A Pastoral Reflection on the Fourth of July

Because many of you may be out of town this week, I thought I would send out my sermon notes for next week’s message early.

As you know, it will be the Fourth of July. I felt that I should deliver a message that celebrates what is good and noble about our nation while remaining true to the gospel we are responsible to proclaim in our Sunday worship.

I ask for your prayer and any feedback you wish to give.

Worshipping God; Loving Country
Romans 12: 18 – 21; 13: 1- 8

Julia Ward Howe (1819 – 1910) could read and write in seven languages. She was an accomplished poet. She was also a fiery preacher at a time when few people believed it was possible for a woman to preach. She carried these gifts under the oppressive authority of an arrogant husband. He rarely allowed her to speak in public or to publish her work. However, a few years before her husband’s death, she published a series of poems. These poems expressed the depth of her anguish and loneliness. They shocked Boston and humiliated her husband but they also made a place for her at the highest levels of American intellectual life. She soon became a friend of Mark Twain and other great American thinkers. In so many ways, Julia Ward Howe expressed the spirit of her times and gave the issues of those times a voice. From slavery to female suffrage, Julia Ward Howe spent her life exploring the meaning of the phrase “liberty and justice for all.”

Few Americans now know the name of Julia Ward Howe. But she wrote one thing that everyone in this room, indeed that most Americans, learn before they can read and write.

She wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

She published the lyrics in the February edition of the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. Abolitionists immediately began to use her song in their meetings. It was then adopted by soldiers. Soon, every American, North and South had made it one of our nation’s most beloved patriotic songs. Since then, it has been used more often than any other music for presidential inaugurations and burials. It is arguably more familiar to our citizens than the National Anthem. Although it is often satirized and abused, just hum a few lines of it. Soon, every American within earshot will be humming along!

Today is the Fourth of July. It is a good day to express my own feelings about faith and patriotism. I thought that the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic would be the best way to do that.

I’ll confess that I am a little nervous, preaching a sermon about patriotism. Our age has become so polarized by political pundits that one learns to keep quiet about politics. You never know who may become deeply offended if your opinion differs in some small way from his.

Most Americans now tend to believe that there are only two possible political positions: the Right and the Left.

If you do not hold to every point embraced by the contemporary Left, people on the left may identify you as fundamentalist, racist, fascist, environmentally irresponsible and hopelessly ignorant.

On the other hand, if you do not agree with every point embraced by the contemporary Right, then people on the right may identify you as free-loving, anti-democratic, socialistic, tree-hugging and secularist. You might even be French!

Too many Americans have become angry. We are continually whipped up into rage by entertainers who financially profit from our current polarized situation. Many of us have just decided keep quiet, waiting for opportunities to speak words of kindness and comfort into the life of our troubled nation.

Perhaps the fourth of July is still enough of a common celebration to allow me to do that.

Many people have urged me to clarify my political views. I have resisted doing that for several reasons. The central reason is this: I don’t believe that the pulpit is any place to grind a political ax. There are, to be sure, social issues that a pastor must address if he intends to remain faithful to the gospel. To be honest though, were we to do that consistently, everyone one here would probably be offended. The gospel is deeply at odds with many of the ways of our world, whether we label those ways “Liberal” or “Conservative.” The best thing to do is to just teach the Word, worship the Lord, serve the people, and love God in such a way that believers sooner or later grow into a real relationship with Him. A relationship with God always causes a person to reevaluate their options about everything – including their opinions about culture and political life.

Another reason I do not deal much with national issues though, is my belief that piety and patriotism should not be mixed.

I am deeply patriotic. As a young boy, I memorized several great American speeches, the preamble of the Constitution and the opening words of the Declaration of Independence. I love American history. The principles our nation officially proclaims are some of the most enlightened concepts ever developed by human beings and I fervently believe in them.

Every branch of my family tree goes back to an ancestor already living on this continent long before the American Revolution. My family has given its sons to nearly every war this country has fought. I can take you to the graves of my ancestors stretching back two hundred years. I am undeniably an American.

However, I also know that history is full of examples of what occurs when a people confuse piety with patriotism. The outcome has never been good for: Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia or any other country. As Jesus taught us, God and Caesar require different kinds of loyalty and respect from their subjects. What we owe God and what we owe our nation are different things and touch us at different levels.
President Lincoln addressed this very issue in his second inaugural address. In the closing days of the civil war, he refused to claim that God was on his side. Instead, he asked the nation whether we could find a way to get on God’s side.

In today’s reading, St. Paul tells Christians living under the government of Emperor Nero (who was actively persecuting the church at the time) to respect the government. Indeed, he teaches that God has delegated to the government certain kinds of authority in order to maintain a well-ordered society and to provide for the common good of its citizens. Believers do not rail against their government, even when they are opposed to it. We are taught to “bless and curse not.” Sometimes, that is difficult; especially when the will of the state and the principles of faith seem to be at odds.

As we have been reading about the life of David, we have watched as he struggled over defending himself against a king who had turned evil. But he did not strike back and he did not lift his hands against the anointed of the Lord. Many of his Psalms are prayers for God’s vindication and defense because he refuses to disrespect the ruler of the nation. This is the way believers act.

This is always a dilemma for a Christian, especially when holding high office. How does he or she determine how to should carry out his or her patriotic responsibilities in the light of a gospel that recognizes no national boundaries and privileges no group of people? The Kingdom of God is eternal; nations are temporal. The Kingdom of God recognizes no ethnicity, language or borders; nations are defined by such things. How does one remain loyal to both God and country?

Today’s passage gives us some guidance about how to develop an attitude like that of Sir Thomas Moore who said to King Henry VIII, “I am the King’s good servant; but God’s servant first.”

On this Fourth of July, I want to help us understand how to be both good citizens and faithful believers.
Pastors, as private citizens, may have political opinions. We can even belong to a political party, like anyone else. However, pastors in their role as pastors must represent the Kingdom of God; and the Kingdom of God is barely concerned with such things.

Presidents, generals, governors, and other political leaders on the other hand, are called to deal with such issues. If they are believers, they must be loyal to the kingdom of God. However, as political leaders, they must make difficult decisions on behalf of the nation that may displease some of God’s people. How does one balance such things?

American leaders on both sides during the civil war pondered this very question. It was agonizing for them to realize that both sides were calling on the name of the same God. It was not unheard of for officers to allow preachers to pass through the lines from one side to the other to minister to enemy soldiers. Near the front lines, each side could hear the sounds of prayer and singing coming from the ranks of the enemy.

Intelligent people were shaken by this perplexing conflict between faith and national interest. President Lincoln and President Davis, the various generals and officers of both North and South often wrote about this in words that can still bring tears to the eyes of an American man or woman.

This was the climate in which Julia Ward Howe wrote Battle Hymn of the Republic. Although it was written in the North by a Northerner; and although it promoted the abolitionist cause, it drew from the deepest cords of Holy Scripture to express the agony of a nation seemingly trapped by a conflict neither side could avoid or end.

The first stanza observes all the carnage of war and labels it as the judgment of a righteous God. Like Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, the Battle Hymn does not attempt to frame the war as the cause of a righteous North against an unrighteous South. The composer claims that the war is the manifestation of God’s wrath against the entire nation.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

This image of “grapes of wrath” comes from the Book of Jeremiah where God descends among His people in judgment. God afflicts the nation until blood is flowing like wine. God does this because His people have been tolerating great wickedness even though they profess to be His followers. We don’t like this picture of Divine vengeance. However, the Bible warns that God is capable of wrath and that occasionally judges a man, a city or a nation. Many of the leaders of both North and South came to believe that the war was an expression of God’s wrath. This song certainly makes that claim.

The writer continues in the second stanza to develop this view that the nation is under Divine judgment.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.


The composer depicts soldiers building an altar to God in the humid hours at the close of day. Then as the soldiers prepare for sleep, the words of scripture leap out from the dim light of their candles and flares to announce the truth: God has pronounced a righteous sentence against this the nation that cannot be resisted. Although God will accept their words of piety and devotion, He will not remove His hand of judgment until there is repentance. The Day of the Lord will keep marching until God’s sentence is fully carried out and the land has fully submitted to God’s Will.

The next stanza is never used in our times. It’s much too Christian; much too prophetic.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman; crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

This strange and rarely used word “contemner,” makes it difficult to understand. However, the word means “those who resist the law.” In other words, God will deal with people according to how they submit to the sentence he has proclaimed against the nation. “The fiery gospel in burnished rows of steel” is God’s judgment against a people who have so far refused to repent for their grievous national sin.

It seems utterly remarkable to me that a people just a few generations ago could sing such a song. You wonder why they didn’t stone the woman who wrote it! Then we remember that the president himself would say the very same thing in a public speech; “as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’ After saying these words, the president asked his nation, whether in the light of its renewed submission to God could it now hope that God’s wrath against the county would cease?

Julia Ward Howe outs it this way: if the people reading the sentence of God by their dim and flaring lamps would simply submit to God, then “that Hero born of woman would crush the serpent’s head.” It’s not the human enemy that must be crushed but the enemy of human souls that deceives both us and our foes.
One wonders if ten percent of our country now would even understand these words! They are quoted from the first chapters of the Bible where God promises a sinful people that He would send a Savior born of woman that would crush our ancient foe under his heel. Mel Gibson begins his film, The Passion of the Christ, by depicting Jesus in the Garden praying. The serpent craws near to gloat over our Master’s misery and suddenly finds himself ground under the Lord’s vengeful heel.

Believers know what that scene means!

In the next stanza, Julia Ward Howe asks us to wake up. We must realize that God offers us an opportunity for salvation from His wrath, both as individuals and as a nation.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.


God will not turn back. Either that nation will submit or it will be annihilated. The evil must be purged but the Lord is not willing that any should perish. There is a way to escape God’s wrath.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Here finally is the balance and contrast we need to understand between piety and patriotism.

Jesus belongs to everyone, everywhere. We acknowledge in the song that he was “born across the sea;” not across town. We also confess that it is God’s glory in the bosom of Christ that transfigures people; not a national vision or a political agenda. Human beings cannot create utopias – only God can do that. Nonetheless, we have a social responsibility. This song claims that sometimes it requires our blood to set people free. Although we cannot make people eternally free, we can – and we must – be willing to lay down our lives to make people as free as it is possible for them to be on this earth. Justice requires human attention as well as Divine grace. A society’s common good requires the sacrifice of its citizens on behalf of one another.

Americans have been willing to lay down their lives to save others in many conflicts. I understand that not all American soldiers are believers. As in every nation, some of our soldiers in some of our wars have done very bad things. However, American soldiers also marched into Dachau and Auschwitz, taking cans of food to feed the living corpses that filled those camps. They carried in blankets to cover those prisoners’ nakedness. I mention this because my wife’s uncle lost his life on his way to those very camps. I held his rifle the other day. I thought about how short his life was. He died to make men free, just like the song says. I honor that, especially on this Fourth of July. I know you do too. That is the best of our country and we ought always to urge ourselves to be that sort of people.

Finally though, Julia Ward Howe asks us to look at the war they were facing in the light of a coming eternal victory for all people everywhere.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty; He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.


Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

Just as the sunlight creeps over the mountains just before revealing its full power, God is coming into our world. For those who have eyes to see, God’s glory is already rolling like a mighty wave into our world. This glory is wisdom for the mighty and “succour” – that is to say “help,’ “power,” or “ability” for those courageous souls who proclaim Him.

Whatever our circumstance now, Julia Ward Howe says in this stanza that we must look to the coming Day of the Lord, when the world will be His footstool and the soul of Time His slave. Until then, those who serve the Lord within their various nations and eras of time must live lives (and sometimes even give their lives) in ways that reflect the “glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.”

On July 4, 1776, a group of people signed a document that everyone here should go home and read. It is short and powerful. It affirmed that Nature’s God had called into being a new nation, dedicated to the proposition, “that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – that is to say, “a God-given vocation.”

The document goes on to state the reasons why the signers of the Declaration of Independence did not believe that their vision of human life could be pursued while remaining a part of the British Empire.
The signing of that document is, of course, the reason for our national celebration today. Most Americans know the first words of the document by heart. However, it is important to notice the ending of the Declaration:

“For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

As Julia Ward Howe wrote so powerfully in her Battle Hymn of the Republic, a Christian people serve this nation best not by making the nation into an idol but by living lives submitted to God and then offered to the nation we love. We worship God. We give Him our highest loyalty. However, because we are God’s faithful servants first, we are able to serve our country in ways that bring to that country the blessings of God; most especially our unique understanding of freedom that comes to a people who know they are made in His image and His likeness.

As the people of God, we are a blessing to our country; not because we demand or coerce, but because we have the courage to continually call this nation that we love to justice – peacefully, lovingly and respectfully.

Wikipedia is Not A Sacrament

Wikipedia claims that John Wesley was born on today’s date in 1703. That’s incorrect. He was actually born on June 17th. So there: Wikipedia is not always right.

I was all excited, thinking I could write a blog about John Wesley because it was his birthday and then discovered the truth.

Life is cruel. Now what do I write about?

I could write about the incident in today’s One Year Bible reading. King Jehoash visits Elisha because the prophet is old and sick. Elisha tells the king to beat the ground with arrows. The king does so but only half-heartedly.

“YOU MISERABLE WHIM OF A KING!” the prophet shouted. “Now you won’t have victory over all your enemies.”

But what can I possibly do with that story?

Of course, there is the New Testament reading, about Paul’s visit to Ephesus. He finds believers in that city who have not yet received the Holy Spirit. So he lays his hands on them. Then they receive the Spirit and speak in tongues.

I have been writing lately about the importance of sacramental life, so that New Testament story seems the way to go. Something spiritual occurs when St. Paul lays his hands on people. It’s not mere ceremony; they know immediately that something has happened.

It is called sacrament: when a material thing or human action becomes a conduit for spiritual life.

I know: people get nervous when I teach about the sacraments. Some get worried. They fear that we will somehow undo the Reformation – if they know anything about the Reformation. Others get bored. Why should I spend valuable time talking about something that is “merely symbolic?” (As if it is possible for anything to ever be “merely symbolic.”) Few people seem convinced that sacraments are something vital to their spiritual life.

What gets me is the question that I sometimes get about sacraments: “Do we have to receive sacraments to be saved?”

Sigh …

Can a man and wife love each other without “making love?”

Well, yes. In some cases, usually involving illness or injury, a couple must learn to be intimate in ways other than what is usually expected. Many people in such a marriage love one another truly and fiercely. In the same way, it is possible for a believer to love his Lord devoutly and faithfully without experiencing sacramental life.

An exception is not a norm, however.

Normal love between husband and wife involves the union of body, mind, soul and spirit. In the Service of Holy Matrimony (can we still call it that?) we remind everyone present that marriage is “a figure of the union between Christ and His church.”

The words remind us that a covenant between a husband and wife involves the whole person: body, mind, soul and spirit.

So does a covenant between Christ and His Church.

Early believers experienced signs and wonders. They also broke bread. They prayed. They also sat under the apostles’ teaching. They saw visions. They also pooled their resources to take care of poor people.

The early Church did not divorce matter and spirit.

Neither should we.

Christian life and spirituality is unavoidably sacramental; it pulls together material and spiritual life. That is what healthy spirituality looks like.

Elisha discerned something about Jehoash’s character by observing the king’s behavior. The way he went about things revealed his inner life. His half-hearted way of hitting arrows on the ground revealed a half-hearted approach to life, governance and battle. He would not succeed. The fruit of his reign would be somehow connected to the manner in which he carried out spiritual instructions.

St. Paul laid hands on the believers in Ephesus because they had not received the Holy Spirit. I know that modern Evangelicals don’t believe that is possible. Maybe not. Probably St. Luke had not been to seminary before he wrote the Book of Acts, but I’ll leave that one alone. The issue here is that the believers did not have an experience with the Holy Spirit that Paul thought they ought to have. So, he laid his hands on them and then they did.

So what are we to think? Doesn’t it seem in this passage as though perhaps the act of laying on of hands in the Lord’s name actually accomplishes something spiritual?

That’s what we mean when we speak of sacramental action: that we do something natural and God responds by doing something supernatural.

The thing that seems to tie all this together is that the Bible doesn’t recognize this extreme split between nature and spirituality. Human actions reveal inner life and may become a conduit for spiritual force.

John Wesley discovered this. He was an Oxford educated catechist, out-of-touch with himself and others; unemotional, harsh, perfectionist and boring. Then one evening “his heart was strangely warmed.”

Hardly a holy-roller moment! But he began to preach all over England. As he did, people fell out of trees, collapsed on the ground weeping and wailing, and reacted in all sorts of strange ways.

He didn’t like it.

So he made the people stop. But the fire went out. So he stopped trying to control the Spirit.

Spirit is connected to physical emotion and movement. Life is like that.

Sacramental reality is simply the human acknowledgment that spirituality manifests in physical ways.

Sometimes we know what that will look like. Sometimes we don’t.

Wesley didn’t like the way the Holy Spirit showed up. Too his credit though, he hungered for God too much to stop it. Like Elisha and St. Paul, he learned that Biblical spirituality is irrepressibly sacramental.

You can’t learn that on Wikipedia!

Pastors' Kids and Dining Etiquette

*

In my last blog I implied that pastors' kids are terrorists. My daughter insisted tell the other side of the story!
So here goes …

Research has shown that many pastors’ children do not become terrorists. They become gifted leaders. It’s true. Pastors' children make great contributions in all sorts of fields. Some of the world’s most gifted artists, presidents, psychologists and scientists have been pastor’s children.

Why?

We are what we eat.

Conversation around dining room tables, theological disputes, church crisis and endless lectures on scripture and church history develops young minds.

The parish life doesn’t always lead young minds into service for the church, however.

Young John Adams was about to go into church work. Then he heard a parishioner speaking disrespectfully to his father one evening about some petty business in the church. So John Adams decided on the spot that the pastorate was just not for him.

It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.

Young Adams did well for himself though; he was a little paranoid at times, but still …

We are what we eat. We become what we consume. We grow into what we devour.

This the whole idea behind communion, of course: that if we feast on Christ, we will become like Christ.
It’s difficult to draw life lessons from Communion though. We argue about the subject too much. We can’t even seem to agree about what to call it. Should it be “the Eucharist,” (which means “thanksgiving;”) “The Lord’s Supper;” Holy Communion;” or The Lord’s Table?”

We also argue about what Communion means. We argue about what happens when we receive it. We argue about how often we should receive it. We argue about what it is that we receive when we receive it. We argue about whether the bread should be leavened or unleavened. We argue about whether we should use wine, grape juice or Kool-Aid. And we argue about those absolutely detestable, abominable, flip-top plastic communion thingabobs.

Why do we argue so much about Holy Communion?

We argue about it because it is important.

In the gospel of John, chapter six, Jesus said:
I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

“Well, yuck!” the people replied. The passage sounds gross to modern ears and, evidently they sounded just as gross to first century ears!

Some Christians still insist that Jesus was not talking about actual eating but about some sort of spiritual reality that was like eating. However, the people who heard Jesus say those words thought that he meant precisely what it sounded like he was saying. That’s why they ran away.

Intimacy with God is frightening.

But what does Communion mean?

Eating seems, well, so base – so carnal! What possible spiritual significance can eating have?

But think about it. What was the first significant thing that people did in Eden? They ate something that was not good for them. They got very serious indigestion. The bad food not only affected their bodies but their entire being! What they ate released a spiritual poison into their lives.

When we eat or drink we take substance into ourselves. That substance becomes a part of us.

When Church is sacramental instead of an idol (read my last blog about that), spiritual life flows into those who partake of it. Pastors' children eat and drink the effects of church life every day. Sometimes what they consume fills them full of life. Sometimes what they consume fills them with bitterness and rage.

It’s no wonder that some of them become terrorists while others become healers, educators and counselors. Some churches are life-giving; others are toxic. Some are sacramental conduits of grace. Others are idols.

A wise pastor-parent must discern what sort of church he or she is dealing with and whether to serve it or to shake the dust off and move on. If the church is an idol, the pastor will do that for his children’s sake.
Otherwise the child may feel compelled to blow up something later on – maybe even a church!

*Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh (the son of a pastor)

Terrorist at Sunday School

Some years ago, there was a study of terrorists. The researchers found no striking commonality among terrorists, except that a much higher than expected percentage were children of pastors, rabbis, and mullahs!
It is no secret that many children of pastors are jaded about church. Although many of them end up following a spiritual vocation of some sort, just as many do not attend church at all. Hopefully, very few turn out to be terrorists!

Why do so many family members of church leaders – or previous church employees – become cynical about church?

I think it has something to do with the opinion that they previously had about church. No one becomes “disillusioned” who was not originally “illusioned.” The Bible teaches a high view of the church. It does not teach one to idolize the church. There is a difference.

Church is meant to be sacramental.

Something is sacramental when it offers an understanding of and a participation in, some higher reality.

A sacrament is something like an iceberg. It has a visible part. It has an invisible part.

Our faith instructs us to expect to encounter a spiritual reality as we participate in a sacramental rite with faith.
The Christian faith has always offered such sacramental acts as communion, baptism, anointing with oil, the laying on of hands, the dedication of infants, ordination, and marriage.

These sacramental actions are often involved in those times when we acknowledge some fundamental changes in our lives or in the lives of our fellow believers. That word “fundamental” is important. Sacraments deal with fundamental change.

A man who buys a pair of shoes has something new to put on his feet. Tomorrow, he may them take off. But a man who gets married today, or ordained, or baptized, undergoes a fundamental and permanent change. Sacraments acknowledge these sorts of fundamental changes. Indeed, they are conduits through which such changes takes place.

Unfortunately, sacrament can easily become idol.

An idol is something that points to nothing. It is a thing in itself that leads one nowhere else. It accepts honor, respect, and even worship for itself. Bread and wine can become idols. Baptism can become idol. Even the Bible can become an idol. Nothing should ever be worshipped but God.

The Church is meant to be sacrament. It is messy, earthy and human but it points to God and helps human souls know Him.

Unless it doesn’t!

If church does not point the soul to God, it becomes an idol. It accepts and then expects praise, labor, respect, and even worship for itself.

Too many pastors and other church leaders pour their lives into the church and fail to meet God or to lead the flock of their churches to God. Their lives and work become an offering poured out to an institution, a campus or a group of people. Church becomes mistress and wife and children become abandoned.
The sacrament becomes an idol and God is lost.

When this happens, people searching for God slowly become disillusioned, bitter and sometimes even apostate.

They don’t really ignore God; they just don’t know where to find Him. That is because they once mistook him for something else.

Rain Man Goes to Church

In the movie Rainman, Raymond Babbitt is a mentally challenged man who travels with his brother, Charlie, to Las Vegas. While there, he experiences his first kiss. When the woman asks him how it felt, he replies “wet; it felt wet.”

That’s when the woman realizes that something is not right.

What Raymond Babbitt said was perfectly right. But of course, it missed the point entirely. All he understood was the physical elements of the kiss. He didn’t know what a kiss was for.

That is way many Christians interpret the sacraments. They know they are supposed to be done for some reason, but for the life of them it really seems pointless to plunge a person beneath the water or drink wine and eat bread in church. A good Bible study seems so much more important.

Radical Protestantism has tended to become ever more suspicious of sacramental life. Many American Protestants go to church for years now without ever receiving baptism or communion. They may live their entire lives without ever experiencing the laying of hands.

This would have astounded earlier believers, from the first century AD until a hundred years or so ago.

Despite the Lord’s clear instruction, and despite the obvious practice of the apostles and earliest believers, most Evangelicals do not view sacramental life as having much value. Communion, if received at all, is often a “tack-on’ at the end of a worship service. Worshippers open the plastic flip-top-communion-fast-food thing, remove the bread stuff inside and pop it into their mouths. They then swallow the thimble full of reconstituted grape stuff. As the people eat and drink the wretched stuff, the preacher hardly knows what to say. He may read a scripture. Someone may sing a song about ultimate love and sacrifice. Then the worshippers go home, slightly embarrassed about the meaningless mumbo-jumbo they have just experienced.

Many believers have not even experienced as much of a “communion service,” as that – if such a practice can actually be labeled “communion.”

My point is not to mock any church that still does retain some element of sacramental life, but to point out that our faith has become so disembodied that wine, bread, oil and other material elements of worship have come to appear, -- well, weird to us.

So, it is worth asking: “why do we need to use oil, incense, water, wine and other material elements in worship if God’s work in us is strictly a spiritual thing?

The biblical answer will be jarring for modern ears.

God’s work is not just spiritual.

We live, after all, in a material world.
We are material creatures.

God intends to redeem the material world. He intends to bring matter bring back under His authority.
God indeed is invisible and intangible. We, however, are not. God made us to be material creatures. Materiality is our appointed realm. Furthermore, that will always be the case. For “we believe in the resurrection of the body.”

Because this is the way God made us, spiritual things come wrapped in material packages. That is why we need oil on our heads or need to plunge beneath the waters of baptism. That is why we need to taste the bread and the wine.

We need spiritual life to be incarnated within material objects; embedded within human actions. That is not substandard spirituality for weak believers; it is spirituality as God actually wishes it to be expressed on earth.

Well, now that I think of it, love is like that too.

Love is certainly not just a physical thing. Love is really cheapened when we define it as merely physical. Nonetheless, from time to time, most of us need to love something with some skin on it!

Human beings need to be touched; they need love that is physically – not merely spiritually expressed.

Verbal affirmations of love have their place. Ultimately though, most of us want to experience love that is made physical and tangible in some way. Perhaps spiritual beings – such as angels -- are satisfied with disembodied, spiritual love.

We are not.

That is why our Lord bled for us on a cross; to make love physical and tangible.

Jesus Himself, the incarnate God, is thus the Sacrament of all Sacraments.

Biblical worship is worship that recognizes both our spirituality and our materiality.

Biblical worship is sacramental, in both the Old and the New Testament.

God told Moses in Exodus 25:40, "See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”

In the last book of the Bible, when John the Revelator experiences worship in heaven, that worship is still unfolding according to that same pattern.

A Christian worships with Word and Sacrament. As he does, he looks through the material components into another world. Until his eyes are open to see that world, he sees only the water and oil; only the bread and the wine.

When we ask him what it was like and he replies, “Well, it was wet,” we know he didn’t get it.

Toto Takes A Sacrament

Until fairly recently, the more educated a person living in the Western World became, they more he or she would tend to define reality as “things that can be perceived through the five senses."
We have been debating for centuries whether there is anything beyond the world we perceive through the five senses. Every culture (and every generation) tends to answer this fundamental question differently. We are just emerging from an era when most people have doubted whether there was anything beyond.

In their heart of hearts, even many Western Christians have doubted.

Lately, we have entered a new era. Now, many people seem ready to believe in anything, or to believe and disbelieve at the same time, or to believe one thing for one component of their lives – perhaps their social life, for example -- and to disbelieve it for another component –perhaps their workplace.

It’s pretty confusing right now.

Well, how could we not be confused?

We are born into a world of matter. We experience the reality that tells us material effects have material causes. We have learned about germs and molecules. The world seems solidly material at every level. And yet, we also feel things, experience things, and imagine things that seem not to make sense in a world of mere matter.

Somehow, love just doesn’t feel to us like the irresistible push of biology or like an evolutionary instinct to insure the survival of our species.

Justice doesn’t really feel like mere group loyalty.

Aesthetic appreciation certainly doesn’t feel to us like a right brain appreciation for mathematical proportion and balance.

In the last few centuries, most educated people have tried to adjust their feelings, even dismiss them. They wanted, after all, to be sensible people.

It’s just at our most treasured moments we just can’t seem to be sensible!

Music makes us weep. Love makes us write poetry. Justice moves us to risk our lives. Such experiences don’t make sense if sanity is defined by our acceptance of “reality” as simply another way of saying, “the material world.”

The people of Western Civilization were trying to be sensible but then were hit by revolutionary scientific and mathematical theories; such as relativity and quantum mechanics. These theories told us that things like “time” and “distance” do not really exist. They taught us that the mere act of observing something changes its nature. Therefore, we can’t be certain what things are like when they are not observed … blah, blah, blah, blah ….

What were we normal people supposed to think when our experts suddenly could not agree on a definition for “reality”?

Eastern religions tend to deny the reality of the material world any world. They say that the material world is an illusion.

YIKES! Dorothy, where did Kansas go?

We post-moderns are doing our best to make sense of the world. Sometimes, like when we are in love, the Eastern mystics seem right. At other times, like when we need medical treatment, Western materialists seem to be right. (Unless we decide to go for acupuncture, voodoo or herbs!)
We get confused: is the universe material or spiritual?

Is matter or spirit the illusion?

The new uncertainties of the Western World call for answers that Christians have always had but have lately forgotten.

Christianity does not force us to choose between matter and spirit. Christianity teaches that reality is, (and indeed that we ourselves are) both material and spiritual.

Christianity also claims that God, who rules the spiritual world, is Creator and Lord of the material world too.

That what we mean when we say that “we believe in One God, the Father Almighty, creator of all things, visible and invisible.”

Once a week, we explore both parts of the universe, seen and unseen, by peering through thin places in the wall of our material word.

The thin places are called sacraments.

What pours through them is called grace.

Dorothy discovered how this works with a simple pair of red slippers. When her feet clicked the shoes together, she left the crazy world of Oz and landed back home.

Christians do this every Sunday with water, wine and bread.

Windows In The Wall

Imagine a group of people who live their entire lives within a single room. Suppose this imaginary room has no windows and that the people inside this room draw conclusions about the larger world from the noises they hear coming from outside. When they hear a dog barking, imagine what stories they must tell about the noise, having never seen a dog. What about a siren? What sorts of explanations would they make to explain such strange and mysterious sounds!

People inside the room might say that the sounds are produced by molecular vibrations within the walls. Such people might study walls intently, perhaps becoming exerts of wallology.

Others might say that the sounds are not from the walls, but are the result of sound waves converging at or near the walls that emanate from moving objects within the room. Such people might be called experts in sociophonic theory.

Yet others might sincerely believe the sounds are something like an “audio mirage,” the fabrication of bored brains. These would be the psychologists of this imaginary room.

And finally, I would think, there would be another group of people; people who believe in a world “beyond the room.” They would repeat old stories about beasts and thunder and about mystical water that runs down from a ceiling so high that no one can see its end. Those people would doubtless argue endlessly about the color of dogs (which, you will note, none of them have ever seen) and about the subtle differences between nonsense words, such as “snow,” meaning soft frozen water, always to be distinguished from “ice,” meaning hard frozen water, or from “rain,” meaning water falling from high up, or from “flood,” meaning water accumulating from underneath, and other such examples of hopelessly muddled obscurantism.

The people who live in this closed-in room might call those who believe in a world beyond the room something like, “the foolish ones.” The people who believe in the world beyond might simply call themselves “believers.”

Despite all the differences between the groups within the closed-in room, there is one belief they all share. Every one of them will know that he or she must someday walk out of the room. None of them will know why. They only know that each person somehow receives a mysterious summons. After this summons -- sometimes immediately and sometimes a while later -- the one summoned must walk out the door. This door (called, naturally enough, the GREAT DOOR) opens with a terrifying groan.

Once a person exits through the GREAT DOOR, he never returns.

People in the room would be divided over what happens when a person leaves the room. Some say that there is a feast on the other side of the GREAT DOOR. Others warn that those who leave the room are tortured. Yet others insist that those who walk through the GREAT DOOR disappear and cease to be.

It’s all very mysterious.

No matter how wise people get, they are always a bit frightened of leaving the room. It is therefore rare for a person to willingly walk through the GREAT DOOR.

Now imagine that among the foolish ones who tell the old stories, there is a smaller group. Those in this smaller group make an amazing claim. They say that a long time ago one man discovered what was on the other side of the GREAT DOOR.

The foolish ones claim that this man walked through the GREAT DOOR just like everyone else. Then, they say, he came right back through it. He then walked around the room, speaking to his friends. He then left the room once again, promising everyone that he would soon return and lead them all into the great OUTDOORS.

According to those who believe this story - and not everyone does - this same man now invites his friends to gather once a week at a certain place at the wall. They claim that at this appointed place and time, they converse with him. Not only that - they claim that in the wall are places through which one can look out and see (very dimly, they admit) the other side, to the GREAT OUTDOORS!

Those thin places in the wall, claim these foolish people, are made up of one part “this room stuff” and one part “outside stuff.”

Not many people these days go to those thin places in the wall.

Some say the so called “thin places” are a hoax. The places are made of “this room stuff” and nothing else. Others say that the thin places are boring, or that they require too much work. Some say that at best one can only see dim shadows of things that are probably nothing more than figments of one’s imagination at these “thin places.

Some however, return from their weekly visit to the thin places with certain feeling called “joy unspeakable,” because there is no “inside word” to describe what they feel.

So, I imagine, the people of our imaginary, closed-in room are deeply divided. They are all trying to make sense of the only world they have ever known; trying to deal with desires that seem beyond any possibility of fulfillment. Most of all they deal with fears about the Great Door, and spend a lot of time sorting out all the contradictory stories about what it means.

Perhaps we can forgive them for being confused.

Were it not for the outside noises, the old stories (that even the most skeptical among them enjoy,) and their desire to experience such things as “light,” “rain” and “dogs;” the people in the room might adjust to the fact that this closed-in room is “all there is.”

Unfortunately, the noises, stories and desires don’t seem to go away. So the people of our closed-in room can’t seem to adjust, no matter how smart they get.