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Will Jesus find us trusting Him? (Evangelical Catholic Evaluation V)
Devotional thought of the day:
So what makes you think God won’t step in and work justice for his chosen people, who continue to cry out for help? Won’t he stick up for them? 8 I assure you, he will. He will not drag his feet. But how much of that kind of persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?” Luke 18:7-8 (MSG)
We are three days into celebrating the fact that the tomb is empty, that the Lord Jesus Christ is Risen, and that because of that – we can know the Lord is with you!
We love Easter, the celebration, the enthusiasm, the overwhelming joy of coming face to face with God’s love, shown on the cross – where we find ourselves drawn into Christ’s death, and the miraculously, our spirits, freed from sin, soar incredibly without the weight of injustice, and sin and guilt and shame. But soon we crash down into this false reality of life, for reality is that peace, we forget the life we have in Christ. ( thank God we are reminded by Paul “ 2 Keep your minds fixed on things there, not on things here on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 Your real life is Christ and when he appears, then you too will appear with him and share his glory!” Colossians 3:2-4 (TEV) For we are assured that is our reality.
Back to today’s question! In the passage at the very top, we are asked will Jesus find faith on the earth when He returns. If He returned on Easter, as our churches are full, as people are singing and hearing and responding about His being risen from the dead, that day, the answer seems obvious. Yet what about 3 days from now – just a week after Good Friday? What about in August, when the heat is getting to us, and our patience is thin. What about after the next major trauma – whether global in scope or personal? We Christ find faith then?
Two Answers,
The first comes from the book Evangelical Catholic that inspired this post – and it deals with faith from the perspective of doctrine, the Biblical teachings that are handed down to us through our churches. The author, George Wiegel. He makes a very solid point about the impediment of our own adaptation of the faith.
Deep Catholic reform in the United States is impeded by bishops, priests, consecrated men and women in religious life, intellectuals, and laity who are in a diminished state of communion with the Church— existentially if not canonically— because they deny to be true what the Catholic Church “believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God,” as the profession of faith for those being received into full communion with the Church puts it. How many Catholics in the United States— again, bishops, priests, consecrated men and women in religious life, intellectuals, and laity— can say, without mental reservation, “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God”? To the degree that the answer to that question is negative, or ambiguous, then to precisely that degree is the deep reform of the Church envisioned by Vatican II being imperiled. (1)
Though I would need to adapt this a little, the idea that people who deny what is believed (faith placed in) and taught and proclaim that is revealed by God, is the key here. We don’t get to redefine what the “faith” is. It simply is what God has revealed it to be. And the more we deviate with that, the more we slowly at first depart from the faith. The more mental reservations we have, the more we say I believe what God has revealed in scripture, except XXX, the more we make ourselves the judge and jury over God, and the less we walk the life of faith, and to be honest, the more doubts we entertain.
I am not saying we shouldn’t challenge what we believe – exactly opposite. But what we test what we believe against is not what is logical, when can always be easily perceived. What is the standard is scripture. What is standard is how God reveals His love, His mercy, His presence to us, even as He fulfills His promise of bringing healing and life to our sin-bruised, battered and broken lives. The more we deviate from the God who is self-revealed in scripture, the more we struggle with placing our logic above God’s, the less we see His work in our lives.
Which brings us to the second point about faith,
Faith isn’t just a noun, it isn’t just getting to know what the scriptures reveal. It is getting to know, to intimately know, the God who reveals Himself through those writings. That is why I titled the above – will Jesus find us trusting Him. Faith is after all – the description of what we trust in God for, the expectation that He will be who He reveals Himself to be – for us, to us, with us. That is also the context of the first reading – where the judge grants the widow’s request because she places her life in his hands. (and even though an evil judge with be faithful and just, how much more will God be?) So the context of the quote about finding faith is nothing less than will Jesus find us trusting in Him, living based in trusting Him to fulfill His promises, and giving to Him everything that burdens us, that causes anxiety, the things we don’t have an answer for yet?
Will we trust Jesus? Will we realize what that cross and empty grave mean, and will we live life with Him, trusting completely in His promises?
That is what causes renewal in us, renewal in our parishes, renewal in our denominations and in the church universal (i.e. small c catholic)
BTW – He is the only one completely trustworthy.
Godspeed!
Weigel, George (2013-02-05). Evangelical Catholicism (p. 52). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
Evangelical Catholicism Pt IV: Why have churches shrunk?
Discussion Thought of the Day:
“If a robust Evangelical Catholicism, formed by Word and Sacrament to take the Gospel of truth and love “into the deep” of the modern and postmodern world, is the deeply reformed Church to which the entire trajectory of Catholic development from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI points, and which the Second Vatican Council envisioned, then the great postconciliar failure of Catholicism— the collapse of the Church in Christianity’s historical heartland, Western Europe— comes into sharper focus. Western European Catholicism’s demise was not, it becomes clear, the result of an internal civil war between Catholic progressives and Catholic traditionalists. Nor are the prescriptions of either of these exhausted camps likely to lead to revival and reform in the future. The Church in Europe has been in free fall throughout the postconciliar years because too many of its people ceased to believe that the Gospel is true. The crisis of Catholicism in Europe did not come about because the institutional Church faltered and its people subsequently bailed out. The crisis came because the people of the Church (including the clergy) ceased to believe with passion and conviction, ceased to find joy in the presence of the Lord— and sought their happiness elsewhere. Because of that, the institution (which in some countries, such as Germany and Italy, remains extremely wealthy) faltered— and seems to be collapsing in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The Catholic future in Europe lies not in managerial reforms (although those are needed), but in a renaissance of faith, which will likely come (as such things often do) from outside the formal structures of Catholic life (i.e., parishes and dioceses) and from within renewal movements and new forms of Catholic community. There, the vision of Evangelical Catholicism is alive. And if that vision attains critical mass, following the authentic promptings of the Holy Spirit, it may eventually reform— and transform— the institutional Church.” (1)
What I read above, though directed at the Roman Catholic Church by one of its own, I believe is equally true for all churches and all denominations and especially my Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
It’s not a matter a matter of who is right in the worship wars, or the supposed division of being faithful versus being missional. It doesn’t have to do, as much as we think it might – with who is in power, for I think that where the gospel is preached and the sacraments are administer – that is where the church is. The hierarchy exists to serve – to be a blessing to the people, as they serve the sacraments and are nothing but conduits through which God’s love and mercy flows. And I have seen both churches that are contemporary, and that are high liturgical and that are 1950’s dream churches – that all are growing – and that all are failing to reach their community. (Recently in Rome, I saw a church filled with people for a high Latin Mass – all of the with great joy as they looked to the sacrament.) As Wiegel notes – we can reform all our admin, we can put allt he right systems in place and run programs and have staffing, but it will be in vain. And our churches will continue to fail – and depend on what god has supplemented the God who came to us, and died.
I highlighted part of Wiegel’s words above in red for a reason, this is the only thing I see that makes a difference in a church, no matter the size, no matter the budget, no matter whether it is growing or not. It is, clearly this one principal – do they get that they are in the presence of God, do they celebrate His love and mercy and His presence. Do we get that the Lord’s Supper, the focus of this day, isn’t about the rote movements – but as one of my oldest favorite songs describes – “God and Man at Table are sat Down” DO we realize His presence, His love, cleansing not just our feet but our lives, healing us, transforming us, the Holy Spirit residing with us!
Do we get that God has invited us to be not just His servants, but as Jesus says, His friends? To dwell in HIs glory, to be adopted children of the King?
You want such and such style of worship? Fine. You want such and such programs? They are out there! You want a cozy intimate church where everyone knows you name? You want a church that is involved in missional work? Or in serving the poor? Or in saving the unborn? Or in educating everyone? All good things… BUT
Above all, desire this – to be in a place that understands these words:
The Lord is with you!
And respond back… with fervor, with conviction, and with love…
And Also with you ( or and with your Spirit)
(1)Weigel, George (2013-02-05). Evangelical Catholicism (pp. 51-52). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
The Church’s Answer to Post-modern thought…. Word and Sacrament
Devotional Thought of the Day.
26 Whenever you eat this bread, then, and drink this cup, you are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. 27 Therefore anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Everyone is to examine himself and only then eat of the bread or drink from the cup; 29 because a person who eats and drinks without recognising the body is eating and drinking his own condemnation. 1 Corinthians 11:26-29 (NJB)
In these dire cultural circumstances, the social and political effects of which are sometimes masked by material prosperity, it was providential indeed that the deep reform of Catholicism initiated in the late nineteenth century by Leo XIII should have passed through a recovery of Word and Sacrament as the two pillars of the life of Christian discipleship. The life-transforming power of the Word of God in the words of the Bible is the Church’s countercultural riposte to the postmodern deprecation of the human capacity to know the deep truths of the human condition. The sacraments are Evangelical Catholicism’s countercultural antidote to the regnant Gnosticism of later modernity and postmodernity, because the Church’s sacramental system takes the stuff of the world and of human relationships with utmost seriousness, seeing in them the vehicles of divine grace.(1)
For about the past ten years professors and theologians have been advising pastors that since we now live in a “post-modern” and “post denominational” culture, that we need to change our ministry to address these new outlook on lfe – and indeed, change how we minister to others. Some of this has resulted in things like the two movements that have dominated conversation – the emergent and emerging churches. ( I highly recommend Jim Belcher’s book “Deep Church” to clarify what the differences are.
For those outside of the conversation – postmodernism is that outlook on life that is basically skeptical, that questions not only our institutions and ways of doing things – but questions the reasons we have developed that way. It is not a organized thought, for postmmodernists even question each other, but is often portrayed as the idea that there is no objective reality – and no objective truth. Personally, as a post-modernist, I wonder if it is not just the opposite. That we have found so many things wanting, when we question their presuppositions, that we long for something to grasp onto, to hold onto – to find that there is something solid – and that there is… hope.
I think that rather than doing battle with such, or mocking them, we have a much better approach – a very very Biblical one. We give them the reason we have hope – and rather than dealing with faulty reason or logic – we through the arts, through our simplicity, and with great humility, we share with them why we do have hope. We share with them a relationship that is real, and transcendent/incarnate. We let them experience the God who comes to us.
Put in terms a Lutheran or Catholic can understand – the answer to postmodern thought is not an engagement in debate where we provide there is an objective reality. The answer is word and sacrament. We introduce them to Him, to the Objective Reality who really desires to be with them, to show them great love, to reveal Himself to them, as the Holy Spirit as they hear the word of God – as they hear of His love and mercy and presence and grace, As we share with them the promises, the things they can expect because God loves them. We share with them what it means to “commune with God”, simply at first, from scripture. We use stories and modern music and art – the kind which captivates the senses, even as those things did in the middle ages. We engage them at a level where there skepticism and unbelief is put aside, and where they know this is more than what our minds can take in, and that it is real…
But this will require one thing of us, that we know what we are revealing – that church becomes more than an intellectually stimulating and entertaining time. That we realize that walking with God is a sacred thing. That we walk in the relationship with the God who comes to us, and cleanses us, and heals our brokenness.
That we experience Him, as He reveals Himself to us, in the very word ans sacraments which we will share with them.
As we do what the psalmist begs us to do…. to “be still – and (intimately) know that I am God.”
(1) Weigel, George (2013-02-05). Evangelical Catholicism (p. 47). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
evangelical catholic – pt. 3 – An interesting comment on fellowship/communion
Not quite a devotional but….a good thing to discuss!
I mentioned before, in pts 1 & 2 that the Lutherans were once callled “evangelical catholic”, so the title of this book by George Wiegel intrigued me, when I saw a friend reference it. It isn’t about Lutherans, or Lutheranism, but a look back at the last centruy of the Roman Catholic Church, looking at a change in the nature of ministry, a re-focusing. As I have read the first few pages and chapters, I realized that processing it might be better done in writing – as I see somethings incredibly… well “Lutheran”… and part of me wonders about how Luther would fare in today’s RCC. At any rate – since I am processing it, I suppose that some of you might enjoy the thoughts, or even better, engage in discussion. So here goes part 3.
Thus evangelical Catholics who adhere to the Gospel— once again, the truths that God has revealed for our salvation in Holy Scripture and the apostolic tradition— are in fuller communion with evangelical Protestants who affirm classic Christian orthodoxy than they are with prominent Catholic theologians such as Hans Küng, Roger Haight, and Elizabeth Johnson, despite being, canonically, in the same Church with the latter. (1)
The context of this quote, comes from a discussion about the church’s doctrine – and unity within the doctrine. It notes, fairly, that not all that claim the title of Catholic (we could add/substitute Lutheran or for that matter – Christian) do not agree with the teaching and/or practice of the church. There is obviously some flexibility in practice, the Franciscans/Capuchins do hold everything in common with the Dominicans or the numeraries of Opus Dei. But there are those who specifically break with the church. A great example would be Hans Kung, or the politicians who are pro-abortion, or pro-women’ s ordination, and yet claim to be good Catholics. The author notes a desire for people to be honest – if they have another faith, or even another god, just admit it – and follow that god and its teachings to the extreme.
That is another discussion, but it gives context.
What I am surprised at, is the idea that a catholic author would dare write that there are those of us out in the protestant sphere, who affirm classic Christian Orthodoxy, that closer in communion to those “evangelical catholics” – because of our focus on the gospel, and the task we’ve been given to plead with people to be reconciled to God ( II Cor. 5). It is something I’ve been wondering about for about 2 and a hlf years – whether our affiliation to our denominations is based in culture or ethnicity, rather than doctrine. That our battles within denominations are more about our preference of practice, than actually being consistent to the faith delivered to us.
Let me use an example.
A regular attender at one of the churches I pastored was an 88 year old lady – an incredible lady who was an active participant in the life of our parish. She went through the new members class with great joy, as she finally had answers that puzzled her forever. But when it came to the end of the class, she and I had a conversation- because while she wanted to be active in everything (except congregational meetings) and she loved the doctrine that she was taught, loved the service, loved the sacraments and the promises they gave her, she had called herself a Presbyterian all her life. It was hard to give up the word, and the fact that it made up so much of her identity, and she struggled with becoming a member – just because of a strong tie to the word…..
Kung does this – as do other theologians and even writers – look at all the catholic journalists who now are writing that the new pope must change this, or bring the church into the present by removing the restriction on “that”.
And we find ourselves – no matter the title, in fellowship with people who are different in their core beliefs, their core practices, while the people we have far more in common…we are separate from, standing across the road, as it where – able to see and wave and talk… yet…. It’s no wonder that many young people don’t grasp why the denominations are necessary, when they really aren’t united in doctrine.
I think ultimately, there are two options. Will we further dissect the church, creating smaller and smaller denominations and synods – niche marketing the faith as it were…
Or we will simply run to the cross, and pray…. for our unity – in Christ.
(1) Weigel, George (2013-02-05). Evangelical Catholicism (p. 38). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
