The Name of God

For some reason or another I found my mind wandering again on Sunday as it most often does as I lose hold of the flow of the service slogging on around me, and I was thinking about when Moses was called by God and he said, "Well who are you? The people are going to ask me and I need to tell them something." And God replied, one of the many places in Scripture where He reveals who He is by the naming of Himself. And I thought further, which of the names of God is the most complete. Now I don't think there is a good answer to that, but the one that seems to at least be the one that has all of the elements to it that we need to know is "LORD, God Almighty." The LORD, all capitals, is that covenant name of God that He revealed again and again to Moses, it is that name by which He is worshiped in those scenes in Revelation 4. It is He that makes great promises that only the covenant Lord could make. And because He is God, and there is no shadow of turning within Himself, He makes good on those promises because He cannot lie. His word goes forth and accomplishes what it was sent to do. And not in a half-hearted way, because He is God Almighty, able to accomplish anything that He conceives.

I think we try to roll all of these into one when we use the word sovereign. Usually when we define this word it has all of those nuances of power and authority and ability to act. But I think that the meaning is closer to that answer God gave to Moses when He said "I am that I am." One rabbinic writer translated this more closely as "I will be whatever the situation demands." Another Christian writer I looked at said that sovereign means "God is in control", not controlling, but in control. There is a difference in those two that sometimes is hard to see and live in. So another thing that I think I will do in Lent this year is ask God once again to tell me who He is, who is it that makes the ultimate claim on my life and eternity, who is it that wakens me each morning and gives me rest each evening, who is this God that I have sought all these years? I will let you know what He has to say if I hear Him speak to me.

The Onset of Lent

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and with it comes the message of our mortality, our separation from God, our inability to keep our end of the deal day in and day out. I was actually thinking about that on Sunday as I asked myself, "Are we called to be perfect?" Now I convinced myself that this word does indeed appear in the New Testament more than once, and the verses it is found in seem to require us to become perfect or complete. But by what measure? Most churches specifically make lists...how to eat, how to dress, how to worship, how to raise your children, what types of jobs are good, what types of music to listen to or books to read, and so on. And we are more or less perfect as we more or less conform to this master list. Other churches adopt a more biblical view but one that is almost as hard to attain to, we are to come up to the measure of the fullness that is found in Christ. But while he was the son of man, he was also the Son of God and I think that gave him a distinct advantage over me. The whole debate over whether Jesus could have sinned since He had a full human nature is one that goes over the top. And there is also the tendency to then reduce the measure of our lives into just another list, this time what Jesus did, what Jesus said, what Jesus commended, what Jesus avoided. And once again we find ourselves making checks next to an impossible list of requirements.

But it never seemed like Jesus struggled against sin. Oh, he had his moments of temptation, and even what appeared to be anguish over the path that lay ahead. But the majority of His life seems more to be about doing what it is that the Father set before him, and not agonizing over this or that circumstance or possible temptation, what the church used to call the "near occasion of sin." And that gave me the "theme" for my Lenten devotions this year. I am not going to struggle against my own sinfulness, I always fall short of my expectations and certainly of "perfection". But what I am going to do is struggle to hear God more clearly, to see where He is present and what He is doing, and to try to do that one thing that He sets before me in each day. It starts with that bold statement of Isaiah, "Here I am, send me" as God was looking for someone to go on His behalf. I think that if I can half succeed in turning my attention to what God would have me do in the moment, that any struggle against sin will enjoy progress as well. Blessings upon your Lenten pilgrimage.

Evangelical Practices, the Continuation

I am looking back over my notes and see scribbled evangelicalisms that I have picked up over the past week or so. None of them is a complete thought in my spiritual journey and maybe none of them ever will be. So I am putting them here in no particular order because they do have the underlying thread of being the way we evangelicals practice our spirituality.

For instance, when we pray we are always putting something into the hands of Jesus, or into God's ultimate purpose. But what happens if it does not work out the way we expect it or desire it to. What do we think then? Did we fail to put it into God's hands or was it only ever our own desire or plan and by saying the evangelical words over it we somehow attempt to add a divine seal of approval to it and thereby assure success? Here's another one, I heard someone pray that those hearing the prayer would be "led" to step up and lead in this or that ministry that was being prayed about. But this whole concept of not doing anything unless we are "led" more often than not is just an excuse we hide behind, and sometimes people are "led" to do things that have nothing of God in them or about them. Can't we just trust that the way God has put us together and the fact that we are in relationship to him in some way makes us aware of the way things are around us and moves us to respond appropriately? If that is being led, then I guess we are on the same page, but I get the distinct impression that what I just said about responding is not what evangelicals mean when they pray for a leading.

Last one for today. Why do pastors use peer pressure to "get an Amen" to what they say or pray? "Can I get an Amen?" at some point in a sermon seems almost to be the Christian equivalent of a laugh track. It is intended to remind us that something profound or true has just been said and we should respond to it in some way, much as canned laughter is intended to let us know when the joke occurs. The problem is that there are many things that I do not agree with, many things that I have no wish to express an affirmation to. Just because someone is in the pulpit does not make everything they say true, or right, or honorable, or divine. So please don't make me feel guilty about not responding to what you say. Saying Amen in church is right up there with role-playing or songs that require hand or body actions for me. They only alienate me from what is going on and more often than not are inappropriate and ill-placed.

Life and Purpose

I was reflecting the other day on whether everything in life has to have purpose and meaning. I can certainly go to the scriptures and run out all the scriptures that say all things work together for the good, that God has a future and a hope for my life, that Jesus came to give me life and that abundantly. But where I have the problem is hearing people describe every event in life as the sovereign hand of God acting to twist the world this way or that to make their life holy and complete. And I wonder whether the things that fill our day are really the hand of God at work, or only just the ins and outs of daily life breaking against us as we make our way. I can certainly see where one could receive a great deal of comfort and assurance into the hand-of-God-at-work view, but most of the confirmation of that tends to be reading meaning back into something that happened to us that had absolutely no meaning or the wrong meaning at the time it happened. I understand where all of these other views of God come from, the ones that liken him to a master clock maker that winds up his creation and lets it run, or the people that question God's sovereign action in everything and tend to see life as generally God's plot lines but without the detail all worked out.

I'm not sure where I weigh in completely on this question, I just know that I never quite feel at ease when someone expounds on how their husband's cancer, or their bankruptcy, or the death of their youngest child was just God at work bringing about a greater good or glory. It always has a hollow ring to it and somehow I don't think that is the way is should be. This musing isn't finished and there will be more to say on it.

Prayer before the Sermon II, A Word versus God's Word

I find myself become very aware of all of the evangelical sort of things that we do in a Sunday worship service and how the congregation is supposed to react, and what would happen if we just went about doing business with God without all of the fluff and trapping. This week there was a variation on the prayer before the sermon and it went sort of like this, 'May I decrease and you increase as I bring Your word to Your people." Now all of that sounds really good in an evangelical setting, we expect to hear something more or less like it each Sunday, but what the heck does it mean? Does it mean that sermon preparation really does not matter, or that the way a sermon is presented has nothing to do with the way it is received, or that sermon length is not relevant and one hour sermons are just like sitting on the mountain listening to Jesus preaching? Would we be disappointed if our pastor presented some keen insight into the scripture, howbeit his own insight, not the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What if he delivered a practical message with four steps that we could implement that he has spent years working out in his own life, would we consider that divine instruction in how to live? Why do we demand that every sermon be from the very mouth of God? It seems to me that Jesus was a much better example to us of who God is and what He wants for His creation then reading the bible front to back every year and searching out principles that we can write on index cards and magnet to our refrigerator. And it seems to me that seeing the message and example of Jesus lived out day in and day out in the people around us, pastor included, has much more power to move our own lives in the right direction than all of the evangelical practices. Things like this are nothing more than the Christianized version of political correctness. Let's stop making things out to be more than they really are. Go to work, do your homework, expound the scripture simply and persuasively, tell us about Jesus and the good news of God's love, admit that you may not know everything, give us something practical to do or think about and we will go home with something to draw on. But don't pretend that the sermon is an audience with God and that a prayer makes everything better. It hardly ever does.