Dislocation

This entry has a subtitle -
Christianity without Gospel is pure religion.


In some of the southern states of America, you can still find the occasional 'church' which takes the closing passage of Mark's gospel literally.
Playing with poison or swaying with snakes is seen as the done thing, even though every once and a while things go badly wrong and someone dies, because the scriptures are not meant to be 'tested' that way.

If a "serpent" tries to kill God's child before his work here is done, then that's one one foolish creature (see Acts 28), but woe betide us if we think it's good to outlive God's calling (see 2 Kings 20).

It's wise to keep such thoughts in mind at present when we consider the thorny issue of what's currently happening, or not, in respect to our being 'church'.

This week, I listened/watched two broadcasts from a popular reformed presenter across the pond.
On the first, he noted that however much we may be enthralled by the current usage of tech to see each other during this crisis, whatever we think we're doing when we 'commune' like that on line, we're not really "doing church".

The reasoning here was sound enough - church has to be about the material gathering of the saints, because the Bride or Body of Christ is that company of those made whole purely by the redemptive work of Christ.

Great.

So far.

The second presentation was asking whether communion (taking the Lord's supper) was 'do-able' at home, or whether the church really had to be physically together for this to count. After laying out the various views on what goes on at the table, clearly favouring the approach that it was something entirely 'spiritual' (in the Reformed sense), the presenter then began waffling on about how some 'special dispensation' in respect to taking the elements might have to be agreed upon because of our present circumstances.

I was speechless.

Did my ears deceive me?
Nope - 'leaders' and 'pastors' may indeed come to a consensus where communion is 'done' differently whilst we are locked away from each other.

I appreciate that Christians have a spectrum of views on communion, but can you explain to me how it's possible to hold both of these expressed views from the same show at the same time?


Now, let me spell out what worries me here, and for this (for reasons that will quickly become very clear), I'm immensely grateful to my friends over at Mockingbird this month.


Let me begin by quoting from Brad Gray. In a piece on Tolkien and preaching this week, He wrote:
"As a clergyman, I will admit that preaching can become almost second nature. It is the repeatable task you can count on week-in and week-out. There’s a routine to it. And there is great comfort in that, but also great danger, too. The processes necessary to crank out another homily can become so implanted into your brain’s muscle memory that if you’re not careful, you can preach without ever feeling or sensing the words that comprise your sermon. The danger of preaching arises when the preacher himself is unmoved by that about which he is preaching. Such is why Tolkien’s words are, for me, so affecting. The import of the sermon is unlikely to stir the churchgoers unless I, too, am deeply stirred by the significance and truth of the 'myth' about which I am sermonizing. “Our people must realize that we are bent on serious business,” Protestant minister John Henry Jowett affirms, “that there is a deep, keen quest in our preaching, a sleepless and a deathless quest.” As a preacher, I see myself more as a storyteller than anything else, and the one story with which I’ve been charged to proclaim is the story God himself wrote with his own blood". 

Did you hear that?
Church is the place, notes Steve Brown in Hidden Agendas, where we are in such deep relationship with others that preaching, ministry and fellowship opens up the depths - "no sin is a surprise, no pain is suffered in private, and no fear is faced alone".

None of that is actually possible on zoom.
If we think it is, then the so-called TV evangelists of the last several decades, holding out every possible "blessing" in remote response to your faith (and your cash) clearly were right in their definition of 'church' all along and the rest of us are only now catching up.

What is possible is something that so easily slithers into the manner of 'reasonable spirituality' that we can 're-define' the word or sacraments so they are effectively detached from their true place, role and purpose, and that's where the second, deeper depth charge ignites.

Luke Roland noted in another article:
"The real danger to your Christian life is not sin but religion, which insists on muddling the message of the free gift of forgiveness. Religion seeks to put salvation in your hands and give you the false impression that works-righteousness can save you. Anything that draws you to works-righteousness and away from justification by grace alone through faith is big trouble. Remember what the Apostle Paul said: If anyone comes preaching another gospel to you then let them be accursed. Said another way, if anyone comes to you with anything other than the finished work of Christ, well, they can just go the hell on. Our message should be Christ and him crucified".

This is landing us on the right shore. I don't want the Preached word or Sacraments to be mine to steer or control, to 'define' and pragmatise by my criteria, because the door quickly swings wide open to something other than Christ and our fellowship in Him.

Luke continues:

"Religion demands your participation for survival, but there are no more requirements. Jesus has wiped out the requirements that were against us (Col. 2:14)! We have permission to stop doing! Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling! Jesus paid it all! You are now free.So then, what do you want to do now that you don’t have to do anything? To me, that is exactly what enjoying your forgiveness means. The freedom to do anything. When you don’t have to do anything, then you can enjoy the freeing gift of forgiveness, and the world opens up around you".

He notes that being free, belonging to Christ and His own, makes him aware of how religion is thriving everywhere amidst this crisis, and he hates that.

I couldn't agree more.

Religion is primarily that which severs us from the unmerited mercy of God in Christ and puts what is deemed and determined as 'right' into our own hands (Galatians 5:4).
Christianity is the declaration that we are welcome to come, freely, to Christ in the sacraments and the faith to share with others in the freedom and fellowship that brings (1 John 1:7-10, 1 Corinthians 10:16 and 17).

It is imperative that at this moment, we stand fast together in that freedom, and not an empty caricature devised by religious inclination and devilish dilution of what God alone provides.

To conclude, the 'enoughness' of religion is a very real plague that the Gospel requires we avoid at all costs, so why these days are indeed hard to bear, it must be "Christ, and Him Crucified" that sustains us in the trial - whatever waters are faced, and whatever needs we may have (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). It is when the saving work of the Gospel alone addresses all of us, gathered by word and sacrament, that our hunger and thirst and quelled, because there alone we share in His death and resurrection. That is the single 'agenda' that heals.