April 2012 Newsletter article
O Christ,
create new hearts in us
that beat in
time with yours,
that, joined
by faith with your great heart,
become
love’s open doors.
We are your
body, risen Christ;
our hearts,
our hands we yield
that through
our life and ministry
your love
may be revealed.
- Herman G.
Stuempfle Jr., “O Christ, Your Heart, Compassionate,” ELW 722
Last week I
found myself reading an online review of a book about how religion can be
useful to atheists. Rather than digging into the core argument of either the
review or the book, I want to talk about one particularly valuable insight.
“If you ask people in modern western societies whether they
are religious, they tend to answer by telling you what they believe (or don't
believe). When you examine religion as a universal human phenomenon, however,
its connections with belief are far more tenuous.” (John Gray, http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2012/02/religion-atheism-atheists)
Gray points out a fact common to Western Christianity, and
certainly familiar to American Lutherans: too often we equate religion, or even
faith, with belief. Belief is one important aspect of faith, to be sure, but
the fact is that belief is an intellectual reality. Belief is, for the most
part, a brain-only kind of experience.
But our faith does not come only from our minds, from
rational or intellectual exercise. Some aspects of our faith are downright
irrational, and our understanding of God would be tremendously impoverished if
it we limited the ways in which we know God to the rational or intellectual.
As Lutherans, we understand our faith to be a gift from God,
given in God’s grace to we flawed humans who do not deserve it. Our faith is in
our hearts as often as in our minds, and furthermore, our experience of faith
is in our bodies.
Just think of our Sunday gathering for worship. We do not
only come for the readings or the sermon, as moving or intellectually
stimulating as that may be (or not, as I well know). We respond to those
readings with our voices, with song and prayer aloud. We taste the bread and
wine of Christ’s presence. We feel the water and oil on our foreheads, the
handshakes and high-fives and hugs of our sisters and brothers.
Of course, our precedent for all this embodied faith is as
solid as it could be: Jesus our Christ was himself a man, God enfleshed, with
all the aches and pains, smells and tastes that we have. In Jesus, God became
fully human for us, so that God would know humanity from the inside, as one of
us. As Jesus-followers, we rightly respond not by merely assenting to a set of
propositions, but by living our whole lives, with our whole selves, in grateful
response to what God has done for us in Jesus.
Which brings us to Holy Week. During these eight blessed
days, more than any other time in our church year, we engage our whole selves
in faith and worship. When the calendar turns to our most important times, we
embody our faith more profoundly than at any other time of the year.
On Palm Sunday, we wave palms with our arms and walk
ourselves into our worship space, imitating Jesus’ triumphal entry into
Jerusalem. We also speak along with our Gospel lessons, saying the words of the
crowd and other characters in these stories.
On Maundy Thursday, we wash one another’s feet, and allow
our feet to be washed, just as Jesus washed the feet of his unworthy friends.
Sure, it’s awkward. Sure, some of us don’t feel comfortable taking off our
shoes and letting our feet be washed by a pastor or assisting minster. Do you
think Jesus’ friends felt any more comfortable with it 2000 years ago? These
guys walked outdoors, nearly barefoot, all day, every day. I promise you that
every one of their feet was way more gross than yours is. And yet, they allowed
themselves to be vulnerable to the presence of Jesus in this ritual. They
recognized the deep meaning in this ancient ritual of serving those in need,
worthy and unworthy.
If you have never tried foot-washing, this is the year to
give it a try. You may find it awkward, but I hope you also find it a humbling
reminder, in your very body, that God’s unmerited grace and love are for you,
for your whole self, even the parts you may hide away from the world. To accept
the washing of your own feet is meant to be a sign that you accept God’s grace
and forgiveness even where and when you least deserve it. Let this ancient and
powerful embodied ritual show you how.
On Good Friday some of us carry the heavy wooden cross. Some
pray before that same cross on our knees, lighting candles, feeling their heat
and watching their flickering flames as our hearts search for the words to say
to our dying savior. We hear the sound of the tomb closing, so loud and ominous
that our bones may shake.
At the Vigil of Easter, we gather around the heat of the new
fire, kindled as a sign of God’s presence, from which we light the Paschal
candle and the candles we will carry as we walk into our worship space. We hear
and participate in the great stories of the Hebrew Scriptures, the stories of
the God who has always brought life from death. We respond to those stories
with unusual, joyous, sometimes hilarious music. We feel the water of baptism,
sprinkled as we affirm our baptismal promises and remember God’s promise in the
water. We do hear the gospel proclaimed in scripture and sermon, and we also
taste again the gospel proclaimed in bread and wine. Finally after the Vigil we
share a joyous celebration with yummy food and festive drink, and laughter.
And Easter Sunday again we move from font to table,
remembering our baptism and sharing in the feast of Jesus’ presence in bread
and wine, given for us for the forgiveness of sin. We sing joyous songs of
resurrection, remembering the bodily resurrection of Jesus that is the source
and center of this entire celebration.
And we go forth on Easter Sunday from the font and the table
to the most important embodiment of our faith. We go forth to live out our
faith with our whole selves every day, secure in our belief and bodily present
to those in need of healing and wholeness. Our faith is most embodied when we
take God’s embodied presence in our worship and bring that presence in our own
bodies to a world in need.
So bring your whole selves to worship this week to be fed
and forgiven. And when this week is over, when you have heard the whole story
of God’s love from creation through Jesus’ death and resurrection and into your
own life, then go forth and live out your thanks with all that you have and all
that you are.
Pastor Andrew
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