Just When I Thought I Knew What Forgivness was...

Kathy and I are doing daily Lenten readings from the Online Ministries page at the Creighton University website. Part of the daily exercise is a reading of the lectionary scriptures for the day. Just a couple days ago we had a reading from Isaiah 1, you probably know the passage, the one that opens with "Come let us reason together..." and then goes on to describe how the Lord can take sins that are scarlet and make them white as snow. Everyone quotes that verse every now and then when we find ourselves really in need of forgiveness and have that nagging suspicion that maybe this time we have gone over that line that marks the boundary of the unforgivable sin. It's a powerful verse or two but as we read the larger context of the scripture in our daily reading it suddenly became so much larger in its scope and power. Whatever I thought I understood as forgiveness seemed very shallow in the light of the whole chapter. For the first time in my entire spiritual pilgrimage I discovered who those verses were spoken to. We often have the annoying habit of taking any scripture and applying it to our own case and conditions, but often it helps to understand who the words were specifically written to. And in this case it is found in verse 10. "Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah." Now I understand that the prophet is probably speaking allegorically here....the nation of Israel had fallen so low as to become like the people of Gomorrah and its leaders like those in Sodom. But there is always layer upon layer in prophecy and I saw the Lord speaking to Sodom and Gomorrah, those cities whose sin cried out to heaven for God's vengeance, and He says to them "though your sin be scarlet, I can make it white as snow." My understanding of the power of God's grace suddenly became much larger than it has ever been. The prophet Jeremiah later asked, "Can a leopard change its spots?" The amazing answer is yes, and when it does God's forgiveness is present to affect the change.

Ash Wednesday, A Time for Returning

The first reading for today is taken from Joel 2:12 and it sets the whole call of this season clearly before me....." Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart..." Simple, straightforward, understandable - but ever elusive. Why should that be? I think it is because we grow comfortable in our spirituality and it is difficult to confess that we have drifted away from the Lord's presence over time, or even stubbornly stormed off over something that we counted as more important that what He had to offer. To seek to return one must first admit a wandering away, and sometimes we hold such a lofty view of our spirituality that such a confession is difficult. Yet why not? We may not be as bad as the prodigal son who squandered his father's graciousness, we may only be as bad as a sheep who in its own distraction has gone astray. But either needs to return and it does not seem God makes distinctions regarding depth of depravity....He meets the prodigal son on the road and interupts his litany of confession to embrace him with unmerited love. He seeks out that which was lost and when he returns with the one sheep he declares a feast of rejoicing. But the key is the word "whole", as in undivided, complete, nothing withheld. That type of returning is not done in one night and for that I am thankful for the 40 days of this Lenten season.

Church Services and Musicals

So today I found myself in a slightly irreverent mood as Kathy and I went to church. We are in that ackward position of being in between churches, and even more so being in between what we know the church of Jesus Christ to be and what is available in our immediate area. Let it suffice to say that I, at least, have grown disenchanted with entrenched denominationalism.

So back to my irreverence. We went to a local church today because it is the first Sunday of the month and in most Protestant churches that is Communion Sunday. Kathy and I seek out every opportunity to participate in communion, regardless of the church or denomination. But as I found myself sitting through what passes in New England for a traditional church order of service I found myself wondering why the church service was so much like the musicals I have seen. Whenever there was a pause in the action it was time for another song, whether it fit into the overall flow or not. Tradition is a terrible task master and we must obey without question!

Anyway the topic is irreverence. I read some articles in the recent Christianity Today about the trends in worship and the debate over whether traditional music or praise choruses are most suited for today's church. Of course people are split into the two camps resulting is ridiculous things such as "blended" worship consisting of both types and not entirely satisfactory to either camp. I believe in an unchanging gospel message and the need to bring it into the cultural setting in which it is to be proclaimed. And while I love traditional hymns there are some dogs in the hymnals. That makes me wonder how these if these really bad hymns made it into the collection, how many worse ones are out there that were not considered? I apply the same question to contemporary praise music which sometimes seems written only to fill out an album. And don't get me going on the "business" of publishing worship music. Isn't there a word like simony out there anymore? So here's the point. Irrereverently I started to make a test of cultural user-friendliness. I looked at the first 311 hymns in this nice collection published in 1985 (recent publication) and 235 of the hymns were published a minimum of 100 years ago, some 150 to 200 years or more. Can we expect such hymns written by Christians living in a different society and culture and somewhere between 3 and 5 generations ago to speak to the hearts of the unchurched visitors coming in for the first time? They sometimes barely speak to me. I mean, what kind of word is portals, and why is Jesus waiting on them?

So much for my Sunday church irreverence. Just making observations of what it must seem to others who have even less of an idea of what they are doing in church than me.

A Reflection on Faithfulness

Well, it's been a little over a year since I started this blog. I never expected anyone to really read it or follow it, I just felt the need to get some of the things I've written especially on the liturgical cycle of the church year out there onto the web so that there was a chance of them surviving me when my time comes. And reflecting back on that year I see I have been less then faithful to write, but is that any surprise? I have friends who started blogs with good intentions who have left them go fallow for months or longer. It doesn't mean that they ran out of things to write on or have nothing left to say, but just that priorities changed, time allocation became jumbled and some things laid aside or forgotten. I speak from experience. But the thing that I know about my walk with God is that there is no such thing as too late, or not enough, or anything else of that sort. Today is always a new opportunity to start afresh, a time for renewal, a time to remember, a time to pick up one foot and place it in front of the other and get back to the business of walking this pilgrim trail.

So here I am, at least a month since my last post but looking forward to Ash Wednesday in only three days and the start of Lent. There seems to be no better time to begin anew again, not only in this blog but in my spiritual journey. Seems I have left many things go fallow over the past months, it's time to decide which pieces of ground need to be reworked again, and which I will just leave to another generation to consider.