Faith, Justice, and Culture: Exploring Love, Truth, and Social Justice

Faith, Justice, and Culture: Exploring Love, Truth, and Social Justice is an adult formation study using Pope Benedict’s encyclical, Charity in Truth to discover a nuanced approach to the social teaching of the church. Four sessions are used to uncover Benedict’s careful development of what it means that the love of God is only reflected well in light of his truth and his call to understand the nature of justice as the free response to God’s love that poses a challenge to fallen systems and cultures in order to advance his kingdom in redemptive ways in the world.

Sessions five-eight use the framework of charity in truth to explore specific cultural issues based on input from study participants and on contemporary events that highlight pressing issues both national and global:

  • Session five: Systemic racism
  • Session six: Issues of life and human dignity (abortion, euthanasia)
  • Session seven: Prioritizing justice—social issues, economy, foreign policy/security, migration,
    poverty/hunger…
  • Session eight: Cultural grab bag—individual and social identity (gender, sexuality), pandemic,
    freedom of speech, cancel culture…

The complete study guide below includes a model for considering cultural issues in light of Benedict’s teaching and the gospel as well as a glossary and links to other important materials that inform the church’s social teaching.

Charity in Truth, by Pope Benedict XVI

Simple Wisdom: Biblical Guidance for Practical Living

Simple Wisdom: Biblical Guidance for Practical Living is a series of three sessions designed to keep adult formation active in the church during the summer months. Vacations and other changes in routine do result in lower participation, but I have found keeping a simplified, practical study offering in place a rewarding thing to do. The effort is helpful to those who partake, and the smaller groups make for more intimate, fruitful discussion (and I have always resisted the notion that large numbers are a measure of the value of what we do in the life of the body of Christ).

This small series on simple wisdom is comprised of three sessions I like to use sometime in mid-July to easily August. Each are structured on a straightforward process of drawing on our shared experience to explore the difficulties and success in each area of life, exploring things we can find in scripture that might help, and then applying that biblical wisdom to the challenges we face.

The Search and the Joy of the Gospel

During my tenure as Director of Faith Formation, the Augustine Institute developed an excellent video series about the search for God called “The Search” (https://watch.formed.org/the-search). An excellent evangelistic tool, “The Search” dovetailed beautifully with Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel. I developed an adult formation class to consider what it means to search for God on the one hand and to engage in the evangelistic mission of the Church on the other, calling it simply, “The Search and the Joy of the Gospel.” Below is a link to the study guide as well as links to the two sources used in the class.

The Search at formed.org

The Joy of the Gospel, an apostolic exhortation by Pope Francis

RCIA/OCIA Kerygma Retreat

The heart of the Christian faith, and the rites of Christian initiation, is the kerygma (the gospel). The RCIA Kerygma Retreat includes the proclamation of God’s great creative and redemptive purpose and activity and an invitation to become a part of it.

Part of my duties as Director of Faith Formation included running the RCIA (Rite for Christian Initiation of Adults). The attached Kerygma Retreat was one of several extended sessions (3-4 hour “retreats”) I required for both candidates (Christians from other traditions who were becoming Catholic) and catechumens (new Christians preparing for their baptism). The retreat covers the full range of the gospel message, from creation, fall, and redemption to the new creation, already begun in Jesus Christ and yet to be fully consummated. The RCIA/OCIA Kerygma Retreat contextualizes the call to every person to know and submit to Jesus in this greater, cosmic redemptive purpose to make all things new. Using an insightful song from Christian artist Michael Card and his album The Hidden Face of God (“To a Broken God”), I included a video presentation intended to draw each participant to face the gospel message and its demands with a decisive commitment to follow Christ and become a part of his church.

The RCIA/OCIA Kerygma Retreat is included as an Apple Keynote presentation with PDF of landing images and a PDF study guide. A full resolution video is available (which can be used on any platform and paused for instruction). Please contact Dr. Chris (drchris@themystagogue.org) for the video version.

An invitation to sign

A great site inviting you to sign the Declaration for Life demonstrating your commitment to the dignity of all human persons, including the unborn.

A good friend of mine wrote a Declaration for Life, making a strong statement regarding the dignity of all human life, even that of the unborn. I invite you to read and sign the declaration.

https://declaration-for-life.org

Is God speaking?

Text: Amos 7.7-17
(This sermon was given in a Nazarene Church in Frederick, Maryland. References to people and places were to members of the congregation and places familiar to those gathered.)

Has anyone heard God speaking this morning? Did you really? What is he saying? (You don’t have to answer that out loud.)

We walk through these doors week after week. We sit and stand, sing and pray, listen to or sleep through sermons. Once a month we commune at the Lord’s table.

But do we ever really hear him speaking to us?

I don’t know about you, but I hear everything but God all too often. I hear my voice when we sing. I hear my worries when we pray. I hear coughs and kids, rustles and sniffles. I hear questions: “What is to come this week?” What is for dinner in an hour?” “Who did not make it in this morning?” “Why did I wear these shoes today?” “What am I doing on this platform?” I hear random thoughts, to do lists, noises, daydreams, sound system hums, and the soft tick of my watch.

Oh, I do think I hear from God, sometimes—but so little considering the time I say I spend in his presence. I hear God in whispers and snatches—but I wonder too many times whether I am hearing him speak, or just my own thoughts about him. Too often I take action and make decisions, and I wonder if it is something God really wants.

Have you ever wondered, as I have, what it must have been like to hear God like the apostles or the prophets? Don’t you wish you could?

Everything would be perfectly clear, wouldn’t it, if he would just call us to the mountain like Moses and tell us what he wants us to do. Or what if he met us on the road and spoke to us like Paul. We would change our careers in heartbeat and run off to be a missionary then, wouldn’t we?

What if, while we were sitting here today like Isaiah in the temple, God met us and told us exactly what to do and say—burning coals and all? We would hit the floor on our faces and change our attitudes about worship, wouldn’t we? How about if, while were just minding our own business and trimming the trees in the back yard, like Amos, God commanded us to run off to Canada to get the Prime Minister’s attention—we would do it, wouldn’t we?

The Lord speaks clearly, and loudly, perhaps, and we would all have little problem knowing what to do and taking action (or at least we think so). But what if we don’t hear God’s voice that way? How then do we hear what he has to say to us?

I have not heard of or experienced too many direct encounters that rank with those of the prophets and apostles. So what if God chose to send us a prophet?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if God’s prophet walked into our church this morning to tell us exactly what is on God’s mind? Wouldn’t it be grand if he waltzed into the our District Superintendent’s office and told everyone where God was really moving? Or what if he appeared at the doors of Nazarene headquarters in Kansas City and walked into a General Board meeting to deliver God’s word to the church?

We would hear God, then, wouldn’t we? We would all take notice, hunger for the Word of God, hang on the prophet’s every phrase…woudn’t we? Surely our DS would recognize God’s messenger and enlighten us as to what God has to say. If not him, of course our General Superintendents would. After all, they are leaders of a holiness denomination—they must already know what God has to say enough to recognize it from his prophet, right?

What would our prophet look like, I wonder. He would be alright, certainly, if he was dressed well. They would listen if he walked in with a nice suit (or at least business casual clothes), his latest book, and a forty day program based on five purposes. Or perhaps he would get a wide hearing if he held a conference on new ways of communicating to a postmodern world. His mixed-media presentation would generate some excitement. We would take notice if he worked in a little “message from the Lord” after the praise band and before the small group break-out sessions.

Or maybe God would send us a great speaker in blue jeans who really knows how to connect with us. Surely we would know he was authentic if he sat on a stool and gave us a real honest talk. We would know for certain that he was a prophet if he read from The Message and made everything understandable and homey.

What would happen, I wonder, if God spoke to Mike this week as he’s building out a new Safeway? He’s still in his coveralls, and his hands are coarse and grease stained from working on the sliding doors that morning. The blood dried where he nicked himself when he changed the circular saw blade before finishing the manager’s office, and he still has the pencil behind his ear, but the Lord said to go. So he grabs something from his tool box, jumps into his truck, and calls Kathy on his cell phone as he drives up to York Stillmeadow Church of the Nazarene where the pastors and church leaders for that mission area are gathering to meet with DS.

He gets there a bit late and notices that he hasn’t even taken off his coveralls yet, but it looks like things have started, and he feels the urgency of his message, so he walks into the building and heads off to where he hears the beat of the worship choruses.

He hesitates a bit when he gets to the door. Someone standing at the entrance looks at him a bit askew and begins to ask him why he’s here, but with a whispered prayer and a burst of courage, Mike presses on into the sanctuary (or is it a gymnasium?). He glances from side to side as he walks briskly towards the platform, noticing the puzzled looks, and not a few sneers, from those who notice the dirty carpenter in the coveralls rushing down the aisle.

Several see that he has something in his hand, and that he moves with urgency, so they move out of the rows of chairs to intercept him, concerned about his intentions. By this time, though, he’s reached the platform stairs and has begun to ascend to where the DS, still having a real God moment, has failed to see this new prophet. The pastor notices, though, but before he can move from the glass podium, Mike stops at one of the nearby microphones, nudging aside one of the band members in the process, and holds his right hand high. Dropping from his palm is a small brass weight at the end of a string—a plumb line from Mike’s tool box.

“This is what the Lord said to me,” Mike declares in a somewhat shaky voice. “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of the Church of the Nazarene and its people, as a measure of their faithfulness. I will no longer let them get away with what they’re doing.” The music has stopped and everyone is staring, some bemused, others puzzled, many irritated. “Your largest churches,” Mike continues with a little more confidence, “and your new gymnasiums shall be turned to rubble, and I will rise against your superintendents and your elders. I despise your gatherings, and I take no delight in your worship. Even though you sing and waive your arms, I will not hear you.”

By now the pastor has made it to Mike’s side and tries to gently push him away from the microphone. “Look , sir,” he says. “You can’t just come barging into a worship service like this. I’m not sure where you came, from, but let’s go to my office and talk.” As he’s led off the platform, Mike can hear the DS take charge of the service asking prayer for this obviously disturbed man.

“Go on home,” the Pastor says after he’s heard Mike describe his encounter with God. “I know what you feel God has said to you, but perhaps you should talk to your pastor about it. I know him. I’ll give him a call right away.” When Mike begins to protest he adds, “Look, there are many men of God here, ordained elders and district leaders. If God has such a message for us, he’ll tell us. Now why don’t you go on home, get some sleep, and talk to your pastor tomorrow.”

No one really expects something like that to happen, nor would any of us wish it on a good pastor. And we would certainly hope that God would speak in some other way to church leaders and members who are listening for his voice.

But are we really listening? Would we hear?

Bethel was the center of worship in Israel, kind of the York Stillmeadow of the northern kingdom. When Israel split with Judah to the south, Jerusalem and the temple was no longer available as a place of worship, and the capital in Samaria had no special religious significance. So worship was conducted and sacrifices made in the high places, such as Shiloh, Gilgal, and Bethel, places associated both with Canaanite worship and with the worship of Yahweh in Israel’s past.

It was to Bethel that the humble prophet Amos came at a time when Israel was enjoying renewed prosperity. Bethel was the official place of worship of the King, Jereboam II. After years of fighting between the northern and southern kingdoms, between Israel and Judah, and loss of territory from struggles between the superpowers of the time, both Israel and Judah were enjoying peace. Both kingdoms were regaining territory—in fact they had restored between them almost the full reach of Solomon’s kingdom.

Israel was prosperous, and many considered the king and kingdom blessed by God as a result. We even know from a brief entry in Kings that Jereboam had a prophetic supporter by the name of Jonah (2 Kings 14.25). He likely had the support of the prophetic voices of the court prophets, professionals assigned to the royal sanctuary at Bethel.

Things were going very well indeed, but God calls upon Amos, a shepherd and tree dresser from Judah, to go say otherwise. Let’s read about it in Amos.

This is what the Lord God showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings). When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,

“O Lord God, forgive, I beg you!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!”

The Lord relented concerning this;
“It shall not be,” said the Lord.

This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said,

“O Lord God, cease, I beg you!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!”

The Lord relented concerning this; “This also shall not be,” said the Lord God.

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,

“See, I am setting a plumb line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by;
the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said,

‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
and Israel must go into exile
away from his land.’ ”

And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’

“Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.
You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’

Therefore thus says the Lord:
‘Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
and your land shall be parceled out by line;
you yourself shall die in an unclean land,
and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.’ ” (7.1-17)

Needless to say, Amos was quite unpopular around Bethel, and the word of the Lord, sent through a simple shepherd from the other side of the kingdom border, was not heard. But why so harsh a message when things were going so well? What was so wrong that Amos was sent to contradict the king, his prophets, and his priest?

In chapter five we find out why:

They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.

For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins—you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.

Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time. (5.10-13)

OW! We hear echoes of Amos in John, don’t we, when he says, “Whoever says, ‘I have come to know him,’ but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist” (1 John 2.4); Or in Paul, when he says, “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their actions. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work” (Titus 1.16).

Amos comes with the word of the Lord that cuts through the false piety and the lie of Israel’s empty ritual. “Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts,” we read in verse 16 of chapter 5.

”In all the squares there shall be wailing; and in all the streets they shall say, ‘Alas! Alas!’ They shall call the farmers to mourning, and those skilled in lamentation to wailing; in all the vineyards there shall be wailing, for I will pass through the midst of you,” says the Lord.

“Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?” (5.16-20)

And if that’s not enough, the Lord through Amos continues,

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. (5.21-24)

No wonder Amaziah tried to shoo Amos away!

At a time when Israel was quite comfortable, the Lord, through a very simple man named Amos, exposed them for what they were, and made them uncomfortable. Essentially he said,

– You’re not living in obedience to me. Your religion hasn’t penetrated your life.

– You play at worshipping me, and then you betray me through your injustice.

– You talk of truth and righteousness, but you practice all kinds of deceit and trample on the poor and needy.

– You pretend to be my people, to love me, and yet you mock me through your arrogance and your sin, and so, “I will command and shake the house of Israel among the nations as one shakes a sieve, but no pebble shall fall to the ground. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say, ‘Evil shall not overtake or meet us’” (9.9-10).

We’re all squirming a bit now. Don’t worry, no need to look nervously at your watches. Let me put your mind at ease. I’m not about to launch into a pointed examination of our spiritual condition.

I’m going to let you do that yourself.

What I would like to do is have us think about how we hear God, as we consider for a moment why Israel could not. Why didn’t Israel listen to Amos (or the many other prophets who came after them)? Why did God fulfill his promised punishment by sending Tilgath Pilesar and the Assyrians upon them?

Was it because:

– They were comfortable and complacent?

– Because they were distracted

…by the demands of their successful lives?

…by their work, their commerce, and their profit?

– Or perhaps because they were deafened by the noise of their own faithfulness

…their happy attendance at worship (even as they looked at the clock and wondered when they could get on with things).

…their singing and feasting, their sacrifices and their offerings (their worship teams and their conferences, their concerts and their programs).

…their obedience of the their rules and forms that kept them from seeing how they were failing to live in true obedience.

It was all of these things and more.

Another time we will consider how God chose to speak his word to Israel. We might at least wonder now if they would have heard if anyone but a peasant from the south had brought the message. And yet, when we look at all the other prophets he sent and all of the times he was not heard, even through nobles and sons of priests, we know the answer: Israel and her king were too wrapped up in themselves to hear and live the word of God, and they paid dearly as a result.

But one more question remains before I let you go to get on with whatever may be more important than being here to hear God’s word.

What about those who do hear? What was to happen to them?

Amos has only a few words of promise, but they are so precious and so full hope. They didn’t mean much, I am sure, to those who wouldn’t heed the warning, for what are words of promise to those who don’t sense disaster?

But the Lord said, “On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its branches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; in order that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, says the Lord who does this.

“The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when the one who plows shall overtake the one who reaps, and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.

“I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.

“I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God” (9.11-15)

So as you leave this morning and reflect on God’s word through Amos the shepherd and tree dresser, I want you to consider these few simple questions:

– How has God been trying to speak to you?

– How receptive are you really to what he’s trying to say?

– How selective is your hearing?

Paul said to the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test” (2 Cor. 13.5)! And so also he said, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (2 Cor. 5.17)!

I leave you this morning, as you consider whether or not you can take hold of the promise and not fear the punishment with a very simple plea: Hear the word of the Lord!

The terrifying light of Epiphany

Text: Isaiah 9.1–7; (Matt. 4.12–23); Luke 5.1–11

The weeks between the feast of the Epiphany and the beginning of Lent are treated by some Christian traditions as ordinary time. Ordinary time for the church has always been more an extraordinary time in which the ongoing reality of the kingdom of God and the gospel are explored, never untethered from the anchoring feats that preceded them—Epiphany and Pentecost. In that spirit, the readings for this brief season advance the themes of the feast of the Epiphany itself, the most ancient on the Christian calendar. This is the season of the celebration of the appearance and revelation of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and our readings today are those from the 3rd week of the Epiphany season.

Epiphany, by definition, is a disclosure of something hidden, a revealing of something that was once obscure or unknown. To have an epiphany is to have one’s eyes opened, to see the true nature of something for the first time. To be an epiphany, as Christ was, is to make something known through one’s own nature and way of being.

Epiphany has its opposites—obscurity, blindness, and darkness. It is not hard to find descriptions of the darkness that preceded the epiphany of Jesus Christ. Most of the prophets spent the best part of their lives trying to identify and dispel this darkness. Today we will reach back a little before our Old Testament reading in Isaiah for a sense of the darkness the prophet Isaiah attempted to lift with the light of God’s revelation.

Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity,
Offspring who do evil,
children who deal corruptly,
who have forsaken the Lord,
who have despised the Holy One of Israel,
who are utterly estranged. (Is. 1.4)

Your country lies desolate,
your cities are burned with fire;
in your very presence aliens devour your land;
it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners. (1.7)

Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. (1.13–15)

Therefore says the Sovereign, the Lord of Hosts, the Mighty one of Israel:
“Ah, I will pour out my wrath on my enemies, and avenge myself on my foes!
I will turn my hand against you; I will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove your alloy.” (1.24–26)

Rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together,
and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.
The strong shall become like tinder,
and their work like a spark;
they and their work shall burn together, with no one to quench them. (1.28, 31)

Enter into the rock, and hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty.
The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled; and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day. (2.10–11)

Ah, you who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Ah you who are wise in your own eyes, and shrewd in your own sight!
Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant at mixing drink,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
and deprive the innocent of their rights!

Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble,
and as dry grass sinks down in the flame,
so their root will become rotten, and their blossom go up like dust;
for they have rejected the instruction of the Lord of Hosts,
and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people,
and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them;
the mountains quaked, and their corpses were like refuse in the streets.
For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still. (5.20–25)

Such was the darkness in Judah when Isaiah first prophesied. In fact, so dark with disobedience and injustice was Israel’s history, that Israel had divided, the Northern kingdom had fallen, and Judah was now also exposed to the threat of invasion and destruction. The continued apostasy of their current king, Isaiah knew, would do nothing to avert the Lord’s punishment or lift the impending doom. Their past was riddled with guilt and shame, and the result was a darkness of their own making, of their own sin. For those who were astute enough to heed the prophets, it was a time of great fear and foreboding.

In chapter 9 of Isaiah, in our Old Testament reading for today, a word of hope appears much like the epiphany of the messiah himself.

But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.

You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.

For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (9.1–7)

Light, joy, peace, justice, righteousness—what a contrast with the darkness of Israel’s past. From the destitute land of Zebulun and Naphtali, a region already lost to Judah and occupied by the Assyrians, will come a great light. (Isn’t it so like our God to bring hope out of the place of deepest darkness!) For the people of Judah, this is a light dimmed by a present darkness, a hope for a distant future as the darkness deepens, the Assyrians plunder, and the people are scattered. When Isaiah speaks these words, Judah has much yet to face. As Isaiah has already said, “his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still” (5.25).

Isaiah was a great prophet crying for repentance in the midst of gathering gloom, holding up the light of a distant hope to which the destitute and scattered Israel would cling for hundreds of years. More than 700 years later, another prophet forseen by Isaiah, John the Baptist, cries alone in the wilderness for repentance. In a land of darkness and oppression, of sin and injustice—in the very land of Zebulun and Naphtali, known as Capernaum in Galilee—the light Isaiah described appears to establish the kingdom of God and “uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time onward and forevermore” (9.7).

Ah, but this light is still hidden.

This light comes in the unexpected form of a man named Jesus who begins his ministry quietly in a remote seaside town. This light is no longer distant, for it is with us in the person of Jesus, but few recognize it for what it is. The light itself is not dimmed, but the eyes of the people have been dimmed through centuries of disobedience.

Blessed are those who do see, who are graced with epiphany and witness the great light:

– the shepherds in the hills;

– the wise men, gentile princes from far off lands;

– an old man, Simeon, at the temple;

– Anna, a little known but faithful prophetess;

– Mary and Joseph, simple folk and unexpected parents of an amazing child;

– and John the Baptist—a filthy religious fanatic in the dessert (known as a prophet to those who listen) who saw the great light, and the lamb.

Jesus is the great light in the darkness—wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.

But he was born…in obscurity;

circumcised…just like any ordinary Jewish boy;

dedicated at the temple…with all the rest;

baptized…in the wilderness;

tempted…alone;

and began to unfold the glorious truth of the eternal kingdom of God…in a small, God-forsaken region called Galilee (can anything good come from Galilee? someone later asked).

Jesus’ coming was not the way most expected the messiah to make his appearance, and so only a few witnessed this epiphany of God for what it was—but what a blessed few!

Those who experienced the true epiphany of Christ were changed forever:

– The shepherds remained shepherds, but returned to their flocks “glorifying and praising God” (Luke 2.20).

– The wise men, “overwhelmed with joy,” worshiped the great light and returned to their countries in secret to protect the newborn Lord (Matthew 2.10-11).

– Simeon glorified God and entered his eternal rest in peace, having seen the salvation of the Lord, the “light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of the people of Israel” (Luke 2.32).

– Anna rejoiced, having seen the “redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2.38).

– Mary and Joseph wondered and marveled at what they witnessed, and who they nurtured. When Joseph was gone, Mary would follow her son as Lord, even as she witnessed the fullness of what that meant. She would witness everything—even the resurrection!

– John the Baptist knew what he saw perhaps better than anyone else, and in his awareness recognized that he was not even worthy to untie the thong of Jesus’ sandals (Luke 3.16).

Our gospel reading this morning, tells us of a few others who encountered this living epiphany only to leave all that they were to be changed forever.

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. (Matt 4.18–22)

Let’s focus this morning on one of these and turn to Luke 5 for a more complete picture of his own encounter with the light in the darkness.

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him. (Luke 5.1–11)

Peter had his own epiphany, the first of many, we know.

His reaction to Jesus might seem at first a reaction to the miracle of the catch of fish. But we know from other accounts in Luke and the other gospels that Peter had been around Jesus for a while by this time, perhaps almost a year. In fact, Jesus had spent some time in and around Peter’s home in Capernaum and had even been a guest in his house. We know that this was not the first miracle Peter had witnessed. It was not even the most spectacular.

In Peter’s own home, Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law from a fever, and it was in Peter’s home that people from around the region brought their sick to be healed, including many plagued by demons (Luke 4.38-41). While staying in Capernaum, presumably still in Peter’s home, Jesus also taught at the local synagogue, gathering crowds and eliciting amazement from those who heard him (Luke 4.31-37).

So what was a small catch of fish to a man who had already witnessed so much? Why was this day, when Jesus taught the crowds from Peter’s boat, any different from any other for Peter? What was it about this very simple miracle that lifted the veil enough for Peter to realize who Jesus was?

We cannot know for sure, but we might be able to guess.

We could start by looking at Peter’s reaction—and what it tell us about him. His fear is obvious, as is the fact that it is directed at Jesus. He fell at Jesus feet—something a servant would do before his master, or a worshiper before his God—but his words were not words of praise for the miracle or thanksgiving for the fish. Something in what he witnessed made Peter see beyond the veil of his own darkness to the light of Jesus, and it made him afraid.

What he saw made him realize how truly unprepared he was to face the great light. What he saw caused him to face up to the darkness of his own past, and in an act of pure desperation, Peter confessed his sinfulness and begged Jesus to leave.

But we still might ask—what triggered such a reaction?

Notice that all of those with Peter were equally amazed at the catch of fish, but only Peter reacts this way. Perhaps it was the fish themselves, something Peter knew well as a fisherman. As only Peter would, he very nearly scolds Jesus for suggesting they try to catch more fish. After all, he is the expert (and of what we know of his personality and the leadership he takes later on, he was likely the fisherman in charge that day). Perhaps it was the unexpected abundance. Maybe Peter was confronted not only by miraculous ability of Jesus by the full force of his gracious generosity. “…they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break” (5.6). And after they called over another boat, both were filled until they began to sink.

Whatever it was, like when a curtain in a dark room is thrown open to reveal the bright, even harsh radiance of the sun, Peter stood face to face with the overpowering brilliance of the light of the world—and he was afraid.

Afraid of what might be asked of him?

Afraid that he was not good enough to respond?

Afraid that his sin, his past, would be shown for what it was?

Afraid of that all that he had been doing to cope with life would prove to be inadequate?

Consider this moment for Peter from the perspective of songwriter Michael Card. Put yourself in Peter’s shoes. Let the Lord speak to you through Peter’s story.

In response to the miraculous catch, Peter asks for what he really does not want—he asks for Jesus to leave. He has become the frightened fish, thrashing in the net, wanting to get away, or at least for Jesus to get away from him. Peter has come face to face with the frightening possibility of complete success. Failure, like their earlier empty nets, seems so much safer and predictable.

…often in the presence of Peter, when Jesus reveals his true nature in a new way, the first worded from his mouth anew “Don’t be afraid.” When he calms the storm (Mark 4:40), when he walks on the water (Mark 6:50; John 6:20), when he is transfigured into blazing light (Matthew 17:7) and when he is raised from the dead (Matthew 28:10)—each time Jesus comforts and calms Peter with these words. In each instance, when the veil is temporarily lifted and Peter has the terrifying realization that he, a veteran sinner, is in the presence of undiminished Deity, it totally undoes him (as indeed it should).

…But what’s so terrifying about a net full of fish? Though this kind of volume was certainly a rarity for Simon and his partners, they had seen lots of fish before. Even the miraculous fact that they had come from out of nowhere, out of a lake they know was empty, is an occasion for wonder certainly, but fear?

Simon fears because he is a man who, thanks to the preaching of John the Baptist, has become aware of his sinful state. And now he has become the beneficiary of Jesus, who has graciously filled his nets in spite of himself. There was nothing in his experience, nor in ours, that could have prepared him for this kind of frightening generosity. We are forever asking for things we think we deserve. Simon knew then what we need to learn now: what we deserve is only death and separation from God and all his goodness. If we, for one blink, could step back and glimpse the awesome generosity of the One who should, by all rights, destroy us, we would join Simon on our knees with same confession on trembling lips.

Fear is what has driven Simon to his knees. He has heard the preaching of John the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom is at hand.” His heart has been preconditioned by that preaching; he has been pricked by an awareness that he is, in fact, not ready for the kingdom’s coming. We should all be rightly afraid for the whole world to be on fire. But now, behold, it has so obviously come. Jesus’ miracle language provides the perfect message for the fishermen. You speak to Magi with a star. You convince a fisherman with fish! What he has waited, prayed and longed for all his life is here! And the thought of it absolutely scares Simon to death. The overflowing nets are the sign. (Card, Michael. A Fragile Stone: The Emotional Life of Simon Peter. Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois, 2003, 39–41)

Look at Peter. He’s afraid. He’s very aware of his own sin. And Jesus is very aware of Peter’s sin.

Peter’s going to screw up again and again. He’s impulsive, headstrong, and cowardly. He’s going to deny his Lord and friend. Even later as the foremost apostle and leader of the church, he’s going to screw up and have to be called to account by Paul as we read in Galatians (2.11-14).

But this makes him the very person Jesus is looking for!

Jesus’ word is crucial. “Fear not!” Our sinfulness will ultimately be dealt with. Now, because of his coming, our sin can never stand between us and Jesus. Peter’s confession of his sinfulness means he is precisely the man for whom Jesus is looking. In fact, he is the first person to confess his sinfulness to Jesus.

“They must burn their boast and plunge into absolute insecurity to learn the demand and the gift of Christ” (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p. 53).

Jesus has come, and the line between the world of the Old Testament and the New is now clearly drawn in the sand beside the lake. In the world of the Old Testament, having faith meant waiting faithfully for God to make good on his promises. In the New Testament world, faith means only one thing: following Jesus. Not only did the four of them walk away from their nets and boats, the left behind a net full of fish to follow Jesus! The promises have all been fulfilled; the Promised One is here. Now having faith means following the One in whom God has spoken his “Yes!” to every pledge he ever made to us. The fishermen really have no choice: if they are to be faithful, they must follow. We too really have no choice. Waiting is no longer an option. (Card, 41)

Fear not!

In Peter’s most honest moment of fear and confession, when he is the most vulnerable, most aware of his weakness and sin, his brother and Lord reaches out to him and says, “Don’t be afraid—I want you for something important, and I’m going to help you do it.” Jesus meets Peter at the point of his fear and his sin and calls him to be unsettled, to become part of God’s story of redemption for the whole world, to put his fear and his weakness into the service of the kingdom, and to abandon himself to the will and the care of Jesus.

And Peter—he goes. No questions, still full of fear, still aware of his own inadequacy, still wondering what will come next, still terrified at the prospect of letting go of all he knows and holds dear, and he follows Jesus to seek others who are in darkness and afraid.

“Fear not,” Jesus said. “Follow me.”

If we are to be honest, we’ll admit that to follow—to really leave everything behind—is an absolutely terrifying prospect. Our most natural response would be, like Peter, to fall down and say, “Go away! This is more than I can deal with. I couldn’t be the person you’re looking for.”

We stand before these terrifying possibilities—to let go of our security, to open ourselves to the frightening possibility of complete and utter success, to leave all that is familiar and safe for an unknown world. But then we notice that standing beside us is Jesus. He confidently whispers, “Don’t be afraid. Let go of the nets. Do not be afraid. After all, it’s me.” Jesus has shown Simon that the sea he thought was empty was in fact full of fish. And Simon has begin to learn what it means to become partners with Jesus. A new kind of fishing lies ahead.

There comes a point in our lives when al the pieces of our past, both good and bad, come together to make a meaningful whole. It came for Peter at this point. All this time he had been fishing for fish, with varying success. Now Jesus tells him it is men and women he will be fishing for, and it makes such complete and perfect sense to Peter that he simply walks away from his old life and embraces the unknown new. Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, was also, it seems, a fisherman. And it was Simon Peter who got caught that day. (Card, 41–42)

You know, Peter, and those with him (Andrew, James, and John) left everything to follow Jesus—their homes, their livelihood, and their families. We know that Peter was surrounded by his family in Capernaum, and he was married. His wife was later to join him on his ministry to the church. One wonders if she also followed him to his death when he was, as tradition suggests, crucified upside down for serving his friend and Lord. Everything Peter knew, everyone he knew and loved—everything he held dear—was in Capernaum. And he left it all to follow Jesus.

Peter was not perfect, nor was he well-prepared. He was not fearless. He was not the “super apostle” we make him out to be. He had his epiphany, and it brought him to his knees.

But he was willing to trust Jesus and to follow him without reservation and without knowing what came next. Because of Peter and others with him who together followed Jesus, “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the shadow of death, light has dawned” (Isaiah 9.2)!

Look around you. You are living near someone like Peter. The person you know as friend and neighbor, no matter what you have heard them say, is scared to death. The person you sit nearby in church has done some pretty terrible things in his or her past, and might do so again. And the person sitting in your seat—that’s right, you—is terrified of what might happen if you really left everything to follow Jesus.

We have all had the frightening privilege today in this place, here in the presence of Jesus and through this story of Peter, to lift the veil and to glimpse the true nature of the one who calls you. And yes, we should all hang our heads in shame. We should all quake in our shoes. We should be afraid before undiminished deity. If we are not, we need to get our heads out of the sand and realize just who it is we are facing!

And then we should hear and heed his words—“Fear not!”

The world lives in darkness and the Lord God, its creator, has moved in a mighty way to provide for the salvation of the lost and to shine the light of his glory and righteousness where death has had dominion. He breaks into the dark and sin ridden lives of you and I to call us to become a part of his redemption. Though we are terrified by his power, his reality, his glory, his light, he says, “Fear not! Follow me.”

Though we would want to throw ourselves at his feet and demand that he leave us alone; though we might throw our fear and our sin in his face as good reason that we cannot possibly do what he asks and cling ever more tightly to all that we have created for ourselves as a way to cope with life; and as we hang on for dear life to what we think will see us through—jobs, money, homes, family, friends, or anger, grief, self-pity, resignation—Jesus says, “Fear not! Follow me. No matter what you fear, no matter what you value, no matter what you have done, I have a place for you.”

He loves us enough to grant us the epiphany of who he is, to calm our fear and forgive our sin, and to call us to look outside ourselves to get caught up in his kingdom!

And we have nothing to do but respond and abandon ourselves to his care.

This is what epiphany meant for Peter and for us. In the abundance of the fish Jesus had them catch that day, Peter saw the true nature of the great light, and he was caught forever. What do we see in the abundance of Jesus’ grace for us?

“Fear not,” Jesus says. “Follow me.”

And now I pray that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess 11–12).

A dirty little secret.

Text: Hebrews 11.29–12.2ff

We Christians have a dirty little secret. It is rarely shared these days and not often spoken aloud. It is almost as if we might be afraid that if it gets out, people won’t want to fellowship with us or know our Lord. It is not exactly pleasant, but it’s the substance of our greatest hope. It is the secret the disciples spent the lifetime of Jesus learning, and then as apostles had to realize every day.

There is no fancy way to tell this secret. It is a very straightforward truth that we all must face. It is also an unpopular secret, especially among Christians these days, for it goes against the grain of much that is said and taught in order to fill our churches. In fact, this secret is unique in that it is widely available to any who would see. It can be found all through scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, and yet it is so often overlooked and all too rarely spoken.

What is especially disturbing about this secret, much like the secret Jeremiah was compelled to proclaim, is that to fail to share it is tantamount to telling a lie.

We are reminded in the Old Testament reading for today that when all of Judah felt like all was going well and that God was blessing them for their obedience, and when all the other prophets of the time were proclaiming peace and prosperity in the name of the Lord, the Lord said to Jeremiah,

“Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the Lord. “I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’ How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? …Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. …Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? See, therefore, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who steal words from one another. See, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who use their own tongues and say, ‘Says the Lord.’ See, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the Lord, and who tell them, and who lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or appoint them; so they do not profit this people at all, says the Lord.” (23.23–32)

No, the secret to which I refer is not the same as the judgment of God upon Judah with which Jeremiah was burdened. But like Jeremiah, I am prepared to tell you the truth that may be quite different from what we hear these days. What we are to hear from God’s word is like a fire. Although some have kept it secret, it will not be quenched, and it cannot be sugar-coated.

Recently we spent a little time in Hebrews 11 remembering the heroes of the faith and looking for the assurance they enjoyed:

-Abel, who found God’s favor, Enoch who did not die.

-Noah who escaped destruction and judgment.

-Abraham who obeyed and received back the life of his son.

-Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, David, Samuel.

The list is endless. These were the faithful about whom the author or Hebrews said, “through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection” (11.33–35).

Wow! This is the kind of faith we want, this is the faith we like to proclaim.

Faith is triumphant, it moves mountains, it heals and consoles, it fixes problems. What a God we serve—look what he can do when we have faith in him! Side by side with the wonderful love of Christ, faith like this is the stuff of modern Christianity. We extend promises, forgiveness, love, and hope.

People are hurting, and faith is the solution. People suffer sickness and loss, pain and death, fear and uncertainty, hopelessness and depression. People struggle with their own sin, with greed, lust, hatred, and selfishness, and Christ is the answer, the church proclaims. Come and be healed, filled, and fulfilled.

Many of us know enough to know that this is not the whole story. This is obviously not our dirty little secret, for this is what the church proclaims almost universally. This is the attractive truth of the Christian faith to a hurting world. And it is truth. No doubt, and praise God!

It’s funny, though, isn’t it, how the most straightforward and powerful truth can become a destructive lie when it is not the whole truth. When we withhold our dirty little secret, this great and wonderful truth of faith and love becomes to some the great lie that keeps them from faith.

This truth is the one all believed who now curse God for letting their son or daughter die. This truth is what embitters the cancer patient laying in pain in the hospital, wondering why. This truth is the one referred to when someone in disbelief exclaims, “I can’t believe God would let this happen!”

Some are quick to say, “they didn’t really have faith in the first place, if this is where they ended up.” They couldn’t possibly have known Christ if they gave up so quickly.

But we are not talking about those who never had faith in the first place. We are talking about those who once knew faith. We are talking about those who came to the church seeking real solutions to real problems and found them. We are talking about those who, like the people the writer of Hebrews was addressing, know Christ but are facing troubles that their faith doesn’t seem to be solving.

Let’s be honest. Some of us here today feel deceived by this truth. Some of us even this week have asked God, “Why? How could you? What good is it for me to trust you?” Some of us who have known Jesus for many years are up against trials we don’t think we’ll be able to bear. We’re hurt. We may be angry. We may even feel betrayed.

Where is our loving God in all of this? After all the years I have known and served him, how can he let me go through this?

I must pause for a moment, to address those of you who may not know Jesus, yet. I know there may be someone here this morning who is looking for faith and love. You may have been told that Jesus is the answer you’re looking for.

If you are not sure, I’ll tell you now that he is.

You are seeking someone or something to make sense out of life; someone to help you face your struggle; someone to help you fill your emptiness; someone to bring you hope, give you peace, to fill your life with love.

Please do not fear—you have come to the right place and the right person. Jesus is everything you are expecting him to be…and more. And today, you will have the chance to hear our dirty little secret, the whole truth about faith in Jesus that will make all the difference in your life if you will make the commitment of faith.

In fact, our dirty little secret is for all who seek and question; for all who know of God’s great love and power and yet wonder why life is still so cruel and trial unbearable.

But why a “dirty” little secret, you wonder. Why is it even secret at all if it will mean so much?

It’s ‘dirty’ because it is not a comfortable truth. Our dirty little secret is at first a harsh reality. Much like our gospel reading today, our dirty little secret is not fluffy and nice. While certainly consistent with the love of Christ, it is not necessarily what we want out of that love.

Our dirty little secret requires a divine flip flop, a change in perspective much like the disciples had to make as they followed Jesus. When they looked for deliverance from the Romans and peace in the land under the rulership of a king, they got Jesus who said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed. Do you think I come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” (Luke 12.49–51)!And so our secret requires us to accept an uncomfortable flip flop, a lurch in our perspective that will at first be offensive to us, especially in our struggle.

Let’s return to Hebrews 11 to find a hint about our secret. Of the heroes of faith, the writer also tells us beginning in verse 35,

Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised…” (35–39)

Ah, now we catch a small glimpse of our dirty little secret. These heroes of the faith suffered, even to death, and they did not even receive the promise of God for relief, deliverance…for peace. Why? “Since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect” (40). Their immediate hope was deferred for that time when all of us, them and those of us who are faithful in these and times to come, share in the final perfection of God in glory.

So here we are at the moment of the revelation of our dirty little secret, just as we have reached the point of the review of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews.

With those who conquered in faith in ways we too would like to conquer, alongside of all of those who found victory, healing, strength, and blessing, were all of these who did not. All these together, become the “great cloud of witnesses” in chapter twelve (1). And that to which they witness, the conquerors and the sufferers, is our dirty little secret;

-the secret that is hard to hear and harder to live.

-the secret that if rejected will leave us with nothing but anger at the truth and the one who failed is.

-the secret that if known and lived will put us in the company of these heroes of faith and will guarantee our share in the “something better” mentioned in 11.40.

Now I’m a little worried. I have built up our dirty little secret, and yet it seems to be the simplest truth. I am almost afraid that I have already given our secret away, and your response might be…“Duh!” But then I guess if that is your response, you know our secret, and you know the whole truth, and when you lay in bed this evening and cry “Why?” it will not be followed with unyielding despair. But if that is not your response already, if our dirty little secret is not yet obvious to you, I hope you will listen very closely, now, for everything you will ever face hangs on this.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Hebrews 12.1-4)

What is our dirty little secret? In a word: ENDURE.

Set aside anything that is holding you back. We know these things from Colossians—fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, truthlessness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusiveness. ENDURE (3.5).

Face the fact that we have a race to run and ENDURE.

Look not only to those who bear witness both to the victory and struggle but to Jesus himself who faced the immeasurable torment of the cross, and ENDURE.

ENDURE for the sake of the joy, not that you have now, for you may not at this moment, but for the joy set before you.

“In your struggle against sin”—your own sin, the effects of other’s sin, the sin that has corrupted this world and brought sickness and death and violence and injury and despair—“you have not resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Hebrews 12.4). You don’t even know yet what it means to suffer, so ENDURE.

This is our dirty little secret. Faith in Christ is not always easy. We will face struggles with few answers and must endure. This is the truth that makes the real difference when the rubber meets the road in our walk with Christ.

I know—this secret is difficult to accept, especially when we feel like we need comfort and answers. For those of us who have not yet committed to love and serve Jesus, it makes us think twice, doesn’t it. When we have faith, and when we accept the grace of Jesus Christ and commit to serve him, we are committing to press on and endure no matter what and to set aside anything that will hinder our perseverance. We are committing to not having all of our problems solved in this world. We are committing to not finding an easy way through life.

If we read on, we find that we are committing to submit to God’s discipline and in that discipline to find our greatest hope.

Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. (12.7–13)

And so our dirty little secret becomes the full hope of our salvation; the refining fire that leads to holiness, the full realization of the love of God in Christ that brings us to his righteousness, and the hope of our salvation and eternal rest—if we but ENDURE.

Last week we read that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11.1). And at the end of chapter 12 we are reminded of this.

You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (12.18–24)

We don’t have faith in something visible and terrible that will lead to our destruction, but we endure what can be terrible for the hope of that which is not seen that will lead to our salvation. The very blood of the one to whom we look as the example for our own endurance is the blood that will save us. The very result of his pain and suffering is the word to us that though we suffer we will be saved—if we but endure. This is the word to all of us who walk in faith and face the struggle. This is the difficult little secret that will bring us into the kingdom that cannot be shaken.

To we who know Christ in faith and who struggle with sin and its effects, even as we know the secret of his eternal love that shares in our struggle, I commend this secret to strengthen our hope and add to our resolve. “Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your week knees, and make straight paths for your feet” (Hebrews 12.12-13).

To those who have been fed the falsehood of the easy love of God and the healing without the pain, I disclose this secret to give you hope when you despair and to bring you to the fullness of hope in the blood of Christ. “Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart” (12.3).

To you who do not know Jesus and are looking for the peace, grace, and love he has to offer, I declare this truth to you that you may know in full what it means to commit to Christ and may find the full depth of his love as he walks with you through your trials and prepares you for eternal life in his kingdom. “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God,…and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (12.22-24).

And finally, on behalf of all who would know what it means to walk in faith, to live in victory and in suffering for the sake of he who died for our sins, I thank God for the depth of his love and the privilege to endure in his name. “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed, our God is a consuming fire” (12.28–29).

And so I leave you with the very simple plea, the very profound hope, and the secret upon which our lives depend. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (12.1–2).

As he did, and as he is with us, endure, endure, endure.

Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10.19–23)

Amen.

My struggles as Director of Faith Formation

On January 4, 2021, I resigned as Director of Faith Formation at the Saint Clare of Assisi Catholic Church on Daniel Island, in Charleston, South Carolina. I began in the position in July 2019, moving my family from our home in Colorado where we had lived for fourteen years. Only months into what I had anticipated as an opportunity to work in deeply mystagogical ways with adults, children, and their families, I discovered barriers in worship and patterns of spirituality that spoke to larger issues in that parish, and in the Catholic Church in general, that needed to be addressed.

As I undertook to identify those issues fully and to work with our pastor and other staff members to develop an integrated approach to address them, I ran into a morass of hidden agendas, attempts to silence and redirect the narrative, and the surprising complexities of debate and division within the Catholic world that were deeply affecting our young parish. I discovered as well, through the insights of a former member of the pastoral council who had also been part of my interview team, that concerned parish leaders had hoped I would become a champion for voices in the parish who had attempted and failed to address the challenges of pastoral leadership, liturgical collapse, and ministry fragmentation we continued to face.

What follows is a summary of my approach to the problems I discovered along with additional observations that led to my resignation.

Late October 2019, our priest announced his plans to shift to ad orientem in the mass during Advent. (Ad orientum is the facing of both priest and congregation to the East during the Eucharistic celebration that results in the priest’s back to the people. For some, such an orientation embodies a sense of the transcendence of God and is desirable for those seeking a return to ‘traditional’ Catholic worship, often based on a misunderstanding of the origins of the practice. For more about ad orientum, please see https://themystagogue.org/?p=192.) I began to explore why he wanted to make that change and the reasons I and others felt so strongly that we should not. Not long into that effort, I realized that we were wrestling with that particular issue without the advantage of a clear sense of our identity and purpose as a parish—without a clear vision—and that we had an opportunity to discover both deeper issues and potential in the body life of our community.

Very quickly my attention shifted, as I explained in the ensuing document, to an attempt “to evaluate all aspects of parish life such that we would have a basis from which to find a way forward, as a staff, to help develop Saint Clare of Assisi Catholic Church into that vibrant, kerygmatic community in which all comers can encounter and grow into a profound and fruitful relationship with Jesus Christ” (“Considerations for Building the Body of Christ” aka “Thoughts Moving Forward”). I began sharing versions of that evolving evaluation with our pastor in December 2019 with the hope that we would use it as a basis for discussion and planning as a staff. Sadly, he cautioned me not to share it with other staff members and for a long time failed to respond directly the the concerns and suggestions it contained, which included a very personal appeal to recognize the urgency to address the issues with clarity.

In my role, I explained, I had received a great deal of feedback during my short time in the parish. Some had been very positive, and all had been offered by those who clearly care about our parish and its impact. I discovered that many were deeply alarmed by the direction we took in the mass and ways our worship impacted the vitality and effectiveness of other aspects of our identity and mission. The potential shift to ad orientem was only one of the small but impactive things I witnessed that appear to deny the inclinations I believed the Holy Spirit had developed in our parish and that demonstrated an undefined but active agenda that worked against our ability and desire to fulfill our calling as the body of Christ. As I listened and observed, I worked to look as objectively and yet realistically as possible at the parish out of my own experience and training while making every effort to assure others who had brought their concerns that we had good things to celebrate and build on, even as we looked to confront and correct those things that needed attention.

The concerns were significant enough, though, that there was urgency in the need to address them. Many of our staff also desired to have opportunity to discuss those concerns and to seek a way forward that could result in a revitalization of our ministry at Saint Clare, and it was their sense that we had not addressed them directly or adequately that appeared to have played a role in the resignation of several staff members, including my predecessor, our previous music and liturgy director, and most recently, our coordinator of children’s ministries.

I indicated that I was deeply concerned myself. “Because our worship is the heart of the church, the very embodiment of her identity and mission from which both are derived and empowered,” I wrote, “the concerns related to the mass are those that need to be addressed most urgently” (“Considerations”). Putting my level of concern in very personal terms, I continued,

A parish can survive for a long time while remaining entrenched in forms and practices that are not ideal, but worship that risks stifling the Holy Spirit and dampening the joy and expression of God’s people can too easily become a slow death for a community that is struggling to demonstrate to its members and to the world the compelling love of Christ and the joy of serving him.

I must confess that such a risk as I have seen it at Saint Clare has become for me something of a crisis of faith and mission. When I interviewed, my impression was that Saint Clare was in many ways appropriately progressive in terms of her formation efforts, willing to learn and try approaches that are not typical in the Catholic world. I found that to be true in many ways, and I have enjoyed the flexibility to further evolve those efforts and to find glimpses that our work has been effective and well-received. But I was wrong to think the worship at Saint Clare was equally forward-looking and discovered quickly that the Catholic Church, from this vantage, looks very different than the one I and my famliy came to call home. I felt called to be a part of Saint Clare, but even as my professional concern grew at the signs of incongruity between our worship and the vitality for which we long in our parish, I became alarmed to find that I was questioning my place in the church and whether or not the reality I was seeing was more indicative of the church’s true identity than what I had known of the church before coming to Charleston.

I am praying for a renewal of the sense that the Catholic Church is the place in which I can worship and serve with confidence that she embodies the gospel in the best possible way. I am praying especially that Saint Clare becomes a parish in which I can continue to serve with genuine passion and the hope that we are all working together to discover what Christ desires us to be. Even as I write this, I am still worried that I have to be too guarded in the ways I present the concerns I have mentioned and others have brought. I feel the need to describe them with weight befitting their significance but with tact that keeps the criticism from appearing too severe. That I have to tread so carefully is a concern itself that I pray is unfounded, but I do hope it is perceived as a desire to build on what is good and to find constructive ways to examine and evolve those things that can become a rich and healthy foundation to all aspects of our life and ministry as the body of Christ. (“Considerations”)

One element of disquiet I never thought I would encounter had been the capitulation of the church (culture as well) to the minor threat of the coronavirus. Rather than continuing to worship the Lord of all creation, boldly approaching the throne of grace and demonstrating to all the world that what we believe is true, about Christ, about his active and potent presence in our worship, about his sacramental gift of himself in the mass, about his call to enter suffering and death with the confidence in his promise to save all things through death and resurrection, we declared through our actions that suffering and death are to be feared and avoided. Even apart from consideration of Christ, a reasonable and measured response to the reality of any threat was nowhere to be found. In that absence, the church could and should have proclaimed by its worship the hope of Jesus, rooted in the very source of redemption and healing.

And all of this was in the face of a threat that was, quite frankly, less potent than many humankind has faced and still faces in the course of life in a fallen world. We had enough evidence to suggest that the ‘safe’ practices in which we engaged were not really going to mitigate the virus (they might have delayed some from getting it, but it will always be around). At the same time, even with surges in infection, the death rate had dropped by more than 60% since June (and continued to drop such that it was a fallacy to suggest that death is common). More and more evidence challenged the ‘accepted’ narrative that this virus was worse than the flu and other related illnesses, and we had imposed as much harm as we helped through the restrictions. The church, including our own parish, capitulated to fear, culture, and even to insurance companies over Christ himself, undermining the truth we claim by our actions. Our own worship with masks and elimination of critical elements, such as the peace, the blood of Christ, and communion within the mass (as we did for a time), was not really the worship of a people confident in the grace and mercy of our Lord.

For me, this capitulation added to my concerns about the church and my participation in it. For those for whom we were responsible, we further obscured the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit and deepened the urgency to restore the integrity of our worship, the authenticity of our hope in the present and future kingdom of God, and the joy of knowing and serving the Lord of all creation, in season and out of season, even when it runs counter to the prevailing narratives of fear and isolation. To the world that saw the minor threat as apocalypse and retreated behind presumptions of a facile social ‘unity’, fleeting ‘protection’, and false ‘compassion’, the church could have proclaimed the depth of grace, mercy, and salvation in the face of all threats with the courage of the redeemed in Christ who do not fear to risk everything, even health and safety, to proclaim Christ and the hope of the new creation.

As I explored these and other concerns in the document I came to call “Thoughts Moving Forward” and asked for our pastor’s help in exploring them as a staff, I watched my own family and others withdraw from worship and parish life in ways that betrayed their disillusionment with the church and its ability to embody the joy of the gospel and an abiding faith in our Lord reflected in all we are and do as the people of God, a living sacrament of his kingdom. My wife and sons, like many in the parish, began to yearn for life-giving evidence of the presence of the Spirit in the church and expressed again and again that we were not going to find it at Saint Clare. Even as I struggled myself, I watched them sink deeper into depression and apathy to the point where I felt we would have to go elsewhere to rediscover the presence of Christ and the joy of serving him.

After nine months and our pastor’s caution not to share the evaluation with anyone else, he finally made an overture to explore the concerns I had been raising, and I saw his visit in August 2020 over dinner a glimmer of hope that we might begin that process of discussion, even as a staff, that might help us openly and honestly develop a vision for mission and ministry that might revitalize our parish and restore the joy for which we had been yearning. That hope has quickly faded, as he did not followed though with the time and attention he promised to give to those concerns nor the pastoral care I thought he might extend to my family and to all who shared their own concerns with me through the previous year. In fact, that hope dissipated altogether as I witnessed more small, but potent, signs of an unarticulated agenda that I believed ran counter to the work of the Spirit that triggered the concerns of people in the parish who were hungry for worship and leadership that courageously embodies the challenge and joy of the gospel. I also witnessed a tendency towards historical and theological revisionism, both in some of the curriculum that we used from popular Catholic sources (Ascension Press’ Epic: The Early Church series especially) and in our pastor’s desire to continue to use that curriculum, as well as from comments he made in classes he led, in homilies, and in other contexts. Such things belied the truth we presumed to proclaim.

Until July 2020, our pastor had been leading two parishes, which is certainly not easy, especially as he was also handling a building program in one parish and a restoration program in the other. Some of the concerns I mentioned also related to issues of leadership and vision beyond the parish. I was surprised to discover, though, that both taking on the second parish, Saint Mary of the Annunciation in Charleston, and building in the more elaborate, expensive style (the gothic cathedral), were made over the objections of concerned voices in the parish, including those serving as leaders on our councils. I came to see both, especially the building program, as analogous to the way the Catholic Church has in many ways obscured the very gospel and the apostolic faith she claims to preserve and embody. Although he resigned as pastor of Saint Mary’s, we did not witness a renewed vigor in pastoral leadership at Saint Clare, although the building program received a great deal of time and attention. As it continued to evolve under his careful and energetic guidance, still to the detriment of other ministry, it too impeded rather than advanced our call to embody the mission of the body of Christ.

As I watched the costs of the building balloon from the astounding to the ridiculous even as its value to the mission of our parish diminished, I began to despair that the values espoused by our Lord, values we had been trying desperately to reflect in our ministry in formation and evangelism in the parish, would ever fully define our priorities or find expression and foundation in the worship of our local community. As the costs skyrocketed, many compromises were made to the plans, including a significant reduction in the number of pews it could accommodate. The parish would have a beautiful building, but its reduced capacity would mean fewer opportunities to worship together as a body, especially at those times like Christmas and Easter when more than usual would hope to attend. Also missing would be the spaces necessary for robust formation programs and gatherings outside of the mass, not to mention facilities that I hoped would one day support mission-minded service ministry, as they were shunted to latter phases.

One of the biggest barriers to consistency in our formation and evangelism efforts had been a difficult and often contentious relationship with Bishop England High School, where we had been sharing autitorium and classroom space. At its best, that relationship left us with less than ideal access to facilities and imposed a significant burden on staff and volunteers to facilitate ministry. The additional space afforded by larger administrative offices into which we moved in June 2019, while helpful, remained limited and expensive. I came to fear that increased debt and the burden of maintaining both a new building and the continuing expenses of office and classroom space not addressed in the first phase of construction would significantly delay our ability to address those needs. The beautiful building would, in its inadequacy, perpetuate barriers to mission in the local parish, even as the worship space, clearly designed to support “traditional” forms and aesthetics rooted in more medieval than apostolic norms, would continue to obscure the vitality of worship that is dynamic, compelling, and life-giving.

The edifice of transcendent beauty that emphasizes solemnity and ‘tradition’ over joy and mission seemed to me to parallel the all-too-rigid edifice of presumed infallibility of the truth of the Church that has dimmed the light of the gospel in much of the Catholic faith. The concerns I raised at what I witnessed at Saint Clare drove a renewed urgency in my studies of the Fathers and divines Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, and I came to the realization that the restored communion of the one, holy, apostolic church would require as much humble reform of the Catholic Church—even through honest reexamination of the hitherto unassailable magisterium—as the submission we often expect of our ‘separated brethren’. The Catholic Church has begun in recent decades to rediscover some of the essential nature of the gospel and our call to mission, which is what brought me and my family to her nearly nine years ago, but it continues to struggle under a great deal of baggage codified and blessed as ‘apostolic’ that is not and that has made that rediscovery falter. The fullness of truth is found not in the Catholic Church but in the gospel of our Lord to which we must again submit all assumptions of ‘Sacred Tradition’, seeking with our brothers and sisters in the truly universal (catholic) church the unobscured, foundational truth of the Spirit of God who challenges all of his people to bear the joy and grace of Jesus Christ to a fallen world. With Pope Francis, I came to “dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation” (Evangelii Gaudium, 27). His radical, call is, I firmly believed, the call of Christ himself to his church.

The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself. As John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania: “All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion.” (EG, 27)

In her ongoing discernment, the Church can also come to see that certain customs not directly connected to the heart of the Gospel, even some which have deep historical roots, are no longer properly understood and appreciated. Some of these customs may be beautiful, but they no longer serve as means of communicating the Gospel. We should not be afraid to re-examine them. At the same time, the Church has rules or precepts which may have been quite effective in their time, but no longer have the same usefulness for directing and shaping people’s lives. Saint Thomas Aquinas pointed out that the precepts which Christ and the apostles gave to the people of God “are very few.” Citing Saint Augustine, he noted that the precepts subsequently enjoined by the Church should be insisted upon with moderation “so as not to burden the lives of the faithful” and make our religion a form of servitude, whereas “God’s mercy has willed that we should be free.” This warning, issued many centuries ago, is most timely today. It ought to be one of the criteria to be taken into account in considering a reform of the Church and her preaching which would enable it to reach everyone. (EG, 43)

I was convinced that rather than a conviction that she embodies in perfection the apostolic tradition, the Catholic Church needs to see herself more as the disciple still seeking that truth and willing to submit all she has learned and become to the refining scrutiny of the Spirit that leads her to a maturity yet to be realized. Again, as Pope Francis perceptively argues,

The Church is herself a missionary disciple; she needs to grow in her interpretation of the revealed word and in her understanding of truth. It is the task of exegetes and theologians to help “the judgment of the Church to mature.” The other sciences also help to accomplish this, each in its own way. With reference to the social sciences, for example, John Paul II said that the Church values their research, which helps her “to derive concrete indications helpful for her magisterial mission.” Within the Church countless issues are being studied and reflected upon with great freedom. Differing currents of thought in philosophy, theology and pastoral practice, if open to being reconciled by the Spirit in respect and love, can enable the Church to grow, since all of them help to express more clearly the immense riches of God’s word. For those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance, this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion. But in fact such variety serves to bring out and develop different facets of the inexhaustible riches of the Gospel. (EG, 40)

The deep and life-giving truth of God extends beyond the Catholic Church and her magisterium, and I saw in Vatican II and in the leadership of recent leaders a sensitivity to that reality when I entered the Catholic Church. I did not agree with everything Pope Francis has done and said, but I found in him and other recent popes a willingness to think anew about the challenges the gospel presents to the church and the willingness to submit everything to our risen Lord in an effort to reform and refocus all we are and do with God’s redemptive mission at the center. I struggled to find that same willingness in our leadership at Saint Clare.

I encountered it in some of our people, and I worked to support and equip them as much as possible. I witnessed in some of our most engaged members, who worked often in partial and uncoordinated efforts, a laudable desire to push the boundaries of tradition and expectation for the sake of the gospel. Until a clear vision built around the joy of knowing Jesus and inviting others to do the same, with great risk to ourselves and the comfort of our Catholic ‘culture’, permeated our worship and sacramental life, our stewardship and building programs, and all of our formation efforts, formal and informal, those partial and isolated efforts would falter.

Even as I resigned, I prayed that vision would develop and bear fruit at Saint Clare, but my hope that it would had dimmed. I have spent most of my adult life preaching and teaching the truth of the gospel, often at great cost to livelihood and security and very often challenging the traditions of the faith to which I have belonged. I found some fulfillment in doing so at Saint Clare and some in the parish hungry and receptive to a deeper call to realize the mission of Christ, but I also encountered the need to compromise what I have learned to be the truth of Christ and the hope of the new creation to an extent that put me at odds with the vision of the church our pastor and others, some of the staff included, appeared to embrace. While I struggled to remain faithful to our Lord in asking our pastor to explore reform in our community, I found many of those efforts marginalized, and I came to realize that I could not stay while I watch hope fade in my own family and others who care most deeply in the parish.

Ad orientem

Below are my thoughts expressed to our pastor at Saint Clare of Assisi Catholic Church regarding his announcement that he would shift to ad orientem in the Mass:

As we consider this move to celebrating ad orientem at Saint Clare, I thought I would summarize the arguments I have found in its favor, offering responses that demonstrate an alternative perspective and that highlight some of the deeper issues involved as I, and others who have responded negatively, see them. I hope this serves as a guide to any discussion we might have about the wisdom of making this kind of change at Saint Clare, and I do so with the prayer that the Holy Spirit, whose Church this is, will guide all of us to gracious exchange, to understanding, and to clarity on what we should do moving forward.

Dr. Chris Diffenderfer, October 24, 2019

Regarding ad orientem, arguments for it are in bold, and responses follow:

• The Church still allows it.

Response: This is true, but it is not really an argument for or against it per se. However, this orientation is associated with the extraordinary Mass and is allowed but not encouraged. Responses I have seen from the Vatican tend to emphasize that it should not and will not be supported as an ordinary form.

• Assumptions that the early church celebrated versus populum are wrong (arguments are made based on some references to praying towards the east as evidence that the Mass had been ad orientem in the first place).

Response: While it is very true that many idyllic, oversimplifying assumptions have been made about the early church in many ways, that tendency is not indicative of scholarship as a whole. We do have considerable evidence that versus populum was the more common practice, beginning with the evolution of the eucharistic prayer and Christian worship from the synagogue and including carvings and other images depicting the eucharistic worship of the church at various points in history. Worship in the early centuries of the church was not really uniform in many ways, and so it is difficult to argue to strongly for or against many things due to the variation in regional practice. It is also true that we do not have any overwhelming evidence that ad orientem was common practice until the early medieval period, around the eleventh century, when it appears to have been introduced in the West as a conscious change.

• Facing the East (or at least the apse) more appropriately signifies the leadership of the priest in praying as one with the assembly to God and to Jesus who will return from the East. Conversely, versus populum is praying to the people, not God. Facing the East more appropriately signifies the sacrifice being made to God with priest as in persona Christi, eliminates a visual confusion, and is less disorienting for the priest. Versus populum adds to the elevation of the priest over the laity, creating an orientation of separation and presentation to rather than unity and offering on behalf of the assembly. Facing the East also keeps the assembly less closed in on itself (the closed-circle).

Response: A couple of initial observations can be made, including the fact that the assembly does face the East (or at least the apse) in either case, so there is inherently a sense of anticipation of Christ’s physical return even in versus populum. To insist that the priest must also reorient himself for that anticipation to be fully valid is itself commentary on the priority of priest over the assembled body, as if it is really the orientation of the priest that alone matters. The priest’s comfort or resolution of disorientation is not really the point (and that disorientation can itself be resolved through a more robust theological understanding of worship communicated to all involved).

Notwithstanding those observations, one might question the notion that for prayer to be lifted up to God, we must orient ourselves to a place where God is, as if he is not also among us. Such an argument is especially interesting in a tradition that emphasizes the very presence of Christ himself, not only as the eucharistic species, but alive and active as the real celebrant, as the living Word, as the Holy Spirit who animates and indwells each individual and the body as a whole. It is not really that worship is either about an anticipation of Christ coming some time in the future or about remembering something he did in the past. Worship is really about both the past and future activity and presence of Christ made fully present in the liturgical, eucharistic assembly—in word and table, in prayer and song, in action, posture, heart and mind, body and spirit. Worship is at once anamnetic and proleptic, holding the tensions of the already and not yet in glorious union. In fact, worship is a beautiful symphony of paradox and mystery which is at once past, present, and future. It is earthly and heavenly, it is joy and lament, sacrifice and gift, death and resurrection. Worship is rich with the transcendence of God and his intimate presence as all things are drawn by the Christ of the cross and the resurrection himself, sanctified by Christ himself, offered by Christ himself, and made real by Christ himself, and through him by his people, priest and the assembled priesthood, the very body of Christ.

Rather than closed in upon itself, the circle of priest and assembly hold these tensions in appropriate harmony, as prayer is made to God who is both fully present among us and fully transcendent, not least in the many words, actions, postures, silences, and elements of the liturgy and the sacred space in which it is enacted. In the awareness of the priest acting in persona Christi as the one sacrificing, praying, praising, graciously giving, receiving, speaking, guiding, transforming, making new, humbling, exalting, and more, the assembly and priest together with him are also fully aware of the cosmic assembly of the Church past, present, and future in the very presence of God the Father. All of this is appropriately embodied by the priest and the assembly facing each other, with Christ himself at the center. The circle itself most profoundly evokes eternity, community, unity, and communion.

Ad orientem is an imbalance, an emphasis of but one primary movement in worship, with others grafted through a catechetical insistence perhaps, but without the richness of symbol and movement that brings Christian worship into its fullness.

• People, especially millennials, flock to parishes celebrating ad orientem.

Response: This assumption is one easy to make but more difficult to validate. Many may respond well to the things embodied by ad orientem, but it is also true that many react viscerally to other things it implies, such as actions removed from the assembly and the reinforcement for some that the priest acts as the assembly looks on more as audience, on their behalf and yet without them. The resistance of many has been documented against such an orientation that does not fully embrace the breathtaking theology of Vatican II and that hearkens to a period in the church that was just as rife with attrition, an emphasis on internal piety, and the need for the reforms that were sought in council.

The millennial response, and that of subsequent generations, is itself hardly a measure of value, for those generations often respond to that which makes sense to their personal fulfillment and to things that appear innovative and different. Perhaps a renewal of catechesis and an effort to extol (and embody in music and response) both the joy and depth of current forms, postures, and orientations can bring that same desire to fruition for all generations to worship God in fullness and in truth without alienating others who have come to appreciate the fresh air of the Church renewed and restored, in many ways, to the richness of the worship we now enjoy.

There are many things we can do within the Mass as it exists to help build and reinforce community and draw millennials and others into the joy and beauty of the Mass without making this kind of change that will have, I fear, an opposite impact.

Further observations

The notion that individual priests choose to celebrate ad orientem, over and against common practice, insisting that it somehow enlivens a parish tends to look much like the Protestant tendency to elevate personal and denominational doctrinal choices and practices over the tradition and unity of the church. Variation in local practice does exist, but an accommodation, even an encouragement, of that kind of conscious assertion does devalue the uniformity of faith and practice that speaks to apostolic consistency and communion. While differences in piety reflected in gestures, postures, and patterns do not necessarily take on the weight of dissension or of doctrine, especially at the level of the laity, they can cross into that level of significance when they fundamentally alter the nature and experience of the liturgical assembly and are driven by the priest. That risk is deeply concerning for many of us in relation to ad orientem.