The Little Friar

Read part 3 here.

Read part 1 here .

Some weeks ago, I wrote a series on my theology of preaching.  Now, to try the same thing with my theology of the eucharist.  Part 1 -- on the theology of food.

Criticizing informal worship (what most folks call contemporary worship that's a lot less contemporary than they think) is pretty old hat.  It's such an easy target -- and has been since I was a seminary student in the late 90s.  There's so much one can complain about:  The lack of good theology, the ever-increasing prominence of "me, myself and I", and the combination of complex musical arrangements with simplistic melody lines, or complicated melody lines with predictable arrangements, depending which side of the bed we emerge from that particular morning. But I now think that's the wrong approach.  Oh, I still think there's something dreadfully wrong about "contemporary" worship lyrics.  But I think that's only part of the problem.  There's a bigger problem, and it's not the music's fault. To analyze this problem, let's go back in time, say, 60 years.  In so many churches, you had people singing from hymn books, ac...

I don't intend, in these thoughts, to assess the theological content of contemporary worship.  There's enough ink spilt over that, with very few real progresses made in making good observations. But, I intend, rather, to say a few things to make pastors and worship leaders reflect on what we're saying with the phrase "contemporary worship". "Contemporary worship" is first, and perhaps foremost, contemporary .  The age of music doesn't determine its quality -- I'm not enough of a snob to know that all worship music has to sound like Bach -- but I think that this criticism (normally leveled at contemporary worship) really misses the point.  It isn't about quality.  In a world peopled by advertisers and entertainers, "contemporary" is a hurrah word, a marketing tool, branding liturgical music that is fashionable, up-to-date, oozing youthful cool.  Contemporary is young, and young is good.  The desire to make worship more appeal...

I hear often about what a "great" job I did preaching.  Knowing myself as well as I do, I'm always skeptical.   Good preaching , I think, is hard to be judged in the short term.  You probably won't know it when you've heard it.  Instead, you know good preaching when you see it Monday morning.  What gets said on Sunday are just the seeds.  The growth that comes in God's kingdom, that's when you know if it took hold and accomplished anything to call as good. In truth, I've sat down after preaching and wondered often whether I owe God an apology for having wasted his time or my breath.  So, I thought it might help parishioners to see a few of the rules I've developed and shared over the years with those who've learnt preaching with and from me.  Also, reminders like this can't hurt preachers, either.  1.  Don't assume you always speak for God.  It takes lots of humility to stand and preach.  And if you're cocky ...

For the early Christians the ceremony of the breaking of bread -- the Eucharist -- was intimately connected with the sharing of bread. It was not a mere formalist ceremonial.  The Eucharist signified sharing. It also brought about what it signified.  The rite and the reality were intimately linked.  The symbol was for real.  They tried to practise what they professed.  We have seen how the early Christian groups shared what they had so that there was no one in need. For Jesus too the last supper, the first and inaugural Eucharist, was closely associated with his selfgiving.  He gave bread and wine saying "this is my body"; "this is my blood".  This was not merely a symbol, rite or ceremony.  He said that he was giving himself -- his life -- for his people.  He then gave a new commandment "love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another. If there is this love among you, then all will know you are my disciples ..."  ...

I wrote a few weeks ago about the necessity for churches to relearn to lament in worship.  I want to pick up that theme again. I know why we do it -- why we resist lamenting in our churches.  I just think those reasons don't hold up to scrutiny.  So here I want to take those "reasons" and scrutinize them, in hope that churches will begin to offer a more healthy worship diet. Why?  Well, to be honest, it's scriptural.  "Grieve, mourn and wail.  Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom" (James 4.9).  In the popular (read: contemporary) worship scene, we simply don't do these things.  Substantial engagement with grief (even when that engagement does occur) feels like trying to move a Carnival Cruise ship's course with a canoe.  The ship is just too heavy and the music too loud to hear the shouts of those paddling furiously away from the boat -- the line taut between them.  Those in the canoe -- I probably should point ...

If I'm right -- that a catholic imagination is essential for Christian revitalizing and re-enchanting the world with the Divine Presence -- then the paradox here is learning to set aside particular places, times, activities and things as uniquely sacred, hallowed and sacramental.  Re-enchanting our days involves adding a sacred texture to our lives. Part of my vows include "living the sacramental life" and "promoting the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church".  For me, that mean re-enchanting time by embracing the liturgical calendar and fixed hour prayers.  That sounds rather lofty, so let me use an example: Over the last few years Kendra and I have been very intentional to celebrate all twelve days of Christmas, from December 25 to Epiphany on January 6.  We keep the tree up through the 6th and keep playing Christmas music.  We keep our house enchanted -- with music, lights and the like -- for the entire liturgical season.  We don't tea...

I used to be a fragile worshiper. I'd go to church and there would always be something that set me off.  Sometimes it would be a song lyric that I found theologically problematic or overly sentimental.  Sometimes it was something someone said from the stage or the pulpit.  And a lot of the time it would be getting upset about something I wished we'd do differently.  "I wish we would do it this way instead of that way", I'd often remark. The littlest thing would get me disgruntled and annoyed.  Worship had to be perfect.  Any theological slip ups and I'd pounce.  I had to agree with and like everything.  Start to finish. Perhaps you've been a fragile worshiper, and maybe still are.  Are you overly sensitive to and emotionally triggered by anything that is said or sung in church that you don't like or agree with? Over the years I've worked hard to become less brittle in worship, more tolerant of song lyrics or shared thoughts ...

If the elements of the Lord's Supper, bread and wine, represent -- symbolically (Protestants) or actually (Catholics) -- the body and blood of Jesus then we should note that the body and blood of Jesus was given and broken and poured out for us unconditionally , while we were yet sinners.  Isn't that, at root, what the Lord's Supper symbolizes? If so, to exclude "sinners" from the body and blood of Jesus -- his outpouring love -- and reserve it for the "saints" seems to set into motion a legalism that I worry about. The body and blood of Jesus was poured out on Calvary for the whole world as Jesus says "Father forgive them".  That is what is celebrated at the Lord's Supper -- the wild, wasteful love of God poured out upon an unrepentant, ignorant and violent humanity.  You don't put gatekeepers around that.  You don't put Keep Out signs around the sacred wounds of Jesus. Let us not worry about wasting the blood ...

I was reading Revelation 5 this morning and paused to puzzle over a familiar passage (vv. 11-12): Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,  "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!" (ESV) Why would the Lamb (and elsewhere, God the Father) need to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing? Is he lacking in any of these things? Does he not already possess them? What, in other words, are the creatures giving God here, that is not already his? I then remembered Athanasius' development of The Incarnation of the Word  as the very redemption of all that is.  Christ, the Son of God -- the incarnate, redeeming Word -- both made the universe and in his Incarnation brings that universe to its completion.  And his argument set me...

I have a confession to make:  I love talking to dead people.  This is why today is one of the most spiritual days in the Church's calendar to me.  Just beneath the Easter Triduum -- Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday -- sits the "November triduum" of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints', All Souls'. I love talking to dead people.   Some years ago, as part of my ordination process, I was asked to pick three important spiritual writers who shaped me.  I responded:  "Julian of Norwich, Augustine and Dietrich Bonhoeffer".  "Can't you pick someone living ?", the interviewer asked.  "I went to Duke Divinity.  They are  still living", I said.  He looked at me oddly but carried on.  I love talking to dead people.   Which explains why I'm fascinated to visit cemeteries.  I read them like I read books.  I learn from them.   I enjoy visiting cemeteries because I feel like I need to converse with the dead.  I find ...

Where I live, remembering and honoring the dead is celebrated annually in May.  Over Memorial Day weekend, families flock to cemeteries, flowers in hand, to decorate the graves of loved ones who have passed.  In many cases out-of-town relatives come in for this ritual.  It's a pretty big deal.  It's also odd to me.  Because we Christians have an entirely different day.  Either on  November 1st or the first Sunday in November, we celebrate All Saints' Day.  In the churches I've served, we remember and name the members of the congregation who have died since All Saints' Day the year before.  So what's the difference? For starters, being Christian is never done alone.  I'm a Christian because I'm a member of the Body of Christ, the Church.  That faith was passed on to me, and it's my responsibility to pass it on to others.  The liturgical acts of remembering each saint by ringing a bell, lighting a candle, or naming help us rememb...

A sacrament , broadly conceived, is a physical means of grace -- it's a way of God drawing us into the very divine life of the Trinity.   In a sacrament grace meets us in and through the material world.  Grace comes to us in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  Graces comes to us in the water of baptism.  Most of the Protestant tradition speaks of two sacraments (just mentioned), though Lutherans count a third (confession).  Catholics count seven.  And Orthodox resist counting all-together.   But I'm thinking we Protestants miss one -- the actual gathering  together on Sunday, the Lord's Day.   Marva Dawn rightly insists that worship is "a royal waste of time" (to use the title of her book).  And I think the most sacramental act of that "waste of time" is the strange and graceful act of getting out of bed and getting together.   This sacramental act, of course, sounds to most like a duty, an obligation, more than that sacramental m...

The Psalms have played significant roles in the worship of the Church from its earliest days.  That's why Bonhoeffer rightly insisted that they are "the prayer-book of the Church".  Even in America, the first book to be published, in 1640, was a Psalter.  So this splendid collection of essays seeks to reclaim those Forgotten Songs  of the Bible in the contemporary life of the Church.   The various essays form a coherent vision for how the psalms can revitalize worship.   The Psalter, of course, isn't simply a "songbook", at least not in the sense most modern folks envision songbooks.  Because in reading and singing the Psalms, we are becoming God's people, participating in an ages-old act of worship.  The Jewish and early Christian experiences are thereby becoming our own, and we develop a language -- and therefore create a world -- that is centered in the heart of God.   So Forgotten Songs does two things at the same time.  It prov...

I noticed a trend in worship last Sunday.  It's a trend that makes me wonder if contemporary worship isn't really just another way of insulating White Americans against learning to sing the blues.  All our song were "happy" songs.   We avoided singing "sad" songs.  I think that's because we Americans believe that "sad songs" are indeed sad  while "happy songs" are, well, happy . And that leaves us sounding -- rather defenselessly, if you ask me -- like the temperature of our souls had better be "on fire" if we're going to claim any "joy".   And I think this is why we don't sing more of the Psalms.   If you think "sad Psalms" are sad, and "happy Psalms" are happy, and -- by extension -- "violent Psalms" are immoral (witness things like The United Methodist Hymnal 's editing of the Psalter), then you haven't understood Israel's faith.  Or the reason Christians kept th...

1.  The preaching of the Word of God is  the Word of God.  It's an event in which the speaker and listener surrender control and meet Someone bigger than ourselves.  In other words, preaching is an act of love.  2.  When this encountering happens, the blind come to see what's hidden from the sighted.  Mere human words are ignited with a fire that burns the pages without being consumed, and speaker and hearers find they're on holy ground.  3.  " How could the Word ... be a Word which contains both Yes and No and is therefore self-contradictory?  How could it speak, like so much poor preaching, half of grace and half of judgment, half of life and half of death, half of the love of God and half of the power of the devil?" (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics , IV/3, p. 230). 4.  The preaching of the Word of God is a lot like preparing a good marinara sauce. It's not just a matter of knowing what to include; it's a matter of knowing what to le...