August 26, 2014 Quo Vadis?
My prior three posts trying to understand the criticism of Viola Larson leaned heavily on the nature of the Protestant Reformation. I referred to work by H. Richard Niebuhr who proffered a very penetrating analysis of the dilemma of the Reformation that in its most basic form was an overthrow of institutional order for benefit of spirituality. Let's look a little further.
In spite of professed interest in "orthodoxy," the primary objections of many modern critics seem to concern exploring or changing forms of faithful worship and understanding how to apply scripture in a modern scientific world outside their personal historical experience. I can empathize with that frustration and desire for simple, formulaic answers.
I grew up in a congregation and seemingly simple way of life that was imprinted by the church. In my congregation I was introduced to music at an early age and have sung in church choirs for over fifty years. I grew up singing works by Bach, Handel, Ralph von Williams, Faure, old 1800 hymns from the Baptist Hymnal, and many, many others. The power of the Requiem mass by Faure, or Handel's Messiah as part of a true worship experience for me cannot be understated.
Worship is music. Music touches the soul of the person. Many people who matured in my era worshipped in forms involving the classical ordered structure and music and as penitent congregants. We should continue to sustain the form of that spiritual comfort for folks our age, it does not hinder necessarily our ministry to the newer world.
But worship leaders and laity face a higher loyalty, to be an effective and authentic witness of the power of the Gospel to the world. People of my children's age and younger are left flat often by the institutional ritual form of our older protestant worship service, by the music and passivity and the judgments of the congregants in the worship experience. To them, we are not authentic Christians but old skeletons.
If we structure an order of worship and its content to provide an authentic witness to the power of God to these age groups, must we constrain ourselves to this older worship form and music? The answer is obviously "no" if we care about those who do not worship at all.
As a mediocre church musician, I can walk away from that old form of worship (with some selfish sense of loss), but I find also power in music by the Blind Boys of Alabama, Annie Lennox, Ben Harper, Bob Marley, just to name a few. Many of my colleagues cringe at these songs. I cringe at the somewhat vapid (to me) content of so-called "modern pop Christian songs." I can find and sustain spiritual comfort in new worship forms that bring in those who are outside our congregations. Frankly, it is an obligation rooted in Matthew 28. "If it plays in Peoria," I'll try to use it there.
Where am I going?
This little reflection on church music in worship makes a simple point about the larger issue of authentic Christian worship. If we take our responsibility seriously that we are ministers of Christ in the world, then we must ensure we speak in a language the people of the world understand as they live in this dirty, chaotic old world. We must project Christian compassion in an authentic experience for modern people.
This is a hard task for many people who grew up in the church in the early to mid-twentieth century. Some might say an unfair task to expect us to abandon our old comfortable ways to bring the Good News to people who see our old ways as leaden and devoid of Spirit, regardless of how spiritually uplifting it may be to us. (Neil Young sung a song called "Old Ways." A signature line is "Old ways, it is so hard to change them,...(they) can be a ball and chain.")
The message of the Gospel is, "It is not about us, it is about the lost sheep." In the greater scheme, our present discomfort with new ways of worship are not very high concern on that obligation.
Something happened at worship this Sunday morning that brings all this home to me. I left worship today angry, not joyful because we were told that the session is going to tear out the old windows of our Greek Revival sanctuary and put in more modern plastic ones without even inquiring how we felt. It is embarrassing how persistently the old ways of tradition hang on and how easy it is let tradition cloud worship. This experience certainly shows how easily I can get lost longing for tradition, while even here I critique it. (My wife says, "get over it, they are only windows." And you know what? She is right.)
A Reprise
This brings me to a reprise of my comments on the grief of Viola Larson. Her grief pains me both for the hurt she does to good Christian ministers as for her own anguish and fear. Those old single pane, double hung windows in the sanctuary hammer home that point to me.
Perhaps many people like her who are so upset today over the changes in the church should appreciate exactly what happened when Luther and Calvin and others launched this revolution against the Catholic Church.
In truth, the Reformation was not a revolution against the Catholic Church but a revolution against frozen institutionalism that extinguished the connection of the person in the pew with the spirituality of God's presence in their lives, not some transcendent, unchanging, immutable distant God embodied in a symbolic icon but one whose presence is guaranteed by the immanence of the Holy Spirit found in authentic worship.
Calvin would argue strongly that spirituality had left the Catholic Church in large part being replaced by institutional practices of ritual and objective forms whose underlying connection to the Holy Spirit was lost. (But even Calvin recognized that there were people in the Catholic Church who felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, regardless of its rigid form of worship.)
If you think about it, much of the criticism against reform today uses a similar defense. They accuse the modern reformers of trashing the historical tradition of the Protestant orthodoxy, uprooting its form and circumstance, and erasing the authority of scripture to guide faith. Some conclude because new congregations do not use the same words (even though they are often are code words for a broader collaboration of cultural conservatism and their "orthodoxy") these new congregations and their pastors must be heretical.
Just as the threat to Catholic orthodoxy by the Reformation was horrifying to those leaders and participants of the Church who were responsible for its promulgation and defense, the struggle to find new authentic forms of worship for the new "lost sheep" threatens "Reformed orthodoxy."
I do not want to pick on the Presbyterian Layman, but if you listen to their objections to the changes in Presbyterian polity, for example as espoused byViola Larson, you cannot avoid seeing the similarity of reaction to that of the Catholic Church in the 1500's. Rules are more important than substance. The answers of rigid, brick-like, prescriptive scripture is more important than working out our salvation in fear and trembling. Telling you how to believe is more important than working it out for yourself. Their "Reformed orthodoxy" is sometimes meaningful, but often is a selfish smoke screen to resist uncomfortable changes in the institution - like those sanctuary windows.
This year we note the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Knox, the so-called father of Reformed Presbyterianism. (Shouldn't we name the founder Christ?) Perhaps we should pause to consider this dilemma of our ongoing Reformation in a more earnest and humble way. Are we worshipping the Lord or are we worshipping "orthodoxy" and denominationalism that serves as a supposed port in the storm?
In another way, Are we dry bones with no spirit, or so alive with the promise of faith that we cannot wait to share with the world the message that there is a home?
As leaders and heirs of Reformed Protestantism, we have no port in the storm to rest from our duty. But, we know we are going home.
Grace and peace
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