The Sacraments

 Baptism and the Lord's Supper

There are many things in life that pull us away from the divine. The sacraments are ritual acts or sign-acts that pull us toward the divine.  The holy is present in the sacramental acts. Sacraments move us from experiencing prevenient grace toward justifying grace. They move us from that inward sense that there is something more, some great goodness out there and in here, toward the sense that the great goodness accepts us and is approaching us, even abiding in us.

There are two sign-acts in which Jesus participated: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These two are recognized as sacraments in The United Methodist Church.  As either sign-act is performed, the power of the Holy Spirit is called upon by the person performing the act and by the community of believers present and participating in the act. This holy power passes, by faith, to the person or persons receiving the sacrament.

The components of both Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are simple, everyday objects: people, water, bread and grape juice: gifts from God recognized millennia ago by the Hebrew people, as described in the Bible. People are drawn together, to community. Water has always been drunk and used for cleaning. Water is life-giving but can also be a force of destruction. Water represents life. There are many places in the Bible where God provides water in the wilderness or calms stormy seas. [Numbers 20:8-11; Exodus 15:22-25, 17:6; Judges 15:19; Mark 4:38-39; Matt 8:24-26]

Grain, wine and fruit, bread and grape juice, likewise, have always been eaten and drunk and were part of the typical Hebrew diet and of ritual sacrifice as grain, drink and fruit offerings. [Genesis 4:3; Exodus 29:40; Leviticus 2:1-16, 5:13, 6:14-23, 19:24, 23:13; Numbers 15:5] Washing, drinking and eating become means of grace, doorways to the divine, when they are enacted in a way that opens the spirits of the participants, people in community, to the presence of the Holy Spirit. The rituals and the meaning behind them enable the understanding and perception of the ordinary to become imbued with the extraordinary. Faith is an important component, because without faith, the heart of the recipient is closed, and the meaning denied.

John the Baptist called people to repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3) In Baptism, the covenant made between God and Abraham, through Abraham’s pledge to uphold and teach the law, is transformed. Ritualistic cleansing has roots in ancient Hebrew culture. In Baptism, the ancient legalistic cleansing with water that made the unclean clean becomes a sign-act of repentance, turning away from sin, and spiritual cleansing. The Holy Spirit, sent as our advocate by the risen Christ, is received by the laying-on-of-hands during baptism. Baptism is witnessed by the community, the Body of Christ, promises are exchanged, and the Lord’s Supper follows as a sign of joining to the community of faith. Ritualistic cleansing was performed to remove the unholy so that one could approach the holy. Baptism is understood on a theological level to wash away the guilt of sin. On a practical level, it marks us as Christ’s and is a sign-act to publicly proclaim our journey of faith surrounded by and guided by the congregation.  It is beautiful and profound.

As I read By Water and the Spirit, I find a lot of tension between these statements: “Working in the lives of people before, during, and after their baptisms, the Spirit is the effective agent of salvation.” and “Water is administered in the name of the triune God by an authorized person and the Holy Spirit is invoked…” (By Water and the Spirit, 7) If the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives all the time and baptism serves as a symbolic public recognition of the baptized person as one with the Body of Christ, why must the baptizer be authorized? If the Spirit is always with us, why must the Spirit be invoked? Is it because, although God is at work, we cannot see it? Is religion basically a way for people who have difficulty seeing the Spirit at work in the world to be continually reminded that God is near? Was the ritual of baptism developed to focus our attention and remind us of things that are happening, but often invisible to us, because we are so distracted by the world? 

I believe that the baptizer should be authorized, and the Spirit explicitly invoked, because that helps us accept the gift and avoid some of the doubt that so easily causes us to deny the gift. I am speaking of the gift of grace and adoption. The Holy Spirit is always working in our lives, but we are so easily distracted by the world that attention must be paid to counteracting those forces that would pull us away from our awareness of God and the Holy Spirit. The authority of the baptizer strengthens faith in the act of baptism and opens the hearts of the participants to the presence and work of the Spirit. One should not, however, shift too much power from the Spirit to the baptizer. This might call into question the baptism of someone who was baptized by an elder whose authority was later revoked. Revoking the authority of the baptizer does not revoke the baptism. The baptism is performed by the authorized person but received from the Holy Spirit and cannot be undone. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God fulfilled the prophecy of a new covenant and called forth the Church as a servant community (Jeremiah 31:31-34, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). The baptism of infants and adults, both male and female, is the sign of this covenant. (By Water and the Spirit, 7).

When Jesus met with his disciples in the upper room to celebrate Passover, he added a new component to the Passover meal: “Take; this is my body….This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many…” (Mark 14: 22, 24) During the Lord’s Supper, the significance of the bread and wine in the meal is shifted from remembrance of the Passover covenant and body and blood of the lamb in Exodus to the covenant, body and blood of Christ. The new covenant made between God and all people, through the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ, is remembered and we are united, by faith and the work of the Holy Spirit. When we confess our sins, ask for forgiveness through Christ our Lord, and praise God during the Great Thanksgiving, we are praying to be united, as one people and one with Christ. Sharing and eating the bread and cup seal the proclamations that we have made. We recall Christ’s suffering death and sacrifice and recommit ourselves as his servants. Christ is with us and in us, if we are willing, and we are filled with the Holy Spirit. This strengthens us to do the work of disciple-making.

My call is to facilitate the deepening of the faith of individual Christians and their commitment to a sense of social holiness, especially where they live.  This acts to bridge congregations with their communities and strengthen their commitment to making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. As a deacon, I would assist an elder or licensed local pastor with the preparation and practice of the sacraments of Holy Communion and Baptism, welcoming those from within the congregation and those from the community, and helping to strengthen their understanding of the meaning and purpose of the sacraments.

The meanings of Holy Communion and Baptism are as deep and complex as their visible practice is simple.  When we practice Holy Communion, we eat a meal of grain and drink the fruit of the vine. With Baptism, we wet a brow or sprinkle a few drops of water. These are common, everyday practices made uncommon by their connection to the history and practices of the Hebrew people.  Working in community, I would expect to encounter people with all types of faith, from atheist to any form of theist.  Someone observing communion might understand it as simply eating and drinking bread and juice.  The symbolic meaning would vary, depending on their background and experiences.  In a similar manner, Baptism might be seen as a simple ritual by someone with little understanding of Christianity. Part of my role would be to help the ministry team to navigate interactions with the community and to educate people about the United Methodist understanding of baptism as representing repentance, cleansing and new birth and the Lord’s Supper as redemption and union as the body of Christ. (Book of Disciple ¶ 104 74).

The Question of Evil

 Evil is a very strong and powerful English word. When I use evil, I mean extremely, unimaginably bad. The Meriam-Webster dictionary defines it as morally reprehensible.  The Hebrew word translated to evil in, for example, the verse "And again the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of Yahweh." (Judges 3:12) is  hā·rā‘. (BibleHub interlinear) Strong's Concordance defines it as bad, evil.  The Greek word translated to evil in, for example, the verse "The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure."(Matt 12:35)  is πονηρός/poneros. (BibleHub interlinear) Strong's Concordance defines πονηρός as "evil, bad, wicked, malicious, slothful". I, personally, have never equated evil with slothful. In that same verse in Matthew, evil (πονηρός) is contrasted with good (ἀγαθός/agathos), defined by Strong as intrinsically good, good in nature, good whether it be seen to be so or not, the widest and most colorless of all words with this meaning". That is not a very satisfying translation, since it uses good to define good.  This is, perhaps, more illuminating: Agathós "describes what originates from God and is empowered by Him in their life, through faith". (HELPS Word Studies) So, in good versus evil ( or bad) we have "what originates from God" versus "what is morally reprehensible".

Assuming that God is good and just, as I do, and that, at the time of creation, creation was very good (Gen 1:31), and that humans have free will (Gen 3:6), we can infer that evil is a result of actions that deny and work against the will of God.  Things that people do to purposely oppose the will of God are evil.

God loves us and all of creation beyond all measuring. When I look at unspoiled creation, I see that, indeed, it is good.  Every trip to a beautiful new place has reinforced this impression, whether hiking the West Canada Lake trail in the Adirondack lowlands or Going to the Sun road in Glacier National Park. When my life was blessed with motherhood, my infant son raised my awareness and experience of hope, joy and suffering.  I had played with dolls as a child but manipulating a doll, into situations and positions determined by me, was nothing like interacting with and loving a new creature with free will.  The depth of love and compassion that I experienced brought to my mind the thought, “This is how God loves us.” 

If we begin with the assumptions that God is good, God is love, God loves us and we have free will, we find God in a position very similar to that of every loving parent, with the added benefit of divine wisdom. Parents love their children and the will of a parent for their child is for great good, just as the will of God for us, God’s adopted children, is great good. (Proverbs 3:1-12, 1 Timothy 2:3-4) However, we sometimes choose things that are not good. Sometimes we think that the choice is good, when it is not. Sometimes, we know that the choice is not good. Other times, there does not seem to be a good choice. I do not stop loving my children when they disappoint me. Neither does God stop loving God’s children when we disappoint God.  Every good parent knows the agony of watching a beloved child reject wisdom and fail, only to discover the truth of that wisdom at some later time.  There is joy on all sides when the fortuitous choice is freely made.

Evil happens when we are selfish and destructive, ignoring the will of God or when we are so spiritually distant that we do not recognize the will of God, doing things that cause lasting harm to any part of creation: other people, animals, nature. “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil (κακοὶ) intentions come” (Mark 7:21a, NRSV) Kακοὶ is bad/evil in the broadest sense. (Strong) God, who loves all and is just, cannot will good for one part of creation at the expense of another. (John 12:32) When people choose good for themselves which harms others, that cannot align with the will of God.  If we experience evil at the hand of another, the apostle Paul urges us to follow the response of Jesus and the cross. If we respond to evil with good and try to live in harmony (Rom. 12:14-21), God will support us.  “The cross may reflect weakness, but it reflects power in weakness, the power of God who chooses the weak ‘to shame the strong’ (1 Cor. 1:27). (Bassler 332)

Unfortunately, all people are somewhat selfish and unable to turn completely away from evil without God’s help. Divine power is seen in our recognition of mistakes made and our efforts to correct them. Paul says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9) It would be much easier for God to simply make us do what God wants instead of trying to convince us, but God does not want us to be mere puppets or dolls.  Divine power in the form of prevenient grace, touches our heart before we even recognize God and lures us away from our self-serving impulses and toward recognition of our place in the web of creation and actions that preserve and sustain. (John 6:34) God knows us and loves us. God has given us the gift of choosing.

            To choose, is to make a decision and pick one thing instead of another. It sounds straight forward. However, our choices today are shaped by generations of choices that have come before us. John Wesley urged us to consider scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Our understanding of scripture is based on years of hearing it preached and seeing it applied in peoples’ lives. Our traditions have morphed, evolved and bifurcated over centuries to become a collection of diverse yet related traditions. We each have our own individual gifts of reasoning, be they creative, analytical or perceptive. No two people have exactly the same experiences. Often we are not even aware that we are making a choice or, if we are, the complexity of the choice is unclear and each component of our choosing can, and often is, tainted by evil: historical, cultural, familial, and even imaginary evils. Choosing is not straightforward.

            This is, in my view, the way that the sin of Adam has been passed down to us. I do not consider the cause of that “original sin” to be a curse or an evil presence or spirit that lingers in our midst and has been toying with humans for all time – unless you want to call selfishness an evil spirit. Rather, as with Adam, each time we choose something that is contrary to the will of God, each time we choose wrongly, we are hurting those directly involved, ourselves and future generations. There are ripple effects – for good or for bad.

            Sometimes human choice that leads to evil is the choice of inaction. Consider situations where people are suffering due to an unforeseen or unavoidable natural disaster like a hurricane or earthquake. People will sometimes ask, “How could God allow this to happen?” or “Where was God in all this?”  The universe was created and operates according to a complex set of physical laws. The earth rotates around the sun, the moon around the earth and the earth rotates on its axis. The sun warms the land, oceans and atmosphere. The presence of the moon, the rotations, the pull of gravity and temperature gradients cause the motion of the oceans and the atmosphere. Hurricanes are a product of those natural forces.

If someone came to me asking, “Where was God?” when this or that natural or human-made disaster happened, I would first assure them that God is faithful, loving and always present. God was and is there and ready to offer spiritual protection and comfort in the midst of suffering. When people are suffering, rather than asking, “Where was God?”, we should be asking, “Where was the church? Why weren’t God’s people stepping in to offer food, shelter, clothing and comfort?” We are the hands and feet of God and, like Jesus, should offer assistance when people cry, “Lord, have mercy.” That is one of the ways that we love God and love our neighbor. 

            When someone asks, “Where was God?”, it sounds like the question of theodicy, but I would want to make sure. So, I would first say, “It sounds like you are asking this: If God is good, why do bad things happen to good people. Is that right?”  One of the ways that people deal with theodicy is through dualism. They blame the bad things on Satan so that they don’t have to blame God and God’s goodness isn’t threatened. The Bible doesn’t say that God will prevent all bad things from happening to us if we are faithful. The Bible says that God loves us, God is just and God has made a covenant with us. God will never abandon us.  

            I am reminded of the story of the man born blind. (Matthew 9:27–30; Mark 8:22–25; John 9:1–7) Jesus says: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” Suffering happens. Sometimes it is through natural disasters like earthquakes, sometimes epidemics, sometimes birth defects. All of them provide opportunities for the people of God to do the work of God and show God’s glory. Rather than asking “Why did this happen?” ask “What can I do to help, to show God’s love, care and compassion?”  We may ask “Why did this happen?” in order to prevent suffering from happening again, but little is gained if we are asking “Why?” in order to lay blame. 

There are a lot of things that happen that we don’t understand. They can make us feel vulnerable, scared. We often ask “Why?” Sometimes, we understand afterwards, when we look back. But sometimes we never understand. The Bible tells us that what matters is: that we love and trust God; that we remember that God was here at the beginning of creation, God is good and God will always be with us. God’s love never fails. The other thing that matters is that, when something bad happens or on a regular day when regular things happen, we can show the love of God by the things that we do: by loving our neighbors, by doing as much good as we can.

One of my Basic truths

Life has been too busy and I have not made time for theological reading. 

Today, I must make time.

On the subject of God - Hartshorne ("The Divine Relativity" in Readings in Christian Theology) writes about God being perfect - the most perfect. The "self-surpassing surpasser" of all. My immediate reaction is that this sounds like male ego, not God. Self-surpassing surpassor? In competition with whom? 

Though I reject the term, I accept the concept. He writes that if we acknowledge that humans are imperfect and think that God is perfect (or, he says, transcendentally excellent), that may lead us to think that God did no good in creating the world. As solution, he proposes that the perfect-and-imperfect together as a whole is superior to the perfect alone, independent of the imperfect.

Hartshorne rejects the notion that God surveys all time, knows everything that will happen, and has set the best possible course. He believes that those who propose that idea are confusing reliability (faithfulness) with absolute constancy.  I agree. God does not have to know the future in order to spiritually move us toward the most perfect next step.  Think divine wisdom, rather than omniscience and predestination. 

I would add two things: 1. The imperfect informs the perfect. We, who do not have divine wisdom, can learn and grow by observing less than perfect actions and outcomes. 2. God loves variety. Creation is filled with variety and is perfect in its entirety. To say that God failed because there are imperfect elements within creation is to view creation microscopically rather than macroscopically. The larger, macroscopic view sees the intertwining complimentarity. Yes, this single flower may be crushed by the rushing waters after a rainstorm, but it is better for the water to go in this direction. Learn from it. Grow elsewhere, as the flowers do. 

Tillich (A History of Christian Thought, p 234) writes "Everyone has to be perfect and no one is able to be perfect." We do not have the ability, but we can have the intention.  "Luther turned religion and ethics around. We cannot fulfill the will of God without being united with him." This is supported by John Wesley's statements that we must do all the good we can, in all the ways we can, etc. and strive for perfection through the transformational sanctifying grace of God. I couldn't agree more.

God is great. God is good. God, as Holy Spirit, is working in the world.

A new chapter in life - Recognizing a Call

During an online social hour with friends last night, I mentioned that I need to do some theological work to prepare for an upcoming oral examination. My friend suggested that I blog. I have blogged in the past as you can see here. A lot has happened in the world and my life since my last entry in April 2013. A lot.

I started a new job in August 2013 and continue to work at the same place, but we were acquired by another company and there have been many changes. I'm still married to the same guy - a good match - and we live in the same log house on the same dirt road. Our children, who were in middle school, are now young adults. I was in my 50s and struggling with questions about my faith and have since entered my 60s and graduated from seminary. The world has seemingly become less stable and more dangerous, but it may just be that things that had been lurking in the shadows are now being exposed in the light.

If you're interested in questions about faith, you might find something of value here. I'm hoping for courteous, thoughtful, challenging discussions. You may notice that I bring science and healing into the conversation somewhat often. That's because of my training as a scientist and educator.

My call, as I understand it, is to awaken people to the beauty and balance of a life centered on loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. If you're interested, you can find that in a Bible in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 22, verses 36 to 40.

That's all for today.