The Church does not change!  This was the motto of the Russian Orthodox Church we heard over and over again a few years ago when my wife Kathy and I were in Moscow.  Being consistent in faith and practice is good.  How can you trust people who are always changing their minds?  How can you count on the Church when it is always changing its doctrines and practice?  Yet it is hard to count on a person or church that never reconsiders what it believes or how it acts.

Advancements in knowledge challenge our scientific and theological perspectives, changing how we understand the world.  Many traditional Christian dogmas no longer seem relevant or true to our "modern" minds.  Perhaps some of you now question some things you used to believe?  Realizing the risk, I thought it might be instructive, and fun, to make a "top-ten" list of some things we don't necessarily believe any longer:

Top Ten Things We No Longer Necessarily Believe

9.      Creation happened in six 24-hour days (not that God couldn't do it that way; it just probably didn't happen quite like that)

8.      A man named Methuselah lived to be 967 (literal) years old

7.      The sun actually rises into the sky, travels across it, then settles back to earth

6.      Moses' stopped the sun and extended the day so that Israel could win a battle

5.      Stars are attached to a domed sky over a flat earth

4.      The universe consists of earth at the center, heaven up there, and hell down there - though remnants of this thinking remain

3.      Wealth and success are signs of God's blessing while illness, poverty, and disfigurement are evidence of sin and God's punishment (but maybe traces of this attitude are still around)

2.      Men are inherently more Godlike than women and children (very few people seem to believe this any more)

1.      The Pope, or any religious leader, is infallible (now only true of talk radio personalities)

1.      The Bible only depicts literal history and is exactly as God transcribed it. I'd have to say we're working on that one, with people of faith at extreme ends of the debate.

 

Christian people are questioning the religious language we use, especially the language of worship.  It is politically correct to use gender and other inclusive terminology.  How does that apply to our worship language?  What do you think?

Today is the last Sunday in the church year.  With Advent beginning next week, churches around the world traditionally set aside this day to reflect on the concept, and on the image of, Christ as King.  From all that we know of Jesus and his message, the "kingdom of God" is not the ordinary or familiar idea of kingdom.  Jesus' Kingdom of God is more an "anti-kingdom," an eschatological/apocalyptic kingdom.  With this in mind, and thinking about our God-images and worship language, let us put ourselves in the place of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, as he questions Jesus.

The first thing Pilate says to Jesus, in all four gospels, is:  "Are you the King of the Jewish nation?" Upon seeing Jesus, Pilate seems incredulous:  "Don't tell me you're a king?"  In the synoptic gospels, Jesus answers with just three words, "You say so."  He says no more.  John's gospel develops this scene.  Jesus replies, "Do you ask this on your own?"  Did you have some help, Pilate?  That Jesus was always turning accusing questions back on the questioner, also in search of honest answers.

"Am I a Jew?"  What Pilate means is, "I don't know (or really care) at all about you.  Why should I care?  Am I a Jew?  I have heard about you, but now I see you and, frankly, I'm not impressed.  Your own people have turned you in?  What have you done to deserve this?"

When Jesus responds, he actually speaks to Pilate's earlier question - about his being a king.  "My kingdom is not from this world."  It's in it but not of it.  I'm not talking "kingdom" according to your Roman assumptions.  If I had need, "My followers, my subjects, would have fought to keep me from being handed over to the Jews." Not "to the Romans" but to the Jews.  Roman power and values were  superfluous to Jesus.  John's gospel clearly implies that Jews are the real enemies.  The real issues for Jesus are spiritual ones.  John's Gospel may also be reflecting the growing animosity by the end of the first century between Christians and Jews.

"My followers" is often translated "my subjects," and is the same word John uses for the Temple police.  We're also reminded of Matthew's gospel, when Jesus claims that twelve legions of angels would rescue if needed. Pilate's interrogation was going awry, and so, in verse 37, he demonstrates his gifts of administration and tries to get the conversation back on track.  "So, you are a king?" 

"Yes, you could say I am a king, according to you, but that is not the title I would ideally pick.  I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.  As in the prologue of John, Jesus' death is the mirror event to his "coming into the world" - not to be feared or avoided.

Jesus says, "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." "Listens" implies hearing and understanding.  For Jesus, his kingdom equals truth.  His subjects are those who hear and understand the truth.  The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ," -the Kingdom of Truth.

The image of king would have meant a lot to people in the first century and at many other times in the history of civilizations.  Kings were usually all-powerful and  armies waited at their command.  Many were considered virtually divine.  The Israelites thought of Yahweh God as a king, but much more so.  Each year at the traditional New Year's celebration Rosh Hashanna, Yahweh was again crowned "King of Israel.

We can relate to this "King" image through understanding past cultures more than through our present reality.  God's Kingdom is the realm or situation in which God is sovereign - whether that realm is a physical place or a dimension of being or a state of consciousness.  Considering we live in a generation with very few actual kings, and in a society that has been decided anti-king from its inception, should we keep or let go of this "kingdom" image since it no longer speaks from our own cultural understanding. 

What would we substitute for "king" language?  It seems obvious that the kingdom of God is not like any earthly kingdom with borders to be defended and military power to be supported.  God's kingdom is limitless in its magnitude with God to provide what defense is needed, -truly a kingdom and a whole lot more.  The kingdom Jesus ushers in is a kingdom of the least and the powerless.  It is a reality based on unconventional community and transforming life.

What image might we use instead of king?  I suspect the particular image won't matter a lot because we are a culture that tends to push against all models of "kingship" - creating then destroying our gods and heroes.  Perhaps the deeper issue of this language is its power to challenge us to make peace with our own issues with hierarchy and sovereignty?

 There is a built-in tension in the language of our worship.  It reflects the tension of our theology and of our common life.  Walter Brueggemann identifies this idea in the worship of ancient Israel, between allegiance to king as representing Yahweh's will and allegiance to the demands of Mosaic law for justice and mercy especially to the widows and orphans.  This tension is evident in the Psalms and was powerful present in the Israel's worship even when the king was most powerful. 

There is tension represented in our church language.  Are attempts at language that is gender inclusive helpful, by expressing a separation of our religious faith from its patriarchal roots, or is it lacking because we lose the personal pronouns and warm personal images like God as Father.  These tensions, however, seem to reflect a very basic tension between traditional and contemporary expressions of faith - tensions entangled with issues of power, possession, and territoriality.  I fear the lifeless repetition of traditional language.  I fear the deadliness of political correctness.  I fear the danger of inspired imagination that loses touch with the very foundations of our faith, becoming no more than inspired humanism.

Church musician and pastor Erik Routley cautions us against factionalism with regard to our worship language.   We need to keep all the voices of the body in the worship experience together to inform us and challenge us.  When comfort and numerical growth come only with the price tag of social, economic or theological homogeneity, the cost is too high.  Human nature moves toward what is comfortable and familiar, but the Spirit calls us to choose and to grow.  The true power of our worship comes when we embrace our differences and recognize that our only common link is the Spirit and our commitment to each other.

Author Madeleine L'Engle' writes of the tension reflected in our religious language in her Genesis Trilogy-

Somehow it does not help to affirm the feminine aspect of the Godhead, or the Holy Spirit (it)self by saying "She" - because the concept is far deeper than a personal pronoun.  Though the Holy Spirit calls forth from us all that is nurturing and intuitive, there is also a wildness of where is also a wildness of which we are afraid.

She adds, "This wildness is the maternal aspect of the Trinity."  Many "see the maternal being as totally devouring" and are afraid of it.  When our language for God, our language of worship, and especially our attachment to that language, serves to protect us from knowing ourselves and God more clearly, we need to let go of the language.  When our resistance to another's language leads us to judge or condemn, we need to look into our own hearts, minds, and motives.

 Meister Eckhart writes, "The soul will bring forth Person if God laughs into her and she laughs back to him."  L'Engle concludes, "We need a little more merriment and considerably less brittleness as we come face to face with our problems of human and divine sexuality."  We can add, "and with our human and divine language."

These are some good questions to ask ourselves-

• "What is the essence of my faith I seek to find with inclusive language?"
• "What do I seek to preserve with traditional language?"
• "What am I trying to say about myself with my words?"

            We need the language of worship to comfort us in our affliction and also to afflict us in our comfort, to challenge us to let go what is shielding us from God and self, to enable us to embrace our own authentic self and thus discover God.  A few years ago, I spent a year working as a hospital chaplain doing a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE).  That year was my "epiphany" in terms of the power of the language and images of faith.  During that experience, I learned about a young girl who had been sexually abused by her father, a girl for whom the "father" image of God no longer provided access to the Gospel messages of freedom.  That's when I became a "born again" believer in inclusive language and alternative images for God.

            That story has been a touchstone for me.  In my own worship language, I consider it a high priority to seek and use images and language that holds open the words of life for all people - male, female, gay, straight, adult, child, abused or not.  At the very same time, I have been nurtured by traditional Christian language and those images have blessed me.  With the benefit of several years now, I perceive several lessons to draw from my CPE story. 

1.                  It is crucial to find other images that can help expand and deepen our sense of God's nature and presence. 

2.                  We need to allow such situations, including our own experiences of being hurt, to challenge what might be our image idolatry.

3.                  We can seek to allow faith to heal the father image so that it can be reclaimed.  God as Father is not a way of limiting God, but of clarifying how much God's "father-ness" we human fathers lack.

4.                  Worship God as God - finding liberation from substituting "images" for "God" (graven image) and from being so reactive to particular images because of bad experiences that we deny the power of those images for others and their potential for us.

 

Prayer

There are no adequate and encompassing images.  Our names for you and our images of You are important because we need to imagine what You are like in some sort of concrete way.  They are important to us as individuals and to us as a body of faithful people.  They are important to the worship we offer You. 

We do affirm and confess that our names and images are not You.  Our theological concepts are only the lines we trace to remember our experiences of you.  Even the name "God" is a description.  You are the most we can imagine and infinitely more.  In you, we live and move and breathe and have our existence.  In us, you live and move and breathe and give us existence.  We worship you with our many images.  They fall to contain you.  In our incomplete knowledge and with our inadequate will, we seek only Your Kingdom, we desire only Your Presence.  Only in You can we ultimately find ourselves.  Only in You can our hurting ultimately be healed.  Only in You can our strength ultimately be embraced.  Thank You for the wisdom of all our sisters and brothers, of our mothers, and father, of our daughters and sons.  Thank you for the wisdom that wells up within us like our breath.  Your Spirit consumes us and sets us free.  And we all say Amen.