The Emerging Informality: Christianity's Dire Need, Part IV

[My apologies if you've come here to read about George Bush's foibles or Howard Dean's much hoped-for return to Vermont's Green Mountains. I remain on my topic of informalism in the American Church. If you are late to the discussion and would like to join it, I suggest you read parts I, II, and III. Not that you have to.]

Things have gone dreadfully serious here, and profoundly spiritual. In hopes of bringing a light moment to my serious series on the plight of the American church, I must share a sentence I read last night. At the risk of sounding woefully pedantic (intellectually show-offish), I admit, with a smidgeon of shame, that I was reading "The History of Philosophy," the massive, amazing series by the brilliant historian Fr. Frederick Copleston, S.J.

In Vol. 6, Part 1, I fell on this laugher penned by the genius Copleston during his discussion of Denis Diderot:

Similarly, the fluid character of his thought makes it impossible to state simply and unequivocally that Diderot was or was not a materialist.

Well, I should think that, if I were Fr. Copleston, Mr. Diderot's character unequivocally proves to the satisfaction of any erudite mind that Diderot was something of a blatant liquidist. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

[Of course, this all is funny to exactly one person.]

***

I've been writing of informalism, or, more accurately, I've been writing about the need for informed formality in American churches. All of this it must be said is in response to a reputed trend to make American Christianity more relevant by making it less formal, more casual and familiar. I have argued that this trend is going in the wrong direction: we need more formality, not less.

May the following anecdotes, all true, serve to bolster my case. They are each real; they are not fictions for argument's sake.

First, I recall only a couple of years ago speaking with friends who attended a nearby popular evangelical church on Ash Wednesday. I was excited to hear about their experiences, surprised as I was to hear that such a church would even have an Ash Wednesday service. Plus, I knew how powerful my Ash Wednesday experiences had been, kneeling before the sacramental altar, with my own mortality smudged in the shape of a cross on my furrowed brow; the priest speaking of both autumn and spring, of death and resurrection. But to my great surprise I learned that the pastor of the evangelical church decided that, instead of emulating the rituals of millions of Christian parishes and parishioners around the world, he would hold a healing service. Instead of ashes, he would anoint with oil. This, he said, was what God "laid on his heart."

I can't speak for God: God can do amazing things. But it strikes me as odd that this pastor should feel led to do something no one else was doing, considering that what everyone else was doing was really quite powerful and wonderful. These "other churches" with their dirty little ashes also believe in anointing with oil, as symbol and sacrament of God's anointing Holy Spirit, and as the sacrament of unction in the healing of broken bodies and souls. But, alas, twisting and mixing symbols did not seem to matter to this pastor: what does any of it matter? Sadly, his actions remind me of those Protestant pastors I've heard speak around Eastertime of God's great mysteries, including that great mystery called the Immaculate Conception. Of course, the Immaculate Conception is not the virgin birth, which is what too many Protestants think. Rather, it is the distinctly Catholic teaching that God lifted original sin from the Virgin Mary at her conception in her mother's womb. And it also reminds me of the many days I spent Pentecost Sundays in an evangelical church and heard nothing about Pentecost, the very birthday of the Church.

Second, I listened recently to a song sung by a woman soloist backed by the praise band at an evangelical church I visited. The chorus included a line like this: "Jesus, Jesus, come and ravish us!" After the song ended, the soloist prayed aloud, saying, "Yes, Lord! We all ask you now to come and ravish each of us." Needless to say, my response to this prayer was to lean over to my friend, a fellow writer, and whisper, "I can assure you. I do not want Jesus to ravish me at all." You see, I am something of a wordsmith. I am not a walking dictionary, mind you, but I do take words seriously. And to ravish has long suggested "to rape." And if not rape, ravish is to at least overcome a woman's resistance sexually: she's putting up a fight, but she really, really wants it, if you get my meaning. In fact, the Latin root of the word, rapere, means to seize, to carry away (and not with emotion but with sexual intent). Yes, ravish has come to mean (at times) to overwhelm with emotions. But my sense is that most people, especially most men, do not pray or wish that Jesus the Christ ravishes them.

Now these two anecdotes are not signs of anything horrible. They just point to a casual tendency in Christian worship where meanings and definitions become fuzzy and elastic, where form is immaterial or even a hindrance. At least, the loss of form became a hindrance for me, a worshipper in the pews. This next anecdote, however, points to something really quite shocking.

At the wedding of my first cousin-once removed, the pastor, married to another one of my cousins, celebrated communion. This pastor, raised Catholic but now wholly anti-Catholic, stated these two things at the beginning of that once sacred meal:

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread and he brake it, saying, "This is a symbol of my body, broken for you ... " He likewise took the cup and said, "This is a symbol of the new covenant in my blood..."

Anyone familiar with either Jesus' words as recorded in Holy Scripture, or with the Holy Eucharist or Mass, is no doubt aghast at the pastor's gross perversion of the words of Christ. Jesus did not say that either the bread or wine were symbols. He said that they were his body and blood. Of course, they may be nothing but symbols, but Jesus NEVER said that they were.

Needless to say, had the pastor offered me either bread or wine, I would have refused.

Let me talk now, about the meal or feast we call communion, eucharist, mass. To some it is indeed purely symbolic and commemorative, yielding nothing salvific or gracious. It is something to just do, to unite the fellowship of believers symbolically. For others, like me and my more Catholic brothers and sisters, Eucharist is more than symbol, it is sacramental: it gives something to us that we cannot receive any other way. It is a meal of grace; it is the meal of eternal life, by being the meal of a Savior's very real death.

Who is right in this matter, the "low" church folks who treat the meal as memorial; or us "high" church folks? Let me answer that question by quoting St. Paul in what might be the most important passage he ever penned (or dictated), and it is one of the most misused in all of Christendom:

When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not! ... Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world. (I Cor. 11: 20-32)

First, this passage is not a warning to non-Christians. It is not a warning, as so many pastors wrongly suggest, that non-believers must not partake of the Holy Communion for fear of damning themselves. That every word of the New Testament is solely written directly to believers should always give us pause before we issue warnings to non-believers from that sacred text. The casual church misuses Scripture, while the formal church (and this need not be a "high church") uses Scripture rightly (or so I hope).

Second, this amazing passage proves one thing: the Communion Meal is powerful, even to the point of killing or making sick those Christians who abuse it! What kind of symbol does that? What kind of mere memorial or empty ritual kills people who use it wrongly? What sort of symbol carries with it God's discipline and judgment? Furthermore, if the meal can kill or make ill if abused, does that not imply that the meal can give life and healing if prepared, served and received properly? It seems that it must!

All of this amounts to one thing: we need more informed formality in our churches and not less. We need to return to a deep understanding of Christian worship, liturgy and tradition. We need more people formally trained in dividing the "word of truth;" we need more people attentive to the details, trained in godliness with all wisdom. The Church is not to follow the zeitgeist, it is to confront it, even change it. Nay, the Church is to be the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, even the spirit of all ages.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

[Part V/Epilogue is here.]