LOUDER AND SLOWER DOES NOT WORK

 

It just seems so intuitive.  If they don’t understand you, say it louder and slower; and they will understand. 

For those of us who have gotten off the beaten tourist path or lived in a foreign country, we have learned that louder and slower does not work.  If we don’t share a common language, it is hopeless regardless of how loudly we shout. (By the way: they do not “all speak English.”)

What is true of asking directions to the bus station is also true of talking about our experience of faith.  If they do not share our vocabulary or know anything about our belief structure, they are not going to understand us.  We can learn as much from the Apostle Paul.

A Shared Language

Paul’s practice in the book of Acts was to go to the local synagogue and argue from the Hebrew scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah (Acts 17:2).  The folks Paul found in the synagogue shared with him a common body of sacred texts, vocabulary, religious history, and worldview.

 

In our day many of us, who have been long in the faith, assume that others are familiar with our religious vocabulary and, even if not accepting it, understand the conceptual architecture of our faith. 

 

I lived in rural Arkansas in the early 80’s. In that era if you asked someone you met on the street if they had been “washed in the blood,” they likely would have understood your meaning.  Understanding this language, and even using this language, in no way was assurance that they were followers of the way of Jesus; but at a minimum they understood and could speak the language when they needed to.

 

I suspect this would no longer be true even in rural Arkansas.

 

Learning a New Language

Sometimes life requires us to learn a new language.  Paul finds himself in Athens waiting for Silas and Timothy to arrive (Acts 17).  While he waits, he begins talking with Jews and God-fearing Greeks.  “God Fearers” were Gentiles who accepted the ethical teachings of Judaism but had not converted and did not follow the ceremonial laws.  Both these groups would have been familiar with the language of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and the central precepts of the Jewish faith.  They and Paul spoke a common language and drew upon a shared religious universe.

 

Some of the pagan scholars and philosophers, who liked to hang out in Athens and debate new ideas, overhear Paul and call him a “babbler,” one who proclaims some foreign God.  The problem is clear.  Paul is “preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection [17:18].”  These scholars know nothing about any of that.  They likely had little or no awareness of the beliefs of some tiny religious sect of people—the Hebrews—living in the backwaters of the Roman Empire.  These scholars invite Paul with his strange ideas to speak to them in the Areopagus.  The Areopagus was a rocky hilltop where philosophers gathered to debate and criminal trials were held.

 

Paul begins by complimenting them on their passion for truth, saying they are “very religious” (17:22-23).  His use of the word religious is not pejorative as it is sometimes used in our day, as in “Christianity is not a religion; it is a relationship.”  Paul in a winsome way tries to establish some common ground in verse 23 by going on to say, "I am going to declare to you the one you have been seeking.”  Affirming common ground is a constructive way to begin any conversation.

 

Paul then gives an unprecedented sermon.  He quotes no scripture, and he makes only an oblique reference to Jesus in verse 31 by saying judgment will come by a “man whom he (God) has appointed.”  In the place of scripture, he quotes a pagan poet twice (verse 28).  This sermon is quite different from his arguing from the Hebrew scriptures, his normal practice in the Synagogue.

 

He does take a shot at the Athenians' ethnocentric arrogance when he says in verse 26: “He made from one every nation of men to live upon the earth.”  The Athenians believed they were a distinct race, having arisen separately from all the other peoples of the world.  Paul knows of this belief.  He was well versed in the mindset and beliefs of his listeners.  In other words, Paul spoke to them in their own enculturated language of ideas.

 

Paul goes on to talk of resurrection, repentance, and judgment. At this point Paul loses most of his audience.  He does not compromise what he believes to be true as he adopts this new language, of ideas, but he does all he can to build a bridge from his beliefs to their beliefs. Some listeners do believe and join the movement (17:32—34), having heard the message within their own enculturated language.

 

In Our Day

We live in a country where many around us have no awareness of the content of the Bible. They know little or nothing of our faith.  They are clueless about what we do when we gather together.  Sadly, much of what they have heard about us is unattractive to them.  We must learn a new language with new vocabulary and imagery if we want to be heard.  To learn that new language we must be among the people speaking it and listen to what they are saying and how they are saying. 

 

We are spiritual expatriates in our own land; we need to acknowledge this. We must learn the language of our land if we want to be heard. Saying the same old things louder and slower will not work.

 

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State

People Like Us

 

How Can Forgiveness Find a Root in Us?

The Outrages of Life

We read about the Burmese army’s terrorizing of ethnic groups and the tens of thousands of women and children dying in the Holy Land and Ukraine.  We see images of bombed houses and hospitals in war zones and hear the hateful shouts of White Supremacists in Charlottesville.  And we wonder: what do we do with our despair, even outrage?

Then there are the more daily hurts and injustices of our lives, perhaps some coming from decades ago.  We try to leave them behind; but as Timon said in the Lion King: “Just because it’s in the past doesn’t mean it still doesn’t hurt.”

In such a world, we wonder how forgiveness can take root in our hearts.

Jesus talked a lot about forgiveness. Volf points out that Jesus reversed Lamach’s policy for responding to outrage.  Lamach says he will avenge himself seventy-seven fold (Gen. 4:23-24). Yet Jesus turned this dynamic on its head and commanded his fellow Hebrews to forgive seventy-seven fold (Matt 18:21). 

Jesus was talking to people who likely took talk of forgiveness with a grain of salt.  Jesus and his fellow Hebrews lived under an oppressively violent occupying army who acted on behalf of a foreign government who committed daily outrages against the people of Palestine.  Forgiveness was not an academic topic for Jesus or his people. 

Jesus was executed by this occupying force in his homeland.  As he dies, he says “Father forgive them” (Luke 23:34). That is where he stood on the topic.

The Irreversibility of Some Outrages

The problem with many of the outrages of the world is their irreversibility, argues Miroslav Volf (Exclusion & Embrace—A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, pg. 121-23).  The consequences of past wrongs continue to plague us, even passing from generation to generation.  The damage cannot be undone; there is no fixing things.

How can we find the freedom to forgive others in such a world?

People Like Us

Philip Caputo, an American soldier in Vietnam, recounts a day when he and his unit were dropped by helicopter into a swampy jungle southwest of Danang.  They made their way through the difficult terrain encountering Vietnamese fighters, who retreated back into the countryside at the Americans’ advance.  Caputo and his comrades cut their way through the thickets, looking for dead and wounded enemy fighters.  It was a dangerous undertaking.  Wounded soldiers can still fire rifles and toss grenades; ambushes were common as battlefields were “mopped up.”

They came upon a hut that had been used as a base camp by the enemy.  They cautiously made their way up to the structure and finally inside.  Among the military equipment and battle manuals left behind, they found a stack of letters to and from families and girlfriends.  There were photos of mothers and fathers and sweethearts.  Notes were scribbled on the edges of some of the photographs. 

Caputo writes:

I was filled with conflicting emotions.  What we had found gave to the enemy the humanity I wished to deny him. It was comforting to realize that the Viet Cong were flesh and blood instead of the mysterious wraiths I had thought them to be; but this same realization aroused an abiding sense of remorse.  These were men we had helped to kill, men whose deaths would afflict other people with irrevocable loss (A Rumor of War pg. 122). 

Caputo goes on to write that when they were back at their base, a PFC “expressed what may have been a collective emotion. ‘They’re young men,’ he told me.  ‘They are just like us, lieutenant.  It’s always the young men who die.’”

They are just like us.

This the nascent realization that begins the journey to forgiveness. This a taking to heart of Genesis 1:27: “So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” We are all created in God’s image. Are not all people, in some way “just like us?”

This is the fertile ground into which the seeds of forgiveness are sown.  It make take years, even a lifetime, for those tender shoots to mature. This may be the work of a lifetime.

A Beginning Place

Jesus will always be an aspirational figure for us.  Few of us are Christ-like enough to bless someone while they are unjustly executing us. A good beginning point in the process is to remember the words of that PFC:  “They are just like us.”  In one way they are all like us.  The criminals and despots, the White Supremacists and the occupying armies—they are all made in the image of God.  In that way they are “just like us.”

The image God lies within each of us.  Sometimes that image is so deeply buried, so marred by the powers and principalities of this world, it is very difficult to see.  We can just assume it is there and act accordingly.

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Part Two

PART TWO: ARE WE MAKING DISCIPLES OR MEMBERS?

 

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”  At once they left their nets and followed him.

(Matthew 4:18—20)

 

The Beginning and the End Matter

Previously we looked at Jesus’ final words in Matthew’s Gospel (https://jkelseyem.blogspot.com/2023/08/where-do-we-go-from-here.html). We will return to that passage in the future, but for now we will examine the first conversation Jesus initiates in Matthew’s Gospel. 

 

Remember “the primacy effect” and “the recency effect” from Part One? We remember best the first and last items in a story; writers know this. Thus Jesus’ first initiated conversation as he begins his ministry sets the framework for the rest of his work. We are to remember these words as the story unfolds.

 

This first invitation to Simon Peter and his brother Andrew is critical for understanding how Jesus goes about disciple-making. When at the end of the Gospel Jesus tells us to make disciples, this early story informs what he meant.

 

The Setting Matters

What Jesus does in this first encounter is a bit incongruous with the way Matthew introduces the conversation. We can learn something from this.

 

In the preceding verses, 4:12—17, Matthew tells us that what Isaiah wrote about in 9:1-4 is now being fulfilled in Jesus.

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—

The people walking in darkness

    have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of deep darkness

    a light has dawned.

 You have enlarged the nation

    and increased their joy;

they rejoice before you

    as people rejoice at the harvest,

as warriors rejoice

    when dividing the plunder.

For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,

    you have shattered

the yoke that burdens them,

    the bar across their shoulders,

    the rod of their oppressor.

 

Isaiah wrote in the day when the Northern Jewish Kingdom—containing Zebulun, Naphtali, and the way by the sea—had been conquered by a foreign power. The Northern Kingdom had fallen victim to the insatiable greed, devastating weapons, and crushing power of the Assyrian empire. No one questioned the invincibility of the conqueror, no one but Isaiah that is. 

 

Isaiah writes of a King that God will raise up, a savior that will bring possibilities the people could not even dream of. Matthew is saying Jesus is that same type of leader. Jesus is the one who will bring possibilities and deliverance no one can even imagine.

 

So what does Jesus do after this auspicious and majestic introduction to his ministry? He chats up a few fishermen as he takes a walk by the water. Not very dramatic is it? We might expect some thunder and lightning, an earthquake or two. Yet this invitation to these two fishermen prefigures the way God will work through Jesus.

 

A Model for Disciple-Making

Beside the Sea of Galilee we have a model for disciple-making. Jesus’ idea of discipling people is to invite them to travel along with him on a journey he has already begun.  He will teach them what it means to be faithful by showing them his faithfulness in a variety of situations. 

 

He asks them to “follow” him. This inevitably means leaving some things behind. He tells these experienced fishing professionals that they will need to learn a new way of life; they will learn to fish for human beings. This is not a call to a casual endeavor, one new preoccupation among others. “Follow me” is a big ask.

 

Although Jesus takes a rather low-key approach at the beginning, he is not an undercover incognito disciple maker. Admittedly, he asks for no doctrinal declaration or test of orthodoxy; they do not sign any card or undergo any ritual. He will unpack that along the way. He begins simply with an invitation to begin a journey. He is clear, however, that he is inviting them on a journey that will leave them changed.

 

Discipleship is More Than Just Showing Up

Woody Allen once quipped that 90% of life is just showing up. A fellow ABCNYS pastor commented: “Discipleship carries responsibility and accountability. Membership involves just showing up. We need to show up in order to be a disciple - but discipleship requires engagement and action.” Jesus is asking a great deal more than just “showing up” in the right place at the right time. He has a great deal more than member-making in mind.

 

Simon Peter and Andrew brought with them that day a hunger for a grander and deeper way of life and a willingness to leave some things behind to find it. Not everyone is ready for this journey into discipleship. Disciple-making takes into account where people are, where they have been, and what they are looking for. It recognizes they must be ready, hungry for something more than life has provided for them.

 

This is the model of disciple-making Jesus employs. He invites people to travel along with him on a journey that he, himself, has already begun. We call this “impartational disciple-making.”

 

This is a much more ambitious project than simply member-making. It can include member-making, but is a great deal more.

 

Next time, we will think more about “impartational disciple-making.”

 

Blessings,

Jim Kelsey

ABCNYS Executive Minister

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

 July 28, 2023

PART ONE: ARE WE MAKING DISCIPLES OR MEMBERS?

 

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.  And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:16—20)

 

 

Make Disciples

 

It is called “the primacy effect” and “the recency effect.” 

 

We remember best the beginning and the ending of a story. Writers know this and often place the most important material at the beginning and the end of a narrative. So Jesus’ departing instructions to his disciples in Matthew’s Gospel should garner great attention from us. These are his last spoken words, indeed, the final words of the book.  The author is saying: If you don’t remember anything else Jesus said, remember this: “Make disciples as you go through your life.”

 

Michael Foss, a Lutheran pastor, writes about shifting our churches from a culture of membership to a culture of discipleship (Power Surge: Six Marks of Discipleship for a Changing Church). This might seem a bit unsettling to people like me and many of you who have spent much of our lives seeking to build and then maintain the membership of our churches. Jesus is saying job one for his followers is to be disciples and then make others. Member-making can be seen as a part of that work, but disciple-making is a far more comprehensive project.

 

I believe membership in a congregation reaps rewards in our own lives and in the life of our community and the broader world. I am not badmouthing membership. In the letters of Paul we see that those followers in closest historical proximity to Jesus quickly organized themselves into local communities of believers. Paul wrote in Ephesians 4 about the life of local congregations and the responsibility membership brings. In the midst of this chapter he writes: “So then, putting away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with your neighbor, for we are members of one another [4:25].” We will, in a future piece, look at the nuanced differences between “membership” and “being members of one another;” they are not necessarily the same thing.

 

I wonder if in our attention to membership concerns we have lost sight of the higher calling: making disciples. Member-making and disciple-making are not mutually exclusive. They are not, however, precisely the same thing.

 

Making Disciples—Our Original Task

Thinking about disciple-making—in distinction from member-making—can help us move forward and find renewed vitality and purpose in our congregations.

 

In the next few months, I will be writing more on this. Next time we will look at how Jesus models disciple-making in the first conversation he initiates in Matthew’s telling of the story.

 

I am also interested in what you think. What do you see as the distinctions between member-making and disciple-making? Write me at jkelsey@abc-nys.org. We will sort this out together.

 

Blessings,

Jim

ABCNYS Executive Minister

Resurrection and Mass Shooting in Louisville

 

TRAGEDY CLOSE TO HOME

Tragedy always hits harder when it strikes closer to home. There have been 19 mass shootings in America this year, shootings in which 4 or more people were killed.  All of them are horrific, but some of them feel more personal.

 On April 9^th Christians around the globe celebrated Easter. The next morning, with songs of resurrection still ringing in our ears, we learned of the killing of 5 people at the Old National Bank in Louisville KY.

These killings struck close to home for me.  I spent 11 years living in Louisville.  I grew into young adulthood in that city.  I earned an M.Div. and a PhD in that town, a period of transformative theological growth for me.  I made life-long friends in that place; if you look closely you can still see their fingerprints on my life.  I fell in in love and got married in that place.  A city I cherish and to which I owe a lot has been wounded.

I thought about that woundedness in light of the resurrection.

RECONCILING RESURRECTION WITH REALITY

How do we reconcile the tension between our Easter anthems on Sunday and the bloody killings in a bank in Louisville the next morning?

 The French theologian (with the German-sounding name) Oscar Cullman once made a connection between the final phase of WW II and the victory of Jesus on Calvary.  Cullman observed that on D Day, once the Allied soldiers got across the beaches of Normandy and into the hedgerows, the war was won. From there the Allies would move south and west across France fighting village by village.  They would make their way into Germany and finally on to Berlin.  When they got off the sand onto soil, the war was won.

From the hedgerows of coastal France to Berlin was, nonetheless, a long slog.  More people would die.  The road ahead held headships for sure.  As they got off the beaches and into the villages the war was won, but it was not yet over.  There was still a lot of mopping up to do.

This is where we live, in the mopping up phase of things.  The Enemy is defeated, but the Enemy has not yet yielded. The victory of God in Christ is inevitable, but battles are still to be waged. 

The Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 6 admonishes us to put on the whole armor of God. Paul, of all people, affirmed in the victory of God in Jesus. Yet Paul realized there are still some battles to be fought.  He also realized that we wage war not just against random incidental violence.  When a young adult walks into a bank conference room armed with an AR 15 style semi-automatic assault rifle intending to kill, we see we are up against “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).” We see this is about a great deal more than one disappointed well-armed soon-to-be unemployed worker.

HOW DO WE LIVE IN THE MEANTIME?

How do we live in the meantime, as we proclaim resurrection yet mourn Louisville and her dead and the countless other atrocities in our world? 

Victory is assured, but there are still battles to be fought.  In this time of mopping up, we carry on the work Jesus began:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

It is still a battle.  Our world is not in favor of the work of Jesus. 

Jim Kelsey 

Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State

Agreeing with God and Living Well with Ourselves

 

Psalm 32

Lent 2023

 

THE MOOD OF LENT

From childhood, we are taught how to navigate life: play nice; get along well with others; and share your toys. As we grow older, our relationships grow more complex, as do the rules.  Those basic childhood rules, however, are still good guides to adult living.  In particular, getting along well with others increase our joy and minimizes our hardships as we move through life. 

The season of Lent is about living well with God.  It is also about living well with ourselves.  The two are intertwined.

During Lent we have a tendency to talk about repentance, which presupposes moral culpability for the damage we have done and the good we have left undone. The traditional Bible word for this is sin. 

MODERN SENSIBILITIES

Freud came along and taught us to categorize our behavior in a clinically detached way, removing most of the moral element. The rationale of Lent rejects this particular piece of Freudian thought.

 Then Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist, came along and argued that human behavior is culturally conditioned; we are a product of our society. She tested this by examining gender roles in different societies. The question is not whether behavior is right or wrong but rather is it appropriate.  We are certainly a product, to some degree, of our environment.  This does not, however, remove our responsibility for how we live.  Lent recognizes this responsibility.

Both Freud and Mead should, however, introduce some caution and compassion into our commentary on ourselves and others.  If we see a turtle on a fence post, we know the turtle did not put itself up there; it had help.  Our response should be to help the turtle off the fence post, so to speak.  When we see the life of another person headed in a destructive way, we need to remember they had help getting to that point. We should do what we can to help them to move to a better place.  We should engage in the same compassion concerning our own lives.

Recognizing moral culpability, ours and that of others, does not free us from compassion, mercy, and patience.  That failure, in and of itself, makes us morally culpable. 

THE NAGGING SENSE THAT SOMETHING IS NOT QUITE RIGHT

With modern sensibilities—via Freud and Mead—deleting much of the moral dimension from our behavior, we might expect we all would feel free from guilt and feel empowered us to accept ourselves without any personal discomfort.

 

Experience has not born that out.  The 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed that the tragedy of modern people is we can conceive of self-perfection but cannot achieve it.  We still sense that something is not quite right with us.  In the quiet of the night, we find ourselves unsettled about ourselves.  We regret things said and done and things not said and not done.

Karl Jung hit closer to the mark than did Freud or Mead.  Jung observed we have a shadow self, a part of our character that does not match up with our ideal sense of we would like to be.  There are parts of us that are not only unacceptable to those around us but are also unacceptable to ourselves.  Jung encourages us to accept that shadow self, not indulge it but acknowledge it.  In that way we can gain some power over it; we disarm it.

THE PSALMIST ALREADY KNEW ALL THIS

The Psalmist wrote the same thing long ago:  “While I kept silent my body wasted away [v. 3].”  When the Psalmist acknowledges the truth that has been lurking within, the Psalmist is set free:  “Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did hide my iniquity [v. 5].”

Upon realizing there is healing and joy in agreeing with God about our failures, the Psalmist enthusiastically proclaims:  “I will confess my transgression to the Lord,” and God forgave the guilt of my sin.  In honesty before God, God becomes a “hiding place” for the Psalmist, a preserver and deliverer (v. 7).

When we agree with God—which is the definition of confession—and take ownership of the damage we have done and the good we have left undone, then we are finally free to live comfortably with ourselves and with God. 

Adam, when confronted by God for eating the forbidden fruit, blames “the woman whom you gave to be with me” (Gen. 3:12), thereby blaming the woman and implicitly blaming God for giving him the woman in the first place!  Eve, when confronted by God, blames the snake (Gen. 3:12-14). We too, when confronted with our failures, want to assign blame elsewhere.  The Psalmist will have none of that.

 I suspect hell is a place where no one takes responsibility for anything. Everyone all day long chimes “not my fault,” and nothing is ever repaired. 

GRACE ENABLES US TO BEAR UP UNDER HONESTY

This kind of honest responsibility-taking can lead to despair and alienation from ourselves and God if it comes to us unaccompanied by grace. If this honesty is coupled with confession and an experience of grace, we walk across the threshold to renewed life.  We find a way to live with ourselves, knowing that we are--for now--a long way from perfect.

The Swiss physician Paul Tournier compares confession to pulling out a stopper so life can flow again. This is what the Psalmist discovered long before Touriner put it so concretely. 

The rhythm of Lent is not a song of denial and discipline and denigration of self.  Rather the rhythm of Lent is a tune of renewed and grander life.  It is about agreeing with God and finding a way to live with our imperfect selves and a holy God.

Our God, we have done things we should not have done, and we have left undone things we should have done.  We could have chosen otherwise.  And we have tried to find relief through denial and blaming.  

We cast ourselves upon your mercy. 

Cleanse us from guilt and empower us to do better.  May your Spirit nourish renewed life in us in this season of Lent.

For the forgiveness of sin, for deliverance from our weakness, we give you thanks.  May the assurance of your love and your longing for our wholeness embolden us to be honest with ourselves and the grace to live with ourselves—not satisfied with who we are—but able to begin there and grow evermore into the image of your Son Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Jim Kelsey-Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State

THE ASBURY GATHERING IN A BROADER FRAME

 

What Is Going On?

Most of us, by now, have heard of the extended worship service that blossomed at Asbury University in Kentucky.  This phenomenon has spawned similar experiences at Lee University in Tennessee, Cedarville University in Ohio, and Texas A&M.

First, I do not want to join the voices of those who question the motives, authenticity, or sincerity of these young people. 

It seems these days we have trouble affirming anything that might be a bit beyond our range of experiences, beyond the common lore of “our tribe.”  I suspect we might be threatened by anything that does not necessarily fit within the self-affirming ideological and philosophical strictures for how life and faith should work.  

God moves in peoples’ lives. Just because God has not moved in my life or your life in this way, at least in a long time, does not mean it is to be summarily dismissed as just so much melodrama.

I do, however, want to set the religious experiences of these young people within a broader frame of reference.  

We Were All Young Once

I became a Christian as a sophomore in college.  I was all in all the time for Jesus.  As Jacques Ellul, the French Marxist Philosopher turned Christian pastor, wrote: I was violently converted.  I was truly reborn as a new peosn into a new life.

In those years, my faith was quite straight forward: Always do what God wanted me to do—pay any price, climb any mountain, follow any path.  I believed the will of God would come to me, with due diligence on my part, with reassuring clarity and timeliness. 

I saw the world and my life in simple terms.  I had little responsibility, a narrow range of experiences, and the horizon of my thinking rarely extended beyond the end of the academic year.  I had a faith that was appropriate for me.

As I now move through my sixties, I have covered a lot of ground, seen a lot stuff, and known a lot of people.  The college faith I once had is no longer sufficient and appropriate for me.  Throughout the decades God has reformed, reshaped, and renewed my faith multiple times.  In each season, I had a faith appropriate for that day and place.

I am not suggesting that the students caught up in these extended worship experiences have an immature faith.  I am suggesting they have an appropriate faith for their time and place.  Maybe some of our unsettledness over what we are seeing at Asbury springs from a long-dormant longing to be back in a simpler place and time.

These are young people, and perhaps this is how God has chosen to move in their lives.  We should be glad for them.  We were all young once.

What Will Come of This?

Even though we may see the appropriateness of this religious experience, we must ask:  What will come of this?  Where will it go?  An experience of faith that does not move us on to a new place is a missed opportunity.

The Prophets shared that God has little patience with religious devotion that does not drive us out into the broader world and work of God.

Isaiah points up the contrast between the people’s pious worship, in this particular case the practice of fasting, and their greedy oppression of workers and their proclivity to quarreling and violence and then he writes:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
   and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you;
    the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. (58:6-8)

Fasting is good discipline; but as an end unto itself, it is an insult to God.

Micah (6:6-8) makes much the same point about sacrifice:

With what shall I come before the Lord
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
    and to walk humbly with your God?

Sacrifice is a good thing; but as an end unto itself, it is an insult to God.

Finally, the Prophet Amos (5:21-24) says to those who piously worship but do not practice justice during the week:

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 water
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Again, same story,

Jesus issued the same sort of condemnation in his day (Matthew 23:23):

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.

One should tithe says Jesus, but tithing should spawn justice, mercy, and faith.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of these outbreaks of protracted worship.  You can tell a tree by its fruit (Luke 6:43-44). Let us give this tree time to bear its fruit.  Our perceptive should be more long term than just the news of the day.

Generosity and Hope

So what do we make of what is happening at Asbury and other campuses?  First, it may well be the most appropriate expression of Christian experience for those students.  God speaks to us and works within us in ways appropriate for who we are and where we are at that moment.  Let us be generous.

We will wait to see what comes of this.  We may be surprised.  Let us be hopeful.

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State