Spiritual Practices at Home: The Practice of Reminder

One of the essential spiritual practices of the Christian life in general and of living the faith at home, is the practice of reminder. “Out of sight, out of mind” is well-worn aphorism, because of its veracity. In our screen infested age, we might also say, “Screen in sight, no sight of mind.” This is due to the screen’s phenomenal power to capture our mind’s attention, obliterating the world around us. The practice of reminder is all about reminding ourselves of the reality of God and the reality of our commitment to the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ. 

This is more than simply a reminder, such as a post it-note on the refrigerator door or stapled to the dog’s tail (I apologize, the Cat Lovers of Canada requested I include that line). This is a symbolic reminder. We are symbol hungry and symbol making creatures. Nobody needs to tell us this. Nobody needs to tell people to decorate their homes with items that reflect who they are and what they value. Family pictures, movie posters, and so on. Yet, I ask, are there any symbols of the faith displayed in your home? (Red Sox pennants don’t count, close, but no!)

There is a long tradition of Eastern Christians displaying icons in their home, sometimes called an icon wall. In the West, there is the long and wonderful custom of a family altar. A small altar or devotional space that includes saints’ pictures, prayers, and is often changed to reflect the season of the Church year. In more Protestant circles, a prominently displayed family Bible and sometimes also, Bible verses. Among Anglican Christians, a visible Book of Common Prayer. Among Lutherans, a displayed casserole (Yes, that was joke. I prefer Lutefisk, anyway.)

It is not necessary to have a full chapel in your home (though some people have these, really), but it is wise to have some holy reminders, some symbols of the faith, to remind you of your Christian faith. In fact, the idea is for them to be less churchy and more-homey or less gathered church and more domestic church. Let it reflect your personality and any others in your household. Be as creative as you like. There are lots of resources out there. Start small. How are you doing with this or how might you begin?

Spiritual Practices at Home, intro

This Advent, I’ll be writing a three-part blog series, “Spiritual Practices at Home.” Advent is a wonderful season of the Church year for home observance with its Advent wreaths, calendars, and more. But here is the big secret…all the seasons of the Christian year are wonderful for home observance! Growth in discipleship, the pursuit of spirituality maturity, is an adventure of integrating faith in Christ with every aspect of our lives. Our homes, whether a humble room or grand house, influence us immensely and usually reflect ourselves in ways flattering and not so flattering (Really, it’s time to take down that M.C. Hammer poster.) 

Bringing your faith to bear visibly in the most intimate spaces of your life is an important step forward in the journey of Christian discipleship. Home observance of the faith is for all Christians. Certainly, there are practices that lend themselves to family life (in all the wonderful and weary forms it can take), but whether by yourself, with roommates, your significant other, your animal friend, or a house full of small people, the riches of our Christian heritage for daily life are immense. 

When observed faithfully, not perfectly, not dramatically, but regularly, over the months and years, they can serve as quiet shapers of our souls and steady channels of God’s grace, transforming us day by day into people of greater Spirit and Love. Are there particular aspects of home practice you are hoping I explore? (Perhaps the exorcism of that space filled with stuff you haven’t looked at in years?) Do you have recommendations or suggestions to make? They are always most welcome. Please share them as move through the series. 

In the World, Not of the World

This is a reflection and place for dialogue on my sermon (click here to listen) and related themes from the seventh Sunday of Easter, on the Gospel text from St. John 17:6-19. 

The relationship between Christians and the wider world has been a complicated one. Should Christians separate themselves from the world to maintain a purer form of Christian life and practice? Or should Christians throw themselves into the world to maintain a Christian life and practice that transforms the world? Within the history of Christianity and even on the contemporary scene both answers have found significant hearing and emulation. Often, not always, Christian congregations, traditions, and individual who lean one way on this spectrum find themselves in tension with those on the other end. This could be understood as another manifestation of the perennial clash of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Martha is helping to prepare the meal and busy meeting practical needs. Mary is sitting as a disciple, listening to her teacher.  

The problem with pitting contemplation/prayer/separation from the world against activity/practical help/engagement with the world is that conflict finds no justification in the life of Jesus Himself. Jesus’ life was a continual flow from quiet time withdrawal with His Father to active life and ministry among people. One could say that Jesus’ model of “being in the world but not of the world” was to abide in His loving relationship with God while abounding in loving acts with people. This basic pattern should be the paradigm for the Church and for Christians more generally. Further, there are dangers to emphasizing one pattern to the exclusion of the other. The contemplative path runs the danger of isolation or quietism. The active path runs the dangers of burn out, rootlessness, and activity for the sake of activity. In the history of the Church there have been individuals who have given themselves exclusively to these paths.

Those individuals and communities (e.g. monastic) that have committed themselves largely to the contemplative path have been a source of great blessing to the Church and the world. In the same way, those individuals and communities that have committed themselves to the active path have been a source of great blessing to the Church and the world. Historically, there has also been something called the “mixed life” which seeks to embrace both elements, much as our Lord did. It might be argued that most individuals are called to the active path (which requires Sabbath, prayer, and rest for it endure) with the mixed path and contemplative path compromising smaller groups. If this is true, that means the Church will need to give attention to supporting the active life, while also lifting the importance of the contemplative life in a frantic world that might otherwise be unaware of it. 

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about?  

The Fool's Easter

This year has featured two unusual alignments between the Christian calendar and the secular calendar. The first was the coming together of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday on February 14 (click here for a reflection). The second is the coming together of April Fool’s Day and Easter Sunday on April 1. This will, no doubt, be great fodder for critics of faith in general and Christianity in particular. “April Fool’s, this stuff isn’t for real!” Of course, the Christian can easily retort to the atheist, “April’s Fool’s, this stuff is for real!” These sorts of jokes and jabs aside, what insight can be gleaned by bringing together a whimsical, secular, holiday, with the most important feast day of the Christian year? Let’s first touch base on the meaning of each observance on its own merits.

April Fool’s Day is an annual invitation to joke, prank, and pull one over on someone. Unusual newspaper articles, frightening friends with shocking, but old-fashioned fake news, and so on, often characterize the largely innocent quality of this holiday. Of course, it’s not really a holiday. No one gets April Fool’s Day off. Wait! I just received notice that as of 2018 April Fool’s Day will be a federal holiday in the United States and Canada. Yeah. Long weekend! Party time. Celebration. Oh wait…April Fools! This observance, while seemingly silly and light-hearted, has not gone without its controversies. Critics of April’s Fools, and specifically of the sometime elaborate hoaxes that individuals or organizations put on, decry the waste of resources and the confusion that ensues from such pranks.

Easter Sunday is the most important day of the Christian calendar. It is sometimes also referred to as Resurrection Sunday. Both names are proper, the first by long custom (ancient connotations aside) and the second being the event the holiday celebrates. Easter Sunday is a national holiday in many countries with a Christian cultural heritage. For many, Easter is more about family and candy that it is about the resurrection of a 1^st century Jewish Messiah. For the Christian, Easter is the high point of the Christian story and speaks of Christ’s victory over the difficulties and mysterious of sin and death. Christ’s resurrection validates His status as the long expected one and validates His teachings as worthy of reception. Christ is the example of what will take place to all who put their trust in Him. 

What happens when you put these together? You get the dangerous invitation to Easter as merely a sentimental occasion with pretty flowers, fine hats, and in a few places, fuller churches. Pretty flowers, fine hats, and fuller church are all fine and well. But, if Christians merely gather to smile and nod at a story they believe to be some sweet sentimental yarn of a nice man overcoming bad things so that we can be non-dangerously nice to each other, then we will have missed the message of Easter (for more on that click here) and settled for foolishness. The joke will be on us. We will have pranked ourselves. Because Easter rolls away the stone and shows us that the worst of misguided humanity, in its doing the worst, to a singular shinning life, does not have the last word. This is not foolishness. This is astonishing and for over twenty centuries has turned the wisdom of the worldly wise into spiritual tomfoolery. Don’t be fooled. Christ is Risen! 

A Serving Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a serving community here. Service. Servanthood. Often people have a general sense that this is the sort of thing churches are doing or should be doing. The Church today has a mixed reputation on the street. Some bring only negative stereotypes, but others have a sense that even if churches are filled with old odd people or they believe in strange things, they do some good things. In fact, this is true! To some extent, every local church should be a center for community service.

However, the Church serves in Jesus name. The church serves as part of its faith commitment. The church serves and individual Christians serve, because of the Great Commandment of our Lord, “Love God, Love Neighbor” (Matthew 22:34-40). Churches and Christians can fall into two ditches along the serving highway. First, if we are not careful, we can give the impression that we are only helping people or doing good things in order to get people “saved” or to up attendance numbers at our Sunday services. Serving must be done in the spirit of Jesus which is a spirit that serves first and foremost for the sake of the person or the sake of the community’s betterment. No one enjoys being anyone’s project. If you are going to help, help because it’s what we should be doing as Christians and help because it’s the right thing to do.

Second, if we are not careful, we can give the impression that we are simply nice people who like to do nice things for others. In fact, we serve others in Christ’s name. In fact, what motivates our compassion and sustains us along the weary road of fighting poverty, reducing violence, empowering women, and a thousand other good causes, is our faith. There is an art to serving others in Christ’s name in a way that avoids the first ditch and the second. We don’t need to knock people over the head with our faith, but neither do we need to apologize for it by barely acknowledging why we do what we do. It takes trial and error, wisdom and grace, to avoid the first ditch of giving the impression that serving is only a means to an end and the second ditch of giving the impression that we are generic nice people doing nice generic things.

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about? 

A Welcoming Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a welcoming community here. Welcome. Hospitality. These are words that should be synonymous with the word church. Sadly, for many people, this has not been their experience. Of course, for many others, it has. Most church people would agree that a church should be a welcoming community. What exactly do we mean by welcoming? Friendly, kind, and gracious? Yes. These traits are reflective of the fruits of the Holy Spirit that are the marks of growth in the Christian life as found in Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness and self-control.” These traits should be reflective not only of individuals in a congregation, but of the parish family overall. Of course, people are in different places spiritually and a welcoming congregation accepts this and (wait for it) welcomes it.

Herein also lies an important distinction, welcome does not mean full affirmation. That is, all Christian Churches, whether progressive or traditional, recognize that the Christian life involves repentance and growth. For example, a person struggling with an addiction should be welcomed graciously, but the congregation understands that God’s desire for that person is freedom from addiction. Therefore, they will support and encourage and once they have earned trust, challenge that person toward that end. The markers of what things are affirmed and what things are not in people’s lives differ depending on where a congregation is on a specific issue. However, every church will at times, if it is faithful, find itself calling out sin or saying no to certain elements in a person’s lifestyle or beliefs.

The critical element here is respect and kindness. So often people who have felt unwelcomed by the Church experienced petty judgment, mean spirited words, or hateful condemnation. All of this is to fail to be a welcoming community reflecting the teachings of Jesus Christ. A church can welcome people it does not agree with. A welcoming church can also graciously, respectfully, and appropriately be straight forward with people about its concerns. People may well still be offended, but at least the church did not add further offense by being mean spirited or cruel or rude. More broadly, a welcoming church goes out of its way to make it easy for people to find their building, get around the building, and to figure out what they are supposed to do once they are in the building. Many churches are intentionally very unwelcoming because they haven’t thought through how new comers and guests navigate their facility.

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about?   

A Forgiving Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a forgiving community here. A perennial topic of interest for human beings in all stages and states of life. The power of forgiveness and unforgiveness is immediately evident to everyone. There is a mystery to life and forgiveness. Some people are terribly wronged, mistreated, and abused, and yet; live, joyfully, gracefully, and fully. Others experience similar and sometimes much less tragedy and live in perpetual resentment and bitterness. Why? You can find professing Christians who have been able to forgive and those who have not. You can find those who profess no faith who have been able to forgive and those who have not. Forgiveness is a gift of God and something that Christians are supposed to be known for, but ironically, we are often known more for our unforgiveness and pettiness.

Forgiveness is central to the life and teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, forgiveness should be central to the Christian life. A good deal of the time forgiveness is tough going, but perhaps we stumble so much, not merely because we are human (that will do it every time!), because we fail to realize two major factors. First, forgiveness often requires God’s help. I may be able (depending on the day!) to shrug off, without resentment, the driver who cuts me off on the highway. But on other days, I may not be able to. This is minor, but minor bruises add up to a black and blue heart. Without even getting to major relational cuts and slashes, we find ourselves stuck in resentment over the minors. Forgiveness is very often out of our reach. We need divine assistance. Forgiveness will often fail when we ignore the God factor. Second, forgiveness is a practice. Prayer is a practice. Singing is a practice. In other words, you can develop your ability to forgive.

Most liturgical churches include a prayer of confession and a declaration of forgiveness in their services. This is an excellent time to flex your forgiveness muscles. That is, if you have given some thought to your past week and what you need to confess. That is, if the pastor or worship leader provides some silence in which you can confess to God in your heart your failings. Often, we simply go through the liturgy by rote and give very little attention to what we are saying or doing. The sacramental churches, particularly the Roman Church, are known for encouraging confession to God through the meditation of a priest. This is an ancient rite of the Church and one that God has used to bring much healing and mercy to countless individuals over the centuries. Of course, like with the prayer in the liturgy, many also experienced it as a requirement and went through the motions with little transformation. Perhaps, practical teaching, example, and testimony on forgiveness would help churches grow in this area?

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about?