ancient-future

I went to bury my mother. They asked me what clothes I wanted her buried in. I had no idea. We were supposed to purchase a casket and what would she like? Was it for me or for her? Did it make a bit of difference?

I think we go through the same thing when we talk about how to meet as the Church. In one way, God needs nothing from us. No decorations, no music, no art. We can argue that we prefer such things but that they don’t add an iota to our spiritual selves. We can even argue that they take away from God. I don’t think that holds water. He clearly meant for us to have full lives with the lines colored in. Let me offer an alternate explanation of why I even think how we meet might be more important than we think.

When they asked me what I wanted regarding my mother’s funeral, a “wise mother in Israel” suggested that I do whatever I believed would honor her. Now that was a thought, indeed. It wasn’t so much about what would benefit her or me. It was about honor. I think it’s the same question when we meet together as a church or when we present the story of Christ in our narrative to an audience. What would honor Christ?

This tiny uncertainty has hung the Church up in more theological controversy. It’s ridiculous. Our narrative is what we present. It’s how we honor Him. The story begins with Him and ends with our point in time, looking forward to our children’s children and the hope of the kingdom coming in its fullness. We reside in the time of the “now and not yet”.

I often feel angry to have inherited the broken dysfunctionality of the theology wars, being descended from the Reformers and the later shards who spent their lives seeking the “true Church”. I have gone that route myself, only to return full circle to bite myself in the butt. The “true Church” was under our noses all along, it’s us in all of our haphazard glory. We are at different stages in our walk and it will not matter where we go or what we label as “the Church”. We are a messy lot, blaming each other for our woes.

Funny that on my return path, the theology of the Orthodox Church makes the most sense to me, yet there is always one thing that hangs me up with any group. The narrative of the old churches comes across as somebody else’s story — never our own because it is so old. It seems as if important people of the faith lived thousands of years ago and then the story froze in mid-stream forever. But if it’s also our own story, shouldn’t we be writing ourselves back in and keeping it relevant to our own times?

In my case what I have done is returned the expression of church to the family unit — to the home. It is not a do-your-own-thing religion. I have returned to the narrative of Christ and brought it into the present. It is orthodox, it is organic, it is presentable to an audience and it is flexible enough for the great outdoors. It is formal and it is casual. It is not frozen outside of time, but it is very much in stride with time — an eternity continuing to unfold until we all come to the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ.

The implications of how people meet as “the Church” are seeded somehow in my findings. We know they had private lives, but we know they also met with people not of their immediate families. In fact, some of them took up living with others as if they were immediate family. The family of faith was not rooted in flesh-and-blood, after all, but in the spirit. Except for a few travelers, even those of one spirit in neighboring towns were usually related by blood.

Sometimes I believe our simplicity goes so far as to be austere with the shedding of all customs, habits, formulas of meeting. I believe the early church was artistic and had more forms of expression than just music. In short, they had art and soon after the first meetings around the bread and wine, someone began painting icons and another designed symbolic mosaic floors. They decorated everything with a view to “whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure…”

It was not so long ago that I put up a holy table in my own home. I did so because I believe there are two ways of meeting as the church. The first way is spontaneous, in the everyday affairs of life. The second way is intentional, with the determination to remember the narrative of how Christ began the Passion that we are all finishing with Him.

Continuing with my “raw” notes here:

Part of the problem of the churches today is they have frozen customs that no longer have anything to do with our real lives. Larger groups far removed from our private homes have less relevance to where we really wrestle spiritually. Customs and ways of behavior that are thought to be “churchy” are those that made sense when the first people practiced them. They weren’t thought strange perhaps. Maybe formal, but not strange and peculiarly “churchy”. …

It’s the dickens getting the same materials together. (Actually considering how to update my own little holy table.) Everything costs so much and many things are mass produced in gold, brass, etc. I’m trying to figure out what people would have done originally. It has made me consider that whatever was available, that’s what they used.

…I don’t literally have the same culture as my forbears. I’m so Southwest…That could get carried to some pretty extreme interpretations. For instance, you know those cowboy churches they have? Can you see a cowboy orthodox interpretation? Very strange. But if there were various interpretations of orthodoxy in the culture, there still should have been a sense of something very similar no matter what culture you went into. Some might stress one thing above another, but something like the Nicene Creed would be believed by all.

This is a real learning experience as to how we may represent something in our own time. I’m inclined towards rather conservative expressions. You could, theoretically, express this with some sort of modern materials and design. I’m aware that there are many good reasons the old churches prescribed certain practices as better than others. Still, with a little restraint and respect, one could maybe do a modern, “Zen” type of holy table or something with very respectful music. What about a Japanese sound in an orthodox setting? Can you see the possibilities? People might meet in the round, in nature, the holy table might be a circle of stones…wow.

“Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” [Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet]
He sets the solitary in families.

My friend’s response:

Keep digging. The more we reveal the root, the more we can graft ourselves in where we want to be.

I always thought that this was at the heart of the IC [institutional church] problem. They forgot how to tell the story of what they are doing. You can’t just go through the motions because they are churchy. If there are special costumes, candles lit, processions, recitations, then the congregation should know the history and be able to add their own meaning to the event.

For example, why is the bell rung 3 times when the host is held up at the Lord’s table in a Catholic Mass? Don’t you think that would be an awesome moment to stand in the Lord’s story if you knew why??

Of course, my friend wrote me back to protest that her background was not Greco-Roman but Cossack. Ah, but of course! Must I assume that all who speak English have the same background as myself? Her immediate family background is Roman Catholic and Orthodox. I turned back to unraveling my story to see what had gone wrong in the passed-down narrative that made so many of us want to escape. A million things must have crossed my mind as to how we are products of so many people. Where did the line between the Irish fathers and the Roman Catholic fathers and later the Reformers merge in my story? Does it matter? I think they left a dysfunctionality in us from the theological wars. I saw some very interesting things that I will now have to sort out. More from my notes to this friend:

There was domination later of Rome who made us shed our story and take theirs instead. My other “fathers” were physically related, as I am the 10th gr-granddaughter of famous Reformers in New England. I think they maybe missed the trail of the story, having focused on Reforming the church in captivity. This could explain a lot of my desire to bolt and run.

Suddenly I had an epiphany about the family of God and couldn’t wait to tell my friend. The following are the rest of my notes. (I told you they were pretty raw and ragged!):

Say, I’m reading up on Christianity in Britain and seeing some things. You know, in the natural, you obey your parents–not somebody else’s parents. You even obey them over your aunts and uncles. In the spirit realm, I should think that would also be the norm.

Was reading about St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Aidan, and realizing that they are really the spiritual fathers over the area my people are from …

So Britain was Christianized before Rome got hold of them and turned Sts. Paddy and Columba into Roman Catholic saints. But here is the interesting part…once Rome exerted pressure over England (not so much over Ireland at this time), then it was like someone else’s father telling people what to do. Do you see the implications? But…once that happened and there were other believers coming out of that, the thread of Rome did somewhat merge with Britain’s.

So…now Rome had put a ripple in the family storyline and brought in stories not of the tree, thereby inventing a family “genealogy” not their own. The children were not merely adopted, but they were stolen from rightful fathers. …

Now of course, we have to love people of other lines. They have their own valid stories to tell. And of course, as families you receive others into your home and you receive their stories, but they aren’t YOUR story. …

So, I love St. Francis and he’s affected my “tree” through the ripple that Rome has left. He’s part of my story, but he’s not properly my “father”. See where I’d coming from?

Anyway, I believe as I read along that even the Germans had Irish monks as “fathers”– but this is not a national/social/racial pride deal for the Irish. Likely, some of the “Irish” monks were really from Gaul.
I’m anxious to learn more about the other church histories where my people came from to get the full idea of how the natural progression should have been. I believe that had Basil the Great not existed and had all the popes not existed, I would yet be talking about Jesus Christ.

But had Patrick or Columba not existed, who knows? This has interesting implications. Certainly had the Apostles not existed we would neither of us be talking about Christ. Our areas of the world have something to do with which Apostle(s) we “descend” from. …

1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
2 I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
3 things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done. [Psalm 78, ESV]

Recently, I told a friend that I have come to appreciate the story of the Passion as the central part of an intentional service. Being raised in a Protestant background, I have sat through my share of lectures, lectures, lectures. There is nothing that compares with the narrative passed down of the Lord’s Passion and what that means to us. It is the opening chapter of the story of the Church, to which has been added stories of saints through the ages. There is only one Church in heaven and earth, comprised of all the saints who have ever lived. This is where community and persons meet — our stories added to theirs.

But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, [Heb.
12:22-23]

The institutional churches usually limit their concentration to either the community story (e.g., Roman Catholic) or the personal one (e.g., Evangelical “personal testimony”). Why can’t we have both? I think we can have both just as surely as we can have intentional worship and organic spiritual life. They are all the heritage of the Church. The Church does not know its own heritage so it wanders like an orphan in the wilderness. It’s time to wake up and know that we come from spiritual fathers whose story belongs to us and to whom we add our own story.

We share the passion of Christ; His story is our story. Paul viewed his own suffering as a continuation of the suffering of Christ, that the Church might be built up:

Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church: [Col. 1:24]

Jesus also said:

The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. [Luke 6:40]

The way of our testimony is the way of Christ. We are his witnesses on earth that we know Him and are known of Him. And further, Paul tells us:

For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. [1 Cor. 10:17)

Put these together. It begins to make sense. Our tearing is the sufferings that fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ…for his Body’s sake, which is the Church. We are added to the bread that is Him… A friend of mine reminded me of Amish friendship bread where one person makes a starter out of which come multitudinous loaves of bread when passed around. (Remember when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes?) My first thought was something my aunt taught me years ago about the reason wine is to be preferred over grape juice for communion. Wine has spirits that continually reproduce much like the yeast in Amish bread. It represents the eternal life of Christ.

The point is that we, as members of the Body, have stories to add to the parables and dark sayings of old — things that the Lord has done for us that will not be added to the record until we tell of them. Like yeast and spirits, one person’s testimony is the starter for another. The individual story must be understood in the context of the starter story. The narrative is preserved and treasured in the community life, but it is developed in the personal life. We must have experiences that speak to our hearts alone but we must also have a story to share with those who have no story.

In the next post, we will look at the how-to of passing down the story and we will examine our spiritual roots. (They may not be what we think.)

I went back to the root in order to know my place in the Body. Beginning with the early Jewish church, I hit a snag. Ephesians 2:15 says that God made of Jews and Gentiles “one new man”. I mentioned in the last post my acquaintance who converted to Messianic Judaism. It does happen sometimes but not usually. He keeps many of the Jewish laws because he lives in Israel where doing so has relevance. But Paul tells us that God has made two stalks of humanity into one new man in Christ.

This made great sense when I realized that I could not be what I am not — a Jew. However, I could learn from the intersection of the Jewish-Gentile church. The Jewish believers kept the Law; the Gentile believers did not. There’s our answer: We should not strive to be what we are not. God never secreted His things away from the world even when He entrusted the sacred to the Jewish people. The sacred things were revealed in their lives in order that the world might know God.

It took some sorting through random bits of evidence before it hit me over the head why today’s house churches still don’t approximate the early church. It is true that when we meet with other believers for any reason we are “the Church”. However, this simple minded approach lacks any purpose or objective. My mind went into overtime when I realized that the intentional simple churchers I knew were essentially Protestant/Evangelical/Charismatic but in a home instead of a structure. Not much is different. They have the usual pot luck, worship and praise, sharing and prayer — it’s all rather predictable. I can walk into most any group and know exactly what’s going to happen even if I’ve never met these people in my life.

Then we have the really simple house churchers. They have no services and no objective other than to show up and share the Lord as He happens to intrude on everyday conversation. They are no less sincere or unlikely to pursue God than the others. These decry such distinctions as “sacred” vs. “profane”. Every affair of life is holy — but on the other hand, they have also lost the sense of worship in community. Sometimes I’m not sure whether the profane becomes sacred or the sacred becomes profane. They regard the Lord’s Supper as an ordinary part of a meal, though they do take it seriously, making appropriate remarks as the need arises. There is a certain value in learning some propriety, which I think they miss — it teaches us respect for others and for special moments set aside in community. The original Lord’s Table was not part of everyday life — it was part of a Passover Feast and the Lord did a new thing on that occasion. He used the wine and bread to institute a new covenant.

I have known groups that did their best to eradicate culture, believing it to be divisive. I think it a mistake. Groups that dispense with culture end up creating a new culture and becoming unnecessarily weird so that they have relevance to no one. Culture is good and necessary. It is the means by which we pass down the narrative of who we are and what we value.

Still, we cannot impose our culture on other groups. It has often been a practice of the institutional church to kill its message by this means. When Bruce Olson went to Colombia to work with the Motilone Indians, he found other Christian groups had also been there to no success. They wanted to force new believers into ways of relating that made no sense to them — strict programs and buildings that were square. The Motilones have round buildings and they give thanks to God whenever they pull up a root — hence, no need to say grace at meals as they have already said it. That, to me, is a lesson to embrace culture but never to put people in a cultural strait jacket.

Having said this mouthful about culture, it brings me to what I really want to drive home in the next post — something long, long neglected. And that is the very wonderful and beautiful role of culture in the Church. Far from being a hindrance to the Gospel of the Kingdom, it ought to be a furtherance. I will lay out in the next post what I believe will support that conclusion. I hope to turn the heart of the children back to the heart of the fathers. Hopefully, you will see the beauty of intentional community worship as well as the personal freedom it allows when living, breathing, playing, worshiping as “the Church”. We should begin to see some authenticity when we recognize our real “Fathers of the Faith”.