed, though the cross has a multitude of meanings, it is quite clearly an indication of the immensity of God's love and God's desire to relate to us, regardless of the cost.

In Christ Plays in 10,000 Places, Eugene Peterson defines spirituality as simply "the Christian life." He also says that if our life is truly in Christ and our ministry is a participation in the ministry of Christ, then the goal of spirituality has to be looking around to see what God is doing through Christ in the world, and then getting in on what God is doing.

That, I believe, is the essence of Reformed Spirituality. And, in addition to Word proclaimed in community, sharing the sacraments, prayer, and assembling together to offer praise to God, I believe there is a place in Reformed spirituality for listening to God and looking for what God is doing through the use of classical spiritual disciplines.

Well, the ceiling of the church didn't cave in and I haven't been struck by lightning so maybe I can proceed with that project.

I'll keep you posted.