I was also struck by the tone set by those in charge, comparing it to the experience of those who wander into church.  The courtroom had an air of solemnity, authority and rules.  “You may not…”  “You will not…Never…”  No one doubted that something important and rich with significance was occurring.  At the same time, there was a very friendly and even fun atmosphere.  Plenty of time to answer questions, to take pictures and lots of warm affirmation.  It often seems like the church can’t hold these two together.  Either solemn, but detached or user-friendly but frivolous. 

The “America is unique…special…divinely sanctioned”…or other over-the-top rhetoric was pretty much held in check.  It was a day to be patriotic and proud, but it didn’t spill over into chest-thumping jingoism.  For Sophie, born a French citizen, talk of freedoms and rights isn’t new (they even have national health-care!).  But perhaps for others whose homelands have been repressive and brutal, yesterday represented the opening to newfound freedoms and opportunities.  They are in search of a better homeland.

I consider myself a wary patriot, a chastened patriot, believing that as a Christian my allegiance and identity are already spoken for.  But yesterday polished away a little of my cynicism and misgivings.  Sophie, who has lived most of her life as an alien or outsider, seems to be a model for Christians living anywhere in this world.  “They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth.   People who speak this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland…They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”  (Hebrews 11)

Alison is one of the most fresh and energetic Bible readers, I know.  This isn’t the place to explore some of his brief allusions such as

• The Cain and Abel story as a reverse image of the Romulus and Remus myth.
• The stories of Joseph as a reverse image of the Oedipus story. 
• Alison’s whimsical suggestion that “being wrong” should be one of the most identifying traits of Christians who are saved by God’s grace.

The night I saw him, Alison began with the provocative suggestion that early Israelite culture, influenced by their pagan neighbors, probably practiced infant sacrifice.  The story of Abraham offering Isaac may have originally been a story of infant sacrifice.  (There are still some seams and clinkers in the text that point back to its original thrust.)  But like a blacksmith working and bending a piece of hot metal, the story was pressed and pushed, altered and amended until over time it is the beautifully troubling tale we have today—of God providing, the lamb in the thicket a brilliant foreshadowing of Christ.  Likewise the odd story in Exodus 4:24-26, of Moses and Zipporah, may also be a remnant from the practice of infant sacrifice, where perhaps circumcision comes to replace sacrifice of the eldest son. 

Agree or disagree, like it or don’t, Alison’s theories are interesting.  But the possible presence of infant sacrifice in the scriptures is not his point.  Instead he points to what he suggests are the comments of two biblical prophets about this terrible scandal in ancient Israel’s past.  Ezekiel (20:25-26) basically seems to put these words into God’s mouth, “Okay, way back when I did give Israel some bad commandments, such as to sacrifice their first-born, but it was only so they would know that I am a fierce and demanding God.”  Ezekiel defends the ugly past as ugly, but still of God.  Meanwhile, Jeremiah (19: 3-6) conveys God saying, “No I never gave any such command about infant sacrifice.  It would never even enter my mind.  Those who attribute it to me were wrong.  These are the commands of false and bloody god.”

As we wrestle with God’s word, especially some its parts that seem barbaric and bizarre, are we more to be like Ezekiel—“OK, it was pretty bad, but sadly necessary back then,” or Jeremiah—“No, I never commanded what some people said I did.  It would never enter my mind”?

Alison (and Jeremiah, too) is provocatively practicing what I call a “Pentecostal hermeneutic” (hermeneutic meaning tool or method of interpretation).  By that I’m suggesting that the Holy Spirit is a a key, but of course very elusive, untamed player in our interpretation of scripture.  The Spirit is who makes scripture come alive, who brings up to the surface fresh streams that were subterranean in the scriptures before, who empowers us, like a skilled blacksmith to beat and bend scripture to new situations.  I know this will strike some as dangerously open-ended and subjective, but I believe it is both very Reformed (equally Word and Spirit, where the Holy Spirit is the One who makes the scriptures become alive and important) and very faithful to what we see happening in scripture itself.  The story of the inclusion of the gentiles in Acts 15 strikes me as the preeminent example of a Pentecostal hermeneutic.  “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…”

The other option (ironically practiced by most Pentecostals today) is what Alison calls the “Koranic temptation.”  Like Muslims and their Koran, this way of interpretation, sees holy books as so fixed, so charmed, so static, as to be beyond interpretation.  The reader, like Ezekiel, is always on the defensive, always protective from probing and change.  While some Christians would call this a “high view” of scripture, it actually treats scripture more as a flat and lifeless fossil, where there is no role for the Spirit.

Whatever you think of Alison’s case-study on infant sacrifice, he does us good service in reminding us that scripture is alive, that the Spirit builds on (and sometimes bends, too) the old, to speak afresh and anew to every age.  Moreover, while we see, and sometimes celebrate, the many ways Pentecostal Christians have influenced today’s church, adopting a truly Pentecostal hermeneutic for the Bible might be the gift we need most.

But maybe there are other factors at play in our shrinkage. Three things come to my mind.

Discernment

I once read an article by a Christian Reformed Church minister during the middle of the 1950’s, (I wish I could remember more about the author). It was a time when mainline church membership was thriving.  Babies, a home in suburbia and church membership all seemed to go together. This CRC minister, however, said it was an era of decay and deception. A “true church of Christ,” he argued, should expect to shrink and be ignored in such decadent times. Eventually, we should expect nothing but a “faithful remnant” when Christ returns.

So how do we know when to play the “shrinking equals faithfulness” card, rather than the “shrinking equals unfaithfulness” card? I’ve yet to hear anyone suggest that RCA’s declining membership is evidence of stalwart resolve and integrity. Might it be?

Demographics

The RCA has had the misfortune to have the bulk of its congregations located in the northeast and upper Midwest. Maybe our slowness to start new congregations in the Sunbelt, our original reluctance to plant churches if there wasn’t an enclave of Dutch last names can be cited as unfaithfulness. But demographics have not been in our favor.

From my days in upstate New York, I recall small towns that once boasted of being the carpet-capital of the world, the glove-making or the shoe-making centers of the universe. A man could support his stay-at-home wife and family with a lifelong job in those factories. The towns, and the RCA churches in them, hummed. Those days are gone. Not only are the towns and churches much smaller, they also suffered from “brain-drain,” where the best and the brightest left.

Was this shrinkage a sign of unfaithfulness? Those who were uninformed, who lived in regions that were thriving, seemed to believe so. Often there was a quiet implication that if we just loved Jesus more, if we prayed as much as people in the Sunbelt, then our congregations in upstate New York would grow. But eventually some of the shifting demographics came to the Midwest. Then RCA congregations in California and Florida, that once could do no wrong, found themselves old and shrinking. Today, I notice that many of the “poster-child” congregations of the RCA from 10-15 years ago are struggling. They declared that they were going to “do church in a new way.” But now they face transitions in leadership, financial squeezes and a newer ring of exurbs farther out, where the growth and young people are located today.

Who Left?

It is pretty much accepted without debate that the people who left the RCA left for churches where the worship was more lively, the faith more fervent and the theology more conservative. To compete, then, we must start congregations that seem like Pentecostal and Baptist churches. However, Hope College sociologist, Don Luidens, has evidence that suggests there has been a quiet, but steady erosion of people from the center-left in the RCA. These people want more liturgical worship, thoughtful ministers and a socially-progressive church. They would say they want a truly Reformed church. Typically they’ll say, “I didn’t leave the RCA. It left me.” Many have drifted to the Presbyterians, Lutherans and Episcopalians. Truthfully, many have just stopped being part of a church. Perhaps our shrinkage is a result of unfaithfulness, but the unfaithfulness has been to our Reformed heritage, a willingness to sell our birthright for mess of pottage, and an unwillingness to trust our tradition. 

I’ve asked more questions than provided answers. I don’t have the answers. But maybe we should be asking different questions about our shrinkage and what truly accounts for it.

Right before General Synod, I was contacted by Terry DeYoung, managing editor of the Church Herald, to offer my take and evaluation on these blogs.  I never got around to responding to Terry, but if I had I would have said that I felt like it was really just beginning to take off. that we were seeing some glimpses of what these blogs could be and do.  I found the discussions of the Belhar Confession an especially helpful example of the potential of these blogs.  So I am sad to see the Church Herald go, and I am also sad that presumably these blogs will disappear with it.

We try in our congregation to make a big deal of Pentecost in our worship, with all sorts of extra flourishes. Just as the Holy Spirit is the low-profile member of the Trinity, so Pentecost has seemed pretty minor compared to Christmas and Easter. Several years ago in Sunday School, a young boy, after hearing the story of Pentecost, responded, “How come I’ve never heard that story before?”

Talk of Pentecost always raises questions about the role and work of the Holy Spirit today. In the past few decades, the influence of Charismatic-Pentecostal Christians upon all Christian churches, including the RCA, has been huge. A few weeks ago, Church Herald blogger Dave Cheadle wrote about the importance of the “signs and wonders” as evidence of the power of Holy Spirit in the church. http://heraldblog.squarespace.com/dave-cheadle/2009/5/12/full-gospel-preaching-words-signs-and-wonders.html

I am largely sympathetic and supportive of these charismatic impulses in the church. I accept and believe in most of the more “far-fetched,” extraordinary gifts and outpourings of the Holy Spirit.

No doubt Pentecost and the Holy Spirit may have been ignored and undervalued for centuries, but I am beginning to feel that we are to a point of overcompensating for those centuries of under-appreciation.

In my pastorate, I have found that the church of Jesus Christ is really a lot more like the fragile, all-too-human, yet wondrous, grace-filled churches we encounter in Paul’s letters than the church as it is portrayed in Acts. I have grown weary of being beaten up and guilted and made to feel inferior because our churches today don’t meet the inflated standards portrayed in Acts. (My growing aversion to Acts is especially odd given my fondness for its companion volume, Luke).

I have grown cynical about “Spirit-filled” Christians lecturing quiet, faithful believers about their lack of joy and evidence of the Spirit. In my experience, if you look ten years later, that “Spirit-filled” Christian is now burned-out, says it was all “just a phase” while the quiet, faithful Christian is still plugging away. Increasingly I see churches that ten years ago shouted about “doing church a new way” now in crisis, looking for counsel, assistance and still more money from what they once called “dead-churches”. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church seems to indicate that over-fascination with the Holy Spirit has always led to an inherently unstable, divisive, and prone-to-arrogance kind of faith.

Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a big way. I am increasingly convinced that the most important signs and wonders from the Spirit are gifts like long-term faithfulness, quiet compassion, unseen service, perseverance, sensing the presence of God in ancient traditions, and the Spirit-given ability to live and love together for the long haul. Blessed Pentecost.

I am not a legal scholar and please don’t stop reading because you aren’t either. My interest is less in the law and the Federal Communications Commission, and more in what makes language offensive and how Christians might think about all this.

The Supreme Court decision dealt primarily with the so-called “F-word” which celebrities occasionally let fly during award show presentations. As I understand it, the dissenting justices argued that “offensive language” is such a fluid, arbitrary and capricious category as to make prohibiting it nearly impossible. Again, I’m no lawyer, no expert, but I think I tend to agree with the dissenting justices.

I remember when I was young and someone told me that to raise the middle finger was bad. My young mind just couldn’t figure out how one raised digit could possibly have the power to be bad. I concluded that the middle finger must have some sort of magical power, like the ability to cast spells. It is this memory that makes me sympathetic to justices who argued that offensive language is an arbitrary, contrived category. Why one finger but not another? Why this word but not another? Strangely the F-word has morphed into an almost ubiquitous term, the Swiss-army knife of modern English, able to be used in nearly any sentence, to convey both positive and negative sentiment. Its original and offensive sexual connotation seems far in the past.

I have long wondered why in the “hierarchy of swearing,” it is the "offensive language"--terms from the bedroom, bathroom and barnyard that have been considered “worse” than the theological, religious words—words that Christians might claim are irreverent, even blasphemous—hell, damn, Christ, etc. Eight-year-olds on family hour sitcoms routinely blurt out “Oh my god...” Yet the world and the FCC seem far more concerned about words that may be crude and boorish, but hardly sacrilegious.

I am afraid that this will all be misunderstood as championing coarse language. Instead, I am trying to point out that it is simply coarse, perhaps offensive, but not blasphemous. As a Christian, blasphemy, taking the Lord’s name in vain, are my concern and what I am more concerned to avoid.

I’ll let someone else tackle the issue of “swearing-lite”—gosh, heck, darn. I’m pretty sure it won’t be the FCC or the Supreme Court.

How can anyone be opposed to the missional church? Who isn’t for the church that looks outward, that realizes our cultural context has changed? Who isn’t also for the hospitable church, the Christ-centered church, the praying church, the sharing church, the joyful church? But aren’t all those adjectives, like missional, just implied in the word church?

Once upon a time, probably about 10-15 years ago, missional was a term associated with the followers of Leslie Newbigin who emphasized that for the Euro-American churches Christendom was certainly crumbling, probably over. Okay.

These days, however, missional seems to be stretched every which way so that the term can be slapped on to any half-baked plan in order to make it more palatable.

Two words that I’ve come to associate with missional (at least how I've observed it being used in the RCA) are “desperation” and “disdain.”  Desperate in an obsessive, off-putting way. Desperation that seems so untrusting, unaware of God’s providence over long arcs of history, unaware that “from the beginning of the world to its end,” Christ “gathers, protects and preserves for himself” the church (Heidelberg Catechism Q. 54), untrusting in Christ’s promise that “the gates of hell will not overcome” the church (Matthew 16:18).

Disdain of any idea more than five years old, usually disdainful—sometimes implicitly and sometimes overtly—for all things Reformed. Don’t misunderstand me. The Reformed tradition in general and the Reformed Church in America in particular are definitely not beyond critique, challenge and change. We need to ask ourselves hard questions and be aware of the ever-changing cultural contexts. But just for example, our understanding of baptism, our accepting of women in ordained office, our forms of worshipping, our way of ordering our life together and our practices of mutual accountability, are all these things simply relics of an outdated cultural context, artifacts to be tossed on the trash heap of history? Or are they good gifts that the Holy Spirit has given us, the wise fruit of mutual discernment that has emerged over many centuries. Beyond all critique? No. But good gifts of the Spirit? Certainly.

In 100 years (maybe only 25-50, actually) historians will be amused and bemused while writing dissertations on the missional church. Meanwhile, I’m quite certain the Kyrie Eleison and Nicene Creed will still be with us.

I share some of Kevin’s concerns. Interfaith services are always weird and dicey things. At the very least they tend to be boring. Praying to “Thou great generic One” doesn’t get anyone too excited. Lowest common denominator theology tends to offend and tire everyone. As I watched I wondered if it might not be better to let Hindus be overt as Hindus and let Christians be Trinitarian christocentric Christians. Let them each stand side by side, rather than feigning or wondering “is there something in common here?” or “might these words be potentially divisive?” Was the prayer service “common worship”? Or was it just patriotic American Muslims wanting to bless and pray for their new president, standing next to patriotic American Jews who likewise seek their God’s blessing on our new national leader? If the former is problematic, the latter seems genuine and understandable.

My questions and amusement at the service had more to do with seeing Jim Wallis of Sojourners participate. Of course our own General Secretary, Wes Granberg-Michaelson, was also active with Sojourners as a young man. I just had my 50^th birthday. As we mature, we do a lot of things we said we would never do. I wondered what the 25 year old Jim Wallis would have thought about religious leaders (Christian or otherwise) participating in a prayer service for Richard Nixon? Thankfully, Obama is not Nixon. But the position of President and its trappings remain. A whiff of civil-religion, of the bejeweled priests of Babylon taking part in the coronation of Nebuchadnezzar, comes too easily to mind. While interfaith services are complicated, the slick and craven efforts of American Evangelicals in recent years to declare America and our (conservative) political leaders as “God’s anointed” are probably the greater danger and more damaging to Christ and the Church.

I appreciate and affirm Jack’s and Jackie’s responses. I can almost predict the nay-sayers’ comebacks to Jack and Jackie.

The government is not the church or the Kingdom.

 Taking care of the poor and needy is the church’s task.

 Big government will ... (insert some scary boogie-man threat here, preferably connecting bar codes and the mark of the beast.)

 We must be careful not to interfere with laws of economics and the free market.

I completely agree that the government is not the church, not the Kingdom. That doesn’t mean Christians cannot or should not use their civic voices to be advocates for the poor and marginalized, that we shouldn’t insist our government do a better job of “spreading the wealth.”

I too can be fearful of government overreaching its authority. However my fears have much less to do with “spreading the wealth” and much more to do with things like the government wanting me to call my nation “the homeland,” or any country asking me to pledge allegiance to it. I know my citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20) and I am “seeking a homeland...a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:14-15). For too long Americans, especially evangelical Christians, have seen government only in negative terms, less is always better. True, government is not the place to seek love, purpose, identity, security or a savior. But I am hopeful that the recent elections reveal a turning tide, a realization that government can play a role as a tool for good, for justice, to defend widows and orphans.

Of course, the church has a vital role to play in caring for the poor. And if truth be told, all the little mustard-seed efforts done in Christ’s name—soup kitchens, shelters, Habitat for Humanity projects, rent assistance—are greater than anyone knows. Still it is unrealistic and frankly a callous shunning of the poor to say “If the church did its task, the government wouldn’t have to.”

Governments are always “spreading the wealth” around. For the last 30 years, we have followed economic policies that have spread the wealth to richest and taken from the poorest. But instead of acknowledging these are our choices and government actions, we have been told “we are simply letting the free-market follow its natural course.” It is as if the economy follows the laws of physics, when actually the economy is always being tweaked and manipulated to favor certain outcomes. Spreading the wealth to those on the bottom of the economic ladder is not asking water to run uphill or the moon to be blue cheese. Our current economic meltdown might just reveal how misguided and dangerous it is to believe that economics is about unalterable principles, rather than willful choices and policies. As Christians, we choose to lean toward the “least of these.”

One boy is blond and wearing a diaper. The other is brunette wrapped in an animal skin. Can you guess who they are? The two little boys are Jesus and John the Baptizer. The Bible tells us that Jesus and John are “kin” of some sort, shirttail cousins perhaps. That they ever saw or knew each other as young boys is a speculation at best, poetic license. In snooping around, however, I’ve discovered that paintings depicting Jesus and John together as young boys were once very common. Look at this year’s Christmas postage stamp. It is a painting by Botticelli with Jesus, Mary and a young John the Baptizer.

I am no expert, but I know these sorts of paintings are loaded with symbolism and “secret messages.” Although the diaper of Jesus is white, he is seated on a large red cloth, probably signifying blood and his death. The two little boys are playing with and petting a sheep. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Once again, sacrifice and death are foreshadowed. Yet in the background, right between the two boys is a white flower that looks like a lily. Resurrection, perhaps?

Why was I so taken by this painting? Babies always evoke feelings of innocence and hope for the future. What will these little babes see in their lifetime? How will the world change? Will they play a part in bettering the world? What will become of them? Yet these very same questions can provoke a shadow of fear. Tragedy, disappointment and brokenness emerge in every life.

Seeing the infants Jesus and John the Baptizer depicted together powerfully combines the tender hope of infanthood with a solemn sense of what lies ahead for these rotund babes. The painting conveys a sense of destiny, both of a better future and its terrible toll. For me Rubens somehow holds together both the deep hope that even tragedy cannot erase along with the heartbreaking realities of life that are silently present in even the brightest moments.

In the joy of Christmas, sorrow is always lurking. That is true for many who will be lonely, grieving and missing loved ones this Christmas. For others it will be the sad realization that all the gifts and tinsel do not fill their deepest needs. It is also true for the future of Jesus and John. Ruben’s painting makes me think of the words of old man Simeon when he blessed the eight-day-old Jesus and his parents in the temple. Simeon told Mary, “This child is destined to bring the destruction and the salvation of many, to be a sign that will be misunderstood and opposed. And, sorrow, like a sword, will break your heart too.”

When I look at the painting, in my imagination I ask the two little babes, “What if you knew then what we know now...?” And I believe their response would be “Nevertheless—yes. It is worth it!” Love still takes the risk of birth.