Easter, and a kind of explanation

It's Easter, and I am rather contentedly staying home this morning, for the first Easter in eighteen years. I know this may seem disconcerting to some of my old church acquaintances. After all, this is the biggest day of the year in Christian churches across the world, and the church is, I might add, the bride of Christ. Today she celebrates the salvation that He won for us. Hallelujah!

I believe in all that. I do. Not only the "old, old story" of Jesus, Son of Man and Son of God, the rugged cross, the empty tomb. But also I believe in the church. Love the church. And desire once again to be a part of one.

But not today.

Bottom line, I am tired. And maybe I'm a little jaded. In the last few months I've been going to an Acts 29 church. I admire the pastor, the congregation, and have no quibbles about what's going on there. I'll be going back there in the future. But for whatever reason I haven't gotten plugged in there yet. It's a 20 and 30 something congregation, and I'm a 50-something guy. Maybe that's the reason.

Whatever.

Much of my church experience in recent years has been all about manufactured enthusiasm. It makes me very unenthusiastic. Much lip-service was paid to the idea of "relationships," but on the ground that played out in rather superficial get-togethers for bowling or ballgames or chattering about sports and trucks over donuts and coffee. All of which would be fine, if out of that there grew a couple of relationships of which I could say, this man knows me well, and I him. There is a oneness between us.

Nothing like it.

I heartily confess that I myself am a big part of this problem. I'm an introvert, and don't readily jump into the deep end of relationships. I'm cranky at times, impatient with what I consider nonsense (especially church nonsense). Also, I seem to have a particular set of interests and tastes that few people share. I don't care about TV, don't go to movies (much), and don't read the latest Christian best sellers.

Anyway, none of that was really the reason I left my church of ten years. But it's back-story to the reason why I'm not leaping into some other Sunday church-experience with both feet.

So, back to the here and now. It's Easter, and I'm sitting here blogging, listening to Ralph Stanley sing Listen to the Shepherd. Willie Nelson sing Uncloudy Day. I'm not "in the wilderness." I'm not a lone-ranger Christian. I want that thing that churches call "fellowship," and I know I'll have it again someday. But for now I'm resting. I'm waiting. I'm watching and praying. And I'm looking forward to an uncloudy day.

Listen To The Shepherd - Jim L...

Uncloudy Day - Willie Nelson

And for your added listening pleasure:

Uncloudy Day - The Staple Sing...

A couple of Easter Posts

The Last Supper

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The Cross of Christ: God instead of Us [Part 1, Part 2]

". . . for it is the power of God for Salvation . . ." (Romans 1.16)

Great day in church yesterday! The music, the message, everything pointed us toward the cross, and toward its meaning for our lives. The day being Easter, the church was of course bursting with folk. Laurie and I were standing on the side (no seats left when we got there!), and at the end of the service, when our pastor invited people who did not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior to repent of their sins and ask him into their hearts, 20 people raised their hands in assent. That's probably a record-breaker in our church. I leaned forward and whispered to Laurie, "Hmmm, see what happens when you preach the gospel?"

Now I pray that we would continue as we have begun!

Sometimes I Wonder...

When a church obseves Palm Sunday and Easter while having nothing to do with Lent or Good Friday or anything else about "the church year" (because these things are too "liturgical" and therefore "religious" and therefore "doctrinal" and therefore "formal" and therefore "not from the heart") it makes no sense to me at all. It makes Easter seem like some inexplicable nod to a cultural tradition that comes around each year "out of the blue." It makes Easter seem, in other words, more like a tradition (and only a tradition) than ever it did in my liturgical days.

My church is jumping through a lot of hoops this Easter. We're turning ourselves into a cafe, don't you know? Baristas and all. Moving out all the chairs, bringing in tables. The message will be brief (brevity is definitely one of those "hoops"), a video, and "dialed down" acoustic worship. Don't want to scare anyone off, you see.

All year we as a church are caught up in "knowing" all sorts of other things than simply "Christ and him crucified," and then, once a year, there's this stylized nod in the direction of distant Calvary (it's really not so gruesome from a distance . . . in fact it's kind of a nice picture, isn't it?). Let's face it, this is simply the truth about the church.

I don't want to pre-judge any of this "cafe" business. I'll be helping move the chairs today, in fact. I'm all for "thinking outside the box," after all. I just think it's funny how we "Spirit-filled" Evangelicals consider ourselves so authentic and "from the heart," when actually we're just playing church games like so many others. We want to attract unbelievers, but I know that I myself, in my days as an unbeliever, would have been wryly amused by all this "show", then I'd have hurried off to a real cafe where I could sip my latte in peace.