in, as the Social Gospel preachers of the early 1900s learned to their chagrin. It is debatable as to whether scientific and technical progress humanizes us or ever brings us closer to God.
In sermon and funeral orations, we have heard about ‘the divine spark in man’ or of the ‘eternal essence’ which cannot die. That is a purely religiocultural notion, not discoverable in the Bible. The New Testament teaches about death and resurrection to new life—a vastly different concept. Paul Tillich describes the Western myth of immortality as an escape from the “courage to be.”
To identify spring and Easter is to get all mixed up. T.S. Eliot said, “April is the saddest time of the year.” He was right. It gives off a hope that is futile. We know winter is coming. There is no hope found in the “eternal return” of the seasons. On the contrary, Easter speaks of something brand new—a dramatic break–up of the certain slavery of death. Once—only once—death was not as certain as winter—and that makes all the difference.
Worship as Experimental Experience
“There’s no such thing as non–liturgical worship. There’s either good or poor liturgy.”
Raised in the evangelical tradition, I know casual forms of service. Those who prayed looked askance at formalized petitions. Rather they “opened their mouths to let the Spirit fill them.” Yet, when analyzed, these casual prayers followed a formula that could find its way into print.
While at Park Church, from 1968 to 1971, much “experimental worship” developed around the country. In that local church, a good deal of restiveness manifested itself regarding the rather stiff and locked–in mode of the Sunday service. To some extent, sensing the desire for change, the Senior Minister, Rev. Ned Burr McKenney, in conjunction with the Board of Deacons, provided opportunity for new forms. In Lent of 1969 four alternative vesper services took place in Thompson Chapel. I provided planning and leadership.
The four services provided variety as follows:
1. A “Service for All Generations” included separate meditations for children, youth, and adults.
2. A “Sing–in for Peace” included a portion of a poem by the Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan. Convicted and sentenced for the destruction of draft files during the course of the Vietnam conflict, he then occupied a prison cell. The poem in part read:
A man stood on his nails
an ash like dew, a sweat
smelling of death and life.
Our evil Friday fled,
the blind face gently turned
another way, toward life.2
3. A “Folk Mass for Passion Sunday,” taken from the Revised Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper of the Episcopal Church, USA. Musicians at piano, bass guitar, and vibraharp accompanied the liturgy.
4. A “Drop–In Communion” for the first day in Holy Week presented the worship with a liturgy side by side with explanatory notes set for private reading. The printed meditation by Catholic author, Romano Guardini, led eventually to the printed invitation to come forward when ready to receive the loaf and the cup. The basic format of the service derived from the Iona Community of Scotland.
God is not better worshiped by some “high church endeavor on Main Street” rather than by a “low church” effort in a white frame sanctuary by the railroad track. Likewise, newness of form offers no panacea. Familiar forms may lead to dulled spirits. Some lively combination seems recommended. Liturgy may provide the comfort of the familiar and the adventure of the new. How desirable!
When two or three gather together, no matter the form, all seek the Presence.
Doing Theology Regularly
The parish minister is ordained and installed as “pastor and teacher.” So in the December 2003 newsletter at Bethel United Church of Christ, in Manchester, Michigan, I devoted the “Minister’s Minute” to one traditional theory about the way the sacrificial death of Jesus applies to our sins: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Old and current stories illustrate the meaning of “ransom” —The Norse myth of how everyone’s tears might ransom Baldur from the dead; the account of The Fisher King, in which a guilt–ridden disc jockey risks his own life to ransom a derelict back from the brink of destruction; the C.S. Lewis space fantasy in which Dr. Ransom fulfills the meaning of his name by saving the mythic planet, Perelandra, from destruction.
The dying of Jesus on the cross has, in Christian theology, been called a “ransom offering.” That is to say it is a price paid to redeem the people from aimlessness and sin back into the safety of God’s eternal care.
The notion of ransom sacrifice finds a small place in many main–line Protestant pulpits. Yet how does Jesus Christ, as the United Church of Christ Statement of Faith says, achieve the “conquering sin and death?” Ransom is one way of answering that question.
We ask, “Does God demand the ransom?” and answer, “Yes.” Immediately we add, “And God provides in Christ the ransom sacrifice.” What God’s moral law demands God’s loving will provides. As in the story of Abraham and Isaac, God both requires and provides the sacrifice.
Once we attended an organ dedication in a near–by church. We sang these words from the hymn, “Salvation unto Us Has Come”:
And yet the law fulfilled must be, or we were lost forever;
Therefore God sent His Son that He might us from death deliver;
He all the Law for us fulfilled and thus His Father’s anger stilled
Which over us impended.
Well, it rhymes, but is there reason? These words, translated from a German source, Paul Speratus (1484–1551), contemporaneous with Martin Luther, remind us of the theology that made the little girl report to her mother about the church service, “Well, I like Jesus, but I don’t like God.”
I do, however, resonate positively with the next stanza of the hymn:
Since Christ has full atonement made and brought to us salvation
Each Christian therefore may be glad and build on this foundation.
Thy grace alone, dear Lord, I plead Thy death my life now is indeed
For Thou hast paid my ransom.3
Other hymns proclaim the ransom. For example, the hymn, “Praise, My Soul, the God of Heaven,” reads as follows:
Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven; to his feet your tribute bring,
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore God’s praises sing.4
It may well be argued that a key verse in St. Mark’s gospel is, “For the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
God
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