Journal Entry for March 25, 2007

Here is my journal entry for today. (Why do i feel compelled to post this?)

I think this journey gets more and more difficult. Perhaps it becomes more difficult with the more direct path. It has always been uphill. Perhaps it was a long time of just going round and round the mountain. It makes for an easier climb but a much longer one. Perhaps I am headed more directly for the top. The destination is in sight and closer but the journey requires so much more effort… and tears seem to become increasingly inevitable. And the question, “Will I make it?” seems to ring more loudly and incessantly.

Today is the Annunciation of our Lord. I would have thought of comfort and encouragement today. The Incarnation of our Lord! Instead, I am made so aware of my own failure and sin again… more deeply than I have felt it for a long time. I am again aware of my weakness of my self-seeking, of my pursuit of comfort and ease and pleasure. Mary did not. The Mother of my Lord, the Mother of the Church, my Mother gave herself with “no holds barred.” I am a miserable wretch next to her… all the more next to my Lord who, because of her, is also my Brother.

I speak of one passion, of desiring only to be holy, to honor God, to give unblemished witness and praise to him. Yet my true passion is for my own ease. I seek, more than anything, to be rid of all discomfort. I simply want to feel good. And now, all I feel is pain, sadness, remorse, regret, sorrow. I feel trapped and my own fears are the chains.

Has not Jesus broken those chains? Has not He who is omnipotent provided everything needed for life and godliness? Cannot he who held the sun in place so the battle could be completed hold my heart, my soul so that his work can be completed in me?

I have no passion for teaching. I want to teach… but I have no unrestrained drive to pursue it. I do not know what I want to “do” other than just to rid myself of this “body of death” and be fully clothed in Life.

There is a deep and all-consuming work that I need to pursue – but it is beyond me. It is more than I can manage and requires more discipline than I have ever managed.

O God, do this thing in me. There is no one else to whom I can turn… no one in heaven, no one on earth I desire besides you. My body and even my heart fail me… but YOU are my strength, the strength of my heart, the strength of my life. You are everything. Remind me. Teach me. Hold me. Strengthen me.

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.

Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.

My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you…

The Church

I attended two very different worship services this morning. One was at an
Evangelical Free church. The other was at a Roman Catholic Church.

The music at the E Free (as they call them) church was tremendous. Not the
usual "pop" music so many "contemporary" evangelical churches are aiming at.
A mix of traditional hymns and more modern worship songs. There was a vocal
quartet that helped to lead vocally. (I couldn't look at them as the one
fellow was very distracting with his gestures and facial expressions. He
may have been genuinely worshipping, but I couldn't tell if that was the
case and it detracted from my own sense of worship.) There was piano,
guitar, bass and brass choir accompaniment. No organ, but the brass made up
for that! And the brass didn't just "play along." They had their own parts
that were both well written and well played.

There was also some scripture reading and several prayers. At the end,
there was communion and we even spoke the Mystery of Faith: Christ has
died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

The sermon, focusing on Jesus' statement, "I am the vine..." lasted about 25
minutes. Actually, it lasted twice as long as it should have. When the
preacher (the senior pastor, in this case) read the passage, he kept making
comments as he read through it... I prefer just reading the passage and then
hearing whatever comments are to be made. While he made his point - that we
need to stay attached and "in" the vine in order to produce fruit (not just
the fruit of new believers but the fruit of the Spirit at least equally as
well) - he could have said it half (or even a third) of the time he took.
It wasn't really exegetical and didn't really describe how that is done
other than mentioning reading the Bible and doing what Jesus says we should
do. (Of course, that's a huge chunk of it, right there.)

We then were served communion. Typical, as far as evangelical churches, go.
The bread and the cup are merely symbolic of the body and the blood of
Christ. On that basis, I did not feel I could participate in partaking.
But I prayed and sang the songs as the elements were served.

One really nice thing that was different from what I've seen at most
protestant services that use PowerPoint was that the actually music notation
was projected on the screen along with the text of the songs - like you were
reading pieces of sheet music. Really much better than just the words...
especially for unfamiliar songs. (Of course, they must pay huge fees to
compensate for copyrights on both text and music.)

After most of our singing there were announcements. I could do away with
announcements altogether. Never liked them when I pastored a church,
either.

Most of the people there seemed very engaged throughout most of the worship
service. I did have a fairly strong sense of God's presence through the
service.

The second service was, obviously, far more liturgical. We were late coming
from the other service and so missed some of my favorite parts (like the
confession of sin). But I loved the liturgy, as usual. The music wasn't
too bad... The organist was very decent and the cantor was an excellent
vocalist. The songs themselves were either traditional hymns or traditional
responses. The hymns were in the hymnal - but I still don't know the tunes
for the responses - which I find frustrating.

I love the liturgy because in every mass the crucifixion is played out for
us so clearly. And we do exactly what millions of other Christians do and
have done for nearly 2000 years.

The homily was fairly typical - rather atrocious. No exegesis. No
foundation for why we should do what we're supposed to do. No real practical
application. Merely a summarizing of the three readings (this time ending
with the parable of the prodigal and his father) and the call to "come home
to the Father." No discussion as to why or how. No discussion of the
Father's heart. No discussion about where we are in the story. Very little
(albeit some) discussion of the father's heart.

But few people seemed engaged with the service. Very few sang anything.
Some (quite a few) left the service early.

If only we could merge the liturgy and mass of the RC with the music and
"spirit" of the evangelical (plus the exegetical and practical preaching of
someone like David Hall) - WOW!!

Forgive me, Lord, for being judgmental of your Church. She belongs to you,
not me. Have mercy on her, Lord. Be glorified in her and through her.
Make me worthy to honor and glorify you. Heal me. Heal your Church. Glory
and praise to you, Lord.

The Way of the Cross

Jesus said, "Let anyone who wishes to come after me deny himself, take up
his cross and follow me."

After more than 30 years as a Christian, I think I'm only just now beginning
to understand this... I'm just a beginner and may never be any more than
that. I think of St. John of the Cross and cannot imagine "St. Jim of the
Cross."

Dying is so hard, especially when everything within screams, "I want to
LIVE!" I once heard a man say, "You cannot crucify yourself. You may be
able to nail down your feet and one hand but what happens to the other
hand?" The problem is that I'm not even sure I can climb onto the cross
myself, let alone nail myself to it.

And I think of a poem by C. S. Lewis:

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you
I never had a selfish thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through.
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace reassurance, pleasure are the goals I seek;
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin.
I talk of love (a scholar's parrot may talk Greek)
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you taught me (but how late the lack!)
I see the chasm. Everything you are was making
my heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

I'm not sure I understand what all Lewis meant in this but what I recognize
is that he recognized a condition of heart that was in desperate need of God
to do something, to do that thing that only God can and even would do. He
seemed to recognize that that what he needed was something that needed to be
done again and again and again.

It's not simply a matter of "being" dead to sin, dead to self and dead to
the world. It's not a once and done thing. It is, whether we like it or
not (and I certainly do not), a process of dying. I suppose this means that
we don't get to have our Gethsemane "once and for all." There must be lots
of them.

So, let it be, Lord. Make my heart, make our hearts what they ought to be.
Make it so in all your people, Lord. Then we will truly be one with you,
one with each other, and the whole world will know that you are God.

More Thoughts During Lent

Lent is always such an emotionally mixed bag for me... and that's so
frustrating because I really don't want it to be emotional at all.

Many have said it before and said it better than me: The closer we get to
God the more acutely aware become of our own sin. Just when I think I can't
take another step forward, I become aware, in some way and once again, that
God's mercy and grace are "bigger" than I thought.

I've been praying the Rosary periodically for the past year. I know most
Protestants become Hoovers when I say that. But to be honest, when I pray
the Rosary, it's not about Mary. I think Mary helps with my prayers but
it's not about her. It's all about her Blessed Son. Today, as I prayed the
Sorrowful Mysteries, focusing on the last day of Jesus' life, I was so
forcefully struck, again, that the suffering, the incredible,
incomprehensible and intentionally CHOSEN suffering Jesus endured was for
me.

Every morning during Lent, the antiphon for the Invitatory Psalm is: "Come
let us worship Christ the Lord who, for our sake, endured temptation and
suffering." For our sake... It wasn't for his sake. He didn't need
anything suffering might offer him. He gained nothing by it. It was all
for my sake... for our sake.

And the last reading this morning was from the prophet Joel: "Return to me
with your whole heart, with fasting, and with weeping, and mourning; rend
your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God. For
gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting
in punishment." (Joel 2:12-13)

I still have comprehended so little of God grace and mercy... and it seems
that the only way for me to more fully realize and comprehend his grace and
mercy are for me to more fully realize and comprehend my own sinfulness and
desperate situation without them... without him.

Perhaps fasting during Lent really does have an effect on prayer. I don't
understand it, how it can... but maybe there's something to it, after all.

Perhaps I need to fast during other times, as well...

Last Sunday

Not only this last Sunday, but it's also the last Sunday. David preached
his last sermon as the senior pastor at EBICC, yesterday. It wasn't his
usual fare as it was not an expository sermon at all... but it was certainly
of God, nonetheless.

My own tears were not that it was his last Sunday as the Sr. Pastor. It
wasn't that he a Libby sang the song I wrote for them. It was actually more
of the same, more of what's been going on for the past couple/several years.
Anytime I take the time or listen to the encouragement - whether it is the
encouragement to abstain from sin or obediently trust God or passionately
pursue and follow Jesus - or ponder again the indescribable, inconceivable,
illogical, irrational, inscrutable, undeniable love of God, I am nearly
always broken and/or in awe. I'm broken because of the realization of
unworthy I am of God's love (and always shall be) because of my sin and
unloving heart. I am in awe because of the power and majesty and glory and
(even more so) the call God has upon my life to simply be like Jesus and (as
our "church motto" puts it) - "to reproduce the likeness of Jesus in our
world."

And this is my prayer (from "Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me") which we sang
during our worship:

O grant that nothing in my soul
may dwell but thy pure love alone;
O may thy love possess me whole,
My joy, my treasure and my crown.
Strange flames far from my heart remove;
My every act, word, thought, be love.

Hell

Which is worse? To be thirsty with no water around or to be thirsty with water around but no access to it?

Very often, hell is associated with death. The "common" biblical understanding of death is the absence of God's presence. While that may be true of death, i'm not so sure that the same holds true for hell. I wonder which would be worse - the absence of God or the presence of God without "access" to him?


Perhaps hell is being near the presence of God but being cut off from him... with a two-fold consequence. First, there would be the torment of remembering - what could have been and could be "now." Second, there would be the torment of understanding - realizing God's eternal goodness and beauty and understanding my own putrid wretchedness... with no way to ever be better.

Holy Free Fall?

I have a friend who is committed to bringing leaders in the Church in this region together for prayer to seek a genuine outpouring of God's Spirit. For many years I had been quite involved with the group he was gathering... but I became more and more "restless" (for lack of a better term) as I felt more and more keenly the brokenness of the Church. The issue that kept resurfacing in my heart was that this was a gathering of Protestants. We met on Protestant terms. It seemed clear to me there was no way Catholic and Protestant Church leaders would ever gather together for this kind of prayer meeting. Either the Protestants would have to become more Catholic (and that was likely not to happen with this bunch) or the Catholics would have to become more Protestant (which is likely never to happen in this region). What divided the two "camps"? The same thing that seems to always divide them...

I've not attended these prayer times for a couple of years, now. (My circumstances of changed and my schedule precludes me from being able to join them.) My friend (I'll call him Bob, which is not his real name), Bob, sends me e-mail regularly as part of a mass mailing to summarize what he sees and hears from the these gatherings, trying to discern what the Spirit is saying and doing. He often sends out mailings after personal prayer and reflection on scripture, again, attempting to "hear what the Spirit says" to the Church in our community.

Bob is rather prolific. I get e-mail from him several times a week. There is a lot of value in much of what he has sent out... things regarding the need for greater humility and repentance in the Church, the need for a much greater rejection of the cultural "norms," God's broken heart over lost souls, and much more. In a sense, Bob is a kind of prophet - not so much foretelling future events but speaking to people as a kind of mouthpiece of God. I like that about Bob.

But Bob is an independent. He's not associated with any congregation. He meets with a few people on a fairly regular basis... but there is no one group to which he "belongs." I don't mean to be judgmental but Bob is a typical Protestant... acting out his protest against the Church that Jesus Christ established through the earliest apostles and any "form" of church (deliberate use of lower-case "c") that disagrees with his ideas of what a church should look like and be doing.

My criticism of Bob isn't really about Bob but me. I read (albeit, slowly) the ante-Nicene writings of the early Church Fathers and wonder why I'm still in the denomination I'm in. Why am I still a Protestant? Am I still protesting? If so, against what am I protesting? I find fault with my denomination, with the this group of Protestants with whom I am associated, with 21st century Evangelicalism, with Protestantism in general... but I also find fault with Catholicism.

But maybe it's not so much Catholicism itself with which I find fault but with the way it is often demonstrated and popularly discussed... or just assumed. When I read the early Church fathers, I am so impressed with how and what they think, with how they lived their lives. I am impressed that so much of what Protestants have tossed out simply because "it's too Catholic" is discussed in the Church's earliest documents... things like the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the exaltation of Mary, the invocation of the saints in prayer, etc. I realize the Protestant movement was intended to be a "back to the Bible" movement, for the most part. But I have to wonder, if since the Catholic counter-reformation and, more recently, Vatican II, Protestantism isn't established simply for the sake of being "non-Catholic."

I think what I want is Bob's zeal and devotion to and for holiness and true Christian discipleship coupled with the early Church father's understanding and practice of what it takes for the true Christian to live the true Christian life in true relationship with the Lord of the Church.

There are groups identifying themselves as "Evangelical Catholics." I think that's at least part of what I'm looking for. There seems to be room in the Catholic Church for that sort of thing.

But I wonder if there are groups identifying themselves as "Catholic Evangelicals." I wonder if it's even desirable given the nature of Protestantism let alone if it's at all possible. And if there are such groups, then how do they understand apostolic succession? How do they reconcile the differences in that understanding with the earliest understandings of apostolic succession? We can’t just toss their understanding aside because it was that earliest understanding that enabled them to identify what it is that constituted the scriptures! And to challenge that means a challenge to the whole of the entire Judeo-Christian history. I don’t think much of the rest of the world would care (except for some being quite ecstatic about it) but it would throw the Church itself into a free fall with nowhere to land.

Maybe that’s precisely the problem with Protestantism – and especially Evangelicalism – today. Is there such a thing as “holy free fall?”