Monthly Archives: November 2013

Are you an earthbound Christian?

 

In order to cash in positively on Halloween my son helped to run a ‘Death Café’ working with an atheist who nevertheless agreed with him that death is the one big taboo subject in our day, and that it really would do people good to have the opportunity to think and talk about it. Apparently Death Cafés  are growing in numbers, and I would have loved to have been there.

There are a few times in the Bible where people tell God that they’ve had enough and would rather just die, an idea which I suspect was not widely represented in the Café. Poor old Moses in Num 11:14; Elijah in 1 Kings 19:4; Job several times, and Jonah in 4:3, for example. That isn’t a prayer I’ve ever prayed, but I have on a couple of occasions been in situations which made me feel that I could understand totally anyone wanting to pray it. I didn’t ask God to take me, but I came pretty close. Sometimes life is so full of trouble that death and heaven seem preferable. Or do they?

I suppose it’s about getting older, but I find myself more and more amazed at the way so many Christians seem to be earthbound in their thinking. Having lived around three quarters of my life now I find the prospect of heaven an increasingly inviting one: on a bad day I can’t wait to get there. But to be honest I don’t find many other people who share these sentiments. There seems to be a burning desire, even among Christians, to hang on to this life as though there were no alternative. It might be awful, but at least I’m alive. Yet the Bible constantly holds out to us the hope of eternal life, and the promise of something better. So much better, in fact, that St Paul can say that he considers ‘that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.’ (Rom 8:18) Clearly for him heaven was a shining vibrant daily reality, and at times you can hear his frustration that he isn’t already there: ‘For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labour for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. (Phil 1:21-24) I hear this kind of talk very rarely in today’s church.

This makes me ask how much of a reality is heaven, really, to Christians today. How certain of it are we? Does there still lurk a nagging suspicion that we might just not be quite good enough to make it? And does this anxiety make us want to hang on to this life, however awful, because at least we know it’s real. Or is there a fear of oblivion, nothingness, in spite of the Bible’s reassurances to the contrary?

Might I suggest deeper meditation on the Bible’s constant affirmations of new life, won for his people by Christ and in no way dependent on our hard work, and its frequent reminders that this world is not our home? And to those of us who are teachers in the church, I ask how often the celebration of heaven is a theme upon which we dwell.

Is Liturgy Biblical?

We’re thinking about liturgy and whether it has any enduring value in a church which has, at least in part, rejected it in favour of singing songs. One of the big questions which I’m asked from time to time is whether liturgy is ‘biblical’. Lurking behind this question is the suggestion that if it isn’t, if it is merely a human invention, then we shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

Firstly I point out that data projectors aren’t biblical, but we don’t seem to feel that they are a problem. But underneath this is a much deeper and far more complex truth. In order to understand it we’ll have to take a trip back to childhood, and then beyond that to the 15th century.

So here are some pieces of liturgy – see if you can complete the responses:

‘What big teeth you’ve got, Grandma …’

‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and …’

‘Who’s been sleeping in my …’

‘Cheer up, Cinderella, you shall …’

You get the idea. The fact is that even in our post-book culture we imbibe little bits of ‘liturgy’ with our mothers’ milk, and they stay with us, woven into the fabric of our memories. Different editions of children’s books may tell the stories slightly differently, but those little ‘punch lines’ are eternal and unchangeable, and it is those which we remember. If that is how we work, how much more would that have been the case for pre-book cultures.

The fact that when we think ‘liturgy’ we think ‘book’ is due to an event in history which shaped our world more than just about anything else. Somewhere around 1450 (the exact date is disputed) Gutenberg invented the printing press, and this simple piece of technology changed the world, about as radically as information technology has changed it in my lifetime. Before that the technology available for producing books was called ‘monks’, which meant that books were expensive and rare. Producing books took years, not least because the monks would insist on doing little coloured doodles in the margins instead of just getting on with the job. You used books to store stuff you already knew in safe keeping. But now things were different – you could produce hundreds of copies very cheaply and quickly. The role of books changed: they were now where you found out stuff you didn’t already know.

The church was quick to use this technology: Archbishop Thomas Cranmer set every parish a copy of the new Prayer Book with the instruction that from Pentecost 1549 only these liturgies were to be used in English parishes, thus establishing the Reformation and Protestantism in the land. But how different this approach from that of the Early Church. With its Jewish liturgical heritage early Christianity would have functioned much more like the nursery rhymes above, with short, pithy and highly memorable words which everyone would have known by heart.

So to the question ‘Why is there no liturgy in the Bible?’ the answer is that it is full of the stuff! We have fixed acclamations, often in a foreign language: Amen, Alleluia, Maranatha, Abba. There are doxologies and blessings: 1 Tim 1:17, Rom 11:33-36, hymns: Eph 5:14, 1 Tim 3:16, and creeds: Rom 10:9, 1 Cor 8:6, 15:3-5. There are also physical gestures and postures: 1 Tim 2:8, 1 Cor 16:20, Ax 21:5, and there are festivals: 1 Cor 16:8. These are just a selection of the ways in which liturgical worship would have been part of the Early Church. Basically if you look in the New Testament for bit set out as poetry rather than prose, the chances are you’ve got a liturgical text which would have been well known in the church. Early Church worship was liturgical worship.