Worship in a Storied World (p. 2)
I mentioned in the comments on my last post that I had an interesting experience this weekend as well. I attended my parents' church, which is a large Pentecostal church in rural Pennsylvania. For the record, I don't have anything in particular against Pentecostal or Charismatic churches - I consider myself something of a post-charismatic myself, to borrow a term from RobbyMac. And this is a fairly typical evangelical church, from what I can tell - I doubt that what I experienced would be much different from what many folks from any number of traditions experience on any given Sunday. At any rate - as I mentioned late last week, I've been mulling over this question of worship for what's now over a week. I openly admit that it's a bad, bad idea to go into a worship gathering already pondering what the experience will be like - it's distracting, and it makes it darn near impossible to actually participate in the worship gathering yourself. I don't recommend it. Still, it did highlight for me again some of the concerns that I had last week, about getting lost in the whole "personal" aspect of the gospel, while missing the cosmic thrust of the Story.
My friend Kristi suggested the following in the comments on the last post:
yes, modern worship songs are in part a result of the American/Western Evangelical church's focus on a gospel consisting solely of a personal salvation message, but also a result of a postmodern generation in search of relationship. Lasting relationships, that is. Our generation longs for commitment and dependibility, and darn it if "Jesus-as-my-girl/[boy]friend" doesn't resonate with that longing.I agree with her assessment - I agree that what's attractive about a personal, spiritual, eternal gospel for many, many folks is the prospect of spending eternity in relational bliss, finding meaning and connectedness in a divine relationship that will always endure. And there's nothing wrong with that - that is a good thing. But it's myopic. I wonder, though, if what we're really after isn't relationship at all. Or let's frame it slightly differently - those of us who identify with the emerging church talk a lot about community, and I hear a lot of folks talking about how people are looking for a sense of community and belonging in our current context. But I'm not sure that's really it, on either level. I think what many folks want - to be honest, what I often find myself wanting - are the trappings of community and relationship without all that cumbersome baggage. I want the benefits, but I don't want to pay the dues. I want commitment and dependability - meaning, I want someone (or Someone) to be committed and dependable for me. But don't ask me to commit. That's a pain in the tail.
So I was mentioning the worship gathering at my folks' church on Sunday. It was a fairly typical evangelical-type worship set, lots of songs about how I love Jesus a whole lot, and how He loves me too. Fortunately, no Jesus-is-my-girlfriend songs - there's something to be said for that, I suppose. Then they started singing some songs about how, one day, Jesus is going to come back and take us home to be with Him, and won't it be just swell? And the sermon talked about how God can meet all of our needs, and how miracles don't exhaust God's bank or something like that, and how God wants to give miracles to people today, because He loves them a whole lot. And then folks came up to pray that God would give them the miracle that they need. And then we went to lunch.
And the thing that bugged me about the whole thing wasn't that it was wrong. I mean, I don't think there was a single thing in the whole service with which I'd really take issue, theologically speaking. Even the miracle stuff, even though it sounded a bit hokey, a bit like a televangelist, was ok - I do believe that God still works miracles, and there wasn't any sort of peddling of God's power like you see on TV, so I think that was just a tragedy of language being coopted by snake oil salesmen, so that now when anyone says "miracle" what people hear is something more like "send cash to the address at the bottom of the screen".
What I didn't like about it was that it was...small. The whole gathering felt like the Story wasn't much of a story. It was as if the narrative world of our grand tradition was collapsing in on itself, until it was a sad, pale, hollow shell of a thing. It wasn't the Story of God's redemption of all creation. It wasn't about the triumph of mercy and justice and the restoration of shalom. It wasn't even about God's formation of a new people, a new community in whom His redemptive work can be displayed. It was about how Jesus loves me - which isn't wrong, not at all. But it needs the context of the grand Story of God's redemptive purposes to make it meaningful and beautiful.
Physicists talk about black holes, about massive stars that, at the end, are defeated by gravity, so that they collapse and form an object so dense that not even light can escape. I wonder if that's what we've become - little black holes, all crushed in on ourselves, with no light to be seen because it can't escape the tragic collapse of our narrative world.
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lovely.
no really. i'm often sarcastic, i know, but please hear that word, "lovely" in a complementary, gentle fashion, and you'll have it about right.
now i know, the topic, the idea of our little selves/churches/American Evangelical Gospel being "little black holes, all crushed in on ourselves, with no light to be seen because it can't escape the tragic collapse of our narrative world", isn't in itself a lovely picture, but your description of it is well-crafted, friend.
it kind of makes me think about our (USA/Amer.Evang.Church/Christianity/you-pick-the-majority-class) seemingly(?) diminishing role in the world. we can't be super-powers forever. And would that be a bad thing? somebody has to take the hit, why not me? (paying the dues for benefits received, perhaps? (re:commitment comments above))
i'm all tangental here, i know, but it makes me think about warnings we've heard that the spread of Islam is on the rise, even here in the US. Or that the church is on the decline here. Or that health-and-wealth-personal-gospel-teaching is making shallow Christians. Or or or...
and yes, on many levels, those are bad things.
but i guess what i'm musing about/sharing is my own realization that God is bigger than me, and bigger than my/our conception of church/Christianity/God's Story (how's that for trite?). That is, the church has survived amidst years and years of heresy. The church has survived decadent abuse of power. The church has survived massive apathy, and massive persecution.
The beauty, to me, is that God seems to let it ride a lot longer than i would, even when we are severely jacking it all up.
that's not to say that we shouldn't respond to His call to correct and obey Him. but perhaps we don't have to get so uptight about it (D.A.Carson's anti-emergent diatribe is dancing about my head), even if we turn out to be right in the end. Because it doesn't seem to depend on us in the end anyway.
So, little black holes. [for the record, i'm not calling you uptight about them]. maybe this is the dying gasp of another chapter in His book. maybe we need to be crushed in on ourselves to see that the Story is larger.
can you tell my meds have worn off?
Posted by kristi on May 31, 2006 10:31 PMuh, to be clear, in the above phrase, "His call to correct and obey Him," an appropriate object of the infinitive, "to correct," would be "ourselves" or "course", and not the implied "Him". thus, "His call to correct ourselves/course and obey Him."
Posted by kristi on May 31, 2006 10:36 PMI really resonate with what you mentioned towards the end of your post on the "smallness" of the message at this particular gathering. Nevertheless:
All language is necessarily self-limiting, and no language apprehends God and God's revelatory work entirely. Churches focusing on the "Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with me" angle responded to a lack in this dimension of the confession of the Western church, and they were right--theologically and missionally--to have done so. Certainly "Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with me" is an impoverished treatment of God and the church when that's the only thing one says, but the same goes for any other angle taken on its own, including "the story of God's redemption of all creation," "the triumph of mercy and justice and the restoration of shalom," and "God's formation of a new people, a new community in whom His redemptive work can be displayed." Among other thigns, that's why the Bible is so freaking long and polyvalent. That's also why (to borrow some Reformed ecclesiology) the church is ever in need of reformation and fresh confession.
Finally, speaking as one with a background in physics, black holes are only stars "defeated" by gravity from the perspective of somebody attempting to narrate a struggle for life into a giant, flaming ball of gas. (No offense intended.) Black holes happen; they are cool. The church is not a black hole because, speaking confessionally, the Spririt of God is still at work in the church, making it a city on a hill despite its failings. Extrapolating from a scriptural principle, isn't this a part of the whole "treasure in a jars of clay" thing?
The point: God is glorified in our weakness--even our linguistic weaknesses--because God wants to be, and God is supreme. The church is a part and a result of God's revelatory work. Hence, narrative worlds begin and end, but that's not the end of the church.
Posted by Jacob S. Heiss on June 1, 2006 03:39 PMkristi -
I knew what you were saying. ;)
Jacob -
I hear you; I actually think we're saying the same thing. My concern isn't so much that there's an emphasis on the personal aspect of God's redemptive activities - I tried to indicate that that's a good thing, and that we'd be worse without it, but perhaps I'm being hindered by my own use of self-limiting language. ;) But let's be honest - evangelicalism isn't exactly known for our ability to apprehend the larger nature of the grand narrative. That's why evangelical environmentalist is something of an oxymoron, for example. The gospel of evangelicalism is a call to personal repentance so that I can go to heaven when I die - and that, I'd argue, is most certainly an impoverished view. Again, the gospel is by nature personal - it requires response on an individual basis, and there's no way (or need) to get around that; it's an essential part of the Story. But it also is a call to something, and that's the larger aspect. So, while I agree that God's work is larger than our own narrative worlds, those worlds are significant in framing our response to His work, and our participation in it. If that weren't the case, there'd be no need for a prophetic voice in Scripture calling the people of God to reimagine ways of being that people, the called-out ones. That's what I'm saying here - we've missed a big part of the story, and we are lesser people for it.
As for my thoughts on black holes, well, let's just say that those are my meager attempts to offer some creative anthropomorphisms and leave it at that. ;) My question would be whether our own telling of the Story is helping our task to be that city on the hill, or hindering it. I suspect it's the latter.
Posted by ScottB on June 2, 2006 09:50 AM