Showing and Telling

I consider myself an evangelical, but I’m not really the sort of evangelical that most other Americans who use that term recognize as one of themselves.  I pretty much fail every litmus test other than “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”  But I used to be that sort of evangelical.  I once considered leaving the United Methodist Church and becoming a Southern Baptist (in my own defense, I was 15 at the time).  Thankfully, that was when the Southern Baptist Convention was just starting its Disney boycott, and I thought that was about the stupidest thing in the world.  I also wasn’t keen on being rebaptized.  So I stayed put, but there but for the grace of God go I.  My journay away from evangelicalism (that other evangelicals recognize) occurred largely for theological reasons (and leaving junior high may helped too).  But if I hadn’t started to disagree with their theology, I would have left because of the miserable way they preach about the Passion (happy Good Friday, by the way).

Some Christians seem to have this need to cry.  I’ve cried in worship many times, and figure it will probably happen many more times.  If people don’t like it, they can go be Presbyterians.  But I don’t need you, dear hypothetical worship leader, to put on an affected voice and say over and over again that Jesus died, he died for my sins, mine, even mine, he didn’t have to suffer, he didn’t have to die, but he loved me so much that he did.  Yes, I know.  I’ve heard the story before.  I was so moved that I did in fact accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, thanks be to God.  But you don’t have to try to so hard.  The harder you try, the less it’s going to affect me, especially if you tie it to some horrid atonement theology.  In fact, it will probably just make me feel bad for not feeling what I’m supposed to be feeling, and then I’ll get mad at you, and it’s downhill from there.

The thing is, the story of the Passion is powerful enough by itself.  I don’t need some crazed worship leader to go into an ostentatious display of emotion for the cross to do its work.  Jesus said, right before his Passion, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all people unto myself” (Jn 12:32).  Paul speaks of the crucified Christ being placarded before the Galatians (Gal 3:1), and a prophet says “And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”  My point (and believe it or not, I have one) is that I don’t need to be told about the crucifixion.  I don’t need a preacher or a worship leader to work themselves into a frenzy.  I need to see the crucifixion.  I need to look on the one I have pierced.  Show it to me, and let the Spirit do the rest.

I consider it a miserable sign of the times when I had to go to a Lutheran church tonight to in order to be part of a Methodist Good Friday service.  When they had a huge wooden cross in the front to which we all went up and made gestures of affection while listening to the reproaches and singing the Trisagion, I must confess that my eyes got misty (I may be worshiping in a Lutheran church, but I’m a Methodist to the bone).  The Spirit was present in a mighty way.  Almost made me regret the rather grouchy tone with which I began this entry (the first two paragraphs were written before I went, these two after).  The love of God is great.  I hope that those of us who are called to bear witness to it don’t get it in the way of what we’re trying to show.