Pentecost and Spirit-Controlled Speech

This Sunday is Pentecost, the day when the Church celebrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles in Acts 2:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.  And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. (Acts 2:1-4 NASB)

The Holy Spirit rested upon the Apostles and they spoke in tongues.  Thus was introduced to the Church a spiritual gift which would create controversy from the First Century to the Twenty-First.  The Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians bears witness to the confusion the early Church had about the gift of tongues. In our world today, I’ve known people who have thought that speaking in tongues was the only proof that one was filled with the Holy Spirit. I’ve also known people who’ve insisted that such a gift was no longer given to the Church.  In my experience, both of these extremes have been untrue.  God does still choose to give this gift to individuals within the Church, but it is one of many signs or fruits of the Spirit, and to each member of the Church, different gifts are given. We’re not all called to speak in tongues. The desire to speak in tongues is admirable because it is a desire to yield control of our speech to God. But we would do well to ask: What does it really mean to have our speech controlled by the Holy Spirit? Is speaking in tongues the only form Spirit-controlled speech, or are there others which are more accessible to everyone? 

Perhaps Spirit-controlled speech looks less like “speaking in tongues” and a lot more like “taming the tongue.” When Paul says “I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than ten thousand words with a tongue” (1 Cor 14:19 ESV), he’s indicating that our language should be used to benefit others.  ”Prophesy” is superior to tongues for Paul because ”one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Cor 14:3 ESV). That sort of speech requires wisdom and deliberation.  Control is still yielded to God, but that giving up of control may mean choosing to speak less. I think Paul’s exhortation to pursue prophesy agrees with James’ calling to tame our tongues:

If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.  Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of pilot directs. (James 3:2-4 ESV)

The taming of our tongues is a sign that we are growing in sanctification. “Self-control” is one of the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:23, and exercising self-control with our speech is surely a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work in our hearts.  In the long run, a lifetime of careful, discerning, wise speech may be just as profitable and equally indicative of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit as speaking in tongues.

The great spiritual writers of the early Church understood this. For them, discerning and careful speech was more indicative of the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  The famous prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian asks the Lord not to give us a spirit of “idle talk”, but instead to give us “a spirit of soberness, humility, patience, and love.” St. Diadochos of Photiki saw talkativeness as dissipation of the Holy Spirit. He uses the imagery of a sauna to explain:

When the door of the steam baths is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good.  Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy.  Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts. (“On Spiritual Knowledge” no. 70 in The Philokalia vol. 1 p. 276)

Similarly, John Climacus wrote this in The Ladder of Divine Ascent:

Talkativeness is the throne of vainglory on which it loves to preen itself and show off.  Talkativeness is a sign of ignorance, a doorway to slander, a leader of jesting, a servant of lies, the ruin of compunction, a summoner of despondency, a messenger of sleep, a dissipation of recollection, the end of vigilance, the cooling of zeal, the darkening of prayer. (p. 158)

The sort of careless speech that Climacus is criticizing here isn’t speaking in tongues, but it’s something that’s much more relevant to everyday life. The mindless speech which we engage in every day can detract from our spiritual lives.  Pursuit of holiness, on the other hand, will both be aided by and will produce greater discretion in what we say.

So how do we pursue tame tongues? I’ve found it helpful to make Psalm 141:3 a regular prayer: “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.” Whether before writing, preaching, speaking in a group, or counseling people, this simple verse has helped me yield more of my speech to the Spirit’s control, though I certainly have a long way to go.  I’ve also found that it’s helpful to question my motives for saying (or writing, or tweeting) something. Why do I want to say this?  Will it benefit others? Am I simply trying to attract attention to myself? Am I trying to control or manipulate others by what I say?  The answers to such questions usually quickly reveal whether it’s right to speak up or keep my mouth shut. The challenge is learning to slow down and examine one’s thoughts closely enough to ask such questions before saying something regrettable.

This Pentecost, let us pray that God would grant us the grace of increasingly tamed tongues:

Set a guard, O Lord, over our mouths, and keep watch over the doors of our lips.  Purge us of idle talk and fill us with your Holy Spirit that we may speak with soberness, humility, patience, and love. Tame our tongues as we yield them to your control, in order that you would be glorified, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

“Prayer Book of the Early Christians” – A Review

For being such a slim volume, this book is heavy with the weight of glory. The Prayer Book of the Early Christians is a collection of prayers and prayer services modeled after the liturgies left to us from the ancient Church and used today in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. And having drawn from such deep wells, this prayer book presents its reader/user/pray-er with a treasury of “prayers that have been tried and proved” (p. ix). I am thankful to John McGuckin for editing this collection (and to Paraclete Press for sending me a copy to review). As I’ve used it over the past week and a half, I’ve noticed a few things worth sharing here.

(1) This method of prayer differs from what most of us evangelical-flavored Protestants have been taught. I’m not just referring to the many passages in the book which invite the Theotokos and the saints to intercede for us. (That deserves its own post.) The different I’m referring to here is that, in my experience, our approach to prayer relies heavily on feeling. We want to pray extemporaneously with feeling, from the heart. Unfortunately, this has the unintended consequence of quenching prayer whenever we don’t feel like praying. Correcting this, McGuckin writes in the introduction:

It does not really matter whether we feel fervent or dry as a bone.  It does not really matter whether we feel God’s presence breathing on our face or feel as if he is locked up behind a bronze heaven, never showing a sign of his presence.  What matters is how he sees us.  We do not need to ‘feel’ his presence at every turn, when we know, by faith, that he is more present to us, at every moment of our life, than we are present to ourselves or our most beloved family.  And if at morning and night we present ourselves before God and sing his praise, we have (no question about it) stood in the presence of Christ, prayed along with Christ our High Priest in the pure presence of the Holy Spirit of God, and offered our prayer like incense in the sight of the Father. (p. xiv)

Showing devotion through our actions, especially when our hearts don’t want to do so, can be one way to cultivate the heart’s participation in prayer. Over time, the disciplined practice of these prayers will yield the fruit of an inner disposition of fear, reverence, and deep love of God.

(2) This approach to prayer also requires a different relationship to time. If you’re already accustomed to using prescribed prayers for different hours of the day, you might be used to shorter liturgies. One can pray through an office of The Divine Hours or Celtic Daily Prayer relatively quickly.  These take longer.  It took me thirty minutes to pray through the Matins liturgy on Sunday morning.  McGuckin notes that “Twenty minutes seems a long time for a pressed twenty-first-century dweller,” but once we dive into these longer and richer prayers, “those who swim the ocean of prayer find that time starts shrinking” (p. xv). Increased time spent in prayer is never something to regret. It’s time spent in the life-giving Light of Christ, and the more we experience this Light, the longer we’ll want to bathe in it.

(3) These are serious prayers.  There is a sort of joyful heaviness which permeates the prayers shared here. Though always mindful of God’s grace in Jesus Christ and our common hope of resurrection, most of these prayers have a somber, repentant tone. The Psalms included in the liturgies are Psalms of battle and lament. The selected prayers in Parts 2 and 3 include prayers of repentance like this:

Lord I stand knocking at the door of your compassion, seeking your forgiveness.  By evil I have been kept from the path of life.  My mouth has not praised you; my feet have not walked in your holy place.  Lover of our race, have pity on me. Your who are the splendor of the Father give light of my eyes that I may give thanks for your grace.  I have lain in darkness in this deceit-filled world.  Morning has passed and I did not repent.  Evening has fallen and my sins have increased.  But let your compassion now ascend before my face. (p. 162)

A few may catch the reader off-guard, only to reveal their profound meaning upon deeper meditation. For an example, read the fifth-century vegetarian grace before eating which includes these lines:

Far from us that hungering lust / That craves a bloody feast, / And tears apart the flesh of beasts. / Such wild banquets, made from slaughtered flocks, / Are fit only for barbarians. / For us, the olive, wheat, and ripening fruits, / And vegetables of every kind: / These compose our righteous feast. (pp. 184-185)

At first, I laughed at the “I thank you God that I’m not a carnivore” tone of this prayer (see Luke 18:11). But when I considered its deeper meaning, I was humbled and convicted.  The person praying this is thanking God for simplicity, not luxury.  How often do we thank God for the ability to make do with less?  And the person who prays this acknowledges the violence inflicted upon creation by our appetites.  When we eat meat, how often do we really give thanks for the lives of the animals whose flesh we consume? I’m not a vegetarian (at least for most of the year), but God did use this prayer to convict me about the excesses in my own consumption of food.  It seems these prayers provide avenues not only for us to speak to God, but for God to speak to us.

(4) The book closes with a brief note on the Jesus Prayer, and an invitation to check out the movie about it which McGuckin produced: Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer. Much could be (and has been) written about the Jesus Prayer, but if the few pages about the Jesus Prayer here pique your interest, do check out the movie. It’s worth watching not just for an introduction to the Jesus Prayer, but for its portrayal of the entire ethos of prayer conveyed in this prayer book.  The film provides new depth and perspective as it displays the monasteries where these prayers have been prayed for centuries – the environments where these prayers have been “tried and proved.”

What to Include in a Prayer of Ordination

This afternoon, I will have the privilege of participating in the ordination of a friend from college who will be serving a congregation near Pittsburgh. And not only do I have the privilege of participating, but I have the privilege of actually leading the prayer of ordination at the service. My friend wanted the prayer to be extemporaneous and to conclude by calling the congregation to pray a printed prayer together. I can do extemporaneous.  But I’ve learned from experience that when a prayer has a specific purpose, it can’t be entirely extemporaneous.  Prayers such as those we use to consecrate the Eucharist, or prayers or ordination come out best when the person praying still follows an outline of specific points.  So, I set out on a mission to figure out what these key points should be for a prayer of ordination.  Here’s what I found.

1. In the Presbyterian Church, the Prayer of Ordination is done on behalf of the whole Presbytery.  In other Christian traditions, it is the Bishop who performs the ordination and prays this specific prayer.  In the Presbyterian tradition, the community of pastors and elders known as the Presbytery functions as a corporate bishop.  So rather than one person laying hands on the person being ordained, all ordained people come forward and lay hands on.  The person praying the prayer of ordination prays on behalf of all of them. This is also why I will initiate and lead the prayer, but it will conclude with a unison prayer. All that said, I will begin with an acknowledgement that we are gathered together as representatives of the whole Church.

2. In the Catholic ordination prayers which I read, the prayer of ordination begins by recalling the offices which God has established for ancient Israel and the Church throughout history. This is similar to our Eucharistic prayer which usually begins by recalling God’s faithfulness to Israel up to the time of Christ.  Because the person being ordained is being set apart to function in a similar way, the ordination prayer acknowledges the models of priestly ministry which have gone before: Moses and the seventy elders, Aaron and the priests (Exodus 24). Ultimately, all those ministries pointed forward to the high-priesthood of Christ, so this portion should conclude with thanksgiving for the ministry of Jesus Christ who is both the Priest and Offering reconciling us with the Father in a way no human ministry could (Hebrews 7:26-28).

3. But we don’t thank God only for ordained ministry.  The Holy Spirit gives diverse spiritual gifts throughout the Church, so many prayers of ordination acknowledge with thanksgiving the variety of spiritual gifts present in the Church, including apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers (Ephesians 4:11). “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, but the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:4-7).

4. Then the prayer gets specific: In all Christian traditions, this prayer calls upon the Father to send the Holy Spirit to fill the person being ordained, so that the person ordained will be able to faithfully exercise the ministry to which they’ve been called.  And notice how the Book of Common Prayer describes that ministry:

May he exalt you, O Lord, in the midst of your people; offer spiritual sacrifices to you; and boldly proclaim the gospel of salvation; and rightly administer the sacraments of the New Covenant. Make him a faithful pastor, a patient teacher, and a wise counselor. Grant that in all things he may serve without reproach, so that your people may be strengthened and your Name glorified in all the world.

Anyone in the Church can proclaim the gospel, teach, or counsel. The one thing that is unique to ordained ministry is the administration of the sacraments. The entire reason ordained ministry evolved in the life of the Church was to ensure right administration of the sacraments. So, the prayer of ordination should draw attention to the sacraments of Baptism and The Lord’s Supper, and also ask God to fill the ordained person with whatever gifts are necessary to administer the sacraments faithfully.

A Word About Upper Room’s Easter Vigil . . .

Tonight at sunset – 7:50pm – Upper Room will begin its Easter Vigil service. I say begin because it’s actually the first part of a service that doesn’t completely end until the conclusion of our 11:00am service on Easter Sunday. Not only is it part three of the Triduum (see below), it’s also parts one and two of a four-part Easter celebration (see further below). This may merit some explanation, so, let me explain. (Note also that this explanation is also the fruit of what my co-pastor Mike explained to me earlier in the week.  He’s turning me into a liturgy geek.)

If you’ve never been to an Easter Vigil service before, you may be surprised when some of the language tonight speaks as though Christ has already been raised from the dead.  That didn’t happen till Sunday morning, right? Well, the women found the tomb empty at sunrise on Sunday morning, so technically it would have been sometime during the night that Jesus was raised.  And who would have witnessed this? The angels. We join in worship tonight with the angels, seeing the events of Christ’s passion and resurrection through their eyes.  So, our liturgy for tonight will include part of the Exultet, a centuries old hymn which proclaims the resurrection beginning with the angels: “Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels, / and let your trumpets shout Salvation / for the victory of our mighty King!”

Easter Vigil is the third service of the Triduum, the series of services including Maundy Thursday and Good Friday which in effect constitute one long service. There’s no benediction at the end of any of them. And each of the services is fully aware of the events of the whole week. On Maundy Thursday we included songs about the cross and speech about the resurrection in the service.  This is because (as Mike explained to me) we’re looking at the events again through the eyes of the angels. We know the good news about how the story ends.

Now to the four-part piece of information: The liturgy we’ll use tonight is a combination of Anglican and Presbyterian liturgies, with some traditional, contemporary, and home-grown music added to the mix.  In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer’s liturgy for Easter Vigil, there are actually four parts to the service.  While I think they would normally be celebrated together as one long service, we’re breaking things up and allowing people to go home and sleep.  The parts are listed below, as we will celebrate them tonight and tomorrow morning.

1) The Service of Light – Sunset was the beginning of the next day for Judaism and for the ancient Church. So as we mark the transition to Sunday, we also will light the Christ candle again, signifying the return of life to Jesus’ body.  We’ll sing a modern version of the ancient hymn Phos Hilaron (“Hail Gladdening Light”) and process into our worship space, where we’ll read the Exultet.

2) The Service of the Word - After the Exultet, the service of the Word begins. Most of the service tonight will consist of long readings from scripture, followed by space for reflection and singing.  The scripture passages recall God’s faithfulness throughout history from creation to the promise of Christ. It’s meditative, and joyful in its simplicity.  This is becoming my favorite service of the entire Church year. When it ends, you’re free to go home and sleep.  The service continues at sunrise.

3) The Service of Baptism - This will be our sunrise service at 6:50am near the Blue Slide entrance of Frick Park.  We will sing, we will read the Paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom, and then we will have a renewal of baptismal vows.

4) The Service of Eucharist - 11:00am at Upper Room. Our normal Sunday worship service will conclude the celebration of Holy Week, complete with Eucharist, celebrating our union with the risen Christ.  Though this may feel like the “big” Easter service, it’s really the big conclusion and celebration of the worship which has continued throughout the week.

Holy Week at The Upper Room

I’m really looking forward to the next few days in the life of our Church. This will be the fourth (yes, fourth!) Holy Week that The Upper Room has celebrated together since we ventured out on this journey of planting a new congregation in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Each year our worship together grows richer and deeper, and I believe that God will continue that trend this year. Here’s the full slate of services, borrowed from Upper Room’s website:

At Upper Room, we have a tradition of transitioning from Lent to Easter with a full set of Holy Week services that the Church has called the “Triduum” – a set of three services, which is actually considered one long service of worship over the course of three nights. Here’s a schedule of this year’s services, with a little bit of background on each. Each service (except for the sunrise service) will be at 5828 Forward Ave. and will last about 60 minutes.

Maundy Thursday – Thursday April 5 @ 7pm
This service is the celebration of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples before his crucifixion. This service will include an “Agape (Love) Meal.” We ask everyone to bring a contribution of bread, fruit, cheese or veggies to share. We’ll also celebrate Communion together.

Good Friday – Friday April 6 @ Sunset (7:50pm)
This is the service remembering Jesus’ death on the cross. This service will include some extended readings of Scripture and silence at the end to meditate on Jesus’ death for our sake.

Easter Vigil (part 1) – Saturday April 7 @ sunset (7:51pm)
This service is the oldest known holiday in the Christian church, and is designed to move us to Easter by reflecting on the mystery of the resurrection and recalling God’s faithfulness to his people by reading several Old Testament stories.

Easter Sunrise Service / Easter Vigil (part 2) – Sunday April 8 @ sunrise (6:51am) in Frick Park.  Go to the Blue Slide Entrance at the corner of Beechwood and Nicholson. (weather permitting)
While many Easter Vigils actually last all night, our will be “paused” a little before 9pm and resume with our sunrise service the next day on Easter morning. This service will include the reading of the Easter story and a renewal of our baptismal vows.

Easter Day Worship – Sunday April 8 @ 11am
And of course we’ll be celebrating Easter Sunday at our normal Sunday morning time as well!

Longing for Light

When Eileen and I moved to Pittsburgh, the darkness of winter took us by surprise. We had lived in Boulder, CO, home to 300 days of sunshine per year.  Now we live a place that has 300 overcast days per year.  For most of our winters here, that’s meant not seeing the sun for the entire month of February.  And that sort of darkness is depressing.

The sun has a tremendous impact on our health. Exposure to light affects our immune system, our energy levels, our emotional health. Living without such benefits of sunlight, as we’ve discovered first hand, can easily lead to Seasonal Affective Disorder (with its ironic acronym SAD).  So this winter we actually invested in a blue light designed to mimic the sun’s life-giving rays.  It works.  If I sit next to it for just fifteen minutes in the morning (as I did today), I’m noticeably more energetic and amicable throughout the day.  

Symeon the New Theologian was a monk and abbot in Constantinople in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Early in his monastic life Symeon experienced the light of the Lord perceptibly within his own body. After this experience, Symeon longed to experience the light in such a way again. His Hymns of Divine Eros  express his heartfelt longing to live only in the Light of Christ alongside a confident defense of his experience against his critics. Several times in his hymns Symeon uses the sun as an image analogous to the divine Light. This particular quote from Hymn 34 spoke to me this morning as I remembered why we have our blue light:

But if the created light does these things for you by its energy, / and enlightens your eyes and gladdens your soul, / and it grants you to see what you did not see before, / then when the creator of light shines in your soul, what will He not do, / He who said, ‘Let there be light,’ and immediately there was light?

The sun obviously bestows benefits on us with its light. How much more will the the spiritual light of Christ bless us when we seek Him, expose ourselves to His light, and sit still basking in His presence? Symeon asks, “if He will shine rationally in the heart /  or in the mind like lightning or like a big sun, what will He be able to produce within an enlightened soul?” The answer Symeon gives, based on his own experience, is that the Light of Christ shining our souls produces true and clear knowledge of God. The Light produces true theology, based not on speculative philosophies, but on genuine experience of and relationship with God.

But how does Symeon say we should seek to expose ourselves to Christ’s light? In the next hymn, Symeon emphasizes contemplation of the mystery of Christ’s glory in heaven and His humility in the Incarnation. Contemplation comes alongside other ascetic practices for Symeon, but seems even more essential. Just as I have to sit still to soak in the rays of the sun (or my artificial blue light), our minds must learn to sit still to contemplate the mystery and glory of Christ. We have to ruminate on, brood on these truths in order for our minds to bask in the light of Christ. This is difficult, but the rewards are exponential, according to Symeon. May God grant us the grace of such stillness.

WCD: Transformative Discipleship For Mission Today

How do you learn to love and serve God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind? Not by using the conventional ways the world approaches learning.  I’m a pastor who’s been to seminary – a very good seminary for which I am grateful and which am happy to support – but I think the Church has become a bit too worldly in the way we train our leaders.  Learning to love and serve God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is not merely an academic exercise.  It requires the use of all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  Discipleship is meant to be holistic, teaching us to love and serve God using relationships, our experience, prayer, worship, mission, service, and the intellect.

This is why I love the World Christian Discipleship Program. It’s a nine-month program designed for recent college graduates who want to learn to follow Jesus in community together.  The goal is to prepare them to live as missional Christians in any vocation.  Participants study early Church writings, create rules of life as they learn about spiritual formation, and  world mission.  During this time they’re volunteering in a local church and learning to practice living missionally in their workplaces. Participants also go on a short-term mission trip (international or domestic), giving them a cross-cultural mission experience as part of their missional and spiritual formation.  And this isn’t just for people who think they’re called to traditional ministry. It’s open to anyone. The congregation I pastor now has three people participating in it – one’s a nurse, one’s a social worker and future missionary, and one’s a seminary graduate preparing for overseas mission. And I believe that WCD will prepare each of these young women to glorify God wherever he calls them after this.

The biggest reason why I’m excited about WCD, though, is that I’ve experienced the transforming power of its components myself.  One of the books participants read is The Philokalia, a collection of monastic writings from the early Church which has completely transformed my own personal discipleship, the way I pray, the way I read scripture, and the way I approach my role as a pastor. In short, writings like this have encouraged me to pursue prayer and holiness in ways that I never before thought possible.  And with the way WCD is designed, such powerful material for spiritual formation is connected directly to mission.  Participants seek sanctification for the sake of mission in the world.  So they read Lesslie Newbigin beside St. Teresa of Avila. They learn to pray without ceasing while working part-time jobs in the neighborhoods where they live. They laugh and cry together and learn from each other what it means to be the Body of Christ.

I’ve spent three years as a church-planter doing bi-vocational ministry, learning what it means to be engaged in mission in a post-Christendom environment.  WCD offers both the training that I wish I had when preparing for ministry and the transformation I want members of the congregation I lead today to have. Anyone who wants to be truly transformed by God for the life of the world should consider applying.

“Good Church” – Reflections on Pentecost at Upper Room

Two days ago, Upper Room celebrated Pentecost.  And it was great.  So great in fact, that Eileen and I said to each other during the car ride home, “That was good church.”

One of the appointed scripture readings for Sunday was 1 Corinthians 12, which speaks about the variety of spiritual gifts that are given to individuals within the Church.  “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good,” says Paul, and the goal of our service that day was to provide space for each person’s gifts to be shared.  Rather than the typical sermon, we invited anyone who felt led to share – whether through art, or music, or a testimony, or a poetry, or any other gift.  And share they did.  Two of the men who were present shared songs they’d written themselves.  Two women shared pieces of artwork they had created, one of which was based on the vision of heavenly worship presented in Revelation 4. The other (shown here) is of a dragonfly. In the artist’s statement about the piece, she explained the traditional Navajo belief that dragonflies symbolized pure water. She used the dragonfly then to symbolize the living water of the Holy Spirit welling up inside her. Two other people shared personal stories of how God’s been at work transforming their lives. One of these stories was a moving testimony from a woman who has suffered much, sharing that she now believes her God-given purpose in life is to encourage others who are suffering.

I left the service feeling so proud of our little congregation.  God has brought some amazing people to Upper Room, and God is continuing to bring more people with a variety of gifts and incredible stories.   I think the Holy Spirit is up to something here.  And I am rejoicing.

Jesus: Teacher, Lord, Lamb

I’m leading music tomorrow at Upper Room.  And the song we’ll start with is “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”. I chose it for multiple reasons, which I want to explain now:

Last week we started a new series at Upper Room called Sitting at the Feet of Jesus.  In ancient Israel, to sit at someone’s feet was an expression for a posture of learning. A disciple would learn sitting at a rabbi’s feet.   As we go through the series, the goal is for our community to intentionally seek to learn from Jesus, to sit at his feet and recognize that he is our teacher. So we’re preaching our way through the Sermon on the Mount, reading all four gospels together, and sharing what we’re learning in small groups and in written reflections.  Through all this we want to learn from our Great Teacher Jesus.

But here’s the thing: Many people are quite comfortable to treat Jesus as a great teacher and nothing more.  For them the Sermon on the Mount contains excellent moral advice and that’s all it is.  But when we read the Sermon on the Mount in the light of the rest of scripture, the words take on both a deeper meaning and authority.  The great teacher of the Sermon on the Mount isn’t just a great teacher; he’s the Lord of the universe.  He is God before whom, as the hymn goes, “angels prostrate fall”.   This means (1) that we can’t reduce the Sermon on the Mount to only great moral teaching, but also that (2) since it is the teaching of Jesus the Lord, we should take the teaching very seriously. 

So as we go through this time of focusing on Jesus as Teacher,  I’m hoping songs like “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” will remind us that Jesus is far more than a teacher.  To sit at his feet is an act of worship. As the hymn again stays, ”O that with yonder sacred throng we at his feet may fall / We’ll join the everlasting song and crown him Lord of all.”

In the same vein, Jesus is Lord not because he was a great teacher, but because he died and rose again.  He is the Passover Lamb that was slain so that his people would have life.  So, during communion tomorrow, we’ll sing “Revelation Song” which has lyrics drawn from the songs of saints and angels before God’s heavenly throne in Revelation 4 and 5: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain . . . Blessing and honor, strength and glory and power be to You the only wise King.” And thus we come full circle.  The Lord who is the Lamb is also the “only wise King”, the teacher at whose feet we sit seeking wisdom.

On Being Sacramental . . .

Upper Room calls itself a “sacramental” church.  And as with most big churchy words, saying we’re sacramental elicits head-scratches from folks who aren’t familiar with the church or come from low-church traditions.  So, here’s an attempt to describe what we mean by being sacramental.

We’re going through a sermon series on the life of Jacob right now.  And I think it’s perfect for giving context to what the word sacramental means.  That’s because the life of Jacob shows God at work through tangible, earthy, things and people.  Words of blessing that Isaac speaks over Jacob have real power. Jacob sees actual sacred space at Bethel where he dreams of “Jacob’s ladder.”  When Jacob’s wives Rachel and Leah give birth to sons, they attribute the births directly to God’s action – even in the midst of a very dysfunctional family.  To be sacramental is having a worldview that recognizes God’s imminent presence and action – the worldview of Genesis.

To put it another way:  The simple definition of a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace.  If we’re talking about a visible sign of grace we’re talking about seeing tangible, concrete, earthy things manifest the grace of God.  God isn’t good in the abstract. God’s goodness is something you experience when you taste a delicious piece of fruit, or when you exercise your body the way God designed it to move, when you hold a newborn baby and witness the miracle of life. God isn’t good in the abstract. God is good in the here and now in ways we can perceive with our senses, if we have to the faith to see it. But to say that these visible things are signs of invisible graces is to recognize that there’s more going on than meets the eye. For Isaac and Jacob and Esau a blessing is more than just words. The words would be the visible sign, but there’s something invisible as well.  In the same way, when we come to communion or when we baptize someone, there’s more going on than meets the eye. It’s a mystery – we can’t explain exactly what’s happening or how it is, but God is present and at work in much deeper ways than we realize. And being sacramental means looking at the whole world that way.

So, this is why the Chuch has seen the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist are means of God’s grace.  But the implications go far beyond that.  In worship at Upper Room, this is why we’ve recently incorporated more art into worship. Every piece of God’s good creation is something that can manifest God’s glory. So the paintings that people made and presented at Pentecost, are sacramental exercises.  We also have a canvas in our worship space now with the outline of a tree on it, and when people hear something that strikes them, they can walk up to the canvas and add those words to the tree – creating an artistic representation of the ways God’s speaking to our community this summer.  To write a word on this tree is to change ordinary matter into things that give God praise.  Doing so bears witness to God’s grace through tangible, concrete media.  It makes the invisible action of the Spirit visible. 

So what does this mean today? It means that I can look for ways in which God is at work at the cafe this afternoon during my shift.  It means that God is at work even in the messiness of our denomination’s General Assembly which is going on right now.  It means that as I prepare for Sunday’s worship and sermon, I can trust that God will show up and meet us in the words of scripture, the breaking of bread, and the fellowship of real people gathered in faith.