Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

I am coming to the end of my time in London which is provoking a lot of different thoughts.  I have lived in the USA since 1991 and indeed have become a US citizen but still there is a remnant of Britishness and Scottishness that does not go away.  All those childhood memories form an indelible imprint on your personality and they don’t just leave you, they stick.  It has been good to be reminded of them again.

This is the season of Advent and it has been somehow comforting to be in a place that is cold and dark and therefore, in my memory, offers a real Christmas.  In times of global recession economic turmoil the sight of Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s offer me a sense that this too will pass and the faith will remain constant, true, and eternal.  My favorite newspaper runs today and article on this very thought.  Apparently it is not just me who turns to the church in comfort in times of trouble.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/3630732/Church-attendance-rises-as-recession-deepens.html

Advent comes from a Latin word, “adventus”, which means coming.  In the ancient church these seasons of the church year were designed to give a sense of rhythm and purpose in daily life.  Advent and other Christian seasons were the joining of the very earthly pursuits of spring and harvest, summer and winter, with the heavenly purpose of God in bringing order to a broken creation.  Advent asked us to prepare for the coming of our Lord and prepare for receiving again into our lives the gift of Jesus Christ.  Just writing those words confirms how far we have come from the guidance of our church fathers. 

Even so, it has been my experience that even in the clamor that has threatens to overwhelm the Christ child, somehow he is able to throw that aside and claim again the hearts of those who turn towards him.  The article above talks about the hymn “In the Deep Mid-Winter”.  Funnily enough, my earliest memory of hearing this hymn being sung was in the advent play where I was playing a shepherd.  I was probably about 10 or 11 years old and my first line was, “This wind cuts me like a knife”.  Funny again how things stick in the memory.  Years later another Advent hymn was the moment for me when the Christ child called me back again to the meaning of Advent.  I never remember hearing “Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel” until I was in seminary.  There, during our regular service, I heard the song played and sung in King’s College ancient chapel.  For 1500 years the church had been signing that hymn but I could not remember ever hearing it before.  The hymn articulates a profound sense of waiting that is ultimately fulfilled, of freedom that is bought, of things set right again.  It put my every Christmas gift in its proper place.  The more expensive the gift the more foolish it seems when compared to THE GIFT, Emmanuel.  In grim economic times perhaps that is a thought that offers much practical help.

A final, more up to date thought, on advent.  This week I was in Holland visiting our business there.  I talked with an employee of mine who is a Christian who knows the struggle of being a faithful man in a secular world with personal experience.  All across Europe the church is marginalised.  In a century Holland has gone from the country which elected Abraham Kuyper as prime minister (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Kuyper) to a place where the church is largely irrelevant in every day life.  Kuyper talked about there being no part of every day life that Christ did not declare to be his, but today churches across Europe complain that the culture largely goes on without reference to the very concepts that created them.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/3628448/Cardinal-Cormac-Murphy-OConnor-Britain-is-unfriendly-for-religious-people.html  But, from Sinterklaas in Holland, to the Christmas markets in Germany and Scandinavia, there seems to be something more authentic about the Christmas experience and the advent season in Europe.  I don’t think it just the winter memories of my childhood.  I think that by some miracle amidst the secularism the Christ Child still holds power to correct and convict the soul.  That is something we can be truly thankful for.  And, as a closing thought, perhaps we need to wonder whether the consumerism that we celebrate in the USA is more corrosive to the meaning of Christmas than the secularism of Europe.  Just a thought.

When you walk around London the churches are old, and some are truly ancient.  Parts of Westminster Abbey were started in the 12th century!   So they are fascinating but, for the most part, dead.  To prove a point, this year I took several friends to Westminster Abbey.  This is a truly magnificent building created over centuries and a witness to world shaping history.  Even so, the only photograph I can remember my friends taking was standing next to the gravestone of a “Mr. Peesgoode”.  It is a photograph, of course, that only men could take.  Walking around Westminster Abbey there isn’t any doubt that the abbey is the creation of a world changing faith but it is a faith that, sadly, defines the past of the cities of London and Westminster.  Christian faith does not, it seems, shape the future. 

Or maybe not.  Over the summer I visited another cathedral that seems, in contrast, filled to the brim with life.  In Barcelona Spain, growing like a living thing out of the ground, is Europe’s largest modern cathedral, the Cathedral Sagrada Familia.  Sagrada Familia is not like anything you have ever seen.  It has an Alice in Wonderland quality that defies easy description unless you have seen the other buildings designed by its architect, Antoni Gaudi.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Gaud%C3%AD  Gaudi’s buildings (and there are many of them in Barcelona) seem frivolous but in fact are the product of the deeply held Christian beliefs of the devoutly catholic Gaudi.  Buildings were to have the shape and form of things created as opposed to merely drawn and constructed.  The buildings therefore do not have straight lines of the architect but instead the sensuous curves of the creator.  They seem to affirm life in its chaotic beauty rather than seek to control or capture the life of mankind.  driving around Barcelona you get to see several of Gaudi’s buildings and they are wonderful in the true sense of the word because, as you look at them, you are driven to wonder and awe at the vision of the man who could see these buildings in his mind. 

It is the vision of Sagrada Familia that first overwhelms.  The scale and scope of the story the building tells stretches the mind in wonder.  It is a living building where statues of the saints, sculpture of the life of Jesus, and stone en-carved quotes from ancient scriptures grow out of the rock walls.  Combine this with the work which continues inbside the building (even after 100 years of construction), where stone masons chip and carve their creations from rough rock, and you have a testimony to the faith that lives in the hearts of believers.  Gaudi devoted his later life to this masterpiece and when it is finished it will be a fitting monument to his genius for sure but more to the ever living power of God’s Holy Spirit to enliven the creation with this overwhelming creative force that spills force in the works of art that enrich our lives. 

It is too easy sometimes to think that the faith is for the last generation and that those who follow us will somehow not be captivated as we were by the life of our Lord.  But that confuses cause and effect as if we had better knowledge or insight than our children will have.  The constant thing will be the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ who continues to work in the hearts of men and women moving them, quickening them as the ancients said, towards a life lived with God.  Sagrada Familia shows that the faith still lives and inspires, indeed defies description in its unbounded creativity, and that we live in wonder at the works of our Lord. 

EASY AS SOUP
It’s pretty easy to find a church that has a soup kitchen, a church that puts its money where the hungry people’s mouth is. It just as easy to find a church that believes and teaches the Bible like it matters, as the real word of GOD, a church that reaches out with the good news to people who need to hear it. What’s not so easy is to find is a church that does both.

The church with the soup kitchen, too many times, has lost her faith, although she serves the poor (like the church should) she does not believe or teach the word of God, or reach out with the Gospel to the people who desperately need to hear it. On the other hand, the church that believes and teaches the Bible, willing to share the saving truth of the Gospel at every opportunity, well sometimes they forget to read the verses that talk about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the lonely (Jesus had some pretty hard words for them).

So what do you want; Soup, but no faith? Or, faith, but no soup?
(Faith without soup is dead. Soup without faith is evil.)

NOW, NOT YET
Jesus came to Earth and established His kingdom. He talked about it all the time. The kingdom of heaven is now. Now, but not yet. It is here in its beginnings and purpose, but not complete in its fulfillment and final glory. In the kingdom of Heaven Jesus offers mankind forgiveness of sin and restored fellowship with God. (These are two pretty awesome things, they change everything!) When we receive this truth we begin to live our lives as citizens of His kingdom. We begin to live our lives as Christians, as the church. We begin to do the work of the church. However, as we do the work of the church we immediately notice that evil is not yet put down, evil is all around us.

THINK OF IT LIKE A WAR VICTORY
The battle has already been won, it was won on the cross and in rising from the grave. The King has resumed His throne and His reign has been established. We (the church) have been sent out all over the kingdom (the whole world) to tell people about the newly established King. There are smoking remains from the battle that has been won, there are enemies hiding in foxholes, there are hidden land-mines, there are people to rescue, there are battalions of soldiers in need of medical help and supplies, and there are multitudes of citizens who do not know about the new King and the new kingdom.

This is the work of the church. It is the work of all who are faithful citizens of the kingdom of heaven. We are to tell the world about Jesus, meet the needs of the people God puts along our way, and fight the evil and the darkness wherever it can be found.

Wherever it can be found.

So, God is good and God is in control. The kingdom of Heaven is now, but it is not yet. We are the church and we have work to do.

Anyone know a good recipe for soup?