Chaplain's Corner

As you read, I can anticipate that you are expecting a Christmas article; after all it is the week before Christmas.  But this year, instead of reflecting on Christmas, I want to reflect on an article I read Monday evening, August 9th.  You might still remember the day.  A record was broken for high temperatures and the humidity was ridiculously high as well.  When my wife got home from work she handed me an article and said, “Read this and let me know what you think.”  So I read. It was an article from the Sunday New York Times August 8, 2010 edition titled, “Congregations Gone Wild” written by G. Jeffrey MacDonald.

G. Jeffrey MacDonald is a minister in the United Church of Christ and although I know nothing of him except this article, his insights are important.  In the article, he articulates the responsibility of a Christian minister: “The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways.  As well he articulates the current congregational expectation;  “But church goers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them.  It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches and in mission trips that are more sightseeing than listening to the local people.”

These contrasting and competing values have resulted in many pastors feeling pressured to accommodate the wishes of their congregations for fear that in following their calling to motivate the members of the congregation to spiritual growth, warn against the dangers of succumbing to temptation and encouraging the development of a holy lifestyle; they might find themselves out of work.  Many pastors fear that if they follow this calling they will meet growing congregational dissatisfaction and the potential of finding themselves without a job when the congregations they serve decide they no longer want them as their minister.

Having been a minister in two congregations for more than two decades, I know the pressure is real and I have had at times to make a choice between following my calling and risking dismissal from a congregation that neither wanted to grow spiritually, be reminded of the dangers of our lower impulses or aspire to deeper holiness.

Pastor MacDonald went on to write, “(people) now sample, dabble and move on when religious leaders fail to satisfy for any reason.”   It seems that the trend is to demand that the church, the pastor, exist to make us feel good instead of existing to call us all to the holiness that God calls us to.

Many years ago I was given the book The Cost of Discipleship by the Lutheran Pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  In the introduction of the book we read words written 70 years ago that speak to this trend in the church today.  “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing (page 45)…Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian ‘conception’ of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins…. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God. (pages 45-46)… Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. ‘All for sin could not atone.’ Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world’s standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin…. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (page 47)

Please forgive the lengthy quote, but Pastor Bonhoeffer said it so well and he lived it too.  He was executed by hanging by the Nazi regime on April 9, 1945 for his refusal to capitulate to their will and his insistence that he follow Jesus, even if it meant his own death..  Most pastors respond to God’s call to enter the ministry because they want to be instruments of God to call others to the grace that cost God so much: the grace that resulted in the incarnation, the grace that resulted in Jesus emptying himself and becoming nothing, the grace that led him to a cross where he bore our sins, suffered our punishment and satisfied God’s justice, so that we might be saved.  (Maybe this is a Christmas article?)

You see, what has become of this holiday that we are about to celebrate is a perfect example of the bastardization of the grace of God.  We go about the celebration of the birth of Jesus with little or no reckoning of what that birth is all about.  The angel said to Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  Yet we live in a society and many of us attend churches where sin is hardly ever mentioned and rarely roundly attacked as the offense to God that it is.  A pastor that speaks out against sin is accused of being “too negative” and although it may be tolerates occasionally, if a pastor made it a habit, it might easily result in a need to find a new congregation to serve.

Have you sung the words of some of the carols of this season?  Have you listened to the message of those words?  This Jesus born in Bethlehem was no mere human baby, he is Emmanuel, God incarnate, the eternal Word that spoke the universe into existence.  He is the Holy God who can not tolerate sin but who knows we can not remedy our own sinful condition so in the most absurdly lavish expression of love this universe will ever witness, God chose to step into our experience, bear our sins, satisfy His own justice and offer us forgiveness and life with him if we will but trust Him with the kind of faith that pursues his love and seeks to emulate His holiness with passion.

Sadly, many embrace a faith that is little more than cultural and religious ascent.  “Yes,” we say, “I am a Christian.”  But we have little concept of what it means to face the depths and ruin of our own sinfulness nor do we know what it means to repent, turning from sin and turning to God and his holiness to live a very different kind of life.  This is what Pastor MacDonald was addressing in his New York Times article.  He was addressing the fact that church has become about something very different than coming face to face with our sinfulness and awakened to the wonder of God’s love that resulted in Jesus coming to this earth for one purpose, to save us from our sins.

In a church that no longer talks about sin, there is no need for a Savior and all over North America, there are churches where neither sin nor a Savior are required.  Think about it, are you one of those church goers that expect only encouraging words to help you feel good about yourself so that you can face another week with as little emotional angst as possible.  My, my, what has the church become and how are you and I responsible for this horrible trend?