I did a thing last night.
During this journey I’ve been on into the deep liturgical history of the Church, I’ve had all sorts of new discoveries along the way. Some of them I have enjoyed and some of them I’ve balked at. For example, I was really uncomfortable for awhile about the whole idea of bishops. I was raised Baptist and we didn’t take to that sort of thing. I mean, if there’s someone who is outside the control of the deacons, that can’t be a good thing, right?! (That was sarcasm in case you were wondering.) I have loved the study of liturgical worship. My wife tells me I’m a nerd for getting into this so much and talking about it so much but oh well…then I’m a nerd. But the liturgical history of worship in the Church is rich and I commend the study of it to anyone who loves the Church. In fact, I just finished a book called “On The Apostolic Tradition” by Hippolytus. Whether there was one author or multiple is not the point of what I’m talking about. The liturgy in this writing comes from somewhere around 230-235 AD. Think about that for a second. We know what the liturgy of the Church was (at least the Hippolytean community in Rome) at around 235 AD. That is pretty awesome! By the way, some forms of this liturgy are still in use today. That should be, on some level, cool for you to know and participate in. But I digress. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Despite the sarcasm of all my Baptist friends and their “fasting not to be seen” comments, there is a long and rich tradition of the practice of Lent in the Christian Church. The point of Lent wasn’t to appear hyper spiritual. The point of Lent was a time of preparation for the Church. That time of preparation through prayer, fasting and self denial was to prepare us for Holy Week, when we remember the passion of our Lord Jesus. Being raised Baptist, I had never observed Lent. But now I’m no longer Baptist and now I join a huge number of faithful Christians who observe Lent. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday, during the worship service, ashes are placed (imposed) on the forehead of the believer by the priest or pastor. At our church, Church of the Redeemer (Nashville), this is done by the priests as we kneel before the cross displayed at the front of the church. I want to talk about my experience a bit. I am part of what is called the LEM team. LEM stands for Lay Eucharistic Ministers. We are non-clergy volunteers who go through a training period in order to serve the congregation and priests during worship. We do things like carry the cross and candles during the procession and recession. We serve the chalice of wine to the faithful who come to receive the Lord’s Supper. We carry the Gospel Book, we read Scripture and the Creeds. Basically, we are there to serve the people and the priests and deacons during the worship gathering. Last night I was the crucifer. I carried the crucifix during the procession, Gospel reading and recession. I also served as a chalice bearer. One of the things I love about liturgical worship (and that James KA Smith so eloquently unpacks) is that it engages all our senses. We see, we hear, we smell, we stand and sit and kneel and drink wine and eat bread; we speak aloud, we pray aloud and we pass the peace in handshakes or kisses on the cheek. I love this. The first thing that happened that helped me to become engaged last night was when I picked up the crucifix to carry it down the aisle. It was heavy; heavier than I had anticipated. The people stood in absolute silence as we processed down the aisle. It was so quiet I could hear my own footfalls as I walked on a carpeted aisle. It was a quiet, meditative and holy moment. The service was different. Less Scripture reading; the priests were wearing black cassocks, a cello played somber tones. It was deeply moving, quietly intense. But then the moment of the imposition of ashes came. I stood beside the Table. One of the priests picked up a small bowl and stuck his thumb into the black lump of ashes in the bowl. I don’t know why I did but I closed my eyes when his hand reached for my forehead. I heard his soft and solemn voice say, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Even as the words begin to sink in, I felt his thumb tracing a cross on to my forehead. The tactile scraping of the ashes was an immediate sensation. I could feel the grittiness of the ashes and smell them. In that moment I was starkly reminded that, contrary to my own selfish predilections, I am not the center of the universe; there is Another. There is One who is outside of me that determines my life and my worth and my mortality. And I was humbled and comforted by this fact. I feel like, even in the Church, we too often think we are the point. We think the world, and even the Church, revolves around us. But it doesn’t. The world, the Church revolves around Another, the One who has come, Jesus the Christ. He is the reason we sing, chant, pray, kneel. It is His body that was broken for us that is present with us in some mysterious way when we come to His table. It is His blood that was shed, beaten and nailed and pierced out of Him, so that you and I, by faith, may be made whole and right before God our Father and Creator. He is with us; in the daily moments and in the holy ones. He was present with us last night as the ashes scraped across our foreheads and we were reminded of our mortality. In our mortality we are reminded that our desire for immortality, for eternal significance is only found in the broken and resurrected body of our Lord Jesus Christ. We came to the Table after the ashes were imposed. I served the cup to my brothers and sisters and watched as some wept, some smiled, some laughed for joy, some prayed. But all of us knew that something holy was happening. Jesus was among us. And it was beautiful. Soli Deo Gloria!
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I used to have a band of brothers.
When I first came to Christ in faith I had a group of men around me. These men spurred me on to greater depth in Jesus. They encouraged me to pursue Him, to live in His Word, to pray fervently and to love the brothers. We did stuff together. We laughed, we cried, we confessed our sins to one another, we went on adventures together, we dreamed of growing old together and having stories to tell our children and grandchildren. Mostly we followed our King together. Somewhere along the way I lost that. I didn’t lose those friends but I just drifted. Somewhere along the way I allowed the pace of life to get me distracted and I stopped hanging out with guys like that; men who would pour their hearts into me and let me pour mine into them; men who didn’t shy away from the hard stuff. As I read the Gospels, I am shaken constantly by how much time Jesus spent with his disciples, but especially with three of them. Now, we can argue if you like about whether Jesus had “favorites” or not but the reality is that Jesus poured out a lot into that group of 12 men and especially into that group of three: Peter, James and John. They lived their lives together. They walked the dusty roads of Israel together, they shared meals together, they laughed and cried together, they learned together at the feet of the Master and Friend. (I wonder if Jesus performed the marriage ceremony for Peter?) Jesus had a band of brothers. Now I know that Jesus was doing a lot of that because He was getting ready to launch the Church with those men. I know that Jesus did all things intentionally and we would do well to learn from that. But I also believe that Jesus enjoyed what He did. He laughed at their jokes, made fun of their snoring, read the Word with them, taught them to pray, and maybe even watched them fall in love. Can you imagine the joy that Jesus must have felt as He watched those young men become who they became? They would become the ground floor of what we now call the Church! What joy Jesus must have felt. And what sorrow. He knew that those very men that He poured into would betray Him. He knew they would turn their backs on Him, deny Him and run away to protect themselves. Jesus knew the risks when He befriended them and chose them to follow Him. And knowing those risks, He did it anyway. Sure, you can argue that Jesus was God and so knew everything that was going to happen. And that would be true. But He did it anyway. Why would He do that? Aside from the obvious reason that He would use them to build His Church, I want to suggest another reason. Jesus befriended and walked with these men because He needed to. He needed to be in relationship with those men in order to be fully human. So that we would know what it looks like to be fully human, fully alive, Jesus showed us that we need to be in relationship not only with Him but with each other. We need each other. Despite the pain that comes with it. Despite the disappointment. Despite the messiness of it all. Despite the fact that He knew they would turn away from Him in His hour of deepest need. Jesus was showing us what it means to be fully alive. He was showing us that we need each other desperately. We need to laugh and love and weep and fight and eat with and shout at and engage in the messiness of life with each other because to be human, to be in the image of God, means to be in relationship. This is one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith, that we serve a God who is eternally three-in-one. God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit are in eternal union with each other as individual parts of One whole. I don’t understand that and neither do you. But we can all acknowledge, if we’re biblical Christians, that it’s true. And if the Trinity is in communion with each other, how much more do we need to be in community with each other, submitted to the lordship of King Jesus together? I used to have a band of brothers. By God’s grace, one day we will all be free to be who we are without shame, living our lives in the light of Jesus’ eternal physical presence with open hands and open hearts. And then we will all know the joy of true brotherhood with one another and with Him. Soli Deo Gloria! |
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