Zoe

All entitlements and no responsibility?

Just before we left for Greece I picked up a number of new book titles to read on the monster plane rides. One was most intriguing, The Narcissism Epidemic, written by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell. Professors at San Diego State University. Over the years I have watched as we have coddled our children more and more in the name of building their self image.  I remember as a parent always feeling a bit uneasy about this but not sure why. I mean why does every child on the little league team deserve a trophy even if they did not work hard or show up for over half of the games?  I never have understood that? This is not what life is like. Then this book came along to help me put into perspective why I thought and still think this is a detriment for us as a people.

Did you know that today you can hire fake paparazzi to follow you around when you go out for a night on the town snapping photographs of your exploits. Then they will mount them on your own tabloid magazine cover. Not to mention the reality TV show my Sixteenth Birthday featuring a soon to be 16 year old blocking off her street to make room for the Hummer limousine to deliver her to her home just in time to step out onto the Red carpet. Honestly, have we gone absolutely crazy?  While these are extreme, what about infant pacifiers filled with “Bling” while wearing a baby shirt that says “Supermodel”  or “Chick Magnet.”  We live in a culture of Narcissists. It is all about me, me and more me. Narcissists actually believe they are more intelligent than others, better looking, and could run the world more efficiently than anyone else. They actually believe that they "are special." They have a self imposed moral imperative to tell everyone else how to do what they are to do because they can do it better than the ones who are actually doing it.

I suggest that Americans love to love themselves. Our current culture rains enough narcissism to get all of us wet and chilled to the bone! So my encouragement as we enter into this season of giving thanks is simple: let’s all take off our rain coats soaked with the residue of our own narcissism and seek to do one thing: Be Grateful to God for all that we do have. How might we do this?  First, fast from buying anything other than the basic staples of life. Second, worship every week not for what you can get out of the service or “that special feeling” but for who God is. Finally, train yourself to say “thank you” to God and others. Might we all try to live into these practical steps for grateful living and see how they might mold us a followers of Jesus’ radical way. Can you imagine? I can…..

 

I would love to hear you weigh in on this one???

Proclamation Unfettered

I joined Facebook a few months back and have entered into the "community" with some curiosity. I have watched and read a few posts from friends in another Northwest Presbyterian Church, other than my own, make comments that go something like this, "Worship was great. Thanks for the awesome music."  It has made me think about what we are allowing to happen to the word proclaimed? I have even heard some elders in my own tradition lament that they go to church for the music and that is their primary "bar" that determines if the worship experience "was good or not."  This can be extended to include not just the singing in worship but the visual arts and even liturgical dance. A few comments are worth blogging about in response.

First, we go to worship not for a "feeling" or a "high" or a ecclesiastical substance to be mainlined into our spiritual veins, we go to worship to magnify the Creator, give thanks to the Redeemer and grow in the knowledge of the Spirt known as the triune God.

Secondly, in my tradition, the PCUSA, we have ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament. The Minister of Word and Sacrament is the one who presides over the word proclaimed, articulated, delivered and the sacraments instituted. Let's start with the sacraments as a model for the word preached  and then determine the role of music and the arts. The sacraments are the way by which one remembers, retells, and acts out the story of which we are but a part of. The story was here before us and will remain long after us. This is not meant to diminish our role in the story just to suggest that our role is limited. In this sense the story transcends us. The story is by definition our story and to be entered into. So we encounter the risen Christ mysteriously present in the elements and thereby experience the risen Christ. However, whether one experiences anything in the celebration of the sacraments is entirely besides the point. If we make the experience the mark of authentic worship then we do no more than worship our own sense of a narcissistic self, which is the worship of self. Worship in this Facebook sense is altruistic! Similarly, and this is my primary point, in the sermon God is just as present as in the body and blood of the Eucharist. When it is all about the self then the sermon is just a speech that dispenses "good advice," or teaches a "moral." This is hardly the politic of speech worth getting out of bed for on a highly coveted weekend day off when I can stay in bed to catch up on my sleep and eat krispy kremes. Rather, the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament is trained, called out and ordained to lead the church into a dynamic process of growing into and out of the Good news which is another way of saying transformation. 

The sermon proclaimed in this sense becomes awful and awesome. God is made strangely transcendent and yet refreshingly with us so that good advice becomes good news and  the human "talk" or a "conversation" becomes a transformational word from God that literally saves us. We have an easier time recognizing the mysterious nature of God present in the sacraments but how is it that we have reduced a sermon to a talk that dispenses good moral advice. Perhaps in unfettering proclamation the Minister of Word is one who reads, unfolds, delivers, and applies, the written word of God so that it takes root in our context and becomes the living word of God in Jesus Christ so that Christ is mysteriously present with us in the sermon as Jesus is mysteriously present with us in the sacraments?

Maybe it is time that we stop worshipping worship. Maybe it is time to  stop reducing transformational preaching to a conversation.  We all, if we are honest, want to preach sermons that our congregation will "like." And I confess that it is hard to preach the truth to people who I have come to love, but this is what love requires. This is precisely what it means to be pastor! The truth of the gospel is a hard and audacious word. It is a truth that when it is all said and done we really would prefer to live as if God was really my own feeling of being close to God, which is to make myself god.  Maybe it is time to move beyond all of this "we don't need a message unless its a conversation methodology" so that we can get on with the real good news.  That God is God and we are not! I find this refreshingly freeing.

The role of music and the arts is to prepare us to receive the transformational good news of God in Jesus Christ and the reenactment of our life together in the sacraments.In the sacrament of the Lords Supper we remember. Again, this is really good news that transcends talk and conversation because we remember the work of Jesus on our behalf. This re-membering is what brings together broken people in a broken and dislocated world.  This is really good news that is sooo much better than just good advice! Thus, the role of the arts is that of preparation and therefore fulfills a support role. It points to and prepares us for the reception of the hard words that save, redeem, re-member and unify, rewrite and transform.

So we are left with one question, Is this good news or just good advice?  Hmmm...