Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Religion

All posts relating to religion, including those on the relationship of religion to other fields, such as science and politics

  • Choosing Pastors and Church Continuity

    Choosing Pastors and Church Continuity

    churchandpeopleLast week I encounter two posts that got me wanting to say something about the same topic: pastoral leadership and church mission and continuity. The first was The United Methodist Church Should Give Up Its Game of Musical Chairs, and the second was not obviously related, 5 Reasons Why the Sunday Sermon Is Boring (both HT Dave Black Online). I do tend to see them as related, and I’ll explain why.

    The United Methodist Church has an approach to assigning pastors. We call it itinerancy, because it grew out of the system of circuit riders, but we Methodists should admit that it bears very little resemblance either in theory or in application to circuit riding. And yes, it has its problems, sometimes serious ones. Bigger churches get preference. Places that are well established and have good income are more likely to get experienced and effective pastors. Places where the ground to be ploughed is hard often get pastors who are tired or inexperienced.

    I would also say that quite frequently churches get what they deserve under this system. If a congregation is lively and active and wants to impact its community for good and for God, then it will often get a similarly lively pastor. I once heard a United Methodist district superintendent say she wasn’t going to waste a good pastor on a church that wasn’t going anywhere.

    But the system has the bottom line problem of all systems: People. One can write a similar list of problems for almost any system. A call system often results in similar disparities, this time because the same pastors the bishop would have assigned to more active or larger churches are chosen by such churches, while the smaller or less active churches are left to choose between the remnants. On the other hand, pretty much all systems have at least one plus: People touched by God’s grace.

    We often believe we can rewrite the rules for church polity and thus solve the church’s problems. But our rules do not solve problems. Our rules provide a framework for us to live in community. Yes, they can encourage or discourage various kinds of behavior, but they will not make a successful church. For the church to be successful, we need to proclaim the gospel and act on it in our community. That will require discernment and listening to the Holy Spirit. There are independent congregations that find their way and there are churches with a pastor assigned by a bishop that do so. There are house churches that proclaim the gospel. There are also house churches that go nowhere. The building, furniture, and human rules won’t make it all work.

    So what about those boring sermons. How does that relate?

    I’m glad you asked! The sermon is another point at which we hope certain rules or procedures will solve the problem and make the sermon “work.” But like a pastoral call, we get stuck with what happens. If the called or appointed pastor is a good preacher, we’ll get a good sermon. I know there are classes on homiletics and good books on sermon preparation and presentation. I even publish one. But some people simply aren’t preachers. I know more than one person who was a deep thinker, perhaps an excellent discussion leader, certainly someone who did her or his homework, yet the sermon was just not the right medium for the person.

    But the pastor has to present a sermon!

    And there is our problem with both elements. We have churches that are pastor centered. Why is it that a church cannot function with a change of pastor? Why is it that a church cannot function in the absence of a pastor? Why is it that a change of pastor will bring active ministries crashing down?

    In all cases, I would say, the ministries are too pastor-centered. We are the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). Paul doesn’t tell us that the pastor is the body of Christ and we are the pastor’s minions. Rather, we are the body of Christ and “pastor” is a gifting and calling exercised within that body. A pastor won’t necessarily be a good preacher. And despite those who advocate pastor-teachers (and there are many of those), I believe that the two exist separately as well as together, though the work overlaps. Both pastors and teachers (in one person or not) equip the saints (Ephesians 4:12) for the work of ministry. The means may be different, but the goal is the same: To produce disciples who go forth and minister.

    Now teaching and preaching are not necessarily the same, either. One friend of mine told me that the sermon was more a form of art than of teaching. It carried the worship service forward in an artistic way. I don’t really object to this except to say that if this is worship in the form of an art, it shouldn’t be an individually-centered thing, but rather something in which the whole congregation participates.

    I would suggest that the needed response to the problems addressed in both these articles is to make our churches less pastor-centered. We need to spread out both the work and the leadership. If a church needs to call a new pastor, they should have continuing, active ministries waiting for the new pastor’s added touch, not for him to revive before moving forward.

    Am I against pastors? No! Am I against professional pastors? In some cases. I see a problem when churches that are small spend too much money on having a professional pastor. There is a place for a lay-led congregation or a pastor who is bi-vocational. But whether the pastor is a full-time worker who is paid, or a lay person volunteering part-time, the church shouldn’t center on that one person. Pastoring or teaching should equip others and help them find their place of service in the church and in the community. Further, churches need to recognize this as work. When the pastor sits down in his office with someone for an hour or so, that’s not wasting time. That’s equipping. When the pastor teaches people how to visit and encourage others, that’s not trying to get out of work, she’s doing her job.

    I’d further suggest that we, as a church, should not reserve ordination or commissioning for pastors. We should discover the gifts God has given to each member and commission them for that service in the body. Do you have gifts of administration? Let’s pray over you and lay hands on you commissioning you to administer the church office. Do you have the gift of encouragement? Let’s pray over you and lay hands on you, commissioning you to go out and encourage, recognized by and supported by your church.

    Recognizing, equipping, sending! Sounds like fun! And we might even find that we had fewer discouraged pastors if we did it.

     

  • Guest Post: Thoughts on the SDA General Conference Decision about Ordination of Women

    I thought about commenting on the recent vote by the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference on allowing it’s divisions to choose whether to ordain women. As an ex-SDA, however, and one who works with people on both sides of this issue, I thought it might be a bit rude.

    I just received the post that follows from an SDA young person, thoughtfully responding to the vote. I think there are elements here that should be considered by people of all denominations. If you change the issue, don’t the underlying problems nonetheless remain? – HN

     

    On Wednesday the 2015 General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists made a historic decision on the topic of women’s ordination. On Wednesday, the General Conference stopped representing me.

    I am a 20-something male who could be considered a “card-carrying” SDA: raised in the church, attended an SDA academy and university, and am even a lifelong vegetarian. I’m not a pastor, though at one point I nearly became one. I have worked in Adventist summer camps for over 5 summers, and am involved in music and technological ministry. But what right do I have to speak on women’s ordination? Not much. This vote, however, was not about women’s ordination.

    To make my stance perfectly clear: I am fully supportive of women being ordained in the SDA church and given full privileges in ministry, with no limitations or compromises. I am not a theologian, though, and my intention is not to add to the body of arguments already made for or against it. To me, the deeper, more sinister strain beneath this vote is the clear expression of mistrust that the delegates of the world church have demonstrated towards its members who are called to the ministry of the Gospel. As a church that advocates that all members are ministers, this means that the governing body of my church no longer trusts me.

    Let’s look at the actual measure voted upon:

    “Is it acceptable for division executive committees, as they may deem it appropriate in their territories, to make provision for the ordination of women to the gospel ministry?”

    The delegates voted 1,381-977 against the measure, but what does that mean? Perhaps more importantly, what does it not mean? A ‘yes’ vote would not mean that a division would ordain women. To me a ‘yes’ says that, given an issue to which there are clearly multiple theological and cultural interpretations, regions would have the right to take into consideration the needs of their members and the path that would be most effective in spreading the message of Christ to the world. A ‘yes’ vote, then, could be conscientiously given by a delegate who did not themselves agree with the ordination of women in their division, but wanted to extend that right to those in other divisions.

    The 1,381 ‘no’ votes, however, did not leave room for debate or choice. The GC delegates were under no illusion as to which way the vote would have gone had it been about directly approving ordination without regards to gender across the entire world church. Given a global GC approval was virtually impossible with the current body of delegates, a ‘no’ vote sent a clear message that their interpretation of this issue is the only valid interpretation, and this should be imposed on the global church body. Look at any major tweets or article about the ordination vote and you will see many well-meaning yet inconsiderate replies praising God for keeping His church together or making His will clear through the vote. Meanwhile, the disenfranchised received an ‘official’ slap in the face from the very organization to which they have dedicated their careers and service.

    As someone who can still be considered a (barely) young person in the Adventist church, my global church has told me they do not trust me to think for myself. More insultingly, they have told me I should not regard my close female friends who are dedicated ministers in the church, pastors or otherwise, as highly as the men, independently of the quality and sincerity of their service. In this same GC session, mission has been emphasized, and reports have been given on young people leaving the church. Countless discussions throughout the years have tried to ascertain why this is. Well, as a ‘biased sample’ of those young people, I will answer that to them right now: It’s because you don’t trust us. You won’t empower us. You want us to be nominally part of your mission, but you want us to walk, talk, and sing like you. Yet we see right through your facade. We were attracted to this church because we believe that Jesus is coming soon, and because we want to do our part to get the world as excited as we are. Then we found out that you won’t let us, and we wonder if this mission we were ready to give our lives for was really the mission that you represent at all. Then we ask questions you won’t answer, or that you answer too quickly. Then we doubt. Then we leave.

    Fortunately, not all is lost. Some unions within divisions of the church, such as the Pacific Union, have courageously approved ordination of women within their union. These rights may not extend beyond those unions, but they shine as little lights that will not stand for inequality within the body of Christ. We (of all denominations) need to stand for those who want to spread the light of Jesus but have been discouraged, disenfranchised, or belittled. In my (and I still consider it my) church, I need to stand by the women who are fighting to serve in a church that does not always acknowledge that fight, and I will not blame those who for these reasons feel compelled to leave. Personally, my fight is still from within. I believe that being an ‘Adventist’, one who hopes for the second coming of Jesus, is something far beyond what a large, fragmented, human governing body can define it to be. This is evident in the many accepting local churches and wonderful individuals in the Adventist church of all genders, races, and cultures. Even if I cannot be represented fully by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, I am represented wholly by Christ and His advent. My mission as a Christian and a Seventh-day Adventist is a reflection of Christ’s mission: to reach all the world, without prejudice or compromise.

    I’d like to end with a quote from one of the founders of the Adventist denomination, founded about 150 years ago. Her writings have been used and abused on both sides of this issue and many others, so I will simply leave you this paragraph unabridged and without personal commentary. God bless you, whatever you believe, and thank you for reading.

    Then as the children of God are one in Christ, how does Jesus look upon caste, upon society distinctions, upon the division of man from his fellow man, because of color, race, position, wealth, birth, or attainments? The secret of unity is found in the equality of believers in Christ. The reason for all division, discord, and difference is found in separation from Christ. Christ is the center to which all should be attracted; for the nearer we approach the center, the closer we shall come together in feeling, in sympathy, in love, growing into the character and image of Jesus. With God there is no respect of persons.

    Ellen G. White, 1st Selected Messages, pg. 259

  • Finding Boundaries: Confessional Schools and Exploration Related to Publishing

    200bannerAt least I’m going to relate it to publishing. Which, if you think about it, is what I do to almost everything.

    J. R. Daniel Kirk has announced he will be leaving Fuller (James McGrath comments here). You can get a feel for Dr. Kirk’s comments in Homosexuality Under the Reign of Christ on the Baker Academic web site. Yes, that’s old, but if you want to catch up with the details of the news, start from McGrath’s article. I’m already way behind.

    This reminded me of a post I wrote shortly after Pete Enns lost his position at the time, Confessional Schools vs. Freedom to Explore. There is very little I’d want to add to that post, though that won’t keep me from writing many words. I would like to note that there are also boundaries to the exploration in schools that are secular, progressive, or moderate. The boundaries are just set up differently. If I might summarize, despite the fact that I had my own problems with a confessional school, as a student rather than as faculty, the pastoral concerns and responsibilities of an organization do mean that there will be some limits. Each time a professor is fired, resigns under pressure, or is edged out of one of the more conservative seminaries we have a storm of reaction. While I often sympathize with the person fired, I look back at my own choice. When I found I could no longer support the denomination in which I grew up, I left. Many years later I found another.

    I even publish some authors who have lost jobs under these circumstances, and I appreciate their work very much. The fact that I publish their work should let you know that I don’t think their voices should be silenced. But while I’m often concerned by the particular boundaries set, I don’t see that confessional schools can exist without boundaries, nor do I see that any school actually does, whether confessional or not. There is a great deal of variety provided by the simple fact that there are many, many schools out there and students are not restricted to just one. And the fact is that the people who lose their jobs in these high profile cases generally find something elsewhere. I think in many cases the school doing the firing (or pressuring to resign) is impoverished because of it, but nonetheless, academic exchange goes on.

    And that leads me to publishing. I have been told that I publish an extraordinary range of opinions for an individually owned publishing house. I haven’t really done any sort of survey to find out how true this is, but I do know that I have quite a variety. I sometimes wonder if certain pairs of my authors would get along well if I got them in the same room. I know some of them would differ vigorously, but would they find the dialogue constructive?

    Some people assume that I do this because of a high degree of tolerance. Perhaps I am tolerant. I’m not entirely sure. But that’s not the reason for the variety.

    I publish a variety of views because I find value in those views. I think they need to be considered. I believe there are few things more dangerous than coasting along with a trend either spiritually or intellectually. I heard this argument when I was in graduate school. Why are you writing that topic? Everyone now is trending away from that view. My question was whether that trend was right. Sometimes it was, for example in reigning in rampant parellomania. In other cases not so much. In some areas I’ve seen the trend roll in like a tide and then recede again, even further out than it was at the time I was urged to ride with it.

    A trend can go in any direction, and the trend can be different according to the faith tradition in which you are involved, the school you attend, or your country/region of residence, amongst other factors. One of the weaknesses of academic activity, in my opinion, is that even in with the internet, people in the various streams tend not to talk to one another seriously. Certain ideas are simply dismissed without full consideration. I might be willing to assume that the ideas had received full consideration, and thus had been rejected on a broad basis, but when I look back at the writings of those who should have been providing that serious consideration, I really don’t see it.

    In the hard sciences I see the boundaries much more clearly. There are specific ways that one needs to challenge those boundaries. Find new data. Do experiments. Do field work. Do the hard detailed analysis that is required to challenge a consensus. But in social sciences or historical study, I often see simply a drift of consensus as I read.

    I experienced this in graduate school in the following contrast:

    Form criticism is a new, wonderful tool and ought to be used all over the place. My question: Why?

    vs.

    Form criticism is a tool of the devil designed to destroy our faith in the inspiration of scripture. My question: Why?

    I’ve come to view form criticism as a tool which is occasionally useful when used in the appropriate context on materials that have, in fact, been orally transmitted, and in a cautious way with results stated with care. I found it difficult to find the details necessary to come to that position and examine it when I did. The ratio of assertion to explanation and critique is somewhat unbalanced, in my opinion.

    Pastoral concern can cover a multitude of sins. It doesn’t have to. It shouldn’t. It does. Protecting people from ideas is usually not a good strategy.

    In quite a few study materials used in the United Methodist Church, for example, I see scholarly consensus views thrown out with no other explanation or support than the fact that lots of scholars believe those things. What’s the problem? You may be wondering what should be taught if not consensus views when obviously a full survey of everybody’s position is excluded for lack of time. Frequently when I talk to members and ask why they believe a certain thing they’ll respond, “Isn’t that what scholars believe?” (Which scholars? Why?)

    How about spending a little bit of time explaining how scholars come to those conclusions? Perhaps you could discuss why it is that others disagree. I’ve noticed my pastor recently even in sermons noting alternative positions. The other day he mentioned that most scholars believe Mark was the first gospel. Then he also said that position is being challenged and that he thought it was possible that the consensus won’t hold. That lets the congregation know that there is lively discussion going on. If it was a class with a bit more time, perhaps one could talk about how these things are argued by historians and biblical scholars.

    So not only do I find value in these various views, even (or especially) those I disagree with, but I find value in the discussion that results from making people aware of them. Let the dialogue grow!!

  • Notes on Allan Bevere on Worship

    Allan Bevere posts on worship, calling for it to be well-crafted, authentic, and substantive. I quite agree. But …

    Two additional points:

    1) One of the most authentic worship services I ever attended occurred when the praise band failed to show up and one individual put a transparency on the projector (yes, it was THAT long ago!) and started singing. It wasn’t crafted at all. It just happened. The praise band wasn’t well-prepared; they were in another part of the country, having made an error on their calendar. It was certainly authentic and substantive. Sometimes in the search for the perfect worship service we forget that we can’t really make that happen. I could repeat this story many times. (And no, I do NOT believe we should be slip-shod and haphazard in our planning because God can work with anything. God expects us to use the gifts God has given us.)

    2) Well-crafted and authentic must, I believe, come from the discernment of those who minister regarding where they are ministering. Too many people think they can copy worship services to gain particular results. “If we just do it like ________ Church, people will come,” they say. Won’t work. Authentic worship happens when one is acting according to God’s will. Recently I attended a house church service. It was one of the best times with the Lord and with fellow believers I have experienced in many years. It left me charged up to go out and do more for the Kingdom. It was nothing like I have ever experienced in a designated church building, thank God!

    Bottom line: Don’t get stuck on worship categories. Look for what it means to worship in spirit and in truth.

     

  • Preaching from the Old Testament

    Preaching from the Old Testament

    violence and scripture booksNo, I’m not going to do it, but I’m going to ask Dr. Bob Cornwall some questions about it. He’s currently preaching a series in his church from 1st & 2nd Samuel. Bob is one of my Energion authors (see his book list here), and is editor of the two book series we publish in cooperation with the Academy of Parish Clergy, Conversations in Ministry and Guides to Practical Ministry. You can find more information about this event on its Google+ event page.

    I’m going to ask Bob how he handles the authority of the text he is preaching from, and especially whether he will deal with some of the more violent passages and how he will preach from them. There are quite a number of passages in the books of Samuel that could be very troubling to a 21st century conversation.

    This morning, I was reading one of those: 1 Samuel 15. You can read the whole thing if you want to get a general picture, but let me just summarize here. God tells Samuel to pass the order to Saul, King of Israel, that he should go and wipe out the Amalekites. He is supposed to designate them as herem, meaning that they are devoted to destruction, every person, every creature, every thing is to be destroyed. And lest we be tempted to soften the story, we are told that this included men, women, and even nursing babies.

    Saul disobeys God and doesn’t kill everyone. The best of the animals are preserved, and the king is taken captive. Saul blames this on the people. God blames Saul and says he has cut Saul off (or at least Samuel says God says this) from being king over Israel. This story opens the cycle of stories about the conflict between David and Saul, which ends with Saul’s death in battle and David’s accession to the kingdom.

    I have heard this story handled in a number of ways:

    1. Get a modern lesson from it, ignore the gory details, and hope nobody notices. I remember hearing it in my early years taught as a story about obedience. When God tells you to do something, you better do it. When I did ask about the killing, I was told that it was God, so it was OK.
    2. Emphasize the gory details. We’ve all become too cowardly to truly uphold God’s will in the world. (Yes, I’ve actually heard this.) We can just hope folks like this aren’t too serious.
    3. Some things in the Bible are less inspired than others, and this is one of the less inspired. Bloodthirsty people did bloodthirsty things and blamed God.
    4. When people lived in a violent world God worked within their context. So things that might be commanded then could be forbidden now, not because God has changed but because he is staying the same, and working with us where we are.
    5. The Old Testament God was violent. That’s why we stick with the New Testament. (If you take this approach, you should likely avoid texts like most of Revelation and Acts 5:1-11.)
    6. Let’s never read this in church and hope nobody notices.

    I could probably come up with some more given time. I’ll be interested to see how Bob Cornwall handles the text. He’s both a good preacher and accomplished scholar, so I expect his comments to be helpful.

    In the meantime, two things. Following a challenge on a similar text, I wrote two blog posts. The first was a story/dialogue discussing the text, titled The God-Talk Club and the She Bears, on my Jevlir Caravansary fiction blog. (In the God-Talk Club series I write dialogue without any intention of expressing my own point of view. It’s sort of an exercise for me in trying to express several views on a topic.) The second was a homily on the same passage, titled Real Guy Interpretation.

    Finally, I recently interviewed two authors, Allan Bevere, author of a book based on a series of Old Testament sermons he preached titled The Character of Our Discontent, and Alden Thompson, author of Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?. I’m embedding that video below.

  • Getting Literal, Eschatological, Apocalyptic, Even!

    Well, last night my discussion of According to John covered a lot of other ground. In particular, I was looking at the eschatological use of “hour” and “now,” and I suggested that John has a fairly simple eschatology to go with his fairly simple soteriology. I’m not going to rehash all of this. The foundation is found in Chapter 19 of Herold Weiss’s book Mediations on According to John: Exercises in Biblical Theology. For those who might wish to review the video, here it is.

    In the middle of this discussion I got into talking about the ‘L’ word. No, not liberal. Literal. I tell people that we should avoid simply saying that we’re not taking something literal, and get specific about just how we are taking whatever it is. “We don’t take that literally,” has become commonplace in discussions of the Bible in mainline and progressive circles, but often we don’t tell people just what we do with the thing we aren’t taking literally.

    Last night I was talking about something that is fairly simple to pinpoint, symbolic language in a vision report. (Note that you don’t necessarily have to believe that a person has received a divine vision in order to accept a literary category of “vision report.” I do believe people have visions, but the form remains no matter the source.) If we take a vision such as Daniel 7, for example, we have beasts (which represent something), coming up out of the sea (which represents something), onto the land (which represents something), and so forth. “Not taking Daniel 7 literally” means that I don’t believe that Daniel’s vision was about actual creatures coming from an actual sea onto the land. Rather, these beasts represent something else. Rather than taking them literally, one should take them as symbols of something else.

    One of the problems with the way visions are often interpreted is that people drop from the symbolic to the literal. The beasts, the sea, and the land are symbols, sure enough, but when the Son of Man appears in the clouds, that’s literal. But there isn’t any justification in the text for taking one part of the vision literally. One interpreter of Revelation has maintained (actually more than one, but I won’t list) that we should take everything literally that we can in the book, and only treat it as symbolic where that is essential. It’s a vision! It is filled with symbols! The default has to be that anything in the vision is symbolic unless you have good reason to believe that the writer is seeing actual events. And quite bluntly, in Revelation (or the latter chapters of Daniel), you don’t.

    I think a couple of extensions of how symbols might function would be in order, and Revelation provides examples. First, something literal can be used as a symbol. There is no doubt that the seven churches were real places. Under the rule of taking what can be taken literally, we would see the messages as tailored messages to those particular seven churches. But I would argue here that the actual churches are being used symbolically, with the number seven indicating that the messages to the seven churches constitute as a whole a message to the whole church. Various schemes, such as applying the churches to periods of history and their messages as specifically applicable to such times, while interesting, have the potential to lose us part of the message to the whole church. Second, I would use Revelation 12 as an example of where a visionary symbol points not to something physical, but to something spiritual. We might call it a symbol of a symbol.

    It’s a bit more complex to specify how this works in other passages. For example, I would call Genesis 1 liturgy. That is, by most people’s understanding, non-literal. In addition, there are symbols within the liturgical text. This is why I think it’s important to talk about how we understand a passage and why we understand it that way and avoid simply saying that we don’t take it literally. There are many non-literal ways of taking things.

    I will go into these issues in greater detail when I begin my YouTube study on eschatology starting August 17. On August 10 I plan an interview with Dr. Herold Weiss, winding up my study of According to John. I will begin the eschatology study by looking at the landscape of eschatology using Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide by Edward W. H. Vick, and then proceed to eschatological and apocalyptic passages. I talked about this in more detail yesterday.

  • A Note on Sacraments and Sacramental Acts

    Meditations on According to JohnI’ve generated a bit of surprise by my agreement with Dr. Herold Weiss (Meditations on According to John, chapter 18) in last Thursday’s video study from the gospel according to John (not to mention my Sunday School class), that the gospel is not attempting to institute or to teach sacraments.

    As a foundation to this brief note, you might want to either read Weiss’s chapter (pp. 151-158), watch my video (about 1 hr, embedded below), or both. I’m just going to follow up on a couple of items here. I suspect not that many people will watch an hour of me talking, so I will try to make these notes self-contained.

    First, the video:

    My view of the sacraments is simple: I think that there are public actions and rituals that we take that reflect what is happening spiritually. I do not believe that the presence of Jesus in these activities is dependent on having ordained clergy to preside. I don’t believe that the rituals in themselves are valuable.

    The value of sacramental acts is that they help us recognize and participate in the spiritual reality that is behind, in, and through them. Thus if I partake of communion, a shared meal, and then spend the following week withholding food from those in need, or cutting off fellowship from people I don’t like for various reasons, my act of communion has become a dead ritual.

    Weiss discusses the difference between footwashing and communion in his chapter. One has become a sacrament and one a sacramental act, the latter rarely performed. I could perform the ritual act of footwashing, which rarely has the same impact or feeling that it would have had in Jesus’ time, and then go out and refuse to place myself in the service of others. In that case, the act of footwashing would be a dead and empty ritual as well.

    In the video I relate the experience of my own baptism, at which time we celebrated, as Seventh-day Adventists do frequently, by washing one another’s feet. I was partnered with a Chamula gentleman (this occurred in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico when I was nine years old) who had walked for days to be at this event. We were both newly baptized. He laughed when it came time to wash my feet because I had shoes, while he had but sandals, and I had walked a half mile or so as opposed to days. Washing his feet was meaningful to me and has stuck with me.

    Despite my views, however, I don’t go out offering formal services of the Eucharist as an unordained person. Despite the fact that I don’t think the presence of an ordained pastor should be required, this is an act that is, by nature, done in community. As a member of a United Methodist congregation, part of my duty is to act in community.

    At the same time, I believe that I can and should make every meal a sacramental act. The greater joy I get from the celebration of communion in the church congregation is not that I believe God is more present there, but rather that it is an act I perform in community and covenant. Sometimes in order to be in community, we have to do things the way the community does them, whether we think these things are special or not.

    At the same time I have become fully convinced of the concept of open communion, and by this I mean fully open. I have long accepted the notion that when Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11, talks about taking this “unworthily” he is talking about the way in which the celebration is done, not about the character of the person receiving it.

    By nature of its source, in the shared meal, and its institution, which included offering it to Judas as he prepared to betray Jesus, I think this sacramental meal is intended to invite and not to exclude. It is reaching out, not commemorating our special status as members of some inner circle. Thus communion should be offered to all both in church and when we share our meals with others. I question the idea of a Christian sacrament that celebrates membership in the club.

    But, you might say, what about baptism? Surely baptism can’t be for everyone!

    Yes, baptism is different, yet it is different by its very nature. It is the testimony, the ritual representation of our dying with Christ and being raised with him to new life. It is a singular (generally) event. It does not celebrate how we have become special, but rather how we have chosen to give ourselves up and become part of a community, a community that, in turn, reaches out to draw others in.

    And even here we invite anyone who wishes to testify to that, anyone who wishes to become a servant.

    I think this becomes a problem when we see these events as a sort of initiation, bringing us into the club of the special, in which there are other special rituals in which only other special people can take part. The “in group” view of the people of God that many of us have, consciously or not, leads us to misread scripture. The Jews weren’t chosen by God to sit around and be special. They were chosen to be a blessing. Sometimes being chosen isn’t much fun. There’s the great line in “Fiddler on the Roof” when Tevye wonders if God couldn’t choose someone else for a while.

    Christians, who are often anxious to appropriate the promises made to the Jewish people, are not nearly as often anxious to appropriate the calling, the tasks, and the negative responses of others. Being chosen, being “in” with God isn’t necessarily a picnic.

    In conclusion, I suppose I could say that I have a high view of sacramental acts, and that I consider sacraments to be no more and no less. My high view says God is present and active in sacramental acts. The Holy Spirit works in and through them. But just as the rituals of tabernacle and temple didn’t magically accomplish forgiveness and reconciliation, but rather accompanied God’s actions, so these sacramental acts are filled with God’s presence when done “worthily.” (Note: I’m indebted to Jacob Milgrom, author of the Anchor Bible volumes on Leviticus among many other works, for my view of the relationship between ritual and divine action. Milgrom sees this presented, in contrast to some of the surrounding religions, in the way rituals are presented in Torah.)

  • From My Editing Work: The Bible Comes Alive

    From page xvii of Galatians: A Participatory Study Guide by Bruce Epperly —

    When we encounter scripture with heart, mind, and hands, the Bible comes alive and changes our lives and communities.  We become the Galatians of our time, reveling in Christian freedom and living in the Spirit.  We discover that God’s liberating Word, incarnate in the crucified and risen Christ, challenges everything that gets in the way of spiritual freedom and faithful discipleship.

    Sounds like fun!

    Galatians: A Participatory Study Guide

  • Unity and Bible Study

    That’s a very broad title, but I do want to look at the connection. One of the places where we, as Christians, find the most disagreement is in our study of the Bible. In my view, there’s a good reason for this. The Bible is a complex book. Yes, one can find common themes, but there are also many topics on which we can disagree legitimately. While I object to any claim that the Bible doesn’t have inherent meaning—I always say that at least we know it’s not talking about the pink elephant—I still recognize that serious students can come to different conclusions. I find the demeaning way that we refer to scholars who are far from us on the theological spectrum quite unhelpful. Is it not enough to say “I disagree,” or “I disagree strongly”?

    This relates closely to views of attaining Christian unity. Let me highlight two opposed approaches. First, we have the idea that somehow we must eliminate the differences in Bible study. For Catholics, this generally leads to a reference to the magisterium of the church. Protestants often look with some longing at such an authority, an authority that might bring some sense out of the chaos of protestant views of scripture. So you know my prejudices, let me state bluntly that, irrespective of what set of doctrines and interpretations such a magisterium imposed, I would not be a member of the resulting church.

    The second approach is to say that we can have unity of purpose and action in a chaos of individual ideas and spiritualities. The application of this can be quite variable. Do we look to a small list of teachings which are sacrosanct while allowing freedom on all others? Do we allow for just any position at all? Or do we perhaps unite on practice?

    I believe that the difficulty we have with Christian unity is our own hostility to what is different. I recall meeting with members of a church about a particular service of which they disapproved. It turned out that not only did they not attend that service, but that no matter what was changed, they would not begin to attend it. I had to tell them that I could hardly present to the pastor the idea that a service should be altered in form so that nobody would attend! They were hostile to spirituality and forms of worship that someone else was doing when they weren’t even present.

    I’m actually quite a doctrine driven person. I don’t know which actually came first, the doctrine or the practice (though I suspect in my life it was practice), but when I think about things now I start from doctrine and move to practice. That’s just the way my mind works. So the doctrinal standards of a church congregation are important to me. I don’t join a church that strongly proclaims doctrine that I cannot support. I was considering joining a church once before I discovered their approach to politics. In fact, the problem was that I discovered that, contrary to any statement they might make, they had a congregational approach to politics. So I went elsewhere.

    In protestant churches, and particularly among charismatics in my experience, there is a desire to fight the doctrinal chaos with a sort of mini-magisterium. This results in a “don’t go against the pastor” or “don’t touch the Lord’s anointed” attitude. The pastor is the one who makes the determination. I object to this as strongly as I do to larger versions of the magisterium. Protestantism by its very nature (and I’m an unrepentant protestant) is a break from submitting one’s conscience to that sort of authority.

    I would suggest that what we need in Christianity is not a unity of conformity, but rather a unity of attitude and spirit. We claim to follow one master. Let’s allow others to follow him, rather than trying to make them follow us. Let’s approach this with the greatest measure of grace for others. If we need to meet in separate buildings, no problem. Let’s do what is best for loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. But let’s do it without hostility. Perhaps we could manage to resolve our differences in worship practice by meeting in separate times of worship in the same building. There are many ways to work together.

    What set this off this morning? Well, Dave Black posted about not needing teachers and the Holy Spirit as teacher. I reposted it to The Jesus Paradigm so we’d have a permanent link. I agree with what Dave says. He honors scholars, pastors, and teachers, while at the same time acknowledging that the Spirit of Truth is available to us all.

    I don’t want to make this a commercial. Hmmm. Yes I do! Here are some books I publish that relate to this topic: I’m Right and You’re Wrong: Why we disagree about the Bible and what to do about it, When People Speak for God, The Jesus Paradigm, Seven Marks of a New Testament Church, From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully.

  • According to John: The Law Was Given through Moses

    Tonight in my study on John via Google Hangouts on Air I’m going to talk about the law and Jesus, Jews and Christians, and Judaism and Christianity. I’m embedding the player below. In the meantime, read 3 ways to Confront the New Antisemitism by Rabbi Evan Moffic.

    For tonight: