McMunnion

I had one of the most bizarre religious experiences of my life today. As I sat in District Assembly we were given communion. Now I love communion. I love the way we can gather together and drink from one cup, eat from one loaf, and know that while we each taste and experience God slightly differently in the end everything everyone ate came from the same source. I like that what we have together in communion was given to us by another person, even if it was just to put the wafers on the tray.

But the communion experience I had today was very different. I think I was the first human hands to touch this food in its’ entire existence. This communion came prepackaged with a measured amount of juice sealed into a plastic cup by foil. On top of that foil was a plastic sealed piece of bread. It was all hermetically sealed and individually processed.

I know I am old fashioned, but there is something disturbing about hearing “you may now remove the foil” and “open the plastic, take and eat” as part of the communion liturgy. I felt completely separated from all other believers as I had my own McMunnion. It was perfectly American, and to me it signified not only American consumerism, but also American Christianity’s individualism.

Instead of sharing from the same bread, the same Lord, we all have our own. Instead of receiving God from someone else, we open it up all by ourselves. We are reliant on no one for our communion, or our faith if the analogy holds. And what does it mean when the most important repeated ceremony in the Christian faith is fake? What does it mean when the juice and bread are artificial and fake in a ceremony we claim to be real?

It isn’t the end of the world by any means. But we need to think about what we are saying not just with our words, but with our actions and our priorities. If we are more interested in saving ten minutes and fifty cents than we are in making communion a meaningful experience that says something horrible about us and our faith. It says that the bottom line and convenience are more important than worshiping and serving God in meaningful ways. That is a scary concept, and it doesn’t come through just in communion. What we do, where we spend our money and our time scream out what we really believe is important, and whether our people realize it or not they’re learning from those things just as much as from our words.

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When is a religion Dead?

I apologize for not posting for the last several weeks. I wish I had a wonderful reason, but I don’t. I’ve been thinking a lot, working on my master’s, being a father, and everything has just caught up to me the past couple of weeks. A few months ago I posted a blog about what I saw as the death of Christianity in America. Since then I’ve been spending quite a bit of time thinking about how to really define when a religion is dead.

Is a religion dead when there aren’t any people claiming it anymore? That’s the simplest explanation, but doesn’t really fit. I can claim to be Zoroastrian and yet not practice anything that the ancient Zoroastrians did. In that case, the ancient religion would still be dead and instead of rebirthing it, I would be practicing something completely different. Perhaps we could say that a religion is dead when it is no longer growing, but while that is a good indication of health it doesn’t equate with true death as the group could grow again.

Perhaps we could talk about whether the early beliefs of the religion are still being practiced. But then we have to find a cut-off point that defines “early”. In Christian circles, we have abandoned much that defined the early Church. We no longer sell everything we have and live communally. We no longer practice love feasts, or the Sabbath, or live in such radical faith. We are not persecuted either, which was a huge part of the early Church’s faith. And even if much of what we believe is different, there is always the chance that it will come back full circle. So while a difference in belief and practice are good indicators, they don’t seem to completely define the death of a religion. It needs something else. What about if we talked about a religion being dead when it no longer changes people like it did in the beginning? A religion catches on with people because it brings change into their lives, change for the better presumably. But when that change no longer comes, what drove that religion is gone. The faith is dead, even if people still claim to be a part of it. Individual ideas, beliefs, and actions can change in a religion as the times change, but if that change in their lives does not appear, or significantly changes, then the religion is dead, or is no longer the same religion it once was.

So is Christianity dead or alive in America by this criterion? I would say it’s pretty well dead. When people come into the Church today, we ask them to change their behavior, but not in ways that the ancient Church would have understood. The most strident ways we urge people to change are in their dress, their language, and their voting habits. There are many churches that are faithfully leading people to God and seeing people changed to serve others, to give sacrificially, to study and care for people together. But the dominant view of Christianity in America today is one of ethics and politics. That is not a change the early Christians would have understood. So if not dead, I would say that Christianity in America has kept the name, but changed into a new religion for many of the believers here, one that is more about “being good’ than showing love in service.

But there is always hope. Christianity is founded on rebirth, and that includes not only the individual but the Church as well. I only pray I help to keep the faith alive and lives changing, instead of stagnating and dying.

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Roman Christianity

I am a student of history, and especially medieval and Roman history. A few weeks ago I posted a blog about similarities between Britain under the Roman Empire and American Christianity. Today I wanted to take that comparison a bit further and look at comparisons of Rome right before the fall of the empire and America today, especially where it comes to religion. Much of this comes from “How the Irish Saved Civilization” page 29.

The Roman Empire was being pressed by floods of immigrants who were largely staying in their own groups and not being integrated, or welcomed, into Roman society (Mexico?). The Bureaucracy of the government focused on keeping themselves in office and afloat more than helping people. Military service became avoided by the elite (Clinton, Bush, etc) and shunned as a lower job by the rest (if you can’t go to college you can always join the army).

The army became mainly immigrants and not Romans (our army is disproportionately minority) and the standards for acceptance in the army were reduced (we have lowered our standards several times just since invading Iraq). Also, towards the end the army became dominated by hired mercenaries (Blackwater Company in Iraq anyone?). The amount that the government was spending on defense increased dramatically until the government could not sustain the infrastructure and taking care of its people (we spend over 50% of our taxes on defense I believe, and have cut schooling, and infrastructure to do so).

There was a big emphasis on the past instead of the future, they kept claiming old values as being alive today (sounds like the moral stuff we’re dealing with now by calling on what the founding fathers did like we practice it today) and legislating that while living in complete opposition to what they are claiming (think governor Spitzer, chasing prostitution rings but in reality using them).

The population was losing its middle class and either being extremely rich or extremely poor (middle class is dying off here too, think inner city). Those rich became the true deciding people in making things happen (Bill Gates recently approached congress with an idea and got it passed basically that day, while most things take months or years to go through). The people passed lots of laws that didn’t really effect anyone but sounded great (think making marriage one man and one woman only).

Order became the thing to keep, not justice (like renovating inner cities without helping those who live there but just kicking them out, CIA interrogation, or ignoring Darfour because it isn’t us). Religiously, the people had been Christian for centuries and it was assumed that people were believers just because they were Roman (ding). Attendance in church diminished, and involvement in church became the role of the pastor only (we are seeing the same thing right now).

The priesthood was raking in money at the expense of their people (prosperity preachers, televangelists, etc). The Church had become a political entity as much or more than a spiritual one (think James Dobson, the Christian Coalition and special interest groups). The Church became linked with the state, with priests preaching about the Roman Empire and preserving its’ glory more than the preaching the gospel (see most Fourth of July services in most churches here, or September Eleventh remembrances. The Church began to rely on the state for its’ support, purpose, and guidance (the big thing right now is making sure we follow the State’s guidelines in order to not have to pay our taxes).

The Church also became very turned inward, looking towards the Christians in its’ country as being the true church and everyone else around the world was a second class Christian (why else would we consider all other places in the world “missionary” work except here if we didn’t honestly consider America the heartland and center of Christianity). Preserving the Church in Rome became more pressing than getting more Christians outside of its’ realm (think about how much more money we spend on “church growth” books and plans for locally sustaining ministry than we spend on people outside of our nation).

There are many more analogies that can be made, and it’s scary. But I don’t have time, and you don’t have patience to read it I’m sure. Suffice to say, Christianity in America is in trouble, America is in trouble, if the analogies hold up in the long haul. I don’t know if there is a simple solution to it, but there is a first step. We are acting like Rome, thinking that Christian and American are the same thing, and being American means we’re a better Christian. We need to get over ourselves. I love my nation, but my God is bigger than any nation. Christianity flourishes where the people live it out, not where it is legislated, or where it is politically powerful, or even where it is allowed. We don’t need our nation to be Christian, and we need to start acting like that, like we are Christian first, American second, not the other way around.

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Passing on Grace

Easter has come and gone, and it was a blast to experience for me even though it was so hard to get everything done and prepared on time with school and baby. I can’t say everything went smoothly, but what happened was very meaningful, at least for me. We had a mock Ash Wednesday service (mock because it’s the right service on the wrong day), a Good Friday service, a baptismal service Sunday, and then Easter itself. Partway through the week, as I was meeting with the people about to be baptized and planning Sunday I really realized something.

I am not worthy of what I have been given. Not only has grace been given to me for forgiveness of sins, but even my position is grace. I was baptizing people who I had not led to Jesus. But I was still given the honor of ushering them into the faith. Somehow I have been allowed to give communion and pass out God’s grace to people who barely even know me. I watched people’s sins literally burned to ash and then placed that same ash on their foreheads, telling them that all that’s left of their past is the cross marking their lives. I don’t deserve that. I am not worthy of administering grace like that. But as I assure people of God’s grace in their lives I am experiencing it myself.

It is so powerful to administer the sacraments, to make the cross on someone’s forehead with their ashen sins, knowing they are seeking forgiveness and knowing that they take this sign as evidence that God forgives and as proof that they are Christian. It is amazing to be able to mark a believer as a Christian in a physical way and have them accept it. It is powerful to dip someone under, knowing that your arms are God’s arms to them as you bring them out of the water and into their new life. I am so humbled by what I am called to do, so thankful.

I have never before experienced so fully how amazing grace is, how awesome faith is, as I did this Holy Week. In a very real sense we experience grace most when we give it to others, and we can sense our own faith when we are sharing in the ancient symbols with others. I know this is usually a pastoral duty, but I really want to share this feeling with others. I want to create experiences where all Christians can take the grace we have all been given, and pass it on to another, while at the same thing receiving it from someone else as well.

When everyone was administering the ashes to another, and receiving them as well, I could see how each person was passing on the assurance of God’s forgiveness to another, and was bowing expectantly as another assures then that their sins are gone as well. I was very moved as I watched the ashes pass through the crowd. But that is such a rare experience for Christian laypeople. It is so rare for us to be able to assure each other of grace in practical, physical ways. None of us are worthy to do that, none of us. But someone has to, and it is one of the most powerful and humbling experiences any of us can ever have. That is what I want to do with all believers in my church, make grace real, make faith physical and universal. .

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Britain and the Death of Christianity

I am a student of history, and the more I study the more I realize that situations in the past can shine a very bright light on what is going on today, and even on what will happen in the future. Take Christianity in Britain for example.

The Roman Empire became Christian, and everyone who was Roman was assumed to be Christian. Fairly soon, it infiltrated the culture on every level. That included the culture of Britain. As the Roman Empire took over Britain, the people naturally assumed that being Christian and being Roman were the same thing.

When the Roman Empire was doing great, people in Britain flocked to the Christian banner, and Christianity reigned in southern England for several hundred years (200 CE at it was already there). It looked like it had really taken hold and would last. But as soon as the Roman Empire started to crumble, so did Christianity. The locals saw the two as identical and so as Roman culture crumbled, so did Christianity. Within a terribly small space of time Christianity was gone from almost all of Britain (post 400 CE with the legions leaving), and would remain missing for about hundreds of years. People had not accepted Christianity, they had accepted Roman culture, and without the Roman culture there was no reason for anyone to be a Christian. Some pockets remained, but the majority was gone.

I think we see the same thing happening in America today. American ideals have been founded on Puritan work practices and Christian ethical systems. It has been expected for 200 years that if you are American you are Christian. To be one is to be the other. Christian leaders have encouraged this by trying to bring about legislative change in the name of Christianity. We also celebrate secular holiday’s more than religious ones (how many times have you celebrated the fourth of July in church, and when was the last time you remembered Pentecost, or ascension Sunday?) and rely on people’s patriotism to bring them into church. We have made Christianity and American culture synonymous.

But now the culture is changing. It is no longer based on the same ethical, political, or economic system as it once was. Postmodernism has changed the very definition of truth in our culture. So what should be the Christian response? Some believers have been trying to reclaim the old culture in order to reclaim the prestige and the power that Christianity had in years past. But if we look at Britain I think we see that is a bad idea.

Christianity is more than a political idea. It is more than an ethical system, and it is more than any one country or culture. That includes America. We do not need to reclaim the lost “glory years” of American Christianity. What we need to do is to make sure that people know Christianity is not American and vice versa. Only if we can show that our God is real no matter what is going on in the world do we have a chance of surviving the cultural storms.

Unfortunately, many Christians are living like the Romans in Britain, and cannot see that there is a difference between their culture, their nation, and their faith. But the more we try and make those two different things the same the more likely it is that Christianity in America will go the way of Christianity in Britain so long ago, and die out as the culture and politics change. And that is not something I am willing to see happen.

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My Daughter and My Finger

Sorry about not posting now, but I became a father last week, a very odd, wonderful, tiring, frustrating, exhilarating feeling. Some of what my little girl does I was told to expect, and some of it completely catches me off guard. Her first day in the world I was holding her on my lap and just went to stroke her face. Instead of rubbing against my finger, or moving away, she rolled into it, grabbed my finger tip in her little mouth and started sucking like mad. I was so surprised I didn’t do anything for a little bit, I just sat there.

I knew babies breast fed, of course, but I had no idea how instinctive their latching and sucking instincts were. I was completely caught off guard. In a moment I got my bearings and tried to pull my finger out of her mouth. It was actually hard to do. She had such a grip on my finger that I was a little worried about hurting her to be honest. I couldn’t easily remove that finger, it really took a bit of effort. I thought that once she understood she wasn’t getting anything from my finger she would let go, but no luck. She didn’t care if she was getting anything from it, she just knew she needed to be sucking on something and was hoping that if she sucked on everything coming her way she would get something from it. I just sat and marveled at how naïve my daughter is. But then I started thinking about my job as pastor and realized that the Church often does the exact same thing. We grab at whatever fad is coming our way, whatever idea has the label “Christian” on it, and hope that it fills our needs.

But most of the time those things don’t really help at all. Or they help for a time, but they don’t feed us in the long haul. But do we get rid of them? Of course not. We just suck harder, trying to get some food from something that simply does not feed us. And so we are sometimes left with service ideas, songs, rituals, and entire ministries in the Church that do not feed us at all, but we’re like my little daughter, still sucking away at my finger, not even knowing if it gives us food or not.

Unlike my daughter, though, we should be able to know what feeds us and what doesn’t, at least after we try it for a while. We need to take a long look at what we do, both as individuals, and as churches, and think about what actually feeds us and what does nothing more than fill our mouths without giving us any spiritual food in return. I can pull out my finger from my baby daughter, but no one except us will stop part of the church that doesn’t feed us. We have to release the fingers in our lives and try and find where God is really giving us food, emphasize that, spend time with those things.

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Holy Days

Easter is almost upon us again, and I have no idea what we’re doing about it. Easter is the holiest day of the year, more holy than even Christmas to believers. It is the day when our salvation was made real, when our lord came back from the dead to guide us into true life. It is sacred. However, throughout my life I have rarely experienced the holy on Easter Sunday.

I want to change that. I want to find a way to make the holy relevant to my people, and find some way we can grasp how special Easter is. The problem is that I have no idea how to do that. When I went looking for ideas of Easter services, I found something very disturbing. Almost all of the ideas I found were about how to get people to show up at church. They were about mass mailings, signs, handouts, and gimmicks. Many of the ideas revolved around giving out gifts and promotions, raffles even and drawings, to bribe people into coming to church on Easter. Nearly every site I looked at talked about how to use giving gifts as an effective way of getting people to attend church and return. Most sites also included ways of making the service more “seeker sensitive,” removing all elements of the holy in an effort to get more people in the church.

I understand being sensitive to others, but Easter, our holiest day of the year, should be the one day where we are unapologetically Christian. It should be the day where we should that our roots are deep in history and our branches touch heaven itself. Easter should be the last day that we sell out on, not the first.

If there is something real about what we do, then this is the day we show it. Easter is holy. How can we convince anyone that there is anything sacred about our faith if we profane the holiest day of our year.

If we put getting more people in the pews at a greater priority than God we have a problem. We say God comes first, but quite often it is numbers that we worship. But if there is one day where we need to show that we are not just putting on a show but giving thanks to our God it is Easter.

The problem is I am not really sure how, because almost all I know is the show.

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