Friday, March 21, 2008

Tenebrae and Its Relation to Home

As you are probably aware, it is Good Friday -- not necessarily the day that Jesus died, just the day that Christians commemorate the most serious and sobering event in human history. Tonight I want to reflect on this day and the challenges facing Christians as we seek to both meditate and celebrate the passion of our Christ.

Having grown up Lutheran, I am quite familiar with Lent. My parents were faithful church-goers in every sense of the word, so during Lent, it was church on Sunday, church on Wednesday night beginning with Ash Wednesday, and church again the next Sunday. For Holy Week we were there for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and sunrise service on Easter Sunday.

During my freshman year in college, I was introduced to the real Jesus (not plastic Jesus, but Jesus who is still building his church and cares about me, yes, even me) and I stopped being Lutheran and over time became something of an evangelical with a focus on Christian worldview applications. I have never regretted this at all, but there are some things evangelicals in our area just don't do. High church Holy Week celebrations are among them.

All this is to explain why I sought out a Lutheran church (LC-MS, as it turned out) on Good Friday. One not far from our farm had a tenebrae service tonight, so I went. I offered Evan the opportunity to join me, and he took it.

I will not bog down in the details of the service except to say that for what it was, it was very well executed and reverent. Not bad for a small-sized, small-town congregation. After it was over I cried in the van. I do not think Evan noticed, and I did not point it out to him because I didn't really know why I was crying. I suspect it had something to do with sorrow for both what they had and what they didn't have. And probably for what I have and what I don't have, ecclesiastically speaking. And for the fact that you just can't go home, and home, if I'm honest, wasn't that great to begin with, again, ecclesiatically speaking.

I will slow down to tell you why I am no longer Lutheran.

1) There is only one man in the sanctuary who is able or empowered to teach God's word. There are plenty of other men who will never get the chance because they did not or could not go to seminary. I get to teach the word every single day and once (yes, only once) on Sundays.

2) The difference between pastor and people is profound. The pastor is an other-worldly sort of being, who, though he confesses his sin with everyone else, is believed to be without sin...sort of.... by the people...most of them. See #1.

3) The identity of the people is still "poor miserable sinner" in the preaching and the liturgy, though, presumably, the people are there to learn of Christ and be his followers. According to the riches of New Testament teaching, Christ's spirit in you changes you from identified with sin (how you were before Christ) to identified with Christ (how you are now with His righteousness imputed to you -- perfect in standing before the Father!).

4) The clarity of the gospel is still... hazy. Lutherans have always been big on grace, but not always able to communicate it in crisp, understandable ways. For it to take root in any heart, the sinner must be aware of his lostness (and the depth of his desperation) before he can really appreciate what a gift Jesus' death and resurrection was.

The tenebrae service was good for me. It renewed my sense of purpose in teaching the Word and proclaiming and living the truth of Christ wherever possible.

2 comments:

Everett said...

We had a very powerful tenebrae service at my church last night. One of the things I appreciated about our former worship pastor was his devotion to exploring and incorporating historic Christian worship practices in our services. When I found out he was leaving for a full time position the loss of that exploration and openness was the thing I feared more than the loss of his awesome songwriting.
There's a power in many of the ancient practices and liturgies that we evangelical types miss without knowing it. Of course, there's a power we've found as well.

Out of curiosity how much of your problems with Lutheranism do you think were attributable to your particular context and how much to Lutheranism in se?

Have a blessed Easter.

Jim said...

You raise some good thoughts, Bubba. Yes, I suspect that my yearning for ritual or beauty or ancient worship drew me to the tenebrae service.

Regarding the question about Lutheranism, I guess I need to know what you mean by "particular context."

The vast majority of my experience with Lutherans has been in the Wisconsin synod, which strives for homogeneity. So I think my experience in several of those churches is representative of the whole.

This most recent experience was in another "particular context", that being LCMS and rural/small town.

The same problems pervade this group, so I perhaps prematurely extrapolate that Lutheranism (at least in the North) struggles with these same idiosyncrasies.

I have also had exposure to LB and ELCA. LB seems the closest to a clear, Bible-teaching church in experiences.

Apparently something in Lutheranism either rejects or struggles with the completeness of the cross, the atonement because it still wants to identify the saved individual with the flesh. NT I believe wants to identify us with the new man while acknowledging that we sometimes do not live according to the new nature. (ref. 1 John "if anybody does sin" seeming to indicate that it isn't normative for us to be wallowing in acts of sin or even the attitudes of the flesh.

Do I sin every day? Yes, I agree with that statement.

Do I identify myself as a sinner? In the same way as I identify myself as a Lutheran. :-) Still have some tendencies/traits of being one, but it would not be my primary approach to being or acting.