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