The Elephant's Child

How To Pray.

First, cover your face with both hands.  Bend at your waist and throw the top of your body down across your legs. Your covered face should be towards the floor. You are speaking with our Lord God, King of the universe, Savior of all mankind, after all. 

This is how many children (and older people, too) prayed when I was growing up in Liberia. I was remembering this in church recently, as I bowed my head for the Gloria Patri. I have noticed the American church doesn't like to move in certain ways.  We worship the Lord with our mouths and our presence, but all too often, not with our bodies. When the American church does move, it is for dance, it is for hands lifting up, it is for feeling moved by the music; it is not in ways that show submission, not in ways that that incovience us or make us uncomfortable. Not in ways that bring us low. 

Moses removed his shoes at the burning bush. Every person in the Bible who was visited by an angel of God fell on their face. We are missing something.

At a friend's church, people bow at the passing of the processional cross, bow at the Gloria Patri, bend a knee at the words of the Creed that mention the Incarnation of our Lord, kneel when petitioning God. Faces turn towards the floor when Christ becomes flesh and blood for us to eat and drink. Like the West African children I watched in church as a child, backs and necks and knees bend before the presence of our Holy God.   

Both ways of praying, that of the African church and that which I see at my friend's church, are appropriate to the culture in which they occur; both show obeisance, something that I sometimes think American church isn't always very good at. 

What Easter Isn't.

I miss Easter in Liberia.  

I can't put my finger on just what exactly is different about Easter here.  I can't tell if it's a real thing that it feels different, or if it's just a lack of my childhood traditions and customs that makes it feel less than it should be. 

It is true that too much of the American church doesn't make nearly as big a deal over Easter as most of the African churches do. Easter was the festival of the church year in the churches I grew up in. 

Lots of palms for one.  The church was decorated with whole palm branches, French-braided over their own stems, then bent into arches over the windows and at the door.  Always a singing, dancing procession. 

Sunrise service outdoors at our mission's main office was a bit more American in nature - no percussion or dancing!. In later years, it was held at the home of the chaplain our mission was finally assigned. The men of the mission making breakfast in the kitchen afterwards. Kids running everywhere. What an incredible amount of joking around and laughing went on in the kitchen. 

For years after I left Liberia, I cried through Easter services here in the States.  Easter is when I miss Africa the very, very most.  As of a couple years ago, I stopped crying quite so much. Only took about twenty years...  

And then this year, our church handed out small, full palm fronds on Palm Sunday, each about 12" long. They're such a weak imitation of real palm fronds, which are three to five feet long, that they're barely worth bothering with. The one I was handed got crushed a bit somehow during the trip from the narthex to a pew.

That smell. Not wood, not plant, not sweet: palm.  Nothing like it.  The smell of boredom because we'd strip palm leaves and weave them for fun. The smell of Easter Sunday because of how the church was decorated.  That smell.

"Don't think about Liberia, don't think about Liberia, you'll start crying again...."

And then someone put a palm in my hand. 

Easter never seems like much here.  It's "just a church service."  (Yes: an important one. But people don't generally treat it like a Big Deal. It's a very small thing compared to Christmas.)

In Monrovia, I ate Easter morning breakfast with friends of my parent's who were like dear family to me. Here, Easter breakfast is served in an echoing gymnasium, assembly-line, institutional style, and nobody talks to us except Pastor and his family. 

It's not the same. But it's not just the social stuff; I've felt the difference ever since I left West Africa, even at previous churches, churches that were warmer and more open than our current one. 

 It's a mystery.

The Christmas Spirit and Feeling Christmasy.

What if the real reason so many of us having trouble feeling "like it's Christmas" in the the weeks before December 24th is because Advent isn't Christmas?  

Maybe our brains and our bodies know intrinsically what the Church year confesses: that the time leading up to Christmas isn't Christmas. It's separate.  It's preparation, it's reflection, it's a time of looking ahead toward's Christ's second coming. It's penitential, like Lent is. 

But it's not Christmas.

Maybe it's ok if we don't feel Christmas-y on Gaudete, the third Sunday of Advent.  Maybe the sad feelings, the days of blue moods, the worry and bustle of the season are good in a certain way. They're pentitential, you could say.  And they do end, because by the time Christmas actually comes, the magic comes too.  The lights seem brighter, the tree is finally decorated, plans for visiting family are finalized, most of the work is done and most of the bustle and craziness has been dealt with, the food gets eaten, and the gifts get opened.

Then it "feels like" Christmas. You know, on Christmas. 

Bearing Fruit For Jesus.

"This is a wisteria vine."

"No, it's not.  I don't see any flowers."

"Look, here is the label attached to the stem.  We can't see the flowers because a wisteria won't bloom until it's been threatened by environmental stress, but this vine most definitely has the ability to bear the beautiful, dangling purple flowers of a wisteria.  It is a wisteria, although it is young and hasn't been threatened yet."

"No, it's only pretending to be a wisteria.  There are no flowers, no fruit, therefore it is not actually a wisteria.  

"Ok, then.  Here is a maple seedling.  It is a baby version of the large tree here in my front yard."

"That is not a maple.  Maple trees make little helicopter-style winged seeds, and this small, four inch tall plant here bears no seeds.  Therefore it cannot be a maple tree. It may want to be a maple, it may think it's a maple, but until it bears the fruit, the seed, it is not a maple tree." 

"All right. I can see that you need clear, simple examples.   Over on the side of the property there is some sumac.  As you can see, the branches have lots of fruit on them.  We can safely say that those plants are indeed sumac. 

"Since that doesn't look anything like what I think 'fruit' should look like, since I don't recongize it as fruit, I have to say that, no, that is not sumac. Fruit is something you can eat, and that doesn't look like anything edible."

"Well, then, tell me which of all these plants here in my garden actually are what they are labelled as."

"There's really no way to be sure.  Only God can judge the heart of each plant. We can make some educated guesses, though.  That apple tree at the back lot line, for example, has apples."

"Those aren't apples.  Those are red plastic globes we hang in the tree as an organic pest control."

"Oh.  Ok, well, how about this oak?  I see acorns on it!  What a beautiful tree; you must be so proud of it!"

"Yes, the oak tree.  It has acorns, true, but come closer and look: it is riddled with oozing cankers and the trunk is hollow, gone to termites.  It is a rotten tree, and the acorns it has borne will be the last.  Next week my aborist is coming to cut it down and chop it up for firewood.

"You know, perhaps you've been wrong.  It is better to identify plants and trees by the Name they have been given, trusting that what is embedded in each plant's DNA will produce what it has been designed to  produce.  Fruit doesn't always look like what we expect it to; sometimes the fruit looks like the little dots in the center of a pointsettia.  Flowers sometimes doesn't show until the plant is stressed.  And sometimes, what is obviously fruit to our eyes is not fruit at all or is a leftover from a past time when the tree was healthy." 

"Oh, gosh look at the time! Gotta go. Hey, let's do lunch sometime, ok?"

Where I've Been.

Yesterday, I traveled across the state to be with a friend as she laid her four-month old baby to rest.   As she said, "No mother should have to do this."  

No.  No mother should have to. It was not intended to be such. 

Sin came in to the world via one man, the man Adam, and because of that sin, men die.  God did not create us to die; that humans die, that there is pain and sorrow in this world, is a consequence of the state of sin in mankind. 

"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— "Roman 5:12

The fifth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans continues, 

"For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.  For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ."

How does that happen, though? How was Christ's righteousness transferred to little Elizabeth, that although her body has died, she is with God? Romans 6 says how:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Amen.  Thanks be to God for baptism.

The Difference.

There is a world of theological difference between:

"The work you do is "good fruit" because you are in Christ."

and 

"Because you are in Christ, go out and bear fruit."  

True Food.

Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.  Jer 15:16

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

"...I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."  John 6:51

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. John 6:53-55

God, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of thy only son, Jesus Christ: Grant that as we joyfully receive him for our redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him, when he shall come to be our judge; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

"Oxford in the Snow," by Flickr user simononly.

Paving Bricks.

At one of the churches we tuned at this week, there is a threshold area made up of those imprinted donation bricks you see at parks, memorials and concert halls.  People make a donation and get their names on one of the bricks.

There was some of that at this church, to be sure.  But I was surprised to see how many of bricks had not someone's name, but a Scripture verse. 

Nicely done and classy.  Standing at the door, waiting for the secretary to buzz you in (it's a downtown church), before you even enter the building, Christ is preached.

Satan.

I found this this morning via @PastorKevinJud on Twitter.  It's from the Confessional Gadfly, and I'll post it in its entirety since it's short.  Here's the original post.

Do you wish to know what Satan does? He does two things - everything he does can be boiled down to this.

1. Satan tells you that you need no forgiveness, therefore ignore your sin.
2. Satan tells you that Christ's death upon the cross is not good enough to forgive your sins.

Whether we see our sin or not, Satan still attacks us by trying to separate us from forgiveness. Cling to the cross which is your life and salvation, and thus thwart the old evil foe.

Satan can also get at #2 by striking at the very truth of Christ's death, taking an axe to the base of the cross, if you will.   If the Cross didn't happen, your sins aren't forgiven.  And if sins aren't forgiven, then maybe it's easier to deal with them by saying #1 is true, too.  It's easier by far to say "There is no such thing as sin" than it is to say "There is no way to erase the guilt of sin." 

Once you decide there's no such thing as "sin," well, then all the filth, tradgedy, horror, evil has no source other than complete randomness. 

That way lies madness and despair. 

Just like a man who, after years of mysterious pain and illness, might find relief in hearing the word "cancer" because now he knows that which afflicts him, I prefer to understand the reason for the horrors of this world.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned --for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.  (Romans 5: 12-14)