narrative

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.

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.)

Who says Protestants don’t have icons? I stumbled across a site dedicated to the Warner Sallman Collection of illustrations that became ubiquitous after the 1940s. Many over the age of 45 will recognize them immediately, having seen them in people’s homes all the time.

The irony of it all – many of us attended institutional churches without pictures on the walls and scarcely even a cross. We were taught the evils of images and statuary, yet our Bible story books were rife with images. Our Sunday schools used flannelgraph boards, we had pictures on the walls of our homes,  our hand fans decorated with Bible scenes littered the church pews, and we sent greeting cards to one another with illustrations of biblical scenes and Bible verses.

I am pleased to see a site that articulates what I have felt intuitively for some few years — that icons and statues are not much different from Bible illustrations. They are the means by which the biblical narrative is kept alive and passed on. Few illustrations are more familiar to the Protestant than Sallman’s, and while it may be true that they were used less directly in matters of prayer, it could be argued that they were no less influential in shaping the meditation of a generation than objects of conscious adoration.

While purists may protest that Sallman’s Christ depicts a European male instead of an ethnic Jew, it may be argued that the significance is not the man Jesus, but God incarnate behind the face of the carpenter. In this sense, Sallman’s paintings stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Orthodox icons, where the idea is to depict humanity raised into divinity. I will leave the reader to sort these matters out privately. In any case, the site is a good read.

My main reason in posting this little series has been to point out that the narrative of Jesus-Christ-and-Him-Crucified has continued in spite of the cultures and institutions that have sprung up. Jesus has not left us as orphans in this world. The real danger, though, is when the narrative disappears.

Much of my fellowship in these few years since escaping the cultist house church has been on Internet forums where I’ve scooped up some very interesting people. It has been my question to God, following this very long hiatus from insane church groups, what to do next — where to go and whether I shall taint the purity of my walk by getting mixed up in any more nonsense in organized groups.

In the meantime, I have run into my share of wayward Internet fellowship — individuals that, supposing themselves to be free from the institutional churches, have actually cast off all restraint and lost their sense of discernment. During this time, I chanced to meet a group of die-hard Hindus (in real life) and started researching on that account. Then, when a Wiccan showed up on my then-favorite forum, and I saw there was no discernment, I found myself by necessity writing about the differences between what people think of as “God” or the “Universal Force.” Here is what I posted:

Thomas Merton was one of the neatest and most messed up Christians I have ever read. We would have gotten on “famously” as they say. He mentioned something in his Asian Journal that I think is profound and I’m astounded that he didn’t see the full implications of it himself.

He described the approach of East and West in arriving at truth. Western thought measures truth by logical analysis. We like to line up all our ducks, circle them and draw the circle tighter so that no mistake can be made–we have not missed anything. Western hero: Thomas Aquinas and systematic theology. Charles Finney is a descendant of this kind of thinking. Only problem is that this thinking has led to lots and lots of ridiculous and conflicting beliefs. The East believes it arrives at truth through experience. Eastern hero: Siddhartha Gautama, founder of Buddhism. This method also produces much diffusion of thought.

I chanced to meet some devout Hindus who were ready to beat me over the head as heartily as any Bible-thumping fundamentalist you ever saw. A man said to me, “You can’t get God out of a book!” referring to the Bible, no doubt. I made a point to research Hinduism with an open mind and came to see that no other religion has produced as many books as Hinduism! Further investigation showed that Hindu thought, while replete with experiences, has no witnesses to testify to anything. You are just supposed to believe things because someone says here’s how it is.

I agreed that no one can get God “out of a book”. And then a young Hindu told me, ‘I have seen God — many times!” I wondered how a heathen can “see” God. And if it’s true, then why would God put such a difference in both Old and New Testaments between heathen and true-God worship? Was it true that there was no harm in mixing them? Are they really just different ways of looking at God? And if reason is a faulty means of proving God and so is experience, then what is the way to be sure?

I did more research on “seeing God”. I finally found my answer. Hindus recognize three “Lords”: Lord Krishna, Lord Buddha and Lord Jesus. They consider them all ascended masters. (One must wonder at this juncture why Jesus, who was contemporary with practicing Buddhists and Hindus never invited those guys to teach the Jews the truth about God.) I discovered that Lord Buddha holds the ticket for both Hindus and Buddhists.

The point is to get to Nirvana — that blessed state of bliss in which one dies to one’s own desires, possesses all things and becomes one with the universe. When one is enlightened, the trees and mountains, etc, take on a wondrous air of “godness” and the person becomes one with them. This is “seeing God”. There is no “me” and no “you” but all are one and one is all. This is to see all things without illusion. I thought there was something familiar about all this. I have experienced a taste of this myself. I definitely was one of those kids growing up who felt the liveliness of rocks and mountains and ponds and stuff. All of Creation groans to be clothed upon… But I never identified this as “God”!

This is how I recognized that this is NOT the SAME GOD as Jesus worshipped at all!!! I have said that neither experience nor logical reason are enough to discern truth. In fact, I don’t think truth can be discerned at all except through faith. Jesus did many miracles in the Gospels, which evidence might have appealed to both reason and experience, yet some people still couldn’t see the truth. Jews came to Him and asked what works He did and wanted to do the work of God also. They were interested in the “goods”. Yet Jesus said to them, “This IS the work of God — that you believe on Him who He has sent.” Some see miracles and do not believe. Most people who believed throughout history never saw a single miracle –that is a miracle in itself — that they should believe anyway. Clearly, that is the work of God if we can say anything is — no logic and no experience. Not even an outward miracle in most cases.

But how should anyone note the difference in the switched Gods without reason or experience? Intangibly through faith — or tangibly through a greater Reality bursting in from without. I have had that greater Reality and without it I might have been fooled by all the wonderful what-ifs taking place on the other threads. [The speculation had completely undermined the purpose of the forum at this point.] But I recognized both realities. The Hindus and Buddhists have chosen the lesser one. It is the reality common to all Creation — humans, trees, mountains, universe. It is real and it is vast. But they have chosen to make themselves one with the groaning Creation and mistaken that as God. The God I know is personal and grander than all that. He has proven to me that He can burst through the Creation as someone OUTSIDE all that. He is not One with His Creation. He is over it, in it and through it, but He is not part of it. Had I not walked both sides of that fence, I never would have known the difference.

Much reasoning and much grasping at wisps of ideas only confuse the issue. God must be eaten to be understood. (Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood…) His words are spirit and truth.

Soon to follow on the heels of this incident with the Wiccan were amazing and convoluted heresies staunchly defended by those who had read many books instead of going to God for insight. I was flabbergasted that in a few short years the worst issues on the Internet were no longer people picking fights or strange “prophetesses” appearing out of nowhere with floaty language that meant nothing. Now we had believers in Christ utterly carried astray, thinking themselves enlightened, yet having no discernment. They had become “black clouds” in our feasts.

I knew, discerning the times, that it was time to make some decisions — whether to continue aloof as I have for some years, testing those things that remain, or to begin reaching out across the boundaries and trusting God to steer me past those things that so easily waste my time or box me in with narrow-minded fears of demons and the Anti-Chirst. I choose trust. Here is what the Lord is speaking to me recently:

He that walketh with wise [men] shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. [Pro 13:30]

A lot of things have happened in my life this year, as some of you know. These past few weeks I have waited, recovering from the emotional and physical toll. But I have prayed and I have listened, knowing the Lord is going to take me a new direction. It does not appear to be exactly the direction thought, but some place different. But I am a better witness for the times I’ve spent sharing the Lord’s teaching among my fellows.

A friend from afar mentioned that I have become a spiritual support of something the Lord is doing in his life. After some prayer and some mulling things over, I think he is right. “Where are You taking me, Lord? I am tired of walking with fools. Give me wise men to walk with now.”