Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lenten Season) is February 13. The season of Lent lasts for 40 days (not including Sundays). It ends on Easter Sunday (March 31).
The word “Lent” comes from the Middle English lente (“spring”) and from the Old English lengten (“to lengthen’), referring to the time of lengthening daylight from Christmas (around the Winter solstice) to Easter (Spring equinox). The Lenten season lasts 40 days, a time of preparation in anticipation of the great events of Good Friday and Easter.
During Lent we are encouraged to examine ourselves anew in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We follow his example and seek for forty days to wage a more earnest struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Our desire in this is increased sanc- tification and growth in Christian maturity and obedience.
At the heart of any worthy Lenten observance is a cultivated attitude of repentance. True repentance means a genuine change in heart and mind, a change of disposition wherever in our lives we need to return to God. That is why true repentance and a true Lent can never be satisfied by mere external observances, no matter how rigorous they may be.
Lent is not merely a time to remember and think about the history of our Lord’s suffering and death, but is intended primarily as an opportunity for serious self-examination and repentance, even fasting (Luke 5:34-35). The high point of Lent is reached on Good Friday, when we remember that our sins led to the crucifixion of Christ.
The color for Lent is purple or violet—a rich color made with the costliest dyes in the ancient world. It appropriately symbolizes deep, heartfelt, and therefore costly repentance.
The following catechism is something I wrote for the children of the church. It's a continuation of what is posted for Advent, Christmas, & Epiphany.
Showing posts with label Liturgy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liturgy. Show all posts
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Readings
In his Introduction to Christian Liturgy
Senn has a quick, but fascinating summary of the development of lectionary readings:
No complete lectionary systems exist before the seventh century, althought there are references in the writings of the church fathers to certain readings being read on certain days. For example, we learn from Augustine's commentary on John that dhe book of Genesis was read duriing Lent, the books of Job and Jonah during Holy Week, the Gospel Passion narratives on Good Friday, the resurrection narratives on Easter, and the book of Acts during Easter season.Nothing too surprising here. But then there's this:
In fact, only with the development of a church-year calendar with specific days and seasons would a lectionary with pericopes even be needed; otherwise biblical books were read continuously. The earliest extant lectionaries are Bibles with marginal markings indicating the beginnings and endings of readings (p. 65).Now just because the lectio continua is earlier than the pericope system doesn't necessarily make it right. Once the church started multiplying memorial events in the life of Jesus and then adding saints days the pericope system became inevitable. I believe that some combination of the two is best. Use the pericope system during Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, but between these read through whole books of the Bible. It may even be advantageous to take a year off of the pericope system now and then.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
On Leaven, Yeast, and the Lord's Supper
I offer some biblical and theological thoughts on the question of what kind of bread to use in the Lord's Supper. This is not a polished essay. I'm just "casting my bread upon the waters," as Solomon advises (Eccl. 11:1).
1. The main thing to think about is that the unleavened bread is bread made without the old sour "starter" dough that contains the yeast. In normal situations the yeast comes from that starter "leaven." "Leaven" refers to the old, sour reserved dough that contains the yeast. Leaven contains yeast. Leaven is not the same as yeast. The NIV and other translations screw this up entirely.
2. When bread is being made, there are two sources for yeast. First, you can get yeast from the old leaven that you have "reserved." In fact, the yeast must be imported into the "leaven" at the start of the process. When the process begins yeast is cultivated from the lees of wine. Then the yeast is put into the dough. A portion of the dough is used to cook the first batch, but a larger portion is "reserved" in order have the yeast readily available for use in later loaves. This "starter" dough that is kept is what is called the "leaven." It's the old, sour dough used as a delivery mechanism for the yeast.
3. The second way to get yeast is to get it "fresh" when it's cultivated from wine. In the ancient world people knew how to rise bread without the sourdough lump (leaven). Technically, a fresh loaf of bread made with this newly cultivated yeast is not "leavened." What this means is that the first batch of yeasted, rising bread that is made with the new yeast is not leavened bread. It is yeasted, but not from the sour dough leaven. So you could say that a loaf made with yeast not from the reserved, sour leaven is still unleavened bread. It's new. It doesn't use the old, sour stuff. The bread we use for the Lord's Supper in our church is not sour dough bread. It is not leavened bread. It contains fresh yeast. It is yeasted, but not leavened. This is theologically and symbolically significant.
1. The main thing to think about is that the unleavened bread is bread made without the old sour "starter" dough that contains the yeast. In normal situations the yeast comes from that starter "leaven." "Leaven" refers to the old, sour reserved dough that contains the yeast. Leaven contains yeast. Leaven is not the same as yeast. The NIV and other translations screw this up entirely.
2. When bread is being made, there are two sources for yeast. First, you can get yeast from the old leaven that you have "reserved." In fact, the yeast must be imported into the "leaven" at the start of the process. When the process begins yeast is cultivated from the lees of wine. Then the yeast is put into the dough. A portion of the dough is used to cook the first batch, but a larger portion is "reserved" in order have the yeast readily available for use in later loaves. This "starter" dough that is kept is what is called the "leaven." It's the old, sour dough used as a delivery mechanism for the yeast.
3. The second way to get yeast is to get it "fresh" when it's cultivated from wine. In the ancient world people knew how to rise bread without the sourdough lump (leaven). Technically, a fresh loaf of bread made with this newly cultivated yeast is not "leavened." What this means is that the first batch of yeasted, rising bread that is made with the new yeast is not leavened bread. It is yeasted, but not from the sour dough leaven. So you could say that a loaf made with yeast not from the reserved, sour leaven is still unleavened bread. It's new. It doesn't use the old, sour stuff. The bread we use for the Lord's Supper in our church is not sour dough bread. It is not leavened bread. It contains fresh yeast. It is yeasted, but not leavened. This is theologically and symbolically significant.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Private Masses
Calvin: "I call it a private mass whenever there is no communion among believers in the Lord's Supper, even if a large crowd of people are otherwise present" (Institutes 4.8.7).
Calvin is talking about a priest doing the Eucharist with the gathered people not communing. It's "private" even if there's a lot of people in the room while it's being performed by the priest because no one but the priest is partaking of the bread and wine.
Of course, private masses are still performed for various reasons by Roman priests. But the Roman church has reintroduced communion in both kinds as well as regular congregational participation at the weekly Supper. The Reformation was pretty successful in dealing with the late medieval problem of the withdrawal of the laity from the Table.
But there's another problem with the way modern Christians celebrate the Lord's Supper that might be labeled as "private mass" or maybe just "private communion." The word "communion" refers not only to our communion with the resurrected Jesus through the bread and wine at the Supper. There's also a horizontal dimension to the Table that flows from union with Jesus. We are united with one another. We commune with Jesus and with one another. "Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one loaf" (1 Cor. 10:17).
Calvin is talking about a priest doing the Eucharist with the gathered people not communing. It's "private" even if there's a lot of people in the room while it's being performed by the priest because no one but the priest is partaking of the bread and wine.
Of course, private masses are still performed for various reasons by Roman priests. But the Roman church has reintroduced communion in both kinds as well as regular congregational participation at the weekly Supper. The Reformation was pretty successful in dealing with the late medieval problem of the withdrawal of the laity from the Table.
But there's another problem with the way modern Christians celebrate the Lord's Supper that might be labeled as "private mass" or maybe just "private communion." The word "communion" refers not only to our communion with the resurrected Jesus through the bread and wine at the Supper. There's also a horizontal dimension to the Table that flows from union with Jesus. We are united with one another. We commune with Jesus and with one another. "Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one loaf" (1 Cor. 10:17).
Thursday, November 29, 2012
God's Special Presence
That we do in truth enter into God’s special presence in the midst of his gathered congregation must never be slighted or forgotten. The reality of God’s special presence with his people on the Lord’s Day has come under considerable attack in recent years. All of life is worship, we are told. God is present everywhere all through the week; therefore, what we do on Sunday is not really any different than what we do on other days. God cannot be more present on one day or in one place over against another. So let's drop all this talk about "coming into God's presence" when we gather for worship at church.
What are we to think about this kind of reasoning? Well, for one thing, it is certainly true that God is present everywhere. But his omnipresence is not what I am referring to when I talk about God's special presence with his people on the Lord's Day. God has promised to be present with his people in a special manner when they gather on Sunday. The one who skips church for the golf course or shopping mall or State park may not argue from God’s omnipresence to justify his not being in church. Sure, God is present on the golf course, just as he is present in hell. But this general presence of God doesn’t do the people in hell much good. Think about it. God is present in heaven and hell, but he is not present in the same way in each of these locations. There is a huge difference.
Even if we cannot define it precisely, God is nonetheless present in a heightened, special sense when his people gather as the church on the Lord’s Day. For one thing, he is present there pro nobis (“for us”). This is the place and time where he gathers his people to hear and receive his gifts through the Word and Sacraments. He has promised to be there for us when his people gather.
It is not so much that God was not present in, say, China, when the pillar and fire led the people of Israel out of Egypt or when his presence filled the Tabernacle upon its completion (Ex. 40). Rather, the Lord was at these appointed places in a special, life-giving way. The people of Israel were given singular signs of God’s special presence as they gathered around Mt. Sinai and the Tabernacle.
Similarly, it is not that God is absent from the food court in the mall on Sunday; rather, he has promised to be present in a special way, the way of salvation and blessing, at the Communion Table in church. The bread and wine are singular signs designed to assure us of his special, gracious presence with us. He has not promised to be in the mall on Sunday for you. Actually, if you refuse to heed the Lord’s summons to gather with his church, he may be present there against you so that you could very well experience his judgment and curse, rather than his promise of blessing, life, and salvation.
Moreover, when we are in God’s special presence with his people every week, receiving from him his promise through his Word and Sacrament, we can leave the gathered congregation into the world with the full assurance that God will be with us and for us wherever we may be during the week. Without being in the Lord’s special presence we have no assurance that his general presence will be of benefit to us. When delight in his special presence then we can be sure of his omnipresent help in every situation and location (see Gen. 3:8; 4:16; Exod. 33:14-15; Deut. 4:37; Deut. 12:7, 18; 14:23, 26; 15:20; Judges 18:6; 2 Kings 13:23; 17:18-23; Matt. 18:20; 1 Cor. 5:4; 11:18ff.; etc.).
What are we to think about this kind of reasoning? Well, for one thing, it is certainly true that God is present everywhere. But his omnipresence is not what I am referring to when I talk about God's special presence with his people on the Lord's Day. God has promised to be present with his people in a special manner when they gather on Sunday. The one who skips church for the golf course or shopping mall or State park may not argue from God’s omnipresence to justify his not being in church. Sure, God is present on the golf course, just as he is present in hell. But this general presence of God doesn’t do the people in hell much good. Think about it. God is present in heaven and hell, but he is not present in the same way in each of these locations. There is a huge difference.
Even if we cannot define it precisely, God is nonetheless present in a heightened, special sense when his people gather as the church on the Lord’s Day. For one thing, he is present there pro nobis (“for us”). This is the place and time where he gathers his people to hear and receive his gifts through the Word and Sacraments. He has promised to be there for us when his people gather.
It is not so much that God was not present in, say, China, when the pillar and fire led the people of Israel out of Egypt or when his presence filled the Tabernacle upon its completion (Ex. 40). Rather, the Lord was at these appointed places in a special, life-giving way. The people of Israel were given singular signs of God’s special presence as they gathered around Mt. Sinai and the Tabernacle.
Similarly, it is not that God is absent from the food court in the mall on Sunday; rather, he has promised to be present in a special way, the way of salvation and blessing, at the Communion Table in church. The bread and wine are singular signs designed to assure us of his special, gracious presence with us. He has not promised to be in the mall on Sunday for you. Actually, if you refuse to heed the Lord’s summons to gather with his church, he may be present there against you so that you could very well experience his judgment and curse, rather than his promise of blessing, life, and salvation.
Moreover, when we are in God’s special presence with his people every week, receiving from him his promise through his Word and Sacrament, we can leave the gathered congregation into the world with the full assurance that God will be with us and for us wherever we may be during the week. Without being in the Lord’s special presence we have no assurance that his general presence will be of benefit to us. When delight in his special presence then we can be sure of his omnipresent help in every situation and location (see Gen. 3:8; 4:16; Exod. 33:14-15; Deut. 4:37; Deut. 12:7, 18; 14:23, 26; 15:20; Judges 18:6; 2 Kings 13:23; 17:18-23; Matt. 18:20; 1 Cor. 5:4; 11:18ff.; etc.).
Monday, November 26, 2012
Is Christmas Christian? Redux
Every year I repost these essays because every year I keep hearing the same old tired anti-Christmas rhetoric from a vocal minority of well-meaning Christians. I really don't want to return to this issue each year and rework everything. So here it is again. I hope it helps.Christmas Time is Here Again - An introduction to the issues.
The Reformation and The Celebration of Christmas - Have Protestant churches regularly observed Advent and Christmas?
What did John Calvin Think about Christmas?
Isn't Christmas Really A Roman Catholic Holiday? - Why should Protestants observe it?
Isn't Christmas really just a Roman Catholic Mass? - More on the supposed Roman Catholic origins of Christmas
But Christmas is a Roman Catholic HOLY DAY. - Even more on the supposed Roman Catholic character of Christmas.
Isn't Christmas rooted in a pagan holiday?- A critique of the idea that Christmas was pagan holiday incorporated into the church year.
What about all of the pagan symbolism and ceremony associated with Christmas?
Surely you have to admit that the Christmas tree was originally a pagan symbol.
Doesn't Christmas violate the regulative principle of worship? - The Bible doesn't talk about Christmas!
What about the whole "Church Year" thing? - How can we follow a calendar that's not biblical?
But when the Church celebrates Christmas it's an imposition on my conscience. - Why should I be forced to observe Christmas?
Wait! Observing "days and years" is all Old Testament Religion! - We've been freed from all those festivals and observances, right?
Is there any warrant from the Bible for commemorative annual festivals?
But what difference does it really make? - Does the church need to have a church year calendar of annual feasts?
I can't shake the feeling that all of this is too pagan – Isn't all of this symbolic stuff (trees, seasons, etc.) just nature worship?
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Advent & Christmas
Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Not everyone understands what to think about and do during Advent. There are still plenty of Presbyterians who think Christmas is pagan or some sort of compromise with Roman Catholicism.
Here's a simple catechism I wrote last year (for children) explaining the Church Year and Advent.
The Church Year
Q 1. Why do we have different seasons of the year?
A. God created the seasons for man’s use and enjoyment.
Q 2. What do Fall and Winter remind us of?
A. Fall and Winter remind us of sin and death because it is dark and cold.
Q 3. What do Spring and Summer teach us?
A. Spring teaches us that God brings light and life to the world through Jesus Christ.
Q 4. What does the church calendar chiefly celebrate?
A. The church calendar celebrates the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Q 5. Why does the church have her own seasons?
A. The church has her own seasons to teach the world that true life is found in Jesus Christ and to resist reducing life to politics and economics.
Q 6. How are we to sanctify the seasons that God created for our benefit?
A. According to 1 Timothy 4:5, we are to set apart the seasons with the Word of God and prayer.
Q 7. How has the church set apart the seasons with the Word of God and prayer?
A. The church has chosen readings from the Old and New Testaments for each season and has ordered the prayer life of the church to match the life of Jesus.
Advent & Christmas
Q 8. What does the word “Advent” mean?
A. The word “advent” means “to come” and has to do with the coming of Jesus.
Q 9. What portion of the life of Jesus does Advent celebrate?
A. Advent celebrates the times leading up to the birth of Jesus as well as his coming again at the last day.
Q 10. How many Sundays are there in Advent?
A. There are four Sundays in Advent.
Q 11. What are the colors for Advent and what do they mean?
A. The colors for Advent are purple and royal blue. They remind us that Jesus is a glorious King.
Q 12. What do we pray for during Advent season?
A. During Advent we pray that Jesus our King would continue to come to us and serve us as he has promised.
Q 13. In our Advent prayers are we pretending that Jesus has not yet been born?
A. No. During Advent we are praying for him to come to us again and again as he has promised.
Q. 14. How did God fulfill his promises to his people in the Hebrew Scriptures?
A. God fulfilled his promises by uniting himself to our human nature in his Son, who faithfully lived a perfect life of service, died the death we deserve, and was raised to life again as the new man, and all this for our salvation.
Q 15. How has Jesus promised to come to us today?
A. In many different ways—to be with us on Sunday for worship, to help us daily when we are in trouble, and at the end of the world to establish the new heavens and earth.
Here's a simple catechism I wrote last year (for children) explaining the Church Year and Advent.
The Church Year
Q 1. Why do we have different seasons of the year?
A. God created the seasons for man’s use and enjoyment.
Q 2. What do Fall and Winter remind us of?
A. Fall and Winter remind us of sin and death because it is dark and cold.
Q 3. What do Spring and Summer teach us?
A. Spring teaches us that God brings light and life to the world through Jesus Christ.
Q 4. What does the church calendar chiefly celebrate?
A. The church calendar celebrates the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Q 5. Why does the church have her own seasons?
A. The church has her own seasons to teach the world that true life is found in Jesus Christ and to resist reducing life to politics and economics.
Q 6. How are we to sanctify the seasons that God created for our benefit?
A. According to 1 Timothy 4:5, we are to set apart the seasons with the Word of God and prayer.
Q 7. How has the church set apart the seasons with the Word of God and prayer?
A. The church has chosen readings from the Old and New Testaments for each season and has ordered the prayer life of the church to match the life of Jesus.
Advent & Christmas
Q 8. What does the word “Advent” mean?
A. The word “advent” means “to come” and has to do with the coming of Jesus.
Q 9. What portion of the life of Jesus does Advent celebrate?
A. Advent celebrates the times leading up to the birth of Jesus as well as his coming again at the last day.
Q 10. How many Sundays are there in Advent?
A. There are four Sundays in Advent.
Q 11. What are the colors for Advent and what do they mean?
A. The colors for Advent are purple and royal blue. They remind us that Jesus is a glorious King.
Q 12. What do we pray for during Advent season?
A. During Advent we pray that Jesus our King would continue to come to us and serve us as he has promised.
Q 13. In our Advent prayers are we pretending that Jesus has not yet been born?
A. No. During Advent we are praying for him to come to us again and again as he has promised.
Q. 14. How did God fulfill his promises to his people in the Hebrew Scriptures?
A. God fulfilled his promises by uniting himself to our human nature in his Son, who faithfully lived a perfect life of service, died the death we deserve, and was raised to life again as the new man, and all this for our salvation.
Q 15. How has Jesus promised to come to us today?
A. In many different ways—to be with us on Sunday for worship, to help us daily when we are in trouble, and at the end of the world to establish the new heavens and earth.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Anointing With Ketchup and Mustard!
Amazing video!
Closer to the Start - New Creation from Fellowship Church on Vimeo.
When I get back from sabbatical we're gonna start anointing people with kectchup and mustard at my church.
I never knew you could shine a black light on ketchup and mustard and get such colors! Cool! Modern liturgy! Liturgical innovation. A new creation! Or a new human burger. Whatever.
It's time to come into the 21st century, pastors! Let's get excited! Let's let some 50-year-old chicks to squirt ketchup and mustard on us while we sing!
HT: Wayne
Closer to the Start - New Creation from Fellowship Church on Vimeo.
When I get back from sabbatical we're gonna start anointing people with kectchup and mustard at my church.
I never knew you could shine a black light on ketchup and mustard and get such colors! Cool! Modern liturgy! Liturgical innovation. A new creation! Or a new human burger. Whatever.
It's time to come into the 21st century, pastors! Let's get excited! Let's let some 50-year-old chicks to squirt ketchup and mustard on us while we sing!
HT: Wayne
Monday, October 27, 2008
Free Liturgical Advice #4 - Do it; Don't Talk About it!
How many times to I have to say this? Who's listening? Anyone?
Don't preach another sermon at the Table before Communion. We've already heard one sermon; and it if it was a Presbyterian sermon, it was probably already much too long. Why do we need to hear another sermonette before the Supper? Enough talking. We don't need another extended explanation or invitation to the Table before the Lord's Supper. Just do the Supper as Jesus commanded.
Our tradition is so very screwy on this point. We feel like we have to "fence" the Table long and hard in order for the Supper to be effective, so that people will take it seriously enough. Even if we grant the need to take the Supper seriously, what makes us think that talking about it for 15 minutes before we pass out the food will actually make a difference? Presbyterians don't seem to be able to appreciate ritual unless every step is "explained" in the liturgy.
Besides, the Table is not all about us turning in on ourselves or even our individual devotional experience with the Lord. It's a social event, a ritual meal with other people!
It's no surprise to me that most Presbyterian and Reformed churches don't practice weekly communion. Who would want to endure such a protracted call to "serious" self-reflection and "genuine," "honest," "true," "real," "internal" appreciation of the Table every dang week? Not me.
Remember, I've argued against this kind of thing at length here. Perhaps I should serialize my talk at this year's PCA General Assembly and post it here on my blog.
Don't preach another sermon at the Table before Communion. We've already heard one sermon; and it if it was a Presbyterian sermon, it was probably already much too long. Why do we need to hear another sermonette before the Supper? Enough talking. We don't need another extended explanation or invitation to the Table before the Lord's Supper. Just do the Supper as Jesus commanded.
Our tradition is so very screwy on this point. We feel like we have to "fence" the Table long and hard in order for the Supper to be effective, so that people will take it seriously enough. Even if we grant the need to take the Supper seriously, what makes us think that talking about it for 15 minutes before we pass out the food will actually make a difference? Presbyterians don't seem to be able to appreciate ritual unless every step is "explained" in the liturgy.
Besides, the Table is not all about us turning in on ourselves or even our individual devotional experience with the Lord. It's a social event, a ritual meal with other people!
It's no surprise to me that most Presbyterian and Reformed churches don't practice weekly communion. Who would want to endure such a protracted call to "serious" self-reflection and "genuine," "honest," "true," "real," "internal" appreciation of the Table every dang week? Not me.
Remember, I've argued against this kind of thing at length here. Perhaps I should serialize my talk at this year's PCA General Assembly and post it here on my blog.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Free Liturgical Advice #3 - Talk Like a Man
Only men are called to be Pastors. Pastors are called to lead the worship service. Women should have no liturgical leadership role in Christian worship. They should not be up front telling the congregation what to sing or read or what to do next. The pastor is called to represent Christ to his gathered bride, the church. Period.
The fact that Jesus wants his bride to be led by Pastors that he ordains means Jesus wants his congregations to be led and instructed by a male voice. I am using the word "voice" both in its narrow and broader senses.
First, men and women speak differently. Duh. Here's how Jim Jordan describes it in his Liturgical Man, Liturgical Women essays:
The piece of free liturgical advice for this week, however, has to do with the way a man speaks when he's leading the service and what he says. Since the early 19th-century in America the pastorate has been feminized. Men who speak one way with their friends at a bar or at the hunting lodge suddenly start talking differently when they get behind the lectern or pulpit. You know what I mean. Sappy. Sentimental. Syrupy. It's like the difference between Ansel Adams and Thomas Kincade.
I don't even know if I can exhaustively describe the kinds of things I'm talking about. You just know it when you hear it. Preachers using silly, sentimental "illustrations" that the ladies love. Too many flowery adjectives like "glorious" and "heavenly" and "wonderful." In fact, normally this kind of feminized speech is heavy laden with descriptive adjectives. Active verbs get buried in the rubbish heap of affectations and emotive gushing. The pastor feels and says that he has to speak "to the heart." He lowers the volume of his voice to sound "spiritual" and "comforting."
Okay, I know. Obviously there are times and occasions for lowering the volume of one's voice, etc. But not while leading the service and not all through the sermon. I was at a service where the Pastor had this tone of voice that reminded me of a female kindergarten teacher. He tilted his head and affected a sing-song quality in his voice, "Now children, we are about to confess our sins, so everyone pay attention." It's not so much what he said, but the whiny tonality of his voice.
To affect a pseudo-spiritual, effeminate demeanor as liturgical officiant is to give in to the feminization of the clergy. To speak with a religious lilt and sprinkle all your ritual directions with sentimental affectations will undermine the foundational liturgical distinction between Christ, the Husband, and his Bride, the Church. Oh, and it's annoying, too.
Pastors: talk like men.
If you want to read more about the feminization of the church and the clergy, check out these titles:
Ann Douglas, The Feminization of America Culture
Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity
Leon Podles, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity
David Murrow, Why Men Hate Going to Church
The fact that Jesus wants his bride to be led by Pastors that he ordains means Jesus wants his congregations to be led and instructed by a male voice. I am using the word "voice" both in its narrow and broader senses.
First, men and women speak differently. Duh. Here's how Jim Jordan describes it in his Liturgical Man, Liturgical Women essays:
Men’s voices are generally an octave lower than women’s. A musician can tell you that lower notes are more foundational and higher notes are more decorative. The harmonic or “totality” movement in homophonic and polyphonic music is directed from the bass line, while the glory and decorative aspects of the music, including the melody, are in higher notes. Men’s voices (low notes) control the direction of the music, but women’s voices (high notes) glorify it.I'm not so concerned to get into the details of this right now. I just want to note that listening to the voice of a woman lead a service is a different experience than hearing a man do the same.
The piece of free liturgical advice for this week, however, has to do with the way a man speaks when he's leading the service and what he says. Since the early 19th-century in America the pastorate has been feminized. Men who speak one way with their friends at a bar or at the hunting lodge suddenly start talking differently when they get behind the lectern or pulpit. You know what I mean. Sappy. Sentimental. Syrupy. It's like the difference between Ansel Adams and Thomas Kincade. I don't even know if I can exhaustively describe the kinds of things I'm talking about. You just know it when you hear it. Preachers using silly, sentimental "illustrations" that the ladies love. Too many flowery adjectives like "glorious" and "heavenly" and "wonderful." In fact, normally this kind of feminized speech is heavy laden with descriptive adjectives. Active verbs get buried in the rubbish heap of affectations and emotive gushing. The pastor feels and says that he has to speak "to the heart." He lowers the volume of his voice to sound "spiritual" and "comforting."
Okay, I know. Obviously there are times and occasions for lowering the volume of one's voice, etc. But not while leading the service and not all through the sermon. I was at a service where the Pastor had this tone of voice that reminded me of a female kindergarten teacher. He tilted his head and affected a sing-song quality in his voice, "Now children, we are about to confess our sins, so everyone pay attention." It's not so much what he said, but the whiny tonality of his voice.
To affect a pseudo-spiritual, effeminate demeanor as liturgical officiant is to give in to the feminization of the clergy. To speak with a religious lilt and sprinkle all your ritual directions with sentimental affectations will undermine the foundational liturgical distinction between Christ, the Husband, and his Bride, the Church. Oh, and it's annoying, too.
Pastors: talk like men.
If you want to read more about the feminization of the church and the clergy, check out these titles:
Ann Douglas, The Feminization of America Culture
Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity
Leon Podles, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity
David Murrow, Why Men Hate Going to Church
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Free Liturgical Advice #2 - Bread
Don't use flat crackers or hard tasteless little cubes or styrofoam-like, melt-in-your-mouth wafers for communion. Use bread—a normal, fresh, tasty loaf of bread.
Yes, use a nice loaf of yeasted bread. Normal bread with yeast is NOT leavened bread.
I don't know how many times I've had to explain this to visitors, especially Presbyterian visitors.
"Why don't you all use unleavened bread for the Lord's Supper?" they ask.
My answer: "We do. What you just ate is unleavened bread."
"But, but. . . it was not a cracker or a wafer, but a normal loaf of bread!"
"Yes, that's true. But it was not made with leaven, but with new yeast. Sour dough bread is made with old leaven. Ours was not."
Let's think about this a little more carefully.
1. The first thing to note is that the unleavened bread is bread made without the old sour "starter" dough that contains the yeast. In normal situations the yeast comes from that starter "leaven." "Leaven" refers to the old, sour reserved dough that contains the yeast. Leaven contains yeast. Leaven is not the same as yeast. Many translations completely miss the distinction.
2. When bread is being made, there are two sources for yeast. First, you can get yeast from the old leaven that you have "reserved." In fact, the yeast must be imported into the "leaven" at the start of the process. When the process begins yeast is cultivated from the lees of wine. Then the yeast is put into the dough. A portion of the dough is used to cook the first batch, but a larger portion is "reserved" in order have the yeast readily available for use in later loaves. This is what is called the "leaven." Today we call it the "starter" dough for sour dough bread.
3. The second way to get yeast is to get it "fresh" when it's cultivated from the wine. Technically, a fresh loaf of bread made with this newly cultivated yeast is NOT "leavened." What this means is that the first bach of yeasted, rising bread that is made with the new yeast is NOT leavened bread. It is yeasted, but not from the sour dough leaven. So technically speaking a loaf made with yeast NOT from the leaven is still unleavened bread. It's new. It doesn't use the old, sour stuff. The bread we use for the Lord's Supper in our church is not sour dough bread. It is not leavened bread. It contains fresh yeast. It is yeasted, but not leavened.
4. There was theological symbolism involved in the use of unleavened bread when the Israelites made their flight from Egypt. They left behind the old, sour world of Egypt and began a new life. It was called "the bread of haste" because they had no time to cultivate new yeast. The process takes time. So they had to eat unleavened and un-yeasted crackers.
5. Once they arrived in the promised land, they started over again with the yeast of God's new world. They would no longer get their "life" from Egypt, but now from the Lord's Spirit. They ate unleavened bread in the wilderness until they could get to the new land, harvest grapes, make wine, and also new yeast.
6. All of this has to do with the Old Creation. One cuts off Egyptian leaven and finds new leaven in the New Land. In between, one eats unleavened bread. The annual Feast of Unleavened Bread seems to be a week long return to the wilderness, the inbetween place. The association of leaven/yeast with the feast of Pentecost makes it clear that by that time new yeast has been found and is being used.
7. So, the general question is whether in the New Covenant we must reenact the history of redemption weekly or annually, or whether that would be the same error as transubstantiationism in the old sense. It seems to me that using unyeasted bread would be like doing animal sacrifices. It was part of what was done over and over until Jesus came and finished it. The new leaven each year gradually fell back and became Egyptian leaven during the year and had to be cut off anew at Passover. But the New Covenant is ongoing, and cannot fall back, because it is guaranteed by the death of Jesus, not by the death of animals. The Spirit-leaven of Acts 2 does not fall back and become Egyptian.
8. Now, if the leaven is thrown out and you are in haste to make bread, then it can be made without yeast. That apparently is what the Israelites did when they hurried out of Egypt. That's why that particular bread was called "the bread of haste." They left behind Egypt (the old leaven) and hurried out to cross the Red Sea. But there's nothing to suggest that we have to eat the bread of haste (unleavened AND unyeasted bread) at the Lord's Table. In fact, Jesus reclined at table and we relax for the covenant memorial meal. The old leaven is gone, so we don't eat sour dough bread. But we do eat newly yeasted bread that represents Jesus new kingdom and the life he gives us at his Table.
9. You should note also that in Israel the bread eaten during the Peace Offering was leavened or yeasted (Lev. 23:17). It is only Passover and the ensuing week that required unleavened bread alone be eaten, and that was not only during the special meal but at every meal for the week. After that, all the bread eaten, including at feasts and sacrifices, was yeasty and leavened. Leavened bread was offered at Pentecost, and leaven is thus associated with the coming of the Spirit, the Yeaster. We live after Pentecost. Go find Dr. Collins's article in the Westminster Theological Journal where he argues that the Lord's Supper is the fulfillment of the Peace Offering. The normal peace offering meal included yeasted bread. The one special one - Passover - did not in order to commemorate the Exodus.
A side note: not every reference to "leaven" in the Bible makes it out to be symbolic of evil or the old world. So the person who says, "I'm sorry, pastor, but I just can't eat this bread for the Lord's Supper because leaven and yeast represent evil in the Bible," is just plain wrong. Leavened bread was a regular part of the fellowship meals at the tabernacle and temple. Sometimes leaven (and the yeast it carries) even represents the healthy influence of the kingdom of God (Matt. 13:33). When you eat yeasty bread at the Lord's Table you are not symbolically ingesting evil. Sigh.
10. Oddly, we object to Romanists when they say (supposedly) that Jesus is recrucified in the mass. But then by using unleavened bread we are really doing something similar: returning to Passover, to the Old Covenant, over and over rather than worshipping in a post-Pentecostal way. I don't want to press this, but it makes sense to me.
So let's stop eating nasty little hard crackers at communion. What kind of feast is that? How can people "taste and see that the Lord is good" when they are wondering about just what that wafer that is stuck to the roof of their mouth is made of.
Yes, use a nice loaf of yeasted bread. Normal bread with yeast is NOT leavened bread.I don't know how many times I've had to explain this to visitors, especially Presbyterian visitors.
"Why don't you all use unleavened bread for the Lord's Supper?" they ask.
My answer: "We do. What you just ate is unleavened bread."
"But, but. . . it was not a cracker or a wafer, but a normal loaf of bread!"
"Yes, that's true. But it was not made with leaven, but with new yeast. Sour dough bread is made with old leaven. Ours was not."
Let's think about this a little more carefully.
1. The first thing to note is that the unleavened bread is bread made without the old sour "starter" dough that contains the yeast. In normal situations the yeast comes from that starter "leaven." "Leaven" refers to the old, sour reserved dough that contains the yeast. Leaven contains yeast. Leaven is not the same as yeast. Many translations completely miss the distinction.
2. When bread is being made, there are two sources for yeast. First, you can get yeast from the old leaven that you have "reserved." In fact, the yeast must be imported into the "leaven" at the start of the process. When the process begins yeast is cultivated from the lees of wine. Then the yeast is put into the dough. A portion of the dough is used to cook the first batch, but a larger portion is "reserved" in order have the yeast readily available for use in later loaves. This is what is called the "leaven." Today we call it the "starter" dough for sour dough bread.
3. The second way to get yeast is to get it "fresh" when it's cultivated from the wine. Technically, a fresh loaf of bread made with this newly cultivated yeast is NOT "leavened." What this means is that the first bach of yeasted, rising bread that is made with the new yeast is NOT leavened bread. It is yeasted, but not from the sour dough leaven. So technically speaking a loaf made with yeast NOT from the leaven is still unleavened bread. It's new. It doesn't use the old, sour stuff. The bread we use for the Lord's Supper in our church is not sour dough bread. It is not leavened bread. It contains fresh yeast. It is yeasted, but not leavened.
4. There was theological symbolism involved in the use of unleavened bread when the Israelites made their flight from Egypt. They left behind the old, sour world of Egypt and began a new life. It was called "the bread of haste" because they had no time to cultivate new yeast. The process takes time. So they had to eat unleavened and un-yeasted crackers.
5. Once they arrived in the promised land, they started over again with the yeast of God's new world. They would no longer get their "life" from Egypt, but now from the Lord's Spirit. They ate unleavened bread in the wilderness until they could get to the new land, harvest grapes, make wine, and also new yeast.
6. All of this has to do with the Old Creation. One cuts off Egyptian leaven and finds new leaven in the New Land. In between, one eats unleavened bread. The annual Feast of Unleavened Bread seems to be a week long return to the wilderness, the inbetween place. The association of leaven/yeast with the feast of Pentecost makes it clear that by that time new yeast has been found and is being used.
7. So, the general question is whether in the New Covenant we must reenact the history of redemption weekly or annually, or whether that would be the same error as transubstantiationism in the old sense. It seems to me that using unyeasted bread would be like doing animal sacrifices. It was part of what was done over and over until Jesus came and finished it. The new leaven each year gradually fell back and became Egyptian leaven during the year and had to be cut off anew at Passover. But the New Covenant is ongoing, and cannot fall back, because it is guaranteed by the death of Jesus, not by the death of animals. The Spirit-leaven of Acts 2 does not fall back and become Egyptian.
8. Now, if the leaven is thrown out and you are in haste to make bread, then it can be made without yeast. That apparently is what the Israelites did when they hurried out of Egypt. That's why that particular bread was called "the bread of haste." They left behind Egypt (the old leaven) and hurried out to cross the Red Sea. But there's nothing to suggest that we have to eat the bread of haste (unleavened AND unyeasted bread) at the Lord's Table. In fact, Jesus reclined at table and we relax for the covenant memorial meal. The old leaven is gone, so we don't eat sour dough bread. But we do eat newly yeasted bread that represents Jesus new kingdom and the life he gives us at his Table.
9. You should note also that in Israel the bread eaten during the Peace Offering was leavened or yeasted (Lev. 23:17). It is only Passover and the ensuing week that required unleavened bread alone be eaten, and that was not only during the special meal but at every meal for the week. After that, all the bread eaten, including at feasts and sacrifices, was yeasty and leavened. Leavened bread was offered at Pentecost, and leaven is thus associated with the coming of the Spirit, the Yeaster. We live after Pentecost. Go find Dr. Collins's article in the Westminster Theological Journal where he argues that the Lord's Supper is the fulfillment of the Peace Offering. The normal peace offering meal included yeasted bread. The one special one - Passover - did not in order to commemorate the Exodus.
A side note: not every reference to "leaven" in the Bible makes it out to be symbolic of evil or the old world. So the person who says, "I'm sorry, pastor, but I just can't eat this bread for the Lord's Supper because leaven and yeast represent evil in the Bible," is just plain wrong. Leavened bread was a regular part of the fellowship meals at the tabernacle and temple. Sometimes leaven (and the yeast it carries) even represents the healthy influence of the kingdom of God (Matt. 13:33). When you eat yeasty bread at the Lord's Table you are not symbolically ingesting evil. Sigh.
10. Oddly, we object to Romanists when they say (supposedly) that Jesus is recrucified in the mass. But then by using unleavened bread we are really doing something similar: returning to Passover, to the Old Covenant, over and over rather than worshipping in a post-Pentecostal way. I don't want to press this, but it makes sense to me.
So let's stop eating nasty little hard crackers at communion. What kind of feast is that? How can people "taste and see that the Lord is good" when they are wondering about just what that wafer that is stuck to the roof of their mouth is made of.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Free Liturgical Advice #1 - Background Music
This is the first installment of a little series I'd like to do for the next three months or so. I didn't write the book on liturgy, but I did write a book on the subject. That doesn't mean I'm an expert, but I think I have a good eye (and ear) for spotting liturgical silliness. And that's what I intend to do in this little series—identify some practical liturgical mistakes that are commonly made in modern American worship services. Liturgical corrigenda ("things that need to be corrected"), if you will. Lucy charges 5 cents. My advice is free.So here is my first piece of advice: don't play background music during the long pastoral prayer. You know what I mean. The piano or synthesizer is playing some slow, nondescript muzak as the pastor begins to pray. The soft, simple music continues throughout the prayer. Sometimes the music is meant to conjure up "heavenly" thoughts or even "outer space." Oh yes, I've heard synthesized "space music" played as the prayer is being made. I don't know what else to call it. It's the kind of music you might hear during a presentation at your local planetarium.
This practice is pure cheese. It is so incredibly annoying and ridiculous. I suspect that it comes directly from televised church services and other televangelistic "ministries." Don't do it. Just pray. If people are having a hard time following your prayers, pastors, then shorten them. That's right. Most pastoral prayers are way too long. Better yet, use a form of prayer—a litany or a bidding prayer—that actually incorporates the congregation in the act of prayer. Now, there's a novel idea. No, actually, it's an ancient practice that treats the congregation as participants in the liturgy rather than simply as an audience that is being manipulated by emotive music.
Cheese is for Friday night at the wine bar. Keep it out of church.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
New Hymns for the Election Season
Yeah. The election season ought to be part of the new four-year church calendar. Yep. No doubt.
Tomorrow I fall off the face of the earth for three months. I'll be on sabbatical. So knowing this, my elders have already started their clandestine attempts radically to change our worship service in my absence. Imagine such a thing. I wrote the book on worship. Me. How dare they? The first thing they want to do is have the children's choir sing these praise songs.
Tomorrow I fall off the face of the earth for three months. I'll be on sabbatical. So knowing this, my elders have already started their clandestine attempts radically to change our worship service in my absence. Imagine such a thing. I wrote the book on worship. Me. How dare they? The first thing they want to do is have the children's choir sing these praise songs.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Liturgy in Brazil
This is pretty cool. Eduardo Chagas, a choirmaster at a Brazilian Presbyterian Church, has translated my old essay Why Presbyterians Don't Like Liturgy into Portuguese for Brazilian Presbyterians. If you read Portuguese, you can find it here.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Show Forth the Lord's Death
In my presentation at the GA Colloquium on the Sacraments I argued for a more joyful, communal experience at the Lord's Table. Will Barker gave a brief, gracious response to my paper suggesting that there was a place for a more solemn experience at the Table. He based this on Paul's statement in 1 Cor. 11:26, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." I believe Dr. Barker's 10 minute response will be posted shortly.
Here are a couple of things to think about. First, I grant that there can be a time and a place for a more solemn, subdued administration of the Supper. Depending on what's happening in the congregation, it may be appropriate given what is happening in the life of the congregation that week. The church may have a more subdued experience at the Table immediately after the death of a prominent member, or the excommunication of a brother or sister, or perhaps anytime when the congregation as a whole needs to mourn or repent. The first time the Corinthian church came together for the Lord's Supper after Paul's letter was read to the congregation probably wasn't the most joyful experience. I don't have a problem with occasional solemn communion services. At least once a year on Maunday Thursday the Supper should probably be experienced as such.
Second, "proclaiming the Lord's death" is not the same thing as mourning his death, or worse, attempting to relive the circumstances of his death. "Proclaiming the Lord's death" could mean one of two things. On the one hand, it could be a reference to the fact that the Good News of Jesus' death is proclaimed every time we eat the bread and drink the wine. The Supper is a public enactment of the application of the death of Jesus to the people of God. The fact that the "proclaiming" happens "as you eat this bread and drink the cup," means it's not a representation or reenactment of the death of Jesus. Eating and drinking cannot possibly be considered symbolic reenactments of death. Eating and drinking are about life and living!
The death of Jesus has happened. It's in the past. We come to the Table where the bread and wine are already there. The body and blood are separated, which means that the death has occurred. In the OT sacraficial system, the blood always had to be separated from the body of the animal, and that separation signaled the death of the victim. We come to the Table that has been spread for us because Jesus has already died. We now enjoy the fruits of his death. The death of Jesus cannot be reenacted at the Table. We can only enjoy the results of the death of Jesus—his body and blood given to us as food. Once again, it's a Table, not a tomb.
Third, the other interpretation of 1 Cor. 1:26 is the one I favor. The Lord's Supper is a covenant memorial meal. By means of the Supper the church memorializes the death of Jesus to the Father. When understood against the backdrop of the Old Testament "memorials," this New Covenant memorial meal is a dramatized ritual prayer reminding God of His covenant. The Lord’s Supper is the New Covenant memorial rite. It is the fulfillment of all the older ways that the Lord instituted as the means whereby His people would call upon His Name and dramatically ask Him to remember His covenant. All the memorials of the old order are now fulfilled and completed (compacted) into one simple covenantal memorial meal. Jesus says, “Do this as my memorial.”
At the Table we memorialize the death of Jesus. This is not about our "remembering" but about the church's reminding God of his covenant promises. It's about our action toward God. This is our prayer to God to remember Jesus and keep His covenant. We "show forth the Lord's death" to the Father asking Him to keep His gracious promises to us in Christ. In the case of the Lord’s Supper this memorializing is an act of the congregation, a pleading of the promises of God. This comes to focus in the prayers of thanksgiving (Greek: eucharist) and memorial before the bread and wine are distributed and eaten, but it is not limited to this. Indeed, the entire meal shows forth the death of Christ, as Paul says in 1 Cor. 11:26: as often as we eat and drink, we show forth the death of Christ.
This “proclamation” is not limited to the prayer or the breaking of the bread, but we memorialize Christ to the Father by means of the common meal. Here is the memorial of Your Son’s atoning sacrifice for us, O Lord, remember and be gracious towards us. Traditionally these prayers always included a summary of the life and work of Jesus Christ. A eucharistic memorial prayer should sound something like this:
All of this to say that our "proclaiming the Lord's Death" at the Table does not demand or imply a solemn, funereal atmosphere for the Supper. The death of Jesus should be proclaimed joyfully, whether to others (as a Gospel enactment) or to the Father (as our memorializing of Jesus work for us).
Here are a couple of things to think about. First, I grant that there can be a time and a place for a more solemn, subdued administration of the Supper. Depending on what's happening in the congregation, it may be appropriate given what is happening in the life of the congregation that week. The church may have a more subdued experience at the Table immediately after the death of a prominent member, or the excommunication of a brother or sister, or perhaps anytime when the congregation as a whole needs to mourn or repent. The first time the Corinthian church came together for the Lord's Supper after Paul's letter was read to the congregation probably wasn't the most joyful experience. I don't have a problem with occasional solemn communion services. At least once a year on Maunday Thursday the Supper should probably be experienced as such.Second, "proclaiming the Lord's death" is not the same thing as mourning his death, or worse, attempting to relive the circumstances of his death. "Proclaiming the Lord's death" could mean one of two things. On the one hand, it could be a reference to the fact that the Good News of Jesus' death is proclaimed every time we eat the bread and drink the wine. The Supper is a public enactment of the application of the death of Jesus to the people of God. The fact that the "proclaiming" happens "as you eat this bread and drink the cup," means it's not a representation or reenactment of the death of Jesus. Eating and drinking cannot possibly be considered symbolic reenactments of death. Eating and drinking are about life and living!
The death of Jesus has happened. It's in the past. We come to the Table where the bread and wine are already there. The body and blood are separated, which means that the death has occurred. In the OT sacraficial system, the blood always had to be separated from the body of the animal, and that separation signaled the death of the victim. We come to the Table that has been spread for us because Jesus has already died. We now enjoy the fruits of his death. The death of Jesus cannot be reenacted at the Table. We can only enjoy the results of the death of Jesus—his body and blood given to us as food. Once again, it's a Table, not a tomb.
Third, the other interpretation of 1 Cor. 1:26 is the one I favor. The Lord's Supper is a covenant memorial meal. By means of the Supper the church memorializes the death of Jesus to the Father. When understood against the backdrop of the Old Testament "memorials," this New Covenant memorial meal is a dramatized ritual prayer reminding God of His covenant. The Lord’s Supper is the New Covenant memorial rite. It is the fulfillment of all the older ways that the Lord instituted as the means whereby His people would call upon His Name and dramatically ask Him to remember His covenant. All the memorials of the old order are now fulfilled and completed (compacted) into one simple covenantal memorial meal. Jesus says, “Do this as my memorial.”
At the Table we memorialize the death of Jesus. This is not about our "remembering" but about the church's reminding God of his covenant promises. It's about our action toward God. This is our prayer to God to remember Jesus and keep His covenant. We "show forth the Lord's death" to the Father asking Him to keep His gracious promises to us in Christ. In the case of the Lord’s Supper this memorializing is an act of the congregation, a pleading of the promises of God. This comes to focus in the prayers of thanksgiving (Greek: eucharist) and memorial before the bread and wine are distributed and eaten, but it is not limited to this. Indeed, the entire meal shows forth the death of Christ, as Paul says in 1 Cor. 11:26: as often as we eat and drink, we show forth the death of Christ.
This “proclamation” is not limited to the prayer or the breaking of the bread, but we memorialize Christ to the Father by means of the common meal. Here is the memorial of Your Son’s atoning sacrifice for us, O Lord, remember and be gracious towards us. Traditionally these prayers always included a summary of the life and work of Jesus Christ. A eucharistic memorial prayer should sound something like this:
It is truly appropriate and right that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to You, O Lord, our heavenly Father, almighty everlasting God. But it is especially fitting that we should now, gathered around this Table, thank You for Your gracious covenant promises to us in Christ. Remember, Father, our Lord’s humble birth, His holy life, His innocent sufferings and death, and His resurrection and ascension for us. Faithfully keep Your covenant with us for Jesus’ sake and come now to nourish and equip us for service in Your kingdom. By Your Spirit make the body and blood of our Lord life-giving nourishment for Your people; in Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.A Eucharistic prayer like this, then, together with the doing of the Lord’s Supper “show forth the death of Jesus” (1 Cor. 11:26) to the Father. The whole meal is a dramatic prayer, a pleading of the promises to the Father by memorializing His Son’s birth, life, suffering, death, and resurrection for us.
All of this to say that our "proclaiming the Lord's Death" at the Table does not demand or imply a solemn, funereal atmosphere for the Supper. The death of Jesus should be proclaimed joyfully, whether to others (as a Gospel enactment) or to the Father (as our memorializing of Jesus work for us).
Thursday, May 29, 2008
PCA General Assembly Colloquium on the Sacraments
I finished my presentation on sacramental efficacy for the General Assembly Colloquium this year. I need to get it to the convener tomorrow. The stipulated question that each of the 4 speakers were asked to address is: What do the sacraments actually accomplish in their administration?
I sought to answer this question from a slightly different perspective. I've broken the question up into two parts, each adressing two dimensions of the problem. First, it's not enough to simply ask what the Lord's Supper, for example, accomplishes, but what ought it to accomplish?
And once we answer that, then the more difficult question is: Does the Lord’s Supper actually accomplish what God intends in our churches? And if it doesn’t, what’s the problem?
Most Reformed people would respond to the problem of the Supper's not accomplishing what God intends with a reference to the individual communicant’s lack of faith. Efficacy depends on the faithful reception of the Supper. No faith, no benefits. True enough. But is that the whole story? What if the way we do the Supper, the way the Supper is performed and then experienced is a major part of the problem? What if even faith-filled Christian people are hindered from receiving all the gifts God intends to give in the Supper because we pastors and elders are not being attentive to the proper manner in which the Supper is to be performed?
That's the question I will address in my presentation. Maybe I'll post it after it's delivered on June 10th.
I sought to answer this question from a slightly different perspective. I've broken the question up into two parts, each adressing two dimensions of the problem. First, it's not enough to simply ask what the Lord's Supper, for example, accomplishes, but what ought it to accomplish?
And once we answer that, then the more difficult question is: Does the Lord’s Supper actually accomplish what God intends in our churches? And if it doesn’t, what’s the problem?
Most Reformed people would respond to the problem of the Supper's not accomplishing what God intends with a reference to the individual communicant’s lack of faith. Efficacy depends on the faithful reception of the Supper. No faith, no benefits. True enough. But is that the whole story? What if the way we do the Supper, the way the Supper is performed and then experienced is a major part of the problem? What if even faith-filled Christian people are hindered from receiving all the gifts God intends to give in the Supper because we pastors and elders are not being attentive to the proper manner in which the Supper is to be performed?
That's the question I will address in my presentation. Maybe I'll post it after it's delivered on June 10th.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Worship in Spirit & Truth - Part 2
This is the conclusion to my discussion of John 2:24 and the regulative principle of worship.
Jesus’ words—“worship in Spirit and truth”—must be understood according to the context of Jesus’ discussion with the Samaritan woman. She had asked where the proper place of worship should be—Mt. Gerizim in Samaria or Mt. Zion in Jerusalem? Jesus responds with a prophetic statement, an utterance about something that will soon be in effect. At the time Jesus spoke to the woman, Jerusalem was the place where God had placed his Name. The Spirit descended in glory upon the tabernacle and temple. If you wanted to be faithful to the truth and enter into the environment of the Spirit, you went to Jerusalem with the people of God. In contrast to this, the Samaritans worshipped in ignorance. They bowed down as a people in the wrong place. There was no guarantee of the Spirit’s presence on Mt. Gerizim. Jesus makes this clear. They were wrong to worship God on the mountain of their own choice.
But a time was coming—indeed, it was being inaugurated in Jesus’ own ministry—when bowing down “faithfully” and “in the Spirit” could be done by God’s people anywhere, not merely in Jerusalem. The post-Pentecost situation would radically decentralize corporate worship. Not individual worship. That had always been decentralized. The big change now would be that longer would worshipers gather together only at Jerusalem, but now the Spirit would be present wherever the church assembled in the Name of Jesus. That's what this passage is all about.
Today most commentators agree that in proclaiming worship "in Spirit and truth," Jesus was not contrasting external worship with internal worship. His statement has nothing to do with worshiping God in the inner resources of one’s own spirit. The Spirit Jesus speaks of in this passage is the Spirit of God, not the spirit of man, as vs. 24 makes clear . . . . Jesus is speaking of the eschatological replacement of temporal institutions like the Temple, resuming the theme of 2:13-22. In 2:21 it was Jesus himself who was to take the place of the Temple, and here it is the Spirit given by Jesus that is to animate the worship that replaces worship at the Temple.
In John 4:24, therefore, Jesus is not emphasizing the importance of one’s inner emotional experience. Jesus is not saying if you want to have genuine worship you must participate with your innermost spirit. If that was what Jesus was saying, then there would be nothing new about such an admonition. It was true in the Old Testament. If worship “in spirit” only meant that individuals should worship sincerely, honestly, with one’s heart and soul, such an assertion could not have answered the Samaritan woman’s question.
"Spirit" is not a description of God’s non-material nature. We should not read this like this: God is a spirit. That is, God is in the category of what we call “spiritual, immaterial beings.” That is not John’s concern. The “S” should be capitalized. God is Spirit. This is not a statement about the “nature” of God, but of the way in which God is present to human beings, his dynamic relations with humanity. The Father gives the Spirit (John 14:1) and the Holy Spirit is the medium of his personal relations to us.
Compare this with 1 John 1:5 (“God is light”) and 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”). These statements do not describe God’s “nature,” but his relational being. To say that “God is Spirit” in the context of a discussion about the place where one should bow down means that God will be properly worshiped wherever his Spirit is. We must be “in the Spirit” if we are to be in God’s presence, the place where he is. This is similar to Jesus saying that one must be “born from above” and “born of water and Spirit” (John 3:3-8). The Spirit connects us with heaven, with the Father.
So if you want to worship the Father, you will be where the Spirit of truth is. Once again, I am not denying we can worship individually anywhere and anytime, and by the Spirit. That was true in Old Testament times as well. But there is a more specific sense of "in Spirit," which is in the community of believers gathered at a specific place for special worship. The context makes it clear that Jesus is speaking in this specific sense. It's as if the woman asked, "Where is the Spirit present so that we can be sure to be worshiping God in the right place? Is the Spirit in Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim?"
In the context of the Old Testament “bowing down in Spirit” meant gathering with the people of God for corporate, sacrificial worship wherever the tabernacle was pitched or at the site of the temple in Jerusalem. But not any more. The Spirit that descended and filled the old tabernacle and temple is the same Spirit that descended and remained upon Jesus, the true and final Temple.
In the new world, the place where God and man are united is in the flesh of Jesus. He is the new Temple (John 2:19-22). Jesus will ascend to heaven shortly after his discussion with the Samaritan woman, and he promised to send the Spirit to indwell and empower his body, the church (John 14-16; Acts 1:8; 2:1-4). When the church gathers, the Spirit is there. Where the Spirit gathers the church, there is Christ. She is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21). And so worship to the Father occurs through Jesus and in the Spirit where the earthly temple of living stones is gathered (1 Pet. 2:5). Thus, in the New Testament, people who worship “in Spirit and truth’ will gather with the Body of Christ to participate in Spiritual worship of the Father (1 Cor. 12:12-14).
Some have even used Jesus’ statement to argue that he was condemning all kinds of external and material worship—rituals, corporeal objects, and the rest. That doesn't work. No way. Jesus is not speaking here about individual, in-your-thoughts worship. But about people and what they do. The Samaritan woman asked where one should “bow down,” that is, where is the proper place to bow down before God and experience his Spirit.
In the New Covenant God has not suddenly become available only to individuals who turn inward or seek some immaterial/spiritual means of communion. Nor has he become a “vagabond God” (Luther’s phrase), wandering here and there apart from any place. Rather just as God limited and bound himself to specified places and times and people in the Old Testament, so also in the New. This has not changed in the New Testament. We have not become disembodied spirit beings! We have no independent, immaterial access to God in the New Covenant. What we have is a different set of physical means appropriate to the change made in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
In the Old Covenant the place of corporate worship was one place and people—the tabernacle, the temple, the ark of the covenant, the altar, and the physical rituals of sacrifice that were performed at these centralized sites. We Christians, however, unlike the believers in the Old Testament, are no longer bound to one geographical location, to one physical temple at the center of the world. We no longer go to one nation that has been given the ministry of priestly intercession and ministry. The Spirit no longer binds himself to one location or one people. This is evident even in this passage. The living water that the woman receives (i.e., the Holy Spirit) wells up in her such that when her fellow towns people hear her witness, they too receive the living-water Spirit and believe (John 4:28-30, 39-42). And they are nowhere near Jerusalem!
What Jerusalem and the Jews were to the Old Testament—the place and ministers by which God met with men and women—Christ and his Body, the Church, are today. Jesus’ humanity is the place to which God summons us. Christ alone is the new sanctuary, the mercy seat, and the high priest through whom we must draw near to God. And Christ has given the Spirit to fill his Body, the Church, on earth so that she might be the place where humanity finds God. She is the New Jerusalem. If we wish to worship God in Spirit and truth, we will seek God among his people, where the Word is audibly read and preached, where the physical sacraments are given and received. He still embodies his presence by the Spirit, but it is no longer a centralized, geographically limited embodiment.
The Spirit is given by Jesus (as John 14-17 will make clear). He is the proper environment of worship. And the Spirit brings men and women together in various places by the Spirit in order that they might worship God through the Messiah. In union with the humanity of Jesus, we have access to the Father through the Spirit. We bow before God in Christ in the environment of the Spirit. Luther reminds us that the ministry of the Holy Spirit “is thoroughly external and completely available to our sense . . . we see and hear the Holy Spirit in the dove, in tongues of fire, in baptism, and in a human voice.” Paul Althaus summarizes it well:
Conclusion
I reject all four of the deformations of the Reformed regulative principle of worship. Much better is A. A. Hodge’s simple comments on the Westminster Confession of Faith 21.1. According to Hodge, this section teaches,
Jesus’ words—“worship in Spirit and truth”—must be understood according to the context of Jesus’ discussion with the Samaritan woman. She had asked where the proper place of worship should be—Mt. Gerizim in Samaria or Mt. Zion in Jerusalem? Jesus responds with a prophetic statement, an utterance about something that will soon be in effect. At the time Jesus spoke to the woman, Jerusalem was the place where God had placed his Name. The Spirit descended in glory upon the tabernacle and temple. If you wanted to be faithful to the truth and enter into the environment of the Spirit, you went to Jerusalem with the people of God. In contrast to this, the Samaritans worshipped in ignorance. They bowed down as a people in the wrong place. There was no guarantee of the Spirit’s presence on Mt. Gerizim. Jesus makes this clear. They were wrong to worship God on the mountain of their own choice.
But a time was coming—indeed, it was being inaugurated in Jesus’ own ministry—when bowing down “faithfully” and “in the Spirit” could be done by God’s people anywhere, not merely in Jerusalem. The post-Pentecost situation would radically decentralize corporate worship. Not individual worship. That had always been decentralized. The big change now would be that longer would worshipers gather together only at Jerusalem, but now the Spirit would be present wherever the church assembled in the Name of Jesus. That's what this passage is all about.
Today most commentators agree that in proclaiming worship "in Spirit and truth," Jesus was not contrasting external worship with internal worship. His statement has nothing to do with worshiping God in the inner resources of one’s own spirit. The Spirit Jesus speaks of in this passage is the Spirit of God, not the spirit of man, as vs. 24 makes clear . . . . Jesus is speaking of the eschatological replacement of temporal institutions like the Temple, resuming the theme of 2:13-22. In 2:21 it was Jesus himself who was to take the place of the Temple, and here it is the Spirit given by Jesus that is to animate the worship that replaces worship at the Temple.
In John 4:24, therefore, Jesus is not emphasizing the importance of one’s inner emotional experience. Jesus is not saying if you want to have genuine worship you must participate with your innermost spirit. If that was what Jesus was saying, then there would be nothing new about such an admonition. It was true in the Old Testament. If worship “in spirit” only meant that individuals should worship sincerely, honestly, with one’s heart and soul, such an assertion could not have answered the Samaritan woman’s question.
"Spirit" is not a description of God’s non-material nature. We should not read this like this: God is a spirit. That is, God is in the category of what we call “spiritual, immaterial beings.” That is not John’s concern. The “S” should be capitalized. God is Spirit. This is not a statement about the “nature” of God, but of the way in which God is present to human beings, his dynamic relations with humanity. The Father gives the Spirit (John 14:1) and the Holy Spirit is the medium of his personal relations to us.
Compare this with 1 John 1:5 (“God is light”) and 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”). These statements do not describe God’s “nature,” but his relational being. To say that “God is Spirit” in the context of a discussion about the place where one should bow down means that God will be properly worshiped wherever his Spirit is. We must be “in the Spirit” if we are to be in God’s presence, the place where he is. This is similar to Jesus saying that one must be “born from above” and “born of water and Spirit” (John 3:3-8). The Spirit connects us with heaven, with the Father.
So if you want to worship the Father, you will be where the Spirit of truth is. Once again, I am not denying we can worship individually anywhere and anytime, and by the Spirit. That was true in Old Testament times as well. But there is a more specific sense of "in Spirit," which is in the community of believers gathered at a specific place for special worship. The context makes it clear that Jesus is speaking in this specific sense. It's as if the woman asked, "Where is the Spirit present so that we can be sure to be worshiping God in the right place? Is the Spirit in Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim?"
In the context of the Old Testament “bowing down in Spirit” meant gathering with the people of God for corporate, sacrificial worship wherever the tabernacle was pitched or at the site of the temple in Jerusalem. But not any more. The Spirit that descended and filled the old tabernacle and temple is the same Spirit that descended and remained upon Jesus, the true and final Temple.
In the new world, the place where God and man are united is in the flesh of Jesus. He is the new Temple (John 2:19-22). Jesus will ascend to heaven shortly after his discussion with the Samaritan woman, and he promised to send the Spirit to indwell and empower his body, the church (John 14-16; Acts 1:8; 2:1-4). When the church gathers, the Spirit is there. Where the Spirit gathers the church, there is Christ. She is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21). And so worship to the Father occurs through Jesus and in the Spirit where the earthly temple of living stones is gathered (1 Pet. 2:5). Thus, in the New Testament, people who worship “in Spirit and truth’ will gather with the Body of Christ to participate in Spiritual worship of the Father (1 Cor. 12:12-14).
Some have even used Jesus’ statement to argue that he was condemning all kinds of external and material worship—rituals, corporeal objects, and the rest. That doesn't work. No way. Jesus is not speaking here about individual, in-your-thoughts worship. But about people and what they do. The Samaritan woman asked where one should “bow down,” that is, where is the proper place to bow down before God and experience his Spirit.
In the New Covenant God has not suddenly become available only to individuals who turn inward or seek some immaterial/spiritual means of communion. Nor has he become a “vagabond God” (Luther’s phrase), wandering here and there apart from any place. Rather just as God limited and bound himself to specified places and times and people in the Old Testament, so also in the New. This has not changed in the New Testament. We have not become disembodied spirit beings! We have no independent, immaterial access to God in the New Covenant. What we have is a different set of physical means appropriate to the change made in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
In the Old Covenant the place of corporate worship was one place and people—the tabernacle, the temple, the ark of the covenant, the altar, and the physical rituals of sacrifice that were performed at these centralized sites. We Christians, however, unlike the believers in the Old Testament, are no longer bound to one geographical location, to one physical temple at the center of the world. We no longer go to one nation that has been given the ministry of priestly intercession and ministry. The Spirit no longer binds himself to one location or one people. This is evident even in this passage. The living water that the woman receives (i.e., the Holy Spirit) wells up in her such that when her fellow towns people hear her witness, they too receive the living-water Spirit and believe (John 4:28-30, 39-42). And they are nowhere near Jerusalem!
What Jerusalem and the Jews were to the Old Testament—the place and ministers by which God met with men and women—Christ and his Body, the Church, are today. Jesus’ humanity is the place to which God summons us. Christ alone is the new sanctuary, the mercy seat, and the high priest through whom we must draw near to God. And Christ has given the Spirit to fill his Body, the Church, on earth so that she might be the place where humanity finds God. She is the New Jerusalem. If we wish to worship God in Spirit and truth, we will seek God among his people, where the Word is audibly read and preached, where the physical sacraments are given and received. He still embodies his presence by the Spirit, but it is no longer a centralized, geographically limited embodiment.
The Spirit is given by Jesus (as John 14-17 will make clear). He is the proper environment of worship. And the Spirit brings men and women together in various places by the Spirit in order that they might worship God through the Messiah. In union with the humanity of Jesus, we have access to the Father through the Spirit. We bow before God in Christ in the environment of the Spirit. Luther reminds us that the ministry of the Holy Spirit “is thoroughly external and completely available to our sense . . . we see and hear the Holy Spirit in the dove, in tongues of fire, in baptism, and in a human voice.” Paul Althaus summarizes it well:
“Christ is present to us in very earthly ways. Everywhere in the history of revelation God embodies himself for us. His Spirit came in the form of a dove and the fiery tongues of Pentecost. And God still embodies himself for us. The Holy Spirit comes to us and brings Christ to us through the external, physical, sensible means of the word, of the human voice, and of the sacraments.God meets with us at trysting places (Luther’s evocative terminology). Where the people of God are gathered as the Church and there is baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the word of God on the lips of his ministers and all his believers—that is where God is. That is where we bow down in Spirit and truth.
Conclusion
I reject all four of the deformations of the Reformed regulative principle of worship. Much better is A. A. Hodge’s simple comments on the Westminster Confession of Faith 21.1. According to Hodge, this section teaches,
“That God in his Word has prescribed for us how we may worship him acceptably; and that it is an offense to him and a sin in us either to neglect to worship and serve him in the way prescribed, or to attempt to serve him in any way not prescribed.”This is a very productive summary of the regulative principle. It avoids the dangers of an unworkable, overly strict formulation (like “whatever is not commanded is forbidden.”). It does not, of course, answer all of our questions in advance. We must still do the hard work of biblical exegesis to determine precisely how God regulates worship. We can be confident, however, that God has prescribed for us in his Word how we may worship him acceptably. This authoritative prescription comes by way of command, principle, and example from both the Old and New Testaments.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Worship in Spirit & Truth - Part 1
This post is actually the next installment for my series on the "regulative principle of worship." But since it's all about John 4:24 and it will take me two posts to deal with the phrase "worship in Spirit and truth," I've renamed it accordingly.
A New-Testament-only approach to the regulative principle invariably ends up advocating an overly inward, rationalistic approach to worship. The inward, spiritual, non-material movement of the mind is more important that the movement of the body (tongue or knees or hands) in worship. So anything material detracts from the true “spiritual” worship of the New Testament.
Here's an illustration of this: A long time ago in a church far, far away a seminary professor of mine, after participating in worship at our church, commented to me about how much he appreciated the times of silence in the service. “That was true spiritual worship!” he said. Now, I think times of silence in the worship service are fine, but they are definitely not more “spiritual” than when the congregation is belting out a vigorous hymn or Psalm. In the Bible the adjective “spiritual” means “of the Holy Spirit,” not something non-material or inward or mental as opposed to the material, physical, and outward.
This “spiritualizing” of the regulative principle of worship is the fourth distortion to analyze. It is often justified by a misreading of Jesus’ discussion with the Samaritan woman in John 4. Jesus’ assertion in John 4:24 is often lifted from its context and dangerously misconstrued to function as a warning against all “outward” and “external” liturgical worship. A more literal translation, however, will help us understand what Jesus means by worshiping in “Spirit and truth”:
The NIV study Bible is quite wrong in its explanatory note: “The place of worship is irrelevant, because true worship must be in keeping with God’s nature, which is spirit.” Jesus is not redirecting genuine worship to inward, sincere worship. This follows from two considerations: 1) the meaning of the word proskuneo, often translated “to worship,” and 2) the redemptive-historical context of Jesus’ remarks.
First, the Greek verb proskuneo (used 9 times in 6 verses in John 4:20-26) means “to bow down,” “to kneel,” or “prostrate oneself.” Even though my translation of this passage is awkward, I have tried to bring out the ritual dimensions of the conversation by consistently translating proskuneo as “bow down.” One must remember the very concrete meaning of proskuneo in the ancient world. Doing “obeisance” means bending your body and placing yourself “under” another. When you proskuneo-ed before someone, you bowed down in their presence, even at their feet.
The English word “worship,” especially as it is used in modern times, is not a very helpful translation. One of the problems with our word “worship” is that it now refers to all sorts of activities, both physical and mental. In fact, a recent fad is to stress that all of life is “worship” and that genuine worship is mental and happens every day and all through the day in our minds and hearts. In some sense this is true, but only in a very loose sense. When used in this sense “worship” denotes a mental disposition.
But this is not the sense in which this word proskuneo or “bowing down” is ordinarily used in the Scriptures. If you want to say that all of life is “bowing down,” that is fine; but this can only be so in a very abstract or metaphorical way. If you are working hard on a painting job, for example, you may, indeed you should mentally give thanks and praise to God while you do so, but . . . you are not bowing down at that time with others in a congregation to offer praise and thanksgiving to God.
The woman and Jesus are not talking about this kind of mental attitude. Jesus is addressing the question of where one should bow down to the Father. It's all about the proper location. Jesus is talking about the ritual act of bowing down or kneeling before God in order to honor him and express one’s proper devotion.
The Samaritan woman asks, in effect, “Where is the place, the location, where we should bow down to God?” We will see how Jesus answers that question in a moment, but for now simply attend to the kind of devotion in question. The activity in view here is what we might call “special” as opposed to “general” devotion. It is special in the sense that it happens at a known location and it involves the people of God in acts of embodied ritual devotion before God. Furthermore, the bowing down in question has to do with corporate or public worship, not private worship.
Bowing down, then, is a kind of synecdoche for everything the people of God do when they gather together in corporate worship. It simply has to be this. Everyone, both Jews and Samaritans knew that one could pray and praise and petition God, one could even get down on one’s knees anytime or place. Individual bowing down was never restricted to the Temple or Jerusalem or in Samaria, to Mt. Gerizim. Individual, private, mental worship had no restrictions in the Old Covenant.
Please, pay careful attention to this point. The big point being made by Jesus in this passage cannot be that now in the New Testament individuals can individually bow down, pray to, or mentally worship God wherever they want. That had always been the case. The controversy here is about where the people of Samaria should gather to bow down in special corporate worship. All special, corporate worship in the Bible is external and bodily and involves the biblical ritual (among others) of kneeling or bowing down.
So what did Jesus mean when he said that the time is coming when people would "bow down in Spirit and truth"? I'll deal with that in the next part.
A New-Testament-only approach to the regulative principle invariably ends up advocating an overly inward, rationalistic approach to worship. The inward, spiritual, non-material movement of the mind is more important that the movement of the body (tongue or knees or hands) in worship. So anything material detracts from the true “spiritual” worship of the New Testament. Here's an illustration of this: A long time ago in a church far, far away a seminary professor of mine, after participating in worship at our church, commented to me about how much he appreciated the times of silence in the service. “That was true spiritual worship!” he said. Now, I think times of silence in the worship service are fine, but they are definitely not more “spiritual” than when the congregation is belting out a vigorous hymn or Psalm. In the Bible the adjective “spiritual” means “of the Holy Spirit,” not something non-material or inward or mental as opposed to the material, physical, and outward.
This “spiritualizing” of the regulative principle of worship is the fourth distortion to analyze. It is often justified by a misreading of Jesus’ discussion with the Samaritan woman in John 4. Jesus’ assertion in John 4:24 is often lifted from its context and dangerously misconstrued to function as a warning against all “outward” and “external” liturgical worship. A more literal translation, however, will help us understand what Jesus means by worshiping in “Spirit and truth”:
The [Samaritan] woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our Father’s bowed down [proskuneo] on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to bow down.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will your people bow down to the Father. Your people bow down to what you do not know; we bow down to the one we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here, when true worshipers will bow down to the Father in Spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to bow down to him. God is Spirit, and those who bow down to him must bow down in Spirit and truth.” (John 4:19-24).Jesus is not saying that God is non-material, so therefore his worshippers must unite with him by means of their spirits or souls. He is not disparaging the body in worship or advocating some sort of "immaterial" worship, whatever that might be.
The NIV study Bible is quite wrong in its explanatory note: “The place of worship is irrelevant, because true worship must be in keeping with God’s nature, which is spirit.” Jesus is not redirecting genuine worship to inward, sincere worship. This follows from two considerations: 1) the meaning of the word proskuneo, often translated “to worship,” and 2) the redemptive-historical context of Jesus’ remarks.
First, the Greek verb proskuneo (used 9 times in 6 verses in John 4:20-26) means “to bow down,” “to kneel,” or “prostrate oneself.” Even though my translation of this passage is awkward, I have tried to bring out the ritual dimensions of the conversation by consistently translating proskuneo as “bow down.” One must remember the very concrete meaning of proskuneo in the ancient world. Doing “obeisance” means bending your body and placing yourself “under” another. When you proskuneo-ed before someone, you bowed down in their presence, even at their feet.
The English word “worship,” especially as it is used in modern times, is not a very helpful translation. One of the problems with our word “worship” is that it now refers to all sorts of activities, both physical and mental. In fact, a recent fad is to stress that all of life is “worship” and that genuine worship is mental and happens every day and all through the day in our minds and hearts. In some sense this is true, but only in a very loose sense. When used in this sense “worship” denotes a mental disposition.
But this is not the sense in which this word proskuneo or “bowing down” is ordinarily used in the Scriptures. If you want to say that all of life is “bowing down,” that is fine; but this can only be so in a very abstract or metaphorical way. If you are working hard on a painting job, for example, you may, indeed you should mentally give thanks and praise to God while you do so, but . . . you are not bowing down at that time with others in a congregation to offer praise and thanksgiving to God.
The woman and Jesus are not talking about this kind of mental attitude. Jesus is addressing the question of where one should bow down to the Father. It's all about the proper location. Jesus is talking about the ritual act of bowing down or kneeling before God in order to honor him and express one’s proper devotion.
The Samaritan woman asks, in effect, “Where is the place, the location, where we should bow down to God?” We will see how Jesus answers that question in a moment, but for now simply attend to the kind of devotion in question. The activity in view here is what we might call “special” as opposed to “general” devotion. It is special in the sense that it happens at a known location and it involves the people of God in acts of embodied ritual devotion before God. Furthermore, the bowing down in question has to do with corporate or public worship, not private worship.
Bowing down, then, is a kind of synecdoche for everything the people of God do when they gather together in corporate worship. It simply has to be this. Everyone, both Jews and Samaritans knew that one could pray and praise and petition God, one could even get down on one’s knees anytime or place. Individual bowing down was never restricted to the Temple or Jerusalem or in Samaria, to Mt. Gerizim. Individual, private, mental worship had no restrictions in the Old Covenant.
Please, pay careful attention to this point. The big point being made by Jesus in this passage cannot be that now in the New Testament individuals can individually bow down, pray to, or mentally worship God wherever they want. That had always been the case. The controversy here is about where the people of Samaria should gather to bow down in special corporate worship. All special, corporate worship in the Bible is external and bodily and involves the biblical ritual (among others) of kneeling or bowing down.
So what did Jesus mean when he said that the time is coming when people would "bow down in Spirit and truth"? I'll deal with that in the next part.
Friday, April 4, 2008
The Regulative Principle of Worship, Part 3
Marcionite RPW?
The third problem with some formulations of the regulative principle is when it is applied in a dispensational, semi-Marcionite way. For some people the regulative principle means that we only look to the New Testament for biblical warrant. Only what the New Testament expressly prescribes ought to be done. All that ceremony and ritual, well, that was Old Testament worship. The Old Testament had a lot of "outward" and "material" religious ceremonies, but in the New Testament our worship is inward and spiritual.
More often than not, popular Protestant imagination inadvertently links Roman Catholic worship with Old Testament worship, as if Catholicism is somehow a throwback to Old Testament worship. The Puritans tended to make this mistake. For example, John Owen (an independent Puritan) does not like the Lord’s Prayer. Why? Because it was part of Old Testament worship structures:
There is a disconcerting penchant among Reformed theologians, from the Reformation on, for disparaging Old Covenant sacrificial ritual by identifying it too closely with Roman Catholic errors. This erroneous identification became more and more prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even though it is not about worship per se, I highly recommend Henning Graf Reventlow’s The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). Reventlow chronicles the rise of Deism in England and Germany as the precursor to higher criticism. In the process of his research he shows how English Protestants, particularly the Puritans, displayed a deep-seated hostility to anything that smacked of material ceremony and ritual, and that they read the Old Testament with these colored lenses such that they tended to interpret Old Testament religion as a kind of Catholicism before Rome.
Furthermore, according to Reventlow, this moralistic, anti-ceremonial bias fed right into (or possibly even “caused”) the rising humanistic antipathy to revealed religion, particularly that of the Old Testament, leading to the rise of higher critical methodologies that deconstruct the first four-fifths of the Bible. At any rate, Reventlow’s research on the anti-ritual “spiritualism” of the English post-Reformation theologians is extremely troubling. This work reveals something of the shortcomings of our own anti-liturgical, spiritualistic heritage.
Another odd characteristic of much of Reformed polemics on the regulative principle has been the appeal to synagogue worship over against the Old Testament biblical regulations regarding the temple liturgy. I say it is odd because there are no explicit biblical regulations concerning synagogue worship. We know that the people of Israel worshiped weekly in local assemblies since a Sabbath day “holy convocation” or “assembly” was commanded by Yahweh in Leviticus 23:3: “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to Yahweh in all your dwelling places.”
Now, it is true that the local Sabbath worship was not explicitly regulated. That is, God did not lay out a how-to list like he does in Leviticus. But that doesn't mean that wise Levites and elders in the local towns would not understand that the regulations of the Temple and sacrificial system applied mutatis mutandis to the local services over which they presided. We have a great deal of evidence to suggest that this is exactly what synagogue worship became: sacrificial worship without the animal sacrifices. Synagogue practice was modeled on the temple (e.g., prayers were described as "sacrifices," similar to the New Testament and the synagogue itself was considered holy space). Although a staple of much Reformed anti-liturgical polemics, the notion that synagogue worship was “simple” and a-liturgical and therefore must function as a model for “simple” New Testament worship lacks credible support.*
Add to this the fact that the New Testament everywhere talks about the church as the fulfillment of the Temple. There's very little to connect the synagogue and church. But all the imagery and symbolism of Israel's Temple comes to fulfillment in the life of the church. Going to the OT and reading it through the lens of it's fulfillment in Christ in order to learn about corporate Christian worship is the great need of the day. This is why, for example, the order or sequence of the "offerings" in the sacrificial worship of Israel is so important.
I could say a lot more about this topic, but I think I'll stop here. The bottom line is that we need to be whole-Bible Christians when we reflect on how the Bible regulates congregational worship.
--------------
*See Peter J. Leithart, “Synagogue or Temple? Models for Christian Worship,” Westminster Theological Journal 64:1 (Spring 2002): 119-134; Leithart, From Silence to Song, chapter 6; John W. Kleinig, The Lord’s Song: The Basis, Function and Significance of Choral Music in Chronicles (JSOT Supplement #156; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); and Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogue in the Second Temple Period (SBL Dissertation Series 169; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1997).
The third problem with some formulations of the regulative principle is when it is applied in a dispensational, semi-Marcionite way. For some people the regulative principle means that we only look to the New Testament for biblical warrant. Only what the New Testament expressly prescribes ought to be done. All that ceremony and ritual, well, that was Old Testament worship. The Old Testament had a lot of "outward" and "material" religious ceremonies, but in the New Testament our worship is inward and spiritual.
More often than not, popular Protestant imagination inadvertently links Roman Catholic worship with Old Testament worship, as if Catholicism is somehow a throwback to Old Testament worship. The Puritans tended to make this mistake. For example, John Owen (an independent Puritan) does not like the Lord’s Prayer. Why? Because it was part of Old Testament worship structures:
Our Savior at that time was minister of the Circumcision, and taught the doctrine of the gospel under and with the observation of all the worship of the Judaical church. He was not yet glorified, and so the Spirit was not as yet given; I mean that Spirit which he promised unto his disciples to enable them to perform all the worship of God by him required at their hands, whereof we have before spoken. That, then, which the Lord Jesus prescribed unto his disciples, for their present practice in the worship of God, seems to have belonged unto the economy of the Old Testament. Now to argue from the prescription of, and outward helps for, the performance of the worship of God under the Old Testament, unto a necessity of the like or the same under the New, is upon the matter to deny that Christ is ascended on high, and to have given spiritual gifts unto men eminently distinct from and above those given out by him under the Judaical pedagogy (Owen, Works, vol. 15, p. 14).Frank J. Smith asserts “Romanism . . . retained much of the Old Covenant sacrificial system” (Worship in the Presence of God, eds. Frank J. Smith and David C. Lachman (Greenville, SC: Greenville Seminary Press, 1992), p. 11). What exactly does this mean? How can Roman Catholicism be said to have “retained” Old Covenant sacrificial practices? Did the error of the Mass develop because the church returned to the liturgical elements of the Old Testament ceremonial system? Or did it develop as a result of the influence of alien philosophical (Aristotelian) categories on biblical teaching? Does Frank Smith want to suggest that the God-given sacrificial system was Romanist? Are we to believe that the corruption of the medieval church came about because of the influence of the Old Testament on the church’s liturgy? This kind of argument is historically and theologically erroneous.
There is a disconcerting penchant among Reformed theologians, from the Reformation on, for disparaging Old Covenant sacrificial ritual by identifying it too closely with Roman Catholic errors. This erroneous identification became more and more prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even though it is not about worship per se, I highly recommend Henning Graf Reventlow’s The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). Reventlow chronicles the rise of Deism in England and Germany as the precursor to higher criticism. In the process of his research he shows how English Protestants, particularly the Puritans, displayed a deep-seated hostility to anything that smacked of material ceremony and ritual, and that they read the Old Testament with these colored lenses such that they tended to interpret Old Testament religion as a kind of Catholicism before Rome.
Furthermore, according to Reventlow, this moralistic, anti-ceremonial bias fed right into (or possibly even “caused”) the rising humanistic antipathy to revealed religion, particularly that of the Old Testament, leading to the rise of higher critical methodologies that deconstruct the first four-fifths of the Bible. At any rate, Reventlow’s research on the anti-ritual “spiritualism” of the English post-Reformation theologians is extremely troubling. This work reveals something of the shortcomings of our own anti-liturgical, spiritualistic heritage.
Another odd characteristic of much of Reformed polemics on the regulative principle has been the appeal to synagogue worship over against the Old Testament biblical regulations regarding the temple liturgy. I say it is odd because there are no explicit biblical regulations concerning synagogue worship. We know that the people of Israel worshiped weekly in local assemblies since a Sabbath day “holy convocation” or “assembly” was commanded by Yahweh in Leviticus 23:3: “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to Yahweh in all your dwelling places.”
Now, it is true that the local Sabbath worship was not explicitly regulated. That is, God did not lay out a how-to list like he does in Leviticus. But that doesn't mean that wise Levites and elders in the local towns would not understand that the regulations of the Temple and sacrificial system applied mutatis mutandis to the local services over which they presided. We have a great deal of evidence to suggest that this is exactly what synagogue worship became: sacrificial worship without the animal sacrifices. Synagogue practice was modeled on the temple (e.g., prayers were described as "sacrifices," similar to the New Testament and the synagogue itself was considered holy space). Although a staple of much Reformed anti-liturgical polemics, the notion that synagogue worship was “simple” and a-liturgical and therefore must function as a model for “simple” New Testament worship lacks credible support.*
Add to this the fact that the New Testament everywhere talks about the church as the fulfillment of the Temple. There's very little to connect the synagogue and church. But all the imagery and symbolism of Israel's Temple comes to fulfillment in the life of the church. Going to the OT and reading it through the lens of it's fulfillment in Christ in order to learn about corporate Christian worship is the great need of the day. This is why, for example, the order or sequence of the "offerings" in the sacrificial worship of Israel is so important.
I could say a lot more about this topic, but I think I'll stop here. The bottom line is that we need to be whole-Bible Christians when we reflect on how the Bible regulates congregational worship.
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*See Peter J. Leithart, “Synagogue or Temple? Models for Christian Worship,” Westminster Theological Journal 64:1 (Spring 2002): 119-134; Leithart, From Silence to Song, chapter 6; John W. Kleinig, The Lord’s Song: The Basis, Function and Significance of Choral Music in Chronicles (JSOT Supplement #156; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); and Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogue in the Second Temple Period (SBL Dissertation Series 169; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1997).
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Regulative Principle of Worship - Part 2
Not Commanded – Not Allowed?
The second problem with some ways of explaining the regulative principle of worship concerns a too narrowly defined principle. The regulative principle is not well formulated when we say that only that which is commanded ought to be allowed in worship. Whatever is not commanded therefore is forbidden. But why should we need only explicit “commands”? This is completely unworkable, and in practice has never been followed. It makes for great rhetoric, but lousy biblical and liturgical theology.
Where does the Bible command that a “call to worship” be issued at the beginning of a service? It must be forbidden.
Where are we commanded to give a benediction at the close of the worship service? Therefore it is forbidden!
Where are we commanded to have choirs? Therefore they are forbidden.
Where are we commanded to celebrate Baptism as part of the worship service? It must be forbidden.
Where are we commanded to take vows as part of the baptismal ceremony? That, too, must be forbidden.
Where are we commanded to take an offering during the service? Can't do it.
For that matter, where are we commanded to have a sermon each Sunday? Where are we commanded to meet on the first day rather than the seventh? Must all of these practices be forbidden if we cannot find a verse that commands us to do them? Some insist that we must actually come up with a proof text that explicitly commands a practice before we are authorized to do it in the worship of the church.
Much better than this is the Strasbourg Reformer Martin Bucer’s explanation of the regulative principle of worship: “nothing should be introduced or performed in the churches of Christ for which no probable reason can be given from the Word of God.” Filling this out a little, we can state the principle like this: the church must have biblical warrant for the way she worships God; such warrant can be derived from biblical commands, principles, or examples.
The second problem with some ways of explaining the regulative principle of worship concerns a too narrowly defined principle. The regulative principle is not well formulated when we say that only that which is commanded ought to be allowed in worship. Whatever is not commanded therefore is forbidden. But why should we need only explicit “commands”? This is completely unworkable, and in practice has never been followed. It makes for great rhetoric, but lousy biblical and liturgical theology.
Where does the Bible command that a “call to worship” be issued at the beginning of a service? It must be forbidden.
Where are we commanded to give a benediction at the close of the worship service? Therefore it is forbidden!
Where are we commanded to have choirs? Therefore they are forbidden.
Where are we commanded to celebrate Baptism as part of the worship service? It must be forbidden.
Where are we commanded to take vows as part of the baptismal ceremony? That, too, must be forbidden.
Where are we commanded to take an offering during the service? Can't do it.
For that matter, where are we commanded to have a sermon each Sunday? Where are we commanded to meet on the first day rather than the seventh? Must all of these practices be forbidden if we cannot find a verse that commands us to do them? Some insist that we must actually come up with a proof text that explicitly commands a practice before we are authorized to do it in the worship of the church.
Much better than this is the Strasbourg Reformer Martin Bucer’s explanation of the regulative principle of worship: “nothing should be introduced or performed in the churches of Christ for which no probable reason can be given from the Word of God.” Filling this out a little, we can state the principle like this: the church must have biblical warrant for the way she worships God; such warrant can be derived from biblical commands, principles, or examples.
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