Feed my sheep...

I always seem to do my best thinking in the morning as I'm getting ready for the day. I'm not sure why this is...I really prefer to think at night. I was getting ready this morning thinking about a question I have fielded twice in recent months...once in my interview for the internship at PCPC and once in conversation with a friend. The question can be expressed in different ways, but the gist is the same. What is a pastor? What are we called to do and be? Unfortunately, I think the American church is answering this question more and more with the CEO model in mind. We manage programs. We oversee church growth. We make sure there is something for everybody when they come to our program on Sunday. My answer in both cases was an attempt to reflect the influence of Eugene Peterson on my thinking, particularly in his work, The Contemplative Pastor. My thoughts this morning went to the way I wish I had expressed myself on both occasions (the Jerk Store dilemma for you Seinfeld fans).

In John Christ calls himself the Good Shepherd and speaks of calling his sheep, and his sheep knowing his voice and coming to him. I think the Puritans hit upon this idea with their emphasis on the beatific vision. This is the belief that although God uses various and sundry means by which to call his own to him, all circumstances consist of this: A vision of the risen Saviour that is more beautiful and compelling than any other truth they have yet encountered; a vision to which, as the sheep in Christ's analogy, we cannot help but freely come. This is the moment in our lives at which Christ reveals himself to us. But it is short sighted to believe that we must spend the remainder of our lives looking back and remembering this vision. God graciously reveals himself to us throughout our lives by making the beatific vision more clear to us now and again. I believe this is the essence of what it means to be fed spiritually. God feeds his sheep by revealing a vision of himself that is compelling all over again.

This is why (in part) communion is not merely a memorial. We are his sheep, feeding on him in the supper. But what is the supper if not a drama played out of Christ in all his glory? Christ broken for us to the glory of God the Father...Christ in whom we live and move and have our being? What is the place of the sermon and reading of Scripture in worship? It is the gospel...we raise Christ up in our midst and worship him, being spiritually nourished by the Word through the word. So we see this concept of feeding on Christ even in our worship.

What then is the role of the pastor? In short, we (instrumentally) feed Christ's sheep! Jesus certainly gives us ample reason to believe this is true by his instruction to the newly reconciled Peter in the last chapters of John. "Do you love me? Feed my sheep." We are to feed the sheep. And what do the sheep feed upon? Christ! So, I say, together with Eugene Peterson, that "my job is not to solve people's problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives." What is "grace operating in their lives"? It is the beatific vision. It is the means by which we glimpse the presence of Christ. Peterson again: "Sometimes I think all I do as pastor is speak the word 'God' in a situation in which it hasn't been said before, where people haven't recognized his presence."

Conversely, I am reminded of something Dr. John Hannah was fond of saying in our historical theology classes at DTS. "What is someone who has abandoned the faith? It is someone that has found something more beautiful than the Savior." Although they believed Christ was most beautiful, they found something they believed was more beautiful. As under-shepherds we minister the grace of Christ by keeping always before our people, according to the means provided for in the Scripture, a vision of the risen Christ.

In our culture today the default by which pastors view themselves is all too often the CEO model in which they must be successful at managing and growing programs. They must make people feel better about themselves and their circumstances, essentially healing them of what ails them. Or they must keep people entertained (which is the basis of the question: How do we get people to come to our church and keep coming?). I consciously reject all of this. We desperately need more pastors in the church today that understand their calling: to minister the grace of God to their people by pointing them in all situations to the risen Saviour.

Holy Saturday...the Time Between

Here's a thought on Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Christ's work in death is a finished work, having accomplished the covering of our sins. It is past (in one sense). Put another way, our participation in the death of Christ is past (in this same sense). Christ's resurrection, while it is past for Him, is yet future for us (in its perfection). Therefore, the church has always since Christ lived in that Sabbath silence that existed on that Holy Saturday 2000 years ago. We are in that time between.

But contrary to the disciples on that day, we look forward with assurance to the hope of our resurrection. And don't miss that fact that that first Holy Saturday was a Sabbath. We are resting in Christ while we wait for our resurrection!

OK...I can't help it...

As I was reading, I thought of a graphic representation of an important concept in the observance of Christian time, so I threw it together real quick before I forgot it and figured I would post it here. It is very simple. Christian time is observed in one or all of three ways: Daily, Weekly, and Annually. Each one finds its connection in the resurrection event. The daily cycle is based upon the crucifixion and resurrection is at it's center. The weekly cycle centers upon Sunday worship, which is at its core a celebration of the resurrection event. The annual cycle has Resurrection Sunday at its center as its highest holy day. I have represented this below...

I am undone!

I have begun two books today that are so completely appropriate to my current thinking and so profoundly inspiring to me that I simply have nothing left to contribute in this setting with regard to liturgy or Christian time. It isn't that I am not still thinking through the subject...far from it. Nor is it unimportant for me to digest these things by writing about them in a non-threatening environment. But for the time being, I am so humbled that it would be best for me to point you to these resources for your own consideration. Once I have finished them I will once again address the subjects here on the blog.

The first of these is Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church by Laurence Hull Stookey. This was recommended to me long ago by Tim Ralston (a prof in the pastoral ministry department at DTS) and I am only just now attacking it in earnest. What a refreshing attempt to explain to a recovering fundy like myself the intersection of past and future in the present through the intersection of faith (in the form of confessional doctrine) and practice (in the form of the liturgical observance of Christian time). Wow! Anyone seeking to better understand the underlying principles of liturgical time should begin here. Simply breathtaking.

The second is a bit more provincial, but no less inspiring. Recovering Mother Kirk: The Case for Liturgy in the Reformed Tradition by D. G. Hart is an appeal to the Reformed faithful to recognize and return to a high view of the church. Hart's model for worship is Calvin's Geneva liturgy, rooting his argument in a solidly and historically reformed source. His opening argument for the centrality of ecclesiology as the unifying principle not only among Reformed and Presbyterians, but potentially among a wider audience, has really struck a chord with me. If you are Presbyterian and tempted to run to the Anglican, Roman Catholic, or even Orthodox tradition in order to find someone that has a high view of the church, make sure you stop off at this work by Hart before making the journey. If you have already made the trek, purely for liturgical reasons, I encourage you to consider the potential of the reformed faith to meet your liturgical needs. I sincerely hope that the reformed church will soon recognize its neglect of ecclesiology and the role of corporate worship in the life of the church and return to its roots.

As I said above, I will return to posting thoughts on this once I have finished these two works. Stay tuned!

Matt

Christ Redefines the Feasts

I want to posit an idea in this post that isn't new of itself. However, I have encountered it primarily among dispensationalists and I am wondering what we (having rejected dispensationalism) might take from it. If Lev 23 lays out an observance of time that is centered upon Christ (as I have argued), then we would expect to be able to look closer and see evidence of this. So let's do as much and see how we fare. Nota Bene: I am setting aside the Sabbath in the following because I believe it is an overarching principle that must be dealt with separately.

It is recognized by all that the first observance commanded, namely Passover, looked back to Israel's deliverance from the slavery of Egypt. From this side of the cross, we see that that very deliverance was a figure of Christ's work to deliver us from the bondage of sin. The lamb is central to the observance of Passover and becomes a key figure, especially in Isaiah and the Gospels, for the Messiah. Now that Christ has come and the cross work is finished, Passover has been redefined so that we look back to the cross and forward to the ultimate and perfect fruit of the cross work: the redemption of creation (and of special interest to us, of the elect). Although we observe communion weekly, or monthly, or quarterly, as the case may be, we do so always with Holy Week in view. Communion and Passover are inextricably linked.

Next, we come to the feast of firstfruits. This is an important step in our thinking. Christ nowhere explicitly reinterprets this for us, so we might be justified in arguing that its observance, in whatever sense, can be dismissed. However, Christ was resurrected on Firstfruits. And inasmuch, he is the Firstfruit...he is the firstborn among many brethren. We understand Firstfruits not as a literal celebration of the grace of God in his provision wrought from the earth itself, but in the provision of the first righteous man in the great work of redemption. And so, Resurrection Sunday is our Christian observance of Firstfruits.

Fifty days later (according to Lev 23) is the feast of Weeks. Can anyone miss that fact that God is following a pattern here? Christ is crucified on Passover, Resurrected on Firstfruits, and the Spirit descends upon the church at Pentecost, the conclusion to the Feast of Weeks. I am still studying Weeks to understand it well enough to draw a correlation between the two. For that matter I feel as though my understanding of Pentecost and the coming of the HS could use some tweaking as well. So I will have to revisit this topic.

We now have a trajectory through the feasts. Is there any dissent? Are there any among my readers that would begrudge this assertion? Are the feasts not clearly symbolic of the overarching work of redemption that God is unfolding in creation? If we are agreed that it is so, then it is with great interest that we turn to Trumpets. In redemptive history, we seem to have come to a standstill of sorts. Although the kingdom is certainly present and (I would argue) advancing, and the work of redemption is still unfolding, we have not experienced the next great event in redemptive history as it is foretold. Christ will return to His people. There will be final judgment. And we will enter into eternal rest in perfect community with God and one another. My study for the time being will take me into the remaining feasts (Trumpets, Atonement, and Booths) and how they may correlate to such events.

I want to make on thing clear, however. I am not interested in predictive effort. My point in this exercise, contra the dispensationalists, is not to ascertain the timing of Christ's Second Coming, which I believe to be a wasted effort, and moreso, contrary to the spirit taught by Christ and the apostles. I am trying, rather, to determine how our cyclical observance of time might be properly related to the OT command to observe these feasts forever. How might this command, properly understood and reinterpreted in light of Christ, change or inform our worship, both our annual cycle and within the observance of the feasts themselves.

So far we have seen that the church is keeping the feasts as commanded in the observance of communion, Resurrection Sunday, and Pentecost. However, after this we are in ordinary time until Advent. I'm curious to find out if Advent (during which time we look back to the coming of Christ into time and space, but more importantly look forward to his coming again) is not correlated to Trumpets.

One thing is clearly taught by those that observe a Christian year...the point of such observance is essentially to unite ourselves to Christ in a more tangible and physical way by re-enacting his life and ministry each year. By such observance, we are reminded of the life and ministry of the one to whom we are to conform, and in so observing, find ourselves being conformed! So the Christian year is consciously formed upon the life and ministry of Christ. This is a fascinating point to me given that trajectory I'm arguing for in this post: The feasts commanded by God for the ordering of the Jewish annual cycle also seem to be structured around the life and ministry of Christ. This is not accidental.

To someone raised in a liturgical tradition, it may seem as if I am reinventing the wheel with all this. But for those of us not only raised outside such tradition, but in traditions that demand that anything we do be biblically based, it is very important that we attempt to understand this biblically. This is especially of importance as we begin to evaluate the fuller tradition in the liturgical year. Is it, for example, proper to observe all the very many feast days and saints days that have accrued over the centuries? Cranmer himself dealt with this when formulating the prayer book. He removed a great many feasts and saints days from the Christian year. I think he might have been motivated primarily by a desire to simplify the observance of the Christian calendar, but that does not negate the clear implication that he felt comfortable doing so! He could only have felt at liberty to abandon these days if he did not feel compelled to observe them in the first place.

The question for us today, especially those that are not confessionally tied to the Prayer Book, is this: has the church once again accrued unnecessary feasts? More fundamentally, did Cranmer succeed in reducing the calendar to its essentials? In reflecting upon our own tradition, is it proper, necessary, or even helpful to reduce the calendar to its essentials. Must we only do those things commanded, or are we at liberty to add those things to our worship that might be helpful or have some wisdom in their observance. I suspect that the regulative principle would answer that we may not add, and this will be something for us to consider in the coming posts.

Where Time and Worship Converge

I replied to some thoughts of my good friend Thom in a post below, but since my reply advances on one of my themes a bit, I thought I would post it out here so that anyone following along wouldn't miss it. These thoughts are not original, except for perhaps in my own head. But they are an important part of my progression in thinking through this. Thom spoke of pulling the OT feasts through the work of Christ, and this is how I responded...

Thanks for the thoughts, Thom. It is precisely this pulling through the cross that I am ultimately preoccupied with. We must recognize that there is some discontinuity between the old administration and the new (although I am loath to use the word discontinuity). What then is the nature of that discontinuity and what are its practical effects? Christ has fulfilled the figures. He is that thing symbolized and looked forward to by the OT symbols. However, his fulfillment need not somehow trump the "forever" observance of, for example, passover. So we have in Passover one of the clearest examples. Clear because it was reinterpreted by our Lord himself. It has become the supper. So the command to observe passover forever is complied with in our observance of communion. And just as passover looked both backwards and forwards, so must communion as well. Communion is both a memorial of the finished work of Christ in space and time, as well as a reminder of the future reality of our perfect redemption and the perfect redemption of all creation. But they are brought together in the now not simply through memorial and reminder, but by the spiritual presence of the Lord himself in which all these things come together. In this way, we more clearly understand our union in Christ, and therefore also with one another. What a beautiful image!

If this is the case with Passover, why should it be true of Passover only? Some would argue it is because Christ only explicitly gave us this reinterpretation, and no other. Those of us coming from a more reformed tradition would also make the connection with regard to circumcision (which is also a forever institution) and baptism, with which it has been reinterpreted. And I willingly concede that Christ does not seem to have explicitly reinterpreted any of the other feasts. However, this fails to take seriously the forever quality of the feasts in the Jewish calendar.

More on this soon.