Consecration and Incarnation — Salvation and Our Skin — Christ and Community

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Clearly I have no idea how to title this blog post.  Perhaps I have way too much going on here.  But my heart and head are still spinning with the events of yesterday at our consecration.  I’m still a little raw.  I’m still moved and touched by all the show of support we had.  I’m still thinking ahead to all the ways this building is going to be used once we’re in a position to use it.

As stated, we had our Consecration of our new church yesterday.  I had looked at all sorts of stuff online to help me shape the service.  A pastor friend gave me his services he had used at a consecration nearly 20 years ago.  I had never had to plan one of these and felt great pressure.  After all, the Bishop was going to be here. 

The problem with so much of the stuff I was looking at was that it was so “high church” and formal.  “Process with Bible and Cross.”  Tons of ritual.  Lots of formal language.  It looked great for the right setting.  Our church is a lot more informal than this.  None of this was going to feel particularly “Girdwoodian.”

This is not to say we don’t have important rituals in our church.  No, rituals are very important.  We have communion every week and go through the full liturgy.  We have the kids come down for children’s time.  We do the creeds often.  It all just seems to have a more informal feel to it.  It seems “common.”  It seems “colloquial.” 

Granted, this reflects me, personally.  However, from a theological perspective, I don’t pretend to have some religious “realm” or state of being and some “secular” realm.  I really don’t have a style of language I use in church and one I use at home.  Or at least I try not to. Because I don’t think these two things can truly ever be separated.  When Christ became incarnate he, as Petersons’ The Message says, “moved into the neighborhood” (John 1).  He entered this real world with its real people and the salvation he offered was for the real world…with our own language and culture and problems.  Yes, we need to be in awe of God.  We should fear God.  We should offer God reverence.  But we can do so by offering who we are here and now.  We stand before God, with all of our quirks and baggage and problems, and are redeemed in the real world and we offer that salvation to those around us in the real world.

One of the illustrations I use frequently in church to talk about the very worldly salvation that Christ offers is the problem of slavery in the US in the 1700s to 1800s where slaveowners would tell their slaves that they had to keep being slaves but that Christ had set them free IN THEIR HEARTS.  It was a disembodied salvation.  It was gnostic.  It only “seemed” like salvation.  And it’s wrong.

Likewise, a church that says it believes in a Christ that saves, but isn’t trying to transform its community is practicing the same kind of gnostic salvation — a salvation that doesn’t really transform anything at all.

Just as our salvation is one that is intimately connected with our skin, so the salvation the church offers is intimately connected with the community and the culture.  Our faith is about changing how we live and how the world operates.  I remember a preacher at Duke Divinity School that “God not only wants to save us in the ‘Sweet By and By’ but in the ‘Nasty Here and Now.'”  The only religion worth its salt is one that is tranformational–of the individual and the world.  (Remember our mission statement here at Girdwood Chapel:  “Love God.  Love others.  Change the world.”)

That’s the understanding of salvation and faith I’ve tried to live and to teach and is why, yesterday at our dedication, we tried to connect with where our people are and why we had a question and answer time to include the community members in asking how we can, together, work to transform our community for the better.  There is not a separate life for my faith, apart from how I live and experience the world.  There is not a separate world of the church, apart from the community in which it finds itself.

I found the following quote from Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio that gets at the theological underpinnings here:

Much of modern culture, with its Gnostic undertones, alienates us from creation and its givenness. Theologian Colin Gunton sees the affirmation of the Incarnation as essential to our enthusiastic participation in creation and therefore in cultural life. “A world that owes its origin to a God who makes it with direct reference to one who was to become incarnate — part of the world — is a world that is a proper place for human beings to use their senses, minds and imaginations, and to expect that they will not be wholly deceived in doing so.”

Christians have the only account of human and natural origins that can give cultural life meaning. But even after 2,000 years of opportunity to reflect on the Incarnation, many contemporary Christians persist in believing in a Gnostic salvation, a salvation that has no cultural consequences. In such a dualistic understanding, our souls are saved, the essential immaterial aspect of our being is made right with God, but the actions of our bodies — what we actually do in space and time — are a matter of indifference if not futility. Salvation is an inward matter only. It affects our attitudes and some of our ideas. But insofar as our cultural activities have any Christian significance it is as mere marketing efforts — things we do to attract others to our essentially Gnostic salvation.

Believing in a gospel that has few earthly consequences is, ironically, just the sort of state our secularist neighbors would wish us to sustain. They, too, are dualists, believing that religion may be a fine thing for people, so long as they keep it private. Their secularism isn’t threatened by Christians as long as they aren’t too “Incarnational.” As long as the cultural lives of Christians aren’t significantly different from those of materialists and pagans, secularism is safe. Christians may pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but as long as they don’t actually do anything that demonstrates how such a petition should affect their political, economic, and cultural activities, the Enlightenment legacy is safe.

That’s a great quote.

In the Sanctuary, All Alone, After the Consecration

It has been a whirlwind the past week. Heck, it’s been a whirlwind over the past month…and years. A lot of time, energy, thought, prayer, work, stress, passion, hope, vision, study, worry, money, and celebration has been put into our building. And, it’s not done yet. A lot more will be put in in the coming months and years. At times it has been emotionally and physically overwhelming.

But today was the day we were Consecrating our New Building — Our building that still doesn’t have heat or running water or many lights. But today, with our Bishop and Superintendent and Director of Connectional Ministries present, along with folks from the community, we were setting it apart for “holy purposes.”

I don’t know how many people were at our building consecration today. I didn’t count.

At 10 AM we had one special worship service, with our Bishop, Grant Hagiya, preaching. Our 8:30 folks were there plus some 70 or so other people. We sang “The Church’s One Foundation” and “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and “The Summons.” The Bishop preached on Acts 2:42-47 saying “The Work Of Ministry Is Just Beginning.” He reminded us that the church is not a building and he told a wonderful story about a church being “high-touch” for his family after his mother had died. That…that is what the church is called to be.

There was a whirlwind of activity over in the new church afterwards as we set up for the pot-luck and consecration service. There were a lot of people and I was very thankful that we had a number of community folks there as well. It all went beautifully. We’re fully consecrated. The bishop said so, therefore it must be true.

We raised our Ebenezer — our “Stone of Help” monument — in the rain.

A handful of us stayed to clean.

People went home.

I was left in that big, new, unfinished church. I was worn out. I was relieved. I was sad that there were a few persons who weren’t there that I really wanted to be there. I was alone. It was quiet. Just the sound of the rain running off the roof behind me.

This was a holy time. As I sat there, up where the pulpit will be in the near future, I soaked it all in. Over the past six summers ‘ve seen a lot of work take place here. I actually don’t know exactly how many work teams we’ve had and I have no idea how many individuals. I know we’ve had three site managers. I couldn’t tell you exactly how many contractors. I sat there looking around and, in my mind picturing all the many hands that have worked to construct this place.

I could picture the floor being blessed. I could picture the walls being put up. I could picture the foundation being laid. I could picture the scaffolding being climbed. I could picture the giant timbers being put together. I could picture people gathering and eating and worshipping. I could see the faces, the hands, the work, all that went into it and all the work behind the scenes.

Lord, this has been a big project.

Sometimes as pastor I can feel like a Lone Ranger, like everything depends on me and God working it out. Now, I know this isn’t true, but it can feel that way…sometimes. Sometimes I feel more important, bigger, than I am.

But, sitting there in that chair, soaking it all in, I felt very small, as if I’d been swept up in a movement much bigger than myself, a God-movement. That, I believe, is a healthy perspective. There is no doubt that I’ve given much of my life to this congregation, to this community, to this church building. But, it’s not me. It hundreds…thousands…of hands under the direction of our all-powerful, awesome God.

Tomorrow the contractors show up again. Hammers. Nails. Saws. Hopefully we’ll have heat by the end of the week. Hopefully. It will be a hotbed of activity and I’ll be faced with the immediate tasks that need to be accomplished. And soon we’ll be in that space and we’ll be looking at ministries to begin and worship to be held. And there will be bills and bills and bills and bills. Sigh…

But there, alone in the sanctuary, I got to spend some time seeing the whole picture. I felt small in the presence of all those others who have been along this journey with us…with me.

It was a holy time.

Don’t Entertain Goats — Feed the Sheep

Image via WikipediaGot this great quote from over at DashHouse.com.   It’s from William Still’s book, The Work of the Pastor:

It is to feed sheep…that men are called to churches and congregations, whatever they may think they are called to do. If you think that you are called to keep a largely worldly organization, miscalled a church, going, with infinitesimal doses of innocuous sub-Christian drugs or stimulants, then the only help I can give you is to advise you to give up the hope of the ministry and go and be a street scavenger; a far healthier and more godly job, keeping the streets tidy, than cluttering the church with a lot of worldly claptrap in the delusion that you are doing a job for God. The pastor is called to feed the sheep, even if the sheep do not want to be fed. He is certainly not to become an entertainer of goats. Let goats entertain goats, and let them do it in goatland. You will certainly not turn goats into sheep by pandering to their goatishness. Do we really believe that the Word of God, by His Spirit, changes, as well as maddens men? If we do, to be evangelists and pastors, feeders of sheep, we must be men of the Word of God. 

So, how much of what I do on a Sunday…or on a daily basis…is feeding sheep?

Am I a slave to worship as entertainment?

How immersed in the Word of God am I?

Got New Banners at Church — These Aren’t Them

Seen this picture around on some blogs. Surprised this wouldn’t have been caught by someone.