A Patchwork Quilt of Broken Vessels

I haven’t blogged in a while and it’s getting high time I did. Your humble correspondent must admit that he has been a bum and an insufferable jackass for a good little bit now, and explaining my recent experience and unloading some of the insights gained from said experience is a good preparatory exercise for leaving that state and returning to productivity.

I am entering a new phase of life that scares me. Seminary education via correspondence was proceeding at a snail’s pace, and I found that undertaking the enterprise of theological education with only myself as a conversation partner was becoming an exercise in spiritual pride and constipation. I have also come to the realization that continuing with more school right now is simply a stall tactic to avoid the inevitable. Don’t get me wrong, I treasure the deeper knowledge and experience of Christ our Savior and training in his service I have gained in my time at seminary and this course of action has been faithful to God’s calling on my life, but I realize that if I don’t get on the horse now and quit waiting around for my future, someday will become never. In light of these realities, I’m reluctantly hauling my happy self off to look for a job. The hitch is that I’m a bit lazy and unmotivated and that working with a disability is fraught with challenges but mostly I’m afraid of the unknown and of the answer to the question of whether or not I can hack it. Currently I’m steering toward work in education, social services, or counseling. It would be ideal if I could find this kind of job in a church or ministry context where I could also use my training and passion for theology and worship.

Another course of events that has gone down recently is a source of much sorrow and a cause for repentance at my own stubbornness and naiveté and the effects it has had on family members who had to suffer through a community that apparently did not want them. In spite of my many and controversial ruminations in recent years about the importance of the worship, teaching, and community of the church and the need to return to a churchly and sacramental Christianity as the path to reform, I find myself at the current time without a church. A piece of advice for those who would follow the path I have attempted to trod from broad evangelicalism to high Protestantism: prepare for a rude awakening if you think because of its traditionally high ecclesiology this segment of the American church has been resistant to the compromise with unhealthy individualism that has plagued mainstream evangelicalism. In spite of my profound Presbyterian convictions I am in all likelihood returning to the Baptist tradition. Let me note that the abuse of the doctrine of covenant succession coupled with the abandonment of the Scriptures and the Reformed confessions and catechisms has coalesced in many historically Reformed churches and denominations in a closed-off, self-conscious elitism that will soon strangle those communities caught in its grasp. The children of mainline Presbyterians have stopped going to church and so the Presbyterian Church USA is experiencing an inevitable numerical hemorrhage. With all of its talk about inclusiveness and diversity, the increasingly liberal Presbyterian Church USA is faithful to the culturally “respectable” progressive ideals of pluralist theology, sexual confusion, and uncritically leftist social and political action but far too often fails to live up to the more countercultural and scandalous progressive ideals of the biblical witness, i.e., preaching the gospel and fostering cohesive and nurturing communities where people from diverse social, cultural, racial, and economic backgrounds are warmly welcomed and accepted into the full worshiping, witnessing, serving, and fellowshipping life of the church.

Lest this turn into a rant against liberal Protestantism based on my limited experience of that segment of American Christianity, I want to emphasize a couple of things. 1) The community in which I gained the unhappy surprise of humbling disappointment has its good points and fair share of earnest, welcoming, and wonderful Christians, as I’m pretty convinced almost all churches do. Elvis has not left the building but his representatives are swimming upstream against the inertia of generations of taken-for-granted grace and the stubborn insistence on, “Well, this is just how we Presbyterians are!” 2) This is not just a problem in liberal and socioeconomically ascendant churches. The keynote of churches in America, conservative and liberal, Protestant and Catholic, is voluntarism. The church is an optional society that we get to make in our own image. An elder in the church I have left essentially told me as much. He was of the opinion that the Scriptures do not teach that individual Christians are obligated to be committed to a particular group of believers. The church exists for no other purpose than to feed individual Christians for their personal ministries in the world. This is sad. The church exists to feed and please me; I do not need to love and serve Christians who do not look, think, or act just like me. Pray tell, if we feel this way about other believers, what does it say about how we will treat nonbelievers who do not look, think, or act just like me?

Pardon me if I suggest that it is precisely this kind of thinking and behavior that causes people on the margins to give up on the church altogether. If outcast church members are not part of the in-group and the members of the in-group feel no sense of Christian love to include and welcome “the least of these” among their brothers and sisters, how can the church possibly realize its mission of being the suffering and world-healing Body of Christ and mother of all the faithful that Jesus has purchased her to be?

Pay close attention, when I say shocking and controversial things like the church is “the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation,” as Presbyterianism’s Westminster Confession of Faith does (25.2), I am not positing a works righteousness whereby all Christian people are forced to conform to the misleading, superficial, cookie-cutter image of the hyper-caffeinated, elite super Christian in order to be saved. The church is not a voluntary society for heroic Christians who have everything together and are of old family, of respectable reputation, of upper-middle class means, or of vast influence in the community. No, the church is the Body of the Lord that has big and loving arms in which to embrace nobodys, losers, outcasts, ordinary people, and those unfortunate fools who think they do not belong to these kinds of categories. Jesus does not embrace people in his body for their social connections or money; he embraces us in his flesh purely because we are sinful and weak and small and empty. He is interested not in what we can bring of ourselves that the world so clamors after and esteems but in the wonders he can work in the world through a patchwork quilt of broken vessels like us—broken vessels that he takes such pleasure in putting back together, making holy, and using to advance His Kingdom. What I hear when I hear that the church is voluntary is really that certain people for whom Christ died are not wanted or that other believers have shown that person that he or she was not wanted or needed after all. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. We need the church and the church needs us because Jesus Christ is there. It is the place through which healing flows to the nations. I think we have to get rid of this notion that the church is supplemental or not necessary to Christian life in order to see this more clearly. Maybe if we came to see it as a tragedy that people are rejected by the church and leave it, then maybe we will realize the gravity of Jesus’ command that we love one another and start doing it on an individual and communal level.

The Worship Wars 2

Not the ranting of a curmudgeon on the pitfalls of worship forms but a few remarks about the relationship between worship forms and culture inspired by an article in this month's issue of Christianity Today. In "Here We Are to Worship," (page 33) Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger give us six principles that should guide our efforts to keep worship relevant and authentically Christian. They draw these principles from John D. Witvliet's book, Worship Seeking Understanding.

The burden these six principles place on us is to answer this question in the affirmative: "Do changing worship forms adapted from popular culture facilitate an authentic encounter with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit as described by the Scriptures and understood by historic Christian orthodoxy?"

1. All liturgical action is culturally conditioned.

We've got to determine the level of contemporary culture's influence on our worship. How deeply influenced are our worship forms by Western consumer culture?

2. The relationship between liturgy and culture is theologically framed by creation and the Incarnation.

Creation implies that human cultural activity is a God-given good, and the Incarnation, with Christ coming in the flesh and taking upon Himself a particular cultural identity, shows us that God is fully capable of revealing Himself through the particularity of human cultures. Thus, popular culture forms and symbols can be utilized powerfully and positively in worship.

3. Integrating liturgy and culture requires us to be critical of our own cultural context.

Does a culturally-conditioned worship form represent God and communicate the Gospel with integrity? For instance, are we coming before the throne of God to offer him the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, or, are we simply looking for an ecstatic experience of a higher plane of reality? Are the needs we seek to address in worship the biblical needs of forgiveness of sin, repentance, and reconciliation with God and neighbor, or, are we simply seeking to address the popularly cultivated desires that drive the consumer marketplace?

4. The extremes of either complete identification with or rejection of a given culture should be avoided.

As Harper and Metzger state it, "The best array of worship forms will illustrate that the church is both embedded in culture, speaking through its constantly changing forms, and also a countercultural community, one that represents transcendent values and truths that confront cultures' fallenness."

5. Worship must reflect common elements of the Christian tradition through the unique expressions of a particular cultural context.

In tailoring a church's worship to a particular culture or subculture, we must be careful that those outside that particular culture be able to connect the church's worship to Christ and the Gospel. Harper and Metzger make the point that the strategy adopted by larger churches of offering both a contemporary service and a traditional service effectively divides congregations, as younger people invariably opt for the contemporary service and the older for the traditional. If we continue to divide churches into smaller and smaller segments, such as adult Sunday school classes and youth groups, for instance, when are there opportunities for a particular church to come together as a single multigenerational and multicultural community to worship its common Lord?

6. The liturgical actions of the church—including proclamation of the Word, common prayer, baptism, and Eucharist—are among the "universal" or common factors in the Christian tradition.

While it is essential for the Church to communicate the Gospel and draw people to worship God in ways that appeal to their particular cultural situations, we must not forget that the Church is a historical community that "always finds its identity in the same God revealed in Jesus Christ." As such, we must maintain a certain continuity in our symbols and forms of worship with those of the past. The symbols, rituals, creeds, and texts that have united Christians throughout the ages are nonnegotiable because without them we forget who we are and we risk losing the central theological and relational realities that can only be expressed therein.

Imagine expressing Christ's sacrificial death and the life we must live as a response in any way other than through the cross. What about the Lord's Supper? In light of the importance of bread in the biblical narrative (think about the manna in the Exodus, the showbread in the temple, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes) and the appropriateness of breaking bread to symbolize the breaking of Christ's body, could we use anything other than bread here? Can you think of a replacement for wine that better represents life, blood, sacrifice, and judgment? How better do we express the central reality of the Church, namely, Christ dead, buried, and risen, and the communal character of His body than through this most elemental meal?

How does this all relate to the question of contemporary versus traditional worship? I think these principles are sustainable in either worship form. At any rate, in either form we must maintain the tension between the ancient, normative liturgical actions and the culturally-determined innovations that aim at relevant expression of "the faith once delivered to the saints" and worship of the Triune God. Perhaps the best way to do so is to combine elements of contemporary and traditional worship forms.

For the Life of the World 1

Here are my notes for chapter 1 from the group study I led on For the Life of the World. The key issue throughout the whole study was secularism and its incompatibility with historic Christianity as embodied in Eastern Orthodoxy. The conclusion is that secularism is sin because it attempts to carry forth life in the world as if God does not exist. It essentially tries to steal the world away from God. The Orthodox tradition, as expressed in this book, asserts that there is no part of life or the world that does not have God as its central referent. There is no separation between sacred and secular or spiritual and material. All is for the glory of God and is a means of communion with God.

In this study, we also dealt with the question of purpose. What is the purpose of humanity and what is the purpose of the world? Historically, Western Christianity has denied any ongoing significance for the world and has treated with indifference the world's original significance. As put forth by Alexander Schmemann, however, Eastern Orthodoxy strongly affirms that the initial and the ongoing purpose of the created order is for it to serve for us as a means of communion with God.

An important book in my spiritual development has been The God of Israel and Christian Theology by R. Kendall Soulen. This book is important to me for a number of reasons, but, as it relates to the issues dealt with in For the Life of the World, The God of Israel and Christian Theology also deals with the question of the world's purpose. In his effort to ascribe ongoing theological significance to Judaism in the biblical narrative and in the attendant purpose of overcoming the Gnostic temptation to empty the world of significance that has historically been present in Christian eschatology, Soulen affirms that God still has plans for the consummation of the earth and that the economy of earthly consummation is caught up with Israel. For the Life of the World affirms God's intent to consummate the creation as well, but, consistent with Orthodoxy, and, in my opinion, Scripture and the Reformed tradition (post-millennialists like NT Wright and the Federal Visionists, among others), this little volume exuberantly proclaims that this economy of earthly consummation is caught up in Christ and the Church. Christ has indeed died and risen for the life of the world, to bring it to its ultimate fulfillment in Him.

Heaven and Earth Are Filled with Thy Glory: Eastern Orthodoxy For the Life of the World

What we are undertaking here is as ambitious as it is exotic. For some of us, the perspective we are unrolling here is a totally different understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It is going to challenge some of our most basic thoughts and assumptions about what Christianity is all about, and ultimately, what life is all about. The most important questions we need to consider before we start this project is, What is the chief end of humanity and of the world? What is the life of the world that Jesus has died to reclaim for us? What exactly are we in the Church doing when we gather together to worship on the Lord's Day? What is it that the Church is doing in all of its work and in all of its teaching and what is the purpose and goal of this action and teaching? Also, what is the significance of our lives beyond church doors? Let's chew on this a little bit while I attempt to answer a question that I am sure all of you might be asking.

What is Eastern Orthodoxy and how is it valuable to us as 21st-century American Presbyterians? Why do I think this book written by an Orthodox priest about the faith of his church is so vitally important that we need to hear it? Well, let's work on exploring Eastern Orthodoxy for a minute. Where does this tradition come from?

The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church separated 500 years before the Protestants broke from Rome. There are more similarities between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism than there are between Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Nevertheless, Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism have some profound differences. For instance, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy has no pope and rejects the doctrine of purgatory and its artistic expression comes to focus on the icons of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the saints rather than on the statuary that is more representative of Roman Catholicism.

On the other hand, like Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox have priests (but unlike in Catholicism these priests can marry); they have seven sacraments instead of two, as we will find out; they recognize the Apocrypha as Scripture; they view Tradition as being equal with Scripture in authority; they have strong devotion to the Virgin Mary; and they ask the saints in heaven to pray for them. Unlike Roman Catholicism and also Protestantism, for that matter, Eastern Orthodoxy does not view mystery and questions we can't answer as the problems we tend to think they are; instead of always trying to figure out the mysteries and provide answers the way we seem to want to, the Eastern Orthodox simply bow before God in worship, thanking Him for His majesty and incomprehensibility.

This points us to the language issue. Greek, the traditional language of the Eastern Church, is more fluid and poetic than Latin, the traditional language of the Western Church. Latin, on the other hand, is characterized as a more legalistic and technical language than Greek. Our Western practice of using a great many words and technical terms to describe and understand divine mysteries is undoubtedly part of the heritage left to the Western Church from the Latin tongue. Nevertheless, from whatever sources it arises, our Western wordiness means that the piety of Western Christianity, particularly Protestant piety, is more focused on the Word and words. As a result, Protestant piety, particularly Reformed piety, gets manifested in things like Bible study, listening to or delivering a good sermon, or congregational singing, for instance, while Orthodox piety gets manifested in ritual action, in chanted music, and in painting or venerating beautiful icons of Christ, Mary, the saints, and other heavenly mysteries.

This really points to another distinction as well between Reformed Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy and even Catholicism are more sense-oriented traditions than most Protestant traditions. This leads to Protestant charges of idolatry against these traditions, some of which are quite frankly valid, but, what we fail to realize is that we put a great deal of emphasis on the senses in our traditions as well. We certainly put a great deal of emphasis on our sense of hearing when it comes to hearing and understanding the Word, and, of course, understandings of the sacraments that limit them to teaching ceremonies certainly put a great deal of weight on the sense of sight. In my understanding of the sacraments, though, I think the use of our senses of touch and taste are also significant. Pay attention to this kind of thing throughout our study. We will be returning to the issue of how our humanity and materiality come into play in our spirituality.

That's enough about the specifics of Eastern Orthodoxy for the moment. The question is, "Why?" What does it have to do with us? Well, there's a couple of things. Eastern Orthodox are our brothers and sisters in Christ, but we don't know much about them. Just as I think we need to do with all Christian traditions, we need to get to know them because they are part of the family and they have something valuable to teach us.

Before we dig deeper into what exactly it is Eastern Orthodoxy can teach us, though, we need to talk about modern Western society and the challenges it poses for Christian mission. This is the central issue that our text is going to be addressing and why we have chosen to study this book. We are seeking a vision to help us more successfully make disciples of Jesus Christ in a very challenging and very quickly changing world. According to our author, the chief problem that our society poses for Christian mission is that it opens a great chasm between the Church and the rest of the world. Dualism is the problem. What the heck do I mean by dualism? On one side of life is material existence; on the other side is spiritual existence.

Fundamental distinction made between:

• religious versus secular
• sacred versus profane
• spiritual versus material
• church versus state

In the preface, Schmemann talks about the two responses that Christians have made to this situation. How has the Church responded?

• Page 7-8, 12-13
• What is the "spiritualist" response? What do you make of it? How is it evident in American Christianity?
• What is the "activist" response? What do you make of it? How is it evident in American Christianity?

Do you agree with Schmemann's statement on the bottom of page 13? Why or why not?

Whether we "spiritualize" our life or "secularize" our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them at a secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave His only begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp.

What seems to be our "traditional" understanding of Christianity? What is the purpose of the world, and what is humanity's purpose? Why did Jesus come and what is the goal of our life in him?

I would characterize the "traditional" American understanding of the Christian faith by three terms: world-denying, pessimistic, and otherworldly. It is world denying in that it really doesn't have an answer for God's purpose in creating the world. Its view of humanity and the direction of our future is pessimistic. Our original purpose, of course, is to "glorify God and enjoy him forever," but humanity is so destroyed and the world is so beyond redemption that it is impossible for God to salvage anything from the planet but the few souls that he has decided to rescue. In order to fulfill our purpose, then, we shouldn't focus too much on what's happening here because our hope is completely in heaven. It is spiritual realities that we truly need to apply ourselves to. I would call this understanding an evacuation theology—the "I'll Fly Away" approach to Christian faith. Christ has simply come to rescue us from this rotten, stinking, sin and death-infested world and take us to heaven. The world is only going to get worse, so the best we can hope for is to be raptured the heck out of here before the world literally goes to hell.

In this perspective, everyday life, the eating, drinking, monotonous, daily grind kind of life, doesn't really have a lot of significance. Don't get me wrong, we have a lot of work to do in getting people saved so we can get them to go to heaven with us, but we really shouldn't be wasting our time on trying to change the world for the better. Nothing but winning souls matters; everything else is just waiting around to die and go to heaven. Does that really inspire you and give you a vision by which to live your everyday life? Don't get me wrong; the freedom from pain and struggle that Jesus promises us in heaven is a valid part of our Christian tradition that at some point in our lives as we grow older each of us is going to draw strength from. The hope of being absent from the body and present with the Lord is precious for those whose lives in the world are nothing but pain and hardship, like those imminently facing death or those who are living in the midst of severe poverty, illness, or oppression, but what about for the rest of us? What do we do until then? It's exactly this kind of view of Christian faith that caused me to leave my own fundamentalist background. It was all about what happens after death. There wasn't much meaning attached to our earthly, everyday lives. It's that ugly dualism again! The spiritual life cares not for the things of this world.

Of course, many Christians in America and around the world have realized the deficiency of this completely otherworldly kind of Christian understanding. I would characterize the alternative view by the terms: world-affirming, optimistic, and secular. It is world-affirming because it is insistent that the world is God's good creation. It has an optimistic view of human nature and of the progress of history. People are inherently good and if we just try a little harder, life can become heaven on earth. If this is the case, in this view, if life in this world holds out such good possibilities, we really don't have to focus too much attention on heaven or on truth claims about God. We really can't know too much about that stuff anyway. The most important thing about Jesus is how he has taught us to live in this world and love one another.

I say this is secular because, if the sum total of our Christian life is activism and we don't pay much attention to worship and the revelation of Scripture, there really isn't any need for the Church when we can accomplish the goal of making a better society through politics or justice movements outside the Church. Many historians and sociologists of religion think this is why Protestantism declined in the Northeast after the Civil War and into the early and middle 20th-century. That confounded dualism strikes again, divorcing our practical life in the world from worship.

Well, the reason I put forward Eastern Orthodoxy, as presented in this book, is that it puts forward a vision of life and of what we are doing here as the Church that, in my view, is unpolluted and uncontaminated by Western forces of modernity and secularity. It has not accepted this confounded dualism that puts religion in a marginal place in this world and takes from it the soul and the spirit of life, truly abundant life, that Jesus promises to give God's people here and now in this world and stretching forward into eternity. During the course of the study, we're going to see how the vision of Christian mission that Eastern Orthodoxy sets forth can give that spirit of life back to us.

Another reason Eastern Orthodoxy might be of help to us is that it's a tough time right now for the Church. If any Christian tradition knows adversity, it has been Eastern Orthodoxy. For the last 500 years, the Orthodox churches in the Middle East have managed to remain in spite of repressive theocratic Muslim governments or societies, and, of course, the Russian Orthodox Church and the other Orthodox churches in the former Soviet Union managed to survive and even thrive throughout nearly a century of Communist rule. There is some kind of power and beauty in this Christian tradition that has enabled it to continue and even flourish through long years of trial. What they've got to say, I think we need to hear and learn from.

There is also the fact that Reformed Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy have a few important areas of convergence. One of the pioneers of Reformed Christianity, John Calvin, looked toward the East in his teaching on the Lord's Supper. In light of this historic convergence, the historic catholic movement within American Presbyterianism has been fed and nourished in sacramental theology by Eastern Orthodox thinkers, especially our author, Alexander Schmemann. We see both of these currents running through the Communion liturgy we use in the Presbyterian Church USA.

So, what is the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the purpose of humanity and of the world?

The world's purpose-

In the Bible the food that man eats, the world of which he must partake in order to live, is given to him by God, and it is given as communion with God. The world as man's food is not something "material" and limited to material functions, thus different from, and opposed to, the specifically "spiritual" functions by which man is related God. All that exists is God's gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man's life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for man. God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation: "O taste and see that the Lord is good." page 14

Humanity's purpose-

Man is a hungry being. But he is hungry for God. All desire is finally desire for Him. To be sure, man is not the only hungry being. All that exists lives by "eating." The whole creation depends on food. But the unique position of man in the universe is to bless God for the food and the life he receives from Him. He alone is to respond to God's blessing with his blessing. . . . The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God—and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he received from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him. The world was created as the "matter," the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and man was created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament. pages 14-15

Is this drastically different from our "traditional" American understanding of the Christian faith? What do you make of humanity being the priest and the world being the eucharist of God's presence? Does this understanding allow for a division of life into sacred and secular? What is most surprising?

What do the Scriptures testify?

Deut. 6:3-12- Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you. . . . then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Romans 8:19-21- The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

How does Schmemann describe the Fall?

The "original" sin is not primarily that man has "disobeyed" God; the sin is that He ceased to be hungry for Him and for Him alone, ceased to see his whole life depending on the whole world as a sacrament of communion with God. The sin was not that man neglected his religious duties. The sin was that he thought of God in terms of religion, i.e., opposing Him to life. The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world. The fall is not that he preferred world to God, distorted the balance between the spiritual and material, but that he made the world material, whereas he was to have transformed it into "life in God," filled with meaning and spirit. page 18

Does this make sense? What about the characterization of religion itself being a result of the Fall?

In light of this understanding of the Fall, what is Christ's mission? What did his death and resurrection accomplish?

But it is the Christian gospel that God did not leave man in his exile, in the predicament of confused longing. He had created man "after His own heart" and for Himself, and man has struggled in his freedom to find the answer to the mysterious hunger in him. In this scene of radical unfulfillment God acted decisively: into the darkness where man was groping toward Paradise, He sent light. He did so not as a rescue operation, to recover lost man: it was rather for the completing of what He had undertaken from the beginning. God acted so that man might understand who He really was and where his hunger had been driving him.

The light God sent was His Son: the same light that had been shining unextinguished in the world's darkness all along, seen now in full brightness. page 18-19

How is this different from the "traditional" understanding of Christ's mission? How is it similar?

Consummation Theology:

In Him was the end of 'religion,' because He himself was the Answer to all religion, to all human hunger for God, because in Him the life that was lost by man—and which could only be symbolized, signified, asked for in religion—was restored to man. page 20

“In Christ, life—life in all its totality—was returned to man, given again as sacrament and communion, made Eucharist.” page 20

What do the Scriptures testify?

John 6:25-35- When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval." Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." "Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread." Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

For next time, we will look at how the Church itself is the sacrament of Christ's presence and action in the world by engaging Schmemann's discussion of the Eucharist in Chapter 2. Please take the time to read it; it is well worth it.

Church: Love It, Don't Leave It

Young pastors Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck writing on Newsweek/Washington Post "On Faith: Guest Voices" blog about the importance of the Church. Though they screwed Calvin and Cyprian's statement up, (which is actually: "Those who wish to have God for their Father must have the Church for their Mother.") they are otherwise spot on.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/07/church_love_it_dont_leave_it.html

The Worship Wars 1

The war over worship has opened a new front in my family. I went away to college and fell in love with a history-conscious, liturgical-sacramental, "high" Church style of worship, but, since I've returned home and we have started going to a very formal, liturgical Presbyterian church, it has become apparent that my mom and little sister are not as enamored with this traditional form as I am. They've informed me that they haven't felt "spiritual" since we started attending Broadway Pres. and that they must struggle mightily to remain awake during the services. What his wounded me the most is that my baby sister Samantha thinks that Presbyterians are just plain "weird," that the music is dreadful, and that the liturgy is basically an invention dropped to the earth from an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Mom misses the simplicity of the Baptist service and all the old hymns she grew up with.

It had been expressed over the past few months leading up to my scheduled move to St. Louis that after I left, Mom and Sam would no longer have to suffer through such boring Sunday morning services and that they would start going to the Celebration Center—the south campus of multi-site First Church United Methodist. In other words, they were going to exchange the boring, formal, traditional, liturgical worship I had gotten them into for trendy, contemporary, informal, uplifting worship at a place that has a movie theater, a coffee shop, a bookstore, and whose "sanctuary" is a big auditorium that doesn't even look like a church.

Well, the move fell through, I'm still here, and we've had to reach a compromise. We are doing Saturday night at the Celebration Center and Lord's Day at Broadway Pres. That's fair enough. Even Broadway is trying to do the same thing. They've started a more contemporary, informal service on Saturday night, "Morning Light" at the early service on Sunday, and traditional worship at 10:30. I would like us to try the contemporary service at Broadway, but since Samantha has connected with the youth group at First Methodist, it's best that we worship there with her.

I can tend to be a little dogmatic and pushy; I must admit I've become somewhat of a formal old prude in my insistence on a Christianity that has roots plunged deeply into the past and that is committed to sacramental and liturgical renewal. The mainstream evangelicalism that I grew up with as a Southern Baptist is no longer enough for me. I don't mean to belittle those who are quite content with mainstream evangelicalism and find themselves fulfilled and fruitful there, but, from my experience, that tradition has serious shortcomings in its individualism, subjectivism, and otherworldliness. I can't go back there. This is why I am going to continue to be a voice calling for the reform of mainstream evangelicalism until it develops a robust and thorough communal and covenantal emphasis, until it values the sacraments and the Church in their full biblical and patristic glory, and until it fully rejects Gnosticism and gets serious about reclaiming the world for God's glory and Christ's Kingdom.

Yes, I'm an old codger and, yes, what I'm doing may very well lead us back to being a bunch of stuffy old confessional Protestants or, worse, a godless horde of Papists (sorry, my "Romish" friends, you know I say this jestingly), but I am not opposed to contemporary Christian music on principle or to the "emerging church" or any other trendy new form or exercise of Christian faith that has as its aim the true worship of God and the advance of Christ's Kingdom. I don't think these things are necessarily bad. Like anything, they can be used for God's glory and the benefit of His Church.

In my hurt feelings that my family does not find my traditional Presbyterianism the "bees’ knees," I have used certain disparaging terms, for their benefit, to refer to the kind of worship that goes on at the Celebration Center. For instance, I've hurled the "Gnostic" label, and I've used "Pietist" in an unflattering fashion on numerous occasions. I've also pulled "McChurch" or "fast food Christianity" out of the hat a few times, which to my disappointment are not at all original but are already being used by opponents of multi-site churches.

Okay, for mainstream evangelicalism, we can avoid Gnosticism by building churches that actually look like churches, not big empty spaces filled with nothing but . . . well, nothing. We can refrain from making so many of our songs and so much of our preaching refer to "flying away" or going to heaven, because, remember, Christianity also has a this-worldly element called discipleship and eternal life is not going to occur for us in some disincarnate plane of existence but in material bodies in a material heavenly city. We can also avoid Gnosticism by keeping in touch with history. Say the Apostles’ Creed, at least, for Christ's sake, or do something else to show that you give a hoot about the 2000 years of Church history that have passed. Finally, we need to take the sacraments seriously. God doesn't just want to touch us on the level of our feelings or our minds but to also appeal to us according to the senses and to seal our faith with objective realities like words, people, water, bread, and wine. Also, "seeker churches" like the Celebration Center must not shirk on the Bible reading in their services. Read some Scripture to those heathens you're trying to convert! Our faith is not based on purely subjective feelings and experiences but on the objective witness of Christ, the Word of God in history, and Scripture, the written Word of God.

Mainstream evangelicals can avoid the worst abuses of Pietism by replacing some of our "I's," "me's," and "my's" in our trendy praise and worship anthems with "us's," "we's," and "ours's." Our public worship isn't just about how Jesus saved me and you and you but about how Jesus has saved us and made us corporately His Bride and Body. Certainly let's sing about "our" salvation, and occasionally about "my" salvation, but let's also sing about Creation, the Church, and God's might displayed in both acts of power and in the humility of the Incarnation and the cross. After all, doesn't salvation encompass all of this and show us how wonderful it all truly is?

Finally, let's not do the "fast food Christianity" thing where we run a bunch of people through our churches like it's the drive-through window at the local Wendy's. Worship isn't about our convenience but is about offering something to bless the heart of God. We can go longer than an hour. We can trade a few worship songs for a time of communal confession in the service, we can put Bible readings in, we can do the Lord's Supper in such a way that it isn't just a tack on at the end of the service, and we can say the Apostle’s Creed and observe the liturgical seasons in a meaningful way. I don't think this is inconsistent with the contemporary style of worship, unless the whole goal of contemporary worship is just to please ourselves.

Next time, I'm going to recap my little sister's complaints about the traditional liturgical style of worship and discuss how more formal worship can avoid the pitfalls of the excesses it is itself prone to.

Fast and Feast, Flesh and Spirit

For someone who just joined a congregation in a mainline denomination three weeks ago, I was awfully hard on that segment of American Protestant Christianity in my last post. All criticisms aside, the orthodox majority of mainline Protestants have done some things better over the last century than most evangelicals have. They have done particularly well with two areas I am keenly interested in—the Sacraments and the social aspect of the Gospel, both emphases that have prevented them from falling into the Gnostic scheme of spiritualizing all the trappings of religion away, at least not to the extent that most evangelicals have.

When it comes to its official statements in its Book of Common Worship, the Presbyterian Church USA is one of the most solid of the mainline churches when it comes to its sacramental theology and its sacramental liturgies. Its baptismal liturgies incorporate the beauty of the best Reformed language about the Sacrament and handle with nuance and subtlety the dialectic theological concerns in play in Reformed thought on the Sacrament. Its Eucharistic liturgies incorporate elements of patristic liturgies, giving them an awesome sense of history and mystery and a catholicity that resonates with believers from the Christian traditions of Wittenberg, Geneva, Rome, and of Constantinople and points north and east. The PCUSA has also done a fantastic job in its work with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in bridging the centuries-old rift that developed between the Reformed and the Lutherans due to their differences on the Sacraments. Needless to say, I am thrilled to officially be a member of this denomination.

In her sermon last Lord's Day, our pastor, Reverend Nancy Carle, did not address the Sacraments but did deal nicely with the issue of fasting as a discipline we are called to practice especially during the season of Lent but also as an ordinary practice of our spirituality. She took the anti-Gnostic track of defending the practice by discussing the importance God places on the actions we perform in and with our bodies. We are not to think of ourselves as having competing and dichotomous fragments of ourselves labeled spirit and matter, with spirit being good and mighty and flesh being somehow lesser or weaker. She pointed to the fact that God called materiality and flesh good and very good when he created it in the beginning and that God assumed flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ, who physically died and bodily rose from the grave. Likewise, she noted the Christian belief in the general resurrection of the dead as stated in the Apostles' Creed. It is in the context of such an embodied spirituality that fasting is an appropriate and necessary activity for Christians. In the season of Christ's suffering and death, we are to show our thanksgiving and joy by bringing our bodies into subjection and offering them as a sacrifice to he who was and is our all-sufficient sacrifice.

With the embodied nature of our spirituality under discussion last Lord's Day, it was appropriate that the contrasting theme of feast also appeared in the service. The idea of fasting as a means of feasting on Jesus Christ came up during the sermon, and, during the children's feature, Nancy discussed with the youngsters the ample material for feasting our worship together provides. She pulled out a hymnal and intimated to the children that a great feast for our ears was set in the music of the church. She pulled out a Bible and pointed to the great feast for our hearts that God's Word is. She also pointed to the congregation and the choir assembled behind her and noted what a feast of wisdom is set before inquiring minds in all the lessons God's people can teach us.

Most naturally, then, my mind made the progression to something else that is as central to our life and worship together as the spoken and written Word of God. Also, with the matters of the mental, emotional, and spiritual feasts set before God's people in worship being dealt with, it was only natural that I should think of the physical feast of the Church. My eyes went from the pastor and the children gathered on the other side of the sanctuary back to the centrally-located altar, hoping against hope that I was mistaken that no feast of Christ's body and blood lay there ready and waiting for us to consume, but, alas, I was not mistaken. No bread. No wine. No literal feast was to be had this day. In good Presbyterian fashion, our fare today was destined only to be words.

Well, my time for complaining is over. Presbyterians have not historically celebrated the Lord's Supper often. Many are now doing so weekly, but many more still are not. The fact is that Presbyterianism is centered on the Word. Well, the entire Church is centered on the Word of God—both the testimony about him and his Father we call Scripture and the God-Man himself, Jesus Christ. The Word of God is speech by and about God as well as the flesh and blood human being that was and is God. Just as Jesus did not come in words alone but also in the flesh when he walked the earth, so too does he not, or, at least should not have to, come by words alone today. In this sense, it is perfectly Presbyterian to make the Sacraments as central to our worship as the Bible is. Since Christ has gone to be present in heaven at the right hand of the Father, through the power the Holy Spirit the Sacraments are the means, in addition to the speech of Holy Writ, by which we continue to commune with him in a fleshly way.

Do I overstate the need for God to engage us at every level of our being, or, conversely that we need to engage God at every level of our being? Doesn't Scripture say, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all" (John 6:63). This is the verse that the Swiss Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, used to support his position on the Lord's Supper at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529.

At this fateful meeting, the Protestant princes and theologians of Germany and their counterparts from Switzerland were assembled to bolster the Protestant movement and unify it in the face of the threat from the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Zwingli and the Swiss Reformed camp agreed on virtually all major points of doctrine with Luther and his followers. However, Luther and Zwingli quarreled bitterly on the question of the Lord's Supper.

Luther took quite literally Christ's words at the Last Supper, "This is my body. This is my blood." He was quite unwilling to budge on this point. He felt that the statement was just too strongly put in Scripture to spiritualize it away. He did not quite accept the Roman Catholic view either, but this was primarily because it was expressed in terms more associated with Aristotelian philosophy than the Bible.

Zwingli found Luther's view to be outright idolatry. He found repugnant the idea that God is present "in, with, and under" the physical elements of bread and wine. On this point, John Calvin would later agree with Zwingli, but his reason for rejecting the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist was thoroughly biblical. As for Zwingli, the basis of his reasoning was philosophical.

Calvin could not reconcile the idea of Jesus Christ the human being sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven while simultaneously being present on a thousand altars. He was worried about inadvertently endorsing the "Monophysite" heresy (which is the elimination of the distinction between Christ's humanity and divinity, namely that "the humanity of Christ is absorbed into his divinity just as a drop of rain is into the sea"), but he nevertheless still affirmed that Christ is spiritually present in the Sacrament and that it contains a divine blessing for believers and a curse for unbelievers.

Zwingli, on the other hand, could not reconcile Christ's physical presence in Communion with his Platonic understanding of the relationship between spirit and matter. For Zwingli, matter was inherently inferior to spirit and could not carry the weight of spiritual reality. As a result, Zwingli's interpretation of that great Eucharistic chapter, John 6, hinged upon verse 63: "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all." (I find it remarkable that a theologian who was as otherwise skilled as Zwingli was could fail to recognize that following his exegetical reasoning on the Lord's Supper to its most obvious conclusion would be to empty the Incarnation of any significance as well!)

At any rate, Luther thought Zwingli had performed a rational emptying of the Lord's Supper and thus uttered, "We are not of the same spirit." (Yay Luther! Even though these words were disastrous for Protestant prospects for church unity and I have some points of departure from Lutheran views of the Lord's Supper, I still have to admire Luther's stand for historic Christianity here.) It was at this point in history that we can mark the definitive split between the Reformed and the Lutherans. Though Calvin took a view of the Sacrament somewhat closer to Luther's view, he helped deepen the split between his followers and Luther's by signing a statement of agreement with Zwingli's followers in the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549. The Reformed have been trying to figure out whether they follow Calvin or Zwingli on the Lord's Supper ever since. (Can you guess which I follow on this doctrine?)

But what do we make of the essential biblical distinction between Spirit and flesh? Paul, for example, uses the dichotomy between Spirit and flesh repeatedly in his letters to mark a sharp distinction between the life of regenerate and unregenerate humanity. Those of the Spirit are rescued from sin and death, given everlasting life, and set on a trajectory toward glory, but those of the flesh are altogether ruined, wrecked, and doomed.

The Gnostics read their anti-materialist prejudices onto Paul's letters, inferring that spirit is inherently good and that matter is inherently evil. I do not mean to question Paul or the Holy Spirit for their mutual decision to use these terms, but it seems as if the distinction inherently smacks of Gnosticism or some species of Platonism.

Well, I think we can defend Paul's and also John's use of this dichotomy while affirming that there is nothing intrinsic to mere spirit or to mere flesh that makes one superior to the other. I want to note a couple of things.

1. "Spirit" in the Pauline Epistles and in John 6:63 is, of course, the Holy Spirit.
2. "Flesh," as used in the New Testament, often means sinful human nature. That is what is in play in most Pauline usage of the word. Neither does it refer exclusively to our bodies and their sinful nature but it includes our sinful minds, sinful hearts, and sinful spirits as well. This is all "flesh" for Paul.
3. "Flesh" in John 6:63 is not synonymous with "sinful human nature" or bare materiality but with pure natural reason. The flesh here that is of no help is that of the human mind unenlightened by faith, not the flesh and blood that Christ bids us to eat and drink as our regular "spiritual" food earlier in the chapter. Christ's literal flesh and blood offered up for us at Calvary, and consequently signified for and delivered tangibly to us in the Eucharist (not by transformation but by the presence of the Holy Spirit in and with the bread and wine, according to my Reformed perspective), is everything in John 6. The flesh and blood Christ offered up for us at Calvary is the root of our Life as regenerated persons.
   
   (The best Protestant commentary I could find on John 6:63 is solid but contains a heresy. The Geneva Study Bible notes of this verse: "The flesh of Christ therefore quickens us, because he that is man is God: and this mystery is only comprehended by faith, which is the gift of God, found only in the elect."
   
   Good so far and still good on its lexical note on Spirit, except for the heresy it contains: "Spirit, that is, that power which flows from the Godhead causes the flesh of Christ (which is otherwise nothing but flesh) both to live in itself and to give life to us."
   
   That which is in parentheses is technically heretical because there is no humanity of Christ without the divine nature joined to it in hypostatic union. The ancient ecumenical Council of Chalcedon describes Christ as being "in two natures, inconfusedly,unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.")
   
   I digress; the point is that Christ's discourse on his flesh and blood in John 6 must be apprehended by faith, not according to human reason. Human reason finds it preposterous that Jesus can be both fully God and fully human and consequently a human sacrifice for us, but faith recognizes that these are the central realities of the Christian faith.
4. The Spirit is eternal, but the flesh is temporary. This doesn't necessarily imply hierarchy of mere spirit over mere matter. The Spirit/flesh dichotomy is most appropriate for its inference about duration and influence. Flesh (matter) as we currently know it is perishable. Sinful flesh in particular is dying a slow death in the Church and in the individual Christian, but it will inevitably and completely die, though bare matter will not disappear because we will have perfect and incorruptible physical bodies in the Kingdom.
   
   The Spirit, on the other hand, which is God's agent (not to mention very God of very God) of cosmic and individual regeneration, is already powerful in the Church, the world, and in individual believers. The Spirit's influence is eternal and is only getting stronger in the Church, the world, and in individual believers. It will triumph over all when the Kingdom arrives in all its fullness.

Okay, here's how I'm going to bring this sprawling train wreck to an end. We fast during Lent, not because matter is bad, but because matter is good, inasmuch as it is a means of communion with God. We fast so we can bring our bodies and souls into subjection to the will of God and thus offer our whole selves as sacrifices to the one who sacrificed his whole self for us.

When we feast as the Church on the Lord's Supper, we are anticipating that time when matter is returned to the purpose for which it was created—to be a means of union between God and his creatures. The purpose of the Eucharist is thus, according to my friend Dustin Lyon, "the fundamental proclamation of the gospel where all creation is redeemed and the world becomes what it was meant to be: a means of communion with God and transparent to Him." That's why the Word of God, as embodied in Jesus himself, Scripture, and Sacrament, are central to Christian worship. Let us not feast on words alone but on the Word, flesh and Spirit, in all of his fullness.

American Religious Identification Survey: What It Means for Evangelicalism?

The latest American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College of Hartford, Connecticut should be no cause for alarm to American Christians, but, neither can we regard its results as a cause for celebration. The most notable features of the 2008 survey are:

• The percentage of Americans claiming no religion has jumped from 8.2 in 1990 and 14.2 in 2001 to the current figure of 15 percent.
• The percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Christian has fallen from 86 in 1990 to the current figure of 76 percent.
• The percentage of Catholics in the United States has remained steady at one in four since 1990, but the percentage of non-Catholic Christians has fallen from 60 to 50 percent over the past two decades.
• Ninety percent of the decline in non-Catholic Christianity over this period has come from mainline Protestant denominations, which have seen their numbers drop from 18.7 percent of Americans in 1990 and 17.2 percent in 2001 to just 12.9 percent of today's population.
• The percentage of evangelicals in the United States continues on the rise, with one-third of the population identifying themselves as such, including 38.6 percent of those in mainline Protestant traditions.
• The largest percentage of increase in the evangelical camp has come from those attached to mega-churches, a number that has skyrocketed from less than 200,000 Americans in 1990 and 2.5 million in 2001 to the current figure of 8 million.

Well, the sky most certainly isn't falling, but, in my opinion, several of the trends noted above bode ill for the future of the Body of Christ in our country. It is no surprise that secularity continues to grow. That's a bummer for sure. Religion is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the lives of most Americans. Also, the decline within mainline Protestantism is surely distressing for a segment of American Christianity that has deep historic roots but which has in too many cases drifted from those roots in order to accommodate the culture.

For most theologically-conservative Christians, however, the numbers do not look that bad. Evangelicalism continues to grow, liberal Christianity is continuing to decline, and the Catholic Church has largely retained its numbers. Evangelicals must feel some sense of vindication in the continued growth in their camp and the continued collapse of mainline Protestantism because it represents to many of them an indictment of lukewarm, compromising Christian faith and a strong affirmation of that which sticks to its guns in spite of the culture.

Appearances can be deceiving. For instance, Mark Silk of Trinity College told CNN.com that the rise in evangelicalism is contributing to the rejection of religion altogether by some Americans. He points to the prominence of the "religious right" in politics as having turned many people the other way. That is undoubtedly true, but I think the connection relates more to the very issues many evangelicals see as problematic with mainline Protestantism, namely, that of compromising too much to the culture.

Though the areas where the influential liberal camp in mainline Protestantism has led the mainline denominations to compromise are different from the areas where particularly evangelism-driven evangelicals have led their fellow theologically-conservative Protestants to compromise, I think the results are ultimately going to be similar.

Even if conservative evangelicals are correct that liberal compromises in doctrine, worship, mission, and Christian morality within mainline Protestantism are related to matters of central concern to the Christian faith (in many cases they are), it is a mistake to assume that the compromises evangelicals have made in the name of winning and keeping converts are not also matters of fundamental integrity to the Christian faith. Just because evangelicals have doggedly retained essential points of Christian doctrine, stayed true to the mission of winning souls for Christ, and insisted on biblical standards of morality, that is no assurance that all remains well within the Church.

What happens if evangelicals continue to insist on individual head and heart matters but continue to neglect the love for one another that characterizes real Christian community, refrain from making disciples, and refuse to carry out the mission of establishing Christ's Kingdom in the Church and in the world? How does 12.9 percent of the American population sound? That's where we're headed if the "Let's have a religious entertainment service instead of public worship, and let's build mega-churches so nobody gets to know one another" movement continues. Private Christianity will inevitably dry the well up! Individualistic American Christians need real community and love, not Sunday rock concerts and a purely private relationship with Jesus.

The Sacraments Revisited

I have not written exclusively or specifically on the sacraments for a little while now, but I'm not done treating the subject in depth. So far, I have written three installments about reclaiming the sacraments for evangelicals. In the process, I have challenged philosophical and theological assumptions that undermine right views of the sacraments, described in brief the sacraments' relation to ecclesiology, exposited Scriptures related to baptism, surveyed various orthodox views of baptism, and given the question of the Lord's Supper a biblical and scholarly treatment from a classically Reformed point of view. I have yet to survey the various orthodox views of the Supper, or, to discuss the broad implications of recovering a sacramental theology.

Before taking up these tasks, I think a little revision is in order when it comes to what I have already written on this subject. The things I had written before are by no means mature thoughts on the sacraments and their implications for the Church and the entire Christian life. They represent my earliest wranglings with these kinds of ideas. I've read and thought more extensively since then. Also, I've learned that doing theology is a constant balancing act. Here are some needed counterweights to my earlier thoughts.

First corrective: In a way that smacks of both medieval scholasticism and the more recent Enlightenment and Age of Reason-inspired evangelical Protestant scholasticism, I described salvation or grace (justification, sanctification, etc.) as a sort of commodity that is distributed by the Church. When we conceive of salvation in this sense, I think we are missing the point. Salvation is relational; it is none other than Christ we seek.

Second corrective: Also in reference to my previous point, commodifying salvation and thinking of the Church as some sort of salvation-dispensing machine diminish the overarching significance of the person of Jesus Christ. We should think of salvation, not as something that is abstracted from Christ and then applied to us, but as nothing more or less than the abiding personal presence of Jesus Christ in and with the believer. Similarly, we should not think of the Church as something antecedent to or separable from the person of Jesus Christ. We should think of the Church in terms of the Augustinian concept of totus Christus and the Eastern Orthodox idea of perichoresis.

The reality of totus Christus is the reality of Christ as the Head in heaven at the right hand of the Father united to the Church—His very own Body—on earth (see Ephesians 5). In other words, Christ is composed of both Christ our Head and we His Body. Therefore, we can say that whenever the Body acts in obedience to its Head, its actions are none other than the actions of Jesus Himself.

When I speak of perichoresis, I am speaking of the sense in which the Persons of the Trinity mutually indwell and interpenetrate one another. Through the Holy Spirit, we as the Body of Christ are taken up into this union the Persons of the Trinity share with one another. As a result, Christ is in us and we are in Christ. Christ is in us individually because we are in Him corporately as the Church.

The point is that neither the Church nor salvation can be theologically separated from Christ. Salvation is right relationship with Christ, embodied in the Church. The Church is salvation. The sacraments are instrumental in our salvation in that baptism incorporates us into Christ's Body and the Lord's Supper continuously renews our union with Christ and His Body.

Third corrective: The sacraments are not means of grace. Again, we are dealing with the problem of thinking of salvation as some sort of commodity. Grace is not some kind of ether that is abstracted from God and distributed. Grace is Christ Himself and the abundant mercy He shows to sinners. A better way to speak of the sacraments is as means of union with Christ.

Fourth corrective: The sacraments are not primarily visible words. This raises the specter of Zwinglian or Baptist memorialism and the worst abuses of medieval sacramental practice. The sacraments do not find their primary use or efficacy in visible demonstration. We certainly cannot neglect the symbolic significance of the sacraments, but we must understand that they are first and foremost performative actions. They are rituals. Preaching Christ's death, burial, and resurrection is more instructive than demonstrating the Gospel through baptism or the Eucharist, hence the reason why those who hold to memorialist views of the sacraments are often prone to neglect their practice.

Baptism is participation in the Gospel through repentance and the objective application of Christ's death and resurrection to us. The Lord's Supper is a participation in the Body and Blood of Christ through eating. It is a meal that embodies the humility and service to one another that are central to the ethic of Christ's Body and it anticipates the full realization of the Kingdom of God at Christ's return.

Certainly, God appeals to our senses in the sacraments but not just to our sense of sight. He appeals to our sense of hearing in that we hear the Word of God in baptismal and Eucharistic liturgies, the shuffling of feet in Communion lines, the sloshing of water, the clinking of cups and plates. God appeals to our sense of smell with the aroma of bread and wine. He appeals to our sense of touch with water, the passing of plates, the handling of pieces of bread and the cup. God appeals to our sense of taste with the Bread of Life and the fruit of the vine through which we truly taste and see that the Lord is good. And he appeals to our corporate human existence and experience by baptizing us into Himself before a great cloud of witnesses, by coming to be present with His Church at His Table, and by feeding us with His flesh and blood.

Fifth corrective: I followed the time honored practice of using a "zoom lens" to think about the sacraments. Discussions of baptism are almost always about what the water does or does not do to the baptizand, while discussions of the Lord's Supper are almost always about what does or does not happen to the bread and the wine. Also, we notice that the focus in discussions of the sacraments is often exclusively on their effects on individuals. Rarely do we consider how the sacraments work to establish and maintain the society of the Church.

As an alternative, Peter Leithart proposes a "wide-angle lens" view in discussing the significance of the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. Here is what a wide-angle lens view of the Eucharist offers as opposed to the traditional zoom lens view:

Instead of attending only to bread and wine on a table, we see people and they are doing things. They are not simply observing the elements but passing them from hand-to-hand, sharing them, eating and drinking them. Words are being spoken. In most churches, one or a few members of the congregation stand nearer the "elements," while the rest sit, stand, or kneel at a greater distance, revealing a hierarchy of some kind. Through the zoom lens, the Eucharist is presented as a miraculous puzzle of physics or metaphysics; through a wide-angle lens, the Eucharist becomes a focal point for more theologically central issues: the relationships of the church’s members to one another, creation, and God. (Leithart, Blessed Are the Hungry, 156)

This kind of discussion provides a good segue into considering the broad reaching implications of reclaiming a sacramental theology. This preceded by a survey of the various orthodox views of the Supper is the next task in my project of reclaiming the sacraments.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

*For directing me to the concept of totus Christus, I owe Peter Leithart and his wonderful scholarship a debt of gratitude. Discussions with Dustin Lyons, former classmate at Mizzou and current graduate student at St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York City, have been important in directing me toward the theological treasures of Eastern Orthodoxy. Interestingly, Reformed scholars like Leithart have also come to look toward the wisdom of the Eastern Church for guidance in ecclesiological and Christological matters. May the dialogue continue between East and West, Protestant and Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, Catholic and Orthodox. We have much wisdom to offer one another.*

Putting the Scandal Back in the Gospel

The Problem

The Gospel is a scandal. It has been since the very beginning of its unfolding in history. The world finds the notion offensive that God called one particular man, Abraham, to be the father of one particular nation, Israel, through whom He intended to bless the whole world. And what a people to choose! An obscure, desert-dwelling, nomadic, tribal people who should have been forgotten in the annals of history.

Yet, even God's own people, Israel, found its particular God to be a scandal. “Why not be like all the other peoples who have many gods? The Divine cannot be exhausted by such a particular One. And what is this that God has a specific name? The gods of the other peoples are known by many names. And this God is such a particular fellow. Why does he demand of us such strict behaviors and mark out such a specific path that we are to follow in order to approach him? Our neighbors have many gods and many ways to get to those gods.”

It was that God should come to them in one specific Man, however, that most scandalized Israel. And such a man! A poor, stinking peasant carpenter of humble parentage from Galilee. "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Perhaps it would have been easier if Jesus had come in glory as a rich, privileged potentate bearing all the symbols of earthly grandeur, but he didn't. In the words of the popular song from the 90’s, he was "just a slob like one of us. Just a stranger on a bus, trying to make his way home.” And those people he hangs out with! Peasants and prostitutes and tax collectors and the poor and even Gentiles—the riffraff of society.

And of course, he had the same aggravating sense of particularity about himself as the Father he claimed to represent, claiming to be the "I Am," the "Son of God," and "the way and the truth and the life, the only way to the Father.” The worst thing, though, is that he went and got himself killed. “Surely, if he were the Son of God, he would not have been condemned as a criminal, to be put to open shame by such a brutal and humiliating death on a cross of wood.”

Even death, however, could not put to rest the scandal of particularity surrounding Jesus. The rumor began circulating that he rose bodily from the grave and ascended into heaven. His followers began to preach a message that was "a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Greeks" (1 Corinthians 1:23). To Jews, it was a stumbling block because the Apostles asserted that "In him the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). The Gentile criticism was twofold. The Gnostics rejected the Apostles’ and Church Fathers' assertions that the God of the Bible, whom they viewed as carnal and bloodthirsty, was the God they approached in their philosophy, that he had created the "evil” material world, that he works in history, and that he had taken on flesh and blood in Jesus of Nazareth. The pagans were offended by the notion that God had acted decisively for the whole world in the singular path of salvation through Jesus.

The objections to the Gospel put forward in Jesus’ and the early Church's day have not changed much. The world still finds the message repugnant that God has acted to bring salvation to sinners through the singular path of Christ's death for our sins and his resurrection for our justification. The objections are basically the following: “It's just too exclusive. There are many paths to God. God cannot possibly be such a particular and choosy God. It's just not fair. God cannot possibly have become one particular man. God could not possibly be angry at me for my sins or condemn me for them. God could not possibly allow an innocent man to die for my sins. They cannot possibly be so bad that he should require such an awful satisfaction for them.”

I do not find the world's objections to be that unreasonable. Should we not expect for the world to object? What I do find strange, however, is that the people today who most visibly and ardently preach the message of salvation in Christ have also fallen prey to the scandal of particularity surrounding the Gospel. The people I am speaking of are ourselves—American Protestant evangelicals. We find the idea blasphemous and offensive that God should continue to use communal, earthly, and particular means to save us. In this we have divorced ourselves from historic Christianity and the faith of the God of the Bible. In our efforts to market the Gospel in an individualistic society and make it palatable and readily available to all, we have conceptually and in far too many cases practically eliminated the earthly, communal, and particular elements that have been so central to historic Judeo-Christian faith and witness.

I am speaking of our rejection of any great theological significance attached to the earthly Church, the social aspect of the Gospel, and the Sacraments. In this rejection, we have made the uniquely historical and communal faith of Christianity an almost entirely ahistorical, individualistic, otherworldly faith that seems to only promise real blessings away from Earth and thus has no bearing on life in the real world. Perhaps this would explain the fact that America is one of the most religious nations on Earth but one of the nations in which religion appears all but irrelevant to the ways people live their lives.

The reality of this can be deceiving. As evangelical Protestants, most of us do not miss historic Christian orthodoxy by much, but the ways in which we subtly and not so subtly miss the mark are important. Of course, we teach that Christians must go to church, that we must meet the needs of "the least of these," that we should be baptized and look forward to Communion as a special time of worship, and that we should have objective certainty of our salvation, but, by our individualistic and radically anti-materialistic theological assumptions and religious practice, we do not allow these things the possibility of being sufficiently realized in the real world. The result is that a wide gulf separates the contemporary American evangelical Church from the historic Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Church.

For instance, let's consider our understanding of the Church. We accept all the orthodox imagery—the Church as the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ—but we take it in a direction that is unthinkable in historic Christian orthodoxy. Rather than the Church as a whole being the Body of Christ (Romans 12: 4-5; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27) and the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-32; Revelation 21:2, 9), we have the individual united directly to Christ as his Bride, not the individual united to the other members of the Body and thereby to the Head and Husband, Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:22-23; 5:23, 29-30; Colossians 1:18).

These are corporate images. There is no connection to the Head of the Body unless one is united with the other members. We are not brides of Christ individually but one Bride of Christ corporately. This, of course, does not exclude the necessity of having a personal relationship with Jesus, but, it does mean that this relationship must be understood in light of the Christian community. It is only by our incorporation into his Body (his Temple) that each of us is animated by the Holy Spirit and enabled together to be his ongoing physical presence in the world (Ephesians 2:17-22). If we separate ourselves from the Body, we shrivel up and decay just as amputated limbs do when separated from physical bodies.

Theology has practical consequences. A deviation from orthodoxy always results in a deviation from orthopraxy. The loss of a communal emphasis in our theology has meant a loss of community in our churches. Whereas Christ tells us, "By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35), our churches all too often seem to be run-of-the-mill voluntary associations of like-minded individuals, like, for instance, the Elks Club or the Moose Lodge. Instead of a family, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Peter 2:9), members of the same congregation frequently exhibit only the loosest of connections to one another, particularly if they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Due to the alliance that has historically existed between individualized evangelical Calvinism and capitalism, the evangelical church today consists primarily of upwardly mobile middle-class whites and represents their particular interests. With the loss of a theology that emphasizes communal rather than individual election and the real spiritual need that Christians have for one another, private Christians feel no responsibility for the salvation of their brothers and sisters, much less their physical and social needs. Christian charity and love are replaced with Christian civility, or worse, Christian snobbery. The transformative power of the Gospel no longer has the force to break down the barriers that exist between middle-class and working-class Christians, much less between rich and poor, white and black, respectable and not-so respectable, important and not-so important. In our churches today, the Pharisees are warmly embraced, but the kinds of people that Jesus hung out with are far too often only coolly tolerated or outright rejected.

As Philip J. Lee notes in Against the Protestant Gnostics, "What is undeniable is that American Protestantism still accepts and practices a social exclusivism on behalf of the privileged and that the lower strata of society have been psychologically, intellectually, and ethically excluded from the fellowship." So much for "as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40) and "Whoever causes one of my little ones to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6; Mark 9:42; Luke 17:2).

For "the least of these," it appears that the opinion of Henry Ward Beecher and his ilk that "churches are largely for the mutual insurance of prosperous families, and not for the upbuilding of the great underclass of humanity” is the norm for evangelical churches. The observation of fellow Boston clergyman Rev. Charles Wood that "the poor are not provided for, nor are they wanted as a part of the congregations which worship in the majority of our city churches" is as relevant today as it was in 1874. When sincere Christians from economically or socially disadvantaged backgrounds are rejected by more affluent church members, the result is invariably that they become discouraged in their faith and disillusioned by the hypocrisy of their congregations. Despairing of finding the warm Christian community that is essential for genuine discipleship, many leave the Church altogether, taking their much-needed presence and perspectives with them. When the poor are out of sight in the Church, they all too frequently are out of mind as well.

Nevertheless, evangelical churches do work for the poor. That is undeniable. But the truth is that we do not do enough, and rarely do we welcome with open arms into our churches the individuals we help. Evangelical churches may meet the physical needs of disadvantaged persons on an individual basis and get them to make professions of faith, but, beyond this, only the most superficial attention is paid to their spiritual and social needs.

We see this in evangelical politics as well. Conservative evangelical political action focuses almost exclusively on the improvement of individual morality as the sole source of social change, ignoring the social structures and realities that perpetuate poverty, crime, and addiction. Disadvantaged individuals are entirely responsible for overcoming their difficult circumstances; it is not society or government's place to help facilitate change.

Additionally, the unbalanced otherworldliness that characterizes American evangelical faith means that the physical circumstances of life are devalued. Changing the world for the benefit of embodied human existence is far less important than saving souls. Social justice, the environment, and the building of meaningful and universally satisfying Christian community therefore all take a back seat to evangelism.

Evangelical rejection of the communal, the earthly, and the particular and its deleterious consequences for orthopraxy is also evident in the evangelical rejection of the Sacraments. Baptism and the Lord's Supper have been supremely devalued as means of grace in the name of universalizing and individualizing the offer of salvation in Christ. Subjective experience has become the sole marker of authentic Christian faith, whereas historically the marks of a Christian have been doctrine, discipline, and incorporation into and participation in the Church through the Sacraments. Being a follower of Jesus Christ and having present faith in Jesus for salvation as well as having the objective, communal testimonies to salvation of Church, Bible, baptism, and Eucharist once blunted the existential force of the doctrine of election. Now, however, that the emphasis in evangelicalism has shifted from communal election to individual election and the objective testimonies have been completely replaced by the subjective conversion experience, those unfortunate individuals who do not have the hubristic confidence in their own sincerity at the moment of conversion or in their memories of that experience to dispel all the clouds of doubt bear the full force of the question of their eternal destiny all alone.

Describing the experience of the late Puritans, the first group in North America to take grace out of the Church, Lee writes, "Left with no definite means of grace, no certitude or even comfort, the Protestant individual found the Calvinistic doctrine of election to be a monstrous threat. The sinner was left to the caprice of the infinite God who despises finite means." God had become "a God who refuses to put His heart into His creation and who leaves His creatures alone and without access to Himself." This remains as relevant for today's American evangelical Protestants as it was for our Puritan forebears. Those not given to great emotionality find themselves without God in the world and the Church. They also find themselves without their brothers and sisters in Christ in a loosely associated, purely voluntaristic Church.

The Solution

We must reject the new particularities of the individual, the middle-class, and subjective experience that American evangelical Protestantism has chosen in favor of the particularities of the Church, the poor, and the Sacraments—the particularities that the Bible and the historic witness of the Christian Church call us to embrace. When it comes to re-sanctifying the particularity of the Church, our preaching must move from a pep talk addressed to private Christians who stand alone before God to an edifying message addressed to the members of the Body, who stand shoulder to shoulder before God, encouraging, disciplining, and urging one another on in the Faith. It must not focus on the works of God done purely in individual lives but on the great historic works of God done in plain sight for the Church and the world to behold. Through this type of message, individuals find encouragement not just in what God is doing in their own lives but in what God is doing in the lives of others, in the life of the Church, and in the life of the world. The individual has the sense of belonging to something that is bigger than just his or her own life and relationship with God. Not only do we have our Lord Christ to live for but we have our brothers and sisters in Him and the world that needs his message to live for.

Our preaching and teaching must also emphasize the fact that the flesh and blood gathering together of believers has great theological significance. We must speak more about how Christ is among us in the Church, working through us to do his work in the world. Going to church and taking the sacraments brings us into communion with Christ and one another in ways that are distinct from the spiritual union believers always have with Christ. In Christ's physical absence, we only meet the Word as he was made flesh in the Church.

In light of the reality of Christ fully formed in his Body, then, individualistic metaphors for the Church must be exchanged for communal metaphors. The Church must no longer be thought of as a mere collection of individuals but as a loving and cohesive family, a tribe, a nation. It must therefore have a patriotism of its own based on its mission. Out of many, the Church is one for the sake of Christ crucified and the sake of seeing his Kingdom reign and rule on Earth as it is in Heaven.

In the Church, the barriers that separate people in the world must be dismantled. The Christian Church is the new humanity, in which "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). God-given differences in the Church must then be viewed not as a reason for our separation but as the basis for our union, for "if the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?" (1 Corinthians 12:17).

As we preach and teach the ideal of the Church as a community formed counter to the principles of the world—a community formed of people the world separates according to race, ethnicity, nationality, language, class, and wealth—we would hope that this ideal would become a reality. However, without diligence and courage this vision will not be realized, for "faith without works is dead" (James 2:17). We must reclaim the Christian Church as a movement of ordinary people—the foolish, the weak, the "low and the despised in the world" (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). Congregations must take special care to welcome the poor, the homeless, the working-class, minorities, the disabled, those who have been in prison, and those struggling with addiction. Churches must follow-up with visitors not in spite of the fact but especially if they come from socioeconomic backgrounds different from the majority of the members in the congregation.

This must be an ongoing ministry. Pastors, elders, deacons, and the laity must be especially diligent in helping to keep members from segments of society especially prone to isolation within congregations connected to the life of the community. Compassionate and caring lay persons must take the initiative to come alongside of individuals who often fall by the wayside, inviting them into their homes and lives and likewise accepting these individuals' invitations into their homes and lives. Establishing fellowship groups of church members from a variety of backgrounds is one practical step that could lead to greater cohesiveness between poor and rich, black, white, Hispanic, and Asian, working-class and middle-class within congregations. These fellowship groups must occur in homes, not in church buildings or at the places of elite society.

The pressure to conform churches to the biblical model of community must continue to be applied from the pulpit, both in a general sense and in response to particular instances of individuals and congregations failing to exemplify real Christian hospitality. Pastors must fearlessly and courageously hold their congregations to task, preaching often, if need be, from hard portions of Scripture, from James' fearless denunciation of favoritism to Jesus' sobering parable of the sheep and goats. Of course, these messages must not be framed in terms of individuals' discipleship but in terms of the spiritual damage done to brothers and sisters in Christ and of bringing reproach upon the name of Christ for all the world to see.

The particularity of the poor must also be focused on by the American evangelical Church in its social action. No longer must evangelical Christian political discourse be framed exclusively in terms of private morality and the protection of the single-family home. The truly pro-life and pro-family agenda is one that not only protects the unborn but is fully committed to seeing life flourish in abundance from womb to tomb. Politically-minded and active evangelicals must take up the fight against poverty in terms of society's responsibility and not exclusively in terms of the individual's. Tax cuts and increased defense spending must be denounced when it means cuts to health care and welfare benefits to children, the elderly, the disabled, and the working poor. Evangelicals must take to task those in Washington and in state capitals who claim to represent their interests but fail to exemplify Christ's Gospel ministry to "the least of these."

American evangelicals must also reclaim the American Protestant tradition of social reform. The work of the abolitionists, the Social Gospellers, the Civil Rights Movement, the Sojourners network, and the emerging church must be brought to fruition. White middle-class evangelical Protestants must give up a good deal of the privilege they have traditionally held in education and employment for the sake of their African-American and Hispanic compatriots and brothers and sisters by supporting affirmative action programs and urban renewal projects. American evangelicals should be at the forefront of efforts to establish a fair policy on immigration, embracing all people in Christian love who have come to our country for the sake of liberty and economic opportunity. Furthermore, evangelicals must be more charitable and gracious to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community, promoting their full civil rights while yet striving to maintain biblical morality and the traditional definition of marriage.

In regard to the social mission of the American evangelical Church, the particularity of America and the American way of life must be moderated by genuine concern for the rest of the world. America is not the world's last best hope but the Kingdom of God as it is already being expressed in the Church of Jesus Christ. No longer must particularly American economic interests be advanced to the detriment of the economic interests of the Third World. The only good trade is fair trade. America must quit playing the hypocrite when it comes to international debt. In light of our own fiscal crisis, we must forgive Third World debt. We must also step up our global efforts to fight AIDS, poverty, and hunger. Considering that the U.S. is responsible for producing the greatest amount of greenhouse gases and carbon emissions, the United States must take the lead in combating global warming. We must not sacrifice the ecological future of the world to our appetite for oil and money. Finally, America must seek an increasingly demilitarized foreign-policy, seeking diplomatic solutions to international issues and abandoning policies of preemptive strike. We must also eschew the use of torture in interrogating terror suspects. The American evangelical Church has been silent long enough on these issues. We must step to the forefront in helping to steer our nation in the right direction when it comes to our relations with the rest of the world.

Finally, we must grapple with the consequences of the Incarnation, embracing the logical conclusion of Jesus Christ taking on flesh, his ongoing redemption of the whole of creation and human life, and of his working out of that redemption through the Holy Spirit-empowered flesh of the Church. That conclusion is that God continues to use finite means to communicate his infinite love and grace to us. If this sounds strange, we must consider that the words and speech that we use to convey the propositional truths of the Gospel and Holy Scripture are things as well. In some sense, even the unfailing message of the Bible and the Gospel is a humiliation of infinite, spiritual truth because it is communicated through the limited “earthen vessels" of language—both the written word and speech—and of thought. We must therefore put aside our superstitious Protestant fear of things and embrace the Sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper as finite means of grace. We should listen to the good British common sense of C. S. Lewis on this matter:

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine [and water] to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

The first thing we must do to reclaim the Sacraments is to get our teaching on them right. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are a sharing in the cross of Christ, in his body and blood. They work and we need them. We need baptism once and only once and Christ's Supper often.

Early in the book of Acts, the Jerusalem church is shown taking Communion daily (Acts 2:42, 46). According to the normative instructions Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians, the Supper is a weekly celebration. In that light, all of us must begin to celebrate it more often. Four times a year is simply not consistent with Christ's command that we continually "feed” on his flesh and blood (John 6:53-56) or with the Reformers' efforts to reclaim the cup for the laity. (It is ironic that Luther and Calvin's spiritual children have now taken both cup and bread from the laity by having Communion so infrequently.) If we wish to see the full effectiveness and value of this sacrament restored in our contemporary thought and practice, nothing less than a weekly celebration will do.

And in this weekly celebration, we must do away with unbreadly bread and unwinely wine. How can this sacrament help us make Christ more relevant to our everyday lives if it is nothing like the food and drink we share at our own tables? On this note, we should also bring back the love feasts of the ancient Church. Taking the Supper in the context of a real meal shared by everyone in church communities would do a great deal to strengthen the communal bond in churches and emphasize the necessity of fellowship in the Body of Christ. Furthermore, in accordance with the Protestant understanding of the priesthood of the believer, I see no reason why families cannot share the Supper in their own homes, especially if their churches will not give it to them but on rare occasions. Furthermore, we must pay great attention to the ministry of the Supper to the elderly and the sick. We must share Christ with those whom it would be easy for us to forget.

I do not wish to wade into the controversies surrounding baptism, but our contemporary practice of this sacrament must change as well. Baptisms must begin to be viewed as crowning moments in the lives of local churches—events that are not merely symbolic but that have real spiritual significance for their participants. We should also use lots of water, and, with rare exceptions, baptism must occur in communal contexts before a "great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1). Re-baptisms must be neglected altogether because baptism is a gift from Christ and not a work we must do to please God.

Let us reclaim the scandal of the Gospel. Our Lord deigned to become one of us, thereby sanctifying human life and all of creation. Jesus continues to make his incarnational presence known to us through his Body—the Church, through the poor and downtrodden he bids us care for, and through the Sacraments. A Christianity that once again values the particularities of life as God's people, God's works in history, of embodied existence, and of the humble things in the world cannot help but put us right where we need to be—a place where our feet are planted firmly on the ground and our eyes are fixed heavenward.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.