IT’S A FUNNY WAY TO HAVE FUN

In the Christian calendar November 1^st is All Saints or All Hallows Day, so the evening of October 31^st is All Hallows Eve or E’en. This is the origin of the word “Halloween”, and so we see that even this most nonsensical of modern celebrations makes a little bit of sense. But there’s more.

At about this time of year, as light gave way to darkness, our pagan ancestors, particularly the Celts, believed that the border between the living and the dead, became thin. They imagined that the spirits of the dead, both friendly and unfriendly, could pass into our world and visit acts of benevolence or mischief upon us. So it stands to reason that they left out goodies to honour and encourage the friendly spirits, and wore masks to fool the others. But what a hassle!

Of course we now know that it’s cultural imperialism, if not a crime against humanity, for Christian missionaries to mess with the way people “choose” to live their lives. – Today this work is reserved for multinational corporations, the UN, Green Peace, and countless other non-Christian missionary organizations. – But I suspect that our ancestors were, nonetheless, relieved when Saint Patrick and his friends showed up and taught them about a loving God who takes care of all that “spirit” stuff, so the dead can get on with being dead, and we with living.

Next Sunday, All Saints Day, Christians will gather with all the saints, both those on earth (the Church Militant), and those in heaven (the Church Triumphant), to worship the living God. And we will celebrate the peace that comes from knowing that we need not fear the living or the dead while we are his.

So, lets all go out next Saturday night and make ghouls of ourselves, remembering that Halloween is actually a gift from our pagan ancestors, and St Paddy and his friends. The former came up with this funny idea, but it was the latter who made it fun.

SOME THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN 30 YEARS OF PASTORING:

#3 – It’s not how often you get knocked down, but how long it takes you to learn to stay down.

When our first child left home to go to UBC, some time back at the end of the last century, he found a church that he really enjoyed. So, when he came home for Christmas, or perhaps summer vacation, I asked him what he loved about it. He told me that he loved the worship. In fact, he said he felt like he had never really worshipped before.

Now, he had been raised in the churches I pastored, so I was, predictably, a bit startled to hear this. But I bit my tongue and listened while he explained the difference between what they did in his new church and what we had been doing all these years in ours. And, again predictably, I didn’t get it.

Some time later, however, Suzanne and I found ourselves in Vancouver on a Sunday morning and decided to visit his church and just check this thing out. The scene was more casual than our church, but otherwise not so different. The lights were a little dimmer, and it seemed a bit less churchy I suppose. The worship team began as the people gathered, and the people began to sing and sway with the music. Some got up and moved around. The children moved and sang with the adults. And, after about ten minutes, Suzanne and I were caught up in the wonder of just knowing a God who was big enough to create this amazing universe, and small enough to dwell in you and me; strong enough to set a galaxy in space, and gentle enough to assemble an embryo in an egg or womb; immense enough to call into being the very stars of heaven, and intimate enough to speak to a little child, and call her by her name. WE GOT IT.

And, over the years as I’ve reflected on this, I have come to see how right Nathan really was. Not that we never worshipped in our churches, but it certainly isn’t what we did. For the most part we gathered on a Sunday morning to pray, sing, study the Bible, be with our friends, and, above all, listen to a sermon. As a preacher I can affirm all these things, especially sermons, but they are not worship.

Worship the LORD in the splendour of his holiness;

tremble before him, all the earth. Psalm 96:9

Worship is about bowing before God, submitting to him, and acknowledging that he alone is great and glorious and good. Not that there is no greatness, glory or goodness in other things, but that all greatness, glory and goodness comes from him. As James tells us: Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1:16-17

So, what was happening, and what has changed?

The church of the 20^th century was the child of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, so it’s focus was theology and teaching. The hymns and prayers prepared our hearts and minds for the sermon, and the sermon filled our hearts and minds with sound theology and the knowledge of God. This was never right or good, but we got away with it because this was the age of Christendom.

In Christendom (that world where “Christian” was a synonym for “well mannered” and “well behaved”, and cultural assumptions were largely built on vague and garbled memories of biblical texts), we Christians were the only show in town. There were a few strangers among us, it’s true; a few Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and an atheist or two. But, as was often said, “Some of them are even better Christians than some of us”. My goodness, we were an arrogant breed!

But God has knocked his people down a peg or two since then, and we are learning, as we’ve done before, how to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land. God has thrown us into Babylon once more, where we are the strangers. He is humbling us so that we can, once again, be salt and light; salt for the food, not for the shaker; light for the world, not for the lamp.

When we are strangers in a foreign land we learn to bow again. We learn to not be in control, in charge. We learn humility, and begin to understand, once more, that God has called us for the sake of others. And how does he teach us these old truths again? He turns our hearts to worship, the wellspring of humility, compassion, grace.

Knowledge puffs up , but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God. 1 Corinthians 8:1-3

The antidote for the arrogance that so often comes with knowing about God is the humility that comes with loving God, and being known by him. And this comes through worship.

So, Come, let us bow down in worship,... Psalm 95:6. And stay down.

SOME THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN 30 YEARS OF PASTORING:

#2 – If it ain’t broke, break it.

From ancient times the book of Psalms has been called The Book of Praises, but the actual content of this collection of 150 hymns is more complex and interesting than that. Most do focus on praise, but there are other themes. We find laments, for example, with their outpourings of sorrow and discouragement; petitioning psalms, filled with urgent pleas for health, security, and the defeat of enemies; and even cursing psalms, that sometimes cry out for such cruel vengeance as to render them pretty much unfit for public reading. For instance, how many of us have ever heard Psalm 137:8-9 read in church? O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, / happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us / he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

The psalms are examples, not of what we should pray, but how we should pray. When we come before God we should be so open and honest, so unguarded and unpretentious, that prayer becomes a widow into our very souls. Search me, O God, and know my heart; / test me and know my anxious thoughts. / See if there is any offensive way in me, / and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24 If we were this authentic before God and one another we might be a little more discerning of our own motives and shortcomings, and a little less arrogant and blind.

Psalms 6:1-3 O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger

or discipline me in your wrath.

Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint;

O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony.

My soul is in anguish.

There are seven of these “penitential” psalms in the Book of Psalms, and five of them are attributed to King David. Surely this suggests that sorrow for sin, repentance, and fear of the Lord, are sentiments worthy of great leaders, even of the ideal king. But this sort of transparency is all too rarely seen in a church leader, or any leader anywhere for that matter.

In both the Old and New Testaments David is called “a man after God's own heart”, and we see here that such an intimate relationship with God is not established upon purity and perfection – no one is pure or perfect before God – but upon confession and repentance. And David is a model of such a relationship with God precisely because he is so aware of his own sin. A godly leader may fear God’s anger, and long to escape his wrath, but he or she must not seek to avoid discipline. As the prophet Jeremiah humbly pleaded, Correct me, LORD, but only with justice not in your anger, lest you reduce me to nothing. Jeremiah 10:24

And herein lies one of the great failings of the modern church, and probably the church of every age. All communities must have leaders, and these women and men will inevitably have power, authority, influence, status, respect, and often other advantages like special training, experience, and outstanding gifts and abilities. But it is humility that harnesses these qualities for the benefit of the community, and humility is the result of a clear and honest self-assessment.

Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

In 30 years of pastoral ministry I have seen far more damage done to the cause of Christ by the arrogant, self-centred friends of Jesus than ever by his enemies. And if this is what I find among the sheep, I must ask myself, what have we shepherds been up to all this time? Have we been modeling, and insisting upon, the kind of humble leadership that God desires for his people?

In recent years I have been asked on several occasions to stop referring to the people as sheep; they find it insulting, I’ve been told. Perhaps, we see the problem here. But, not to worry, it’s nothing that a little discipline won’t cure, or even just a little honest worship.

Psalm 95:6-7 Come, let us bow down in worship,

let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;

for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture,

the flock under his care.

SOME THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN 30 YEARS OF PASTORING:

#1 - Put the top on the bottom where it belongs.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It's a book by Robert Fulghum, but I’ve never read it so I can’t really recommend it. It was on the New York Times best seller list for almost two years, but who really knows why that happens? All I can say for sure is that it’s a great title that can alter your perspective on life even if you never read the book.

And there’s another book I’ve never read – I find books much faster than I can read them – called The Upside-down Kingdom, by Donald B. Kraybill. Its title is almost as good. One glance at the cover and suddenly you realize what’s wrong with you, with the church and the Christian life, and perhaps even with life in general. We just keep turning it “right-side” up, when it’s not intended to work that way. It’s like those new ketchup bottles where, after generations of stupidity, some genius figured out that the stuff at the bottom is where it’s supposed to be, and it’s the top that’s in the wrong place, or rather the opening. And still we keep putting it back in the fridge “right”-side up. Crazy eh?

Luke 9:46-48 An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. (This is one of those disturbing little scenes where Jesus’ disciples are being so petty that even we are embarrassed for them.) 47 Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. (It’s interesting, and perhaps instructive, to note that Jesus had immediate access to children when he was teaching his disciples. Apparently he was doing it in the midst of life, and not off in a seminary somewhere.) 48 Then he said to them, "...he who is least among you all — he is the greatest ."

Some say that everyone is equal in God’s sight, but the Bible suggests no such thing. God is well aware that we are safe and vulnerable, rich and poor, strong and weak. It’s not that we’re equal, but that God loves and cares for every one of us; something the little ones should always remember, and the big ones dare not forget.

In the Kingdom of God, in any good church, or in any family or community for that matter, people need to grow down, not up. As we get older, richer, stronger, we need, increasingly, to put others ahead of ourselves. We need to watch out for the little ones and be less and less concerned with having our own way.

In many of the churches I have pastored a significant number of the “mature” members do not seem to grasp this basic biblical truth. They believe that their seniority means getting more attention and consideration than others. They think that because they give more money, or do more work, or hold an office, or have a title, they should get what they want. And nothing destroys a church like this fundamental confusion.

When God became a human being he did not go to Rome or Athens or Alexandria to be born, but strait to Bethlehem because, on a world scale, it was a little place; which is to say, it’s where the little ones were. And he grew up with no title, fame or influence, in Nazareth, on the backside of nowhere. You see, Jesus was building the upside-down kingdom, where the big ones are on the bottom, and the little ones come in at the top and work their way down.

If the “big” people – I mean the ones who have caused me the most grief during my ministry – were real disciples, most of them would have learned all this from Jesus long before I ever met them. But, come to think of it, if they were teachable at all, they would probably have learned it in kindergarten.