Visiting in an unfamiliar church is always interesting. I read over the bulletin in order to see how the service would flow. One word appeared repeatedly– love; not a bad concept if a single theme was in order.
There was no doubt that these people liked the idea that God was love, that Christ was all about love, that the Holy Spirit brought love, and that love was pretty much the key to how things were supposed to get done. I took out my pen and circled the word wherever it appeared. It was probably the first time that “love” had been documented in that church.
What was missing? Well, holiness. I thought a little further. There is something to be said about the fear of the Lord in Scripture but it did not appear here. And it would have been unspeakable in that context to wonder about the wrath of God. Even the color of the walls and creature comforts in the fittings seemed designed to assure worshipers that all was well. The hymns did not distract from the message either. One was even about “partnership,” a concept that had gone unnoticed by me in the history of Christian thought.
The Prayer of Confession held no problems. Its components slid through the mind with a minimum of friction. The major worry seemed to be insensitivity, and I am the first to agree that could be a problem. I gathered that I was to report in that I had not responded in love as I could have, a sort of callousness of the soul. And, my goodness, I did not want that to be the case. I mea culpa-ed my way through the environmental crisis and war and peace and felt a lot better for it.
Then I recapped my pen and thought it over. I had come to worship the Almighty in a Presbyterian setting, and I had found myself stuck in a liturgical boutique. There was plenty to buy, as long as you were looking for happy things and a chance to see that everyone had uplift. A kind of emotional branding had occurred, and I had not even recognized it.
I returned home feeling that my diet called for more basic stuff. Among other places that I searched, I settled on Psalm 119.
There were several striking things about this psalm, not including its amazing length. One was preoccupation with the importance of God’s word in shaping life. The second was its complex understanding of God and the necessity of waiting for further clarity. And the third was its very prescriptive prayer, “Revive me according to your word.”
I felt that this one psalm began to restore the balance that was missing in the church service earlier that day. It had obviously come out of an experience of great trust, speaking of God’s loving-kindness and recognizing that God’s testimonies are wonderful.
It became more complicated at verse 120, “My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments.” And verse 75, retroactively, takes it even further, “…in faithfulness you have afflicted me.” That struck me as a very complicated combination of convictions.
In the end the psalmist declares, in spite of his rich meditation upon the word, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep.” The pathos of his situation is unavoidable.
I had not heard in worship anything as perplexing as these texts. While God was hardly depicted as removed he did seem to be as calm and self assured as an old Amsterdam burger in a portrait by a Dutch painter. I realized that church language about God had actually split in two different directions somewhere along the path.
On the one hand there was an oral presentation in sermon and song of a duty with which we could all be comfortable. On the other hand, there was a far more complex understanding of God within the foundational documents of Scripture and confession. What could we make of that? A repackaging had occurred.
Inasmuch as the book of Job contains multiple layers, I turned to it for help. The discussion between God and Satan over Job’s immediate future in the first two chapters exposed more problems than I could solve. But there was more to Job’s circumstances following his great afflictions.
At the end of his long and excruciating journey, Job says in 42:3, “I have declared that which I did not understand.” He admits that he too has been involved in simplifying things. It is a theological sin, rather than a mere redesign of the curriculum. He has given the simple statement when far more complex ones were needed. And as some of us know, smooth talking the difficult things of God on Sunday leaves you with a troubled conscience on Monday.
Job has become as confused as any lost sheep at this point. He has, however, learned one thing; he has learned to wait. And he has learned, as part of this, what waiting for the Lord entails, “Therefore I retract and repent in dust and ashes.” Could this final statement, perhaps at some level launched toward the official theology of court and temple, provide guidance for us?
When all other words fail us, and we would know when, we pray as did the psalmist: “Revive me according to your word.” With the prayer we accept the Lord’s open contract. His word alone will determine the future. And it excludes all the ideas of reform and revival, however interesting they are to us, that spring forth from our own head. That little clause, “according to your word,” is far reaching.
Our beloved slogan, “Reformed and always reforming,” has always beckoned us beyond the place where we are. And we have seen it as a special character of Presbyterian churches. Even when the remainder of the phrase comes to mind, “according to the word of God,” we have still felt that we had a great deal of freedom. Does it all not flow from our interpretation of the word?
Perhaps the author suspected that this idea would not come any easier to us than it did to him. He repeats it some dozen times, leading us repeatedly to ask the question, “What does this concept ‘according to the word of God’ really mean?”
Coupled with the preceding idea of waiting for the Lord, it becomes more closely tied to the conviction that the Lord really does make his will known. He has not left us entitled to use our most enlightened criteria in reshaping the church. It is more tightly wired than that.
“Waiting” itself becomes revived and reformed by the word, and we soon discover that it asks more of us. It asks that we accept the grief that comes when we surrender our old criteria for reforming things. Love of place, pride of life, status among peers — all the things so dear to us — are penetrated by this word that they might be healed and become better. Old inferior love diminishes. And a different kind emerges. It can be so hard. As Paul put it, faith involves dying and rising. Is it really any surprise that so many older Eastern theologians said that when grace and prayer go this deep they involve the gift of tears?
And as the psalmist admits, the only way to grasp the full enigma of such odd waiting is through a very difficult concept, the Lord’s affliction. And the most disorienting things frequently come as a surprise. It is the subtle conviction that steals upon us in the midst of pain, “God has done this.” And if we should finally admit this publicly, the line of those waiting to reassure us would be too long to measure. And as we listen not only to our own hearts but to the cautious whispers of others, we begin to learn more. The freedom to try out a connection like that comes as a gift from within the covenant. It tells us something important, even if we do not have it quite right, that trust is not incompatible with fear nor is grace incompatible with pain. And yet there is still more to learn. Only within the gift of Christ’s righteousness can we understand that what he has brought into our lives can, in the end, not only restore something deep within us but within others as well.
The biblical metaphors of sacrifice become significant for us at this place in our lives. What they seem to say is that, metaphorically, God has laced his own life to ours in a covenant of pain. They include the provision that God inflicts on himself first what he brings to us. That is why the Cross is so definitive in our Christology. The Lamb, we remember, was his Lamb too.
It is important that all affliction that comes upon us be seen from the Cross. This means that our pain is not intended specifically for us. It is vocational. Correlated with Christ’s suffering we become involved with him in bearing the sins of the world. Christological affliction carries so much with it that we might in retrospect identify with what poor Job said, “I have declared that which I did not understand.”
Marketing is intended to reduce the complexity of life. Therefore when we begin to market God we remove the complications and the challenges. And ultimately, we find ourselves removing things that are distinctive for the Christian faith as well. Marketing God, for all of its good intentions, always fails. Simplicity, when it comes to preaching, can unfortunately lead to heresy.
One of the chief marketing tools is the focus group. It meets together, considers the product, looks at what can be improved, and sends out recommendations. Sometimes we call it a task force. But a task force should not simply send out deliverances concerning, as if it were a detergent, ways to get the stain out. It should not be concerned with what would sell. It should be more thoughtfully guided by the practice of the monastic communities which looked at Psalm 119:164 and, reading, “Seven times a day I praise you,” determined to say nothing until they themselves had prayed seven times a day into the secrets of the Lord, until they had learned to wait like that. It is some practice as serious as this that deepens any group of the church into becoming something more profound. And, we also recall, it is that practice that enables a local church to lay bare the irreconcilable doctrines with which, in the end, we can deeply identify.
God has never marketed himself. He has never treated us that way. And should we not learn from him, to honor others with the perplexity of the truth with which he has honored us?
RICHARD A. RAY of Montreat, N. C. is president of the Board of Directors of THE PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK.
