Songs for Good Friday | Songs for Communion

For the past decade, I’ve linked to or included songs at Thinking Out Loud and Christianity 201 which are cross-focused, appropriate for a Communion Service (Eucharist) or Good Friday. There are also a number of songs we’ve done individually or as part of a worship team. I’ve never attempted to gather them all in one place.

These are not the top songs which come to mind for many of you, but ones which I thought might be lesser known, or are more lyrically rich. There are a number by UK artists, and I feel the lyrical depth we get from songwriters there exceeds the output we see from writers in Nashville. I have however included a few you should recognize.

This is the first time I’ve embedded a playlist — not a single video — so to keep it playing you either need to keep this blog page open, or click the YouTube icon to transfer the action directly to YouTube. Right now there are 21 songs, so if you want to have this playing in the background, you should be good for 90+ minutes.

Again, these are not “Easter songs.” A few of them move to the resurrection, but the idea was to focus on the arrest, trial, scourging, suffering and crucifixion of Jesus.

If the player does not open properly here is the link.

I Am Mess

There is a Roman Catholic tradition that one does not partake of The Lord’s Supper without having been to confession. The confessional booth was created for this particular purpose, and is often looked down at by non-Catholics as ‘one more thing the Roman church has added to the Christian faith.’ But while it institutionalizes something the Early Church would have seen take place more organically, it is part of the our mandate as we approach the Eucharist or Communion table.

In the instructions for instituting The Lord’s Supper, the King James version translated I Cor. 11:28 with the familiar words, “But let a man examine himself.” Here’s how The Message deals with it through to verse 34:

^27-28 Anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Master irreverently is like part of the crowd that jeered and spit on him at his death. Is that the kind of “remembrance” you want to be part of? Examine your motives, test your heart, come to this meal in holy awe.

^29-32 If you give no thought (or worse, don’t care) about the broken body of the Master when you eat and drink, you’re running the risk of serious consequences. That’s why so many of you even now are listless and sick, and others have gone to an early grave. If we get this straight now, we won’t have to be straightened out later on. Better to be confronted by the Master now than to face a fiery confrontation later.

The posture with which we come to Communion is a posture of confession.

Unfortunately, this is not always emphasized in all of our churches, and while a few do provide a time of silence for such, many places of worship do not, and many who have more recently become part of our congregations don’t know this teaching.

Having been raised with this, I have no problem remembering this. Sometimes my prayer begins, “Lord, I’m a mess.” I know my heart, and I know God knows my heart. Yes, the heart is deceitful above all things (Jer. 17:9) and yes, we’re very good at rationalizing our own righteousness (Prov. 16:2) as in, ‘Hey, I’m not as bad as my friend.’ But the moments preceding the communion elements are no time for pretense, at that moment, transparency and honesty is the order of the day. My thoughts might be drawn to:

• the anger I may feel toward someone who has wronged me, even things that happened years ago;
• obsessing over regrets concerning past choices;
• lustful thoughts and more lustful thoughts;
• terrible stewardship over the use of time;
• a climate of fear and anxiety which slows lack of trust in God;
• neglecting Bible reading and study to the degree that would be expected of me;
• wishes that certain proud or arrogant people would fail, or just people with whom I don’t see eye-to-eye.

Those are just a few that I thought of immediately. I’m sure there are more. You might be reading this and identifying, or maybe you’re further along in spiritual formation and now think I’m a terrible person! Either way, I come to God with some very small inkling of what my life must appear like before a capital ‘H’ Holy God.

But today, instead of just saying, ‘I’m a mess,’ I found myself saying, ‘I am mess.’ (Take a minute to reflect on the difference.) I don’t just sin, but I am sin personified. Without God’s help, I am a picture of the human condition. I know some will read this and say, ‘Well that’s just the accuser of the brethren talking to you, don’t listen to it.’ But David said, ‘My sin is always present before me (Ps. 51:3).

Both scripture and church liturgy are full of prayers of confession.

But — and here the writers of scripture would add, ‘Thanks be to God’ — we don’t have to stay defined by and defining what it means to sinful and separated from God. We also have the assurance of pardon.

I John 1:9 reminds us:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (NASB)

From the link above, here is the assurance of pardon as found in the Book of Common Prayer:

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has no pleasure in the death of sinners,
but would rather they should turn from their wickedness and live.
He has given authority to his ministers to declare to his people when they repent
the forgiveness of their sins.
God pardons and absolves all who truly repent and believe his holy gospel.
So we ask him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit,
that what we do now may please him
and that the rest of our life may be pure and holy,
so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

If your life is a mess, or if you just feel like you are mess, the Father wants us to come to him. But this is not something we do once upon a time and then write the date in the front cover of our Bible and that’s it, we’re done. No God wants us to come to Him regularly and confess that we do wander from His best, and that we are a people in need of a Savior. True repentance is a sincere acknowledgement of sin, but yes, we will mess up again. Maybe in another area. But his assurance of pardon is always there, even as we come to him over and over and over and over again.

Posted jointly with Christianity 201

Wednesday Link List

You know, that thing where you take a bucket of links and pour them over your head…

• On July 21st of last year, Ken Brantly gave this message to his home church in Indianapolis.
• What police in Ferguson, Missouri couldn’t accomplish, clergy did.
• Another perspective on Ferguson: After eight years in the Cayman Islands, a pastor in Washington, DC is justifiably concerned for his son…
• …While another parent has an entirely different perspective, but similar fears.
• The pastor of one of Charlotte, NC’s largest churches who also hosts an iconic radio ministry program is being investigated.
• What happens when the ‘regular’ editions of Christian books aren’t good enough for people who prefer the ESV?
• Communion complications: “…[W]hen a bridal couple partakes without the whole assembly, they have inadvertently disqualified some believers on the spurious grounds that they are not getting married that day.”
• Historical artifacts: A video interview with people who were actually there for the 1906 Azusa Street revival that launched North American Pentecostalism.
• Essay of the Week: These days everybody does it, but should sermons be published or posted online?
• Personality Profile: You got your Myers Briggs, your Strength Finders, and your DISC, but for leadership development Nancy Beach favors the classic Enneagram.
• Founded only in 2012, a new conservative Presbyterian denom has “…grown from 30 churches and 10,000 covenant partners at our first Synod gathering in 2013 to now having 149 churches and 60,000 covenant partners…”
• With over 8,300 views, this InterVarsity Press book excerpt by Sean Gladding is IVP’s most downloaded.
• Essay of Another Kind: Everything lost in a fire, then, a shattering medical diagnosis. The article is simply titled, “Loss.”
• Parenting the College-bound: “[T]he only freshmen who will be completely “safe” in college are the ones with completely pure hearts. And the last time I checked my Bible, that’s none of us.”
• Question of the Week: How do events involving ISIS shake things on both ends of the continuum between pacifism and ‘just war’ theory?
• What the–Yes! It’s an article on the vulgar and obscene parts of the Bible. (We’re checking to see if you click on this one!)
• Games Christian Play: You can rewrite this for your own denom, but to get the game going here’s 5 ways to sabotage a Mennonite Church committee meeting.
• Francis Chan and Lisa Chan rap their way through their book promotional video for You and Me Forever, which released yesterday. If the book doesn’t sell, they might have a future in music.
• We interrupt this sermon series: Andy Stanley rewrote the playbook on his “In The Meantime” series last Sunday (part two) when it became apparent people wanted to go deep.
• Links to articles on marriage and parenting are easy to come by, but items tailored for blended families are harder to find.
• Pete Wilson notes that increasingly, individuals and couples have ‘revolving door’ best friends.
• A survey sample of 500 UK teens found nearly three-quarters saying it’s too easy to stumble on stuff online you shouldn’t be seeing.
• A short article arguing that every denomination that takes a liberal position on sexual issues sees a drop in attendance.
• Podcast Place: Canada’s long-haired pastor Bruxy Cavey spent the summer teaching his congregation systematic theology. (Audio or video)
• They keep their purity pledge and meeting with their accountability partner, but then, once married, the support structures vanish.
• Tim Keller consolidates much of his sermon audio on a new website, though you need to be prepared to pay.
• Ladies’ Link (a new category we’re testing out): If you missed Lysa TerKeurst’s live book launch webcast for The Best Yes, here’s another chance to watch.
• Christians who aren’t part of a local church. You know some. I know some. Did the early church know any?
• Twitter Curiosity of the Week: Michael Patton wrote, “‘Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love . . .’ Did you know the writer of this song left the faith?” As Wikipedia might say, ‘Citation needed’ or at least wanted, which led me to this article.
• Also at P&P: 21 Things Christians Say That Hurt Their Credibility. (Warning: Each is a link to a detailed article. You may get lost in these for an hour or more.)
• A singer from a legendary gospel music family is suing an Atlanta festival promoter for $75,000.
• Your Facebook post or email forward for today: The Blue Letter Bible, a list of ten things it doesn’t say.
• Another arrangement of the popular song, Oceans. So why is that some songs connect and some don’t? (It was rhetorical…)
• Finally, if you live in Hawaii, keep an eye out for a white male jogger carrying a cross.
• Oh, and a personal statement: Realizing the need for repentance and restoration, I will be stepping down from link listing for a period of six days.

So there you have it! Not a single link about the social media story of the week, unless you count the sideways reference in that last item. To submit a link, send it by noon on Monday, except for next week, which is a holiday Monday.

 

Wednesday Link List

Clicking anything below will re-direct you to PARSE, the blog of Leadership Journal who snapped up the rights to this weekly aggregation of linkage before Salem Communications could even submit a bid. From PARSE, click again on the story you want to read.

• Don’t question your leader. That’s the message this week in several Mars Hill-related (Mark Driscoll) stories like this one…
• …and a number of Lampo-related (Dave Ramsey) stories like this one
• This one is suitable for framing: 25 Bloggers summed up in a single sentence.
• Last Friday, CT documented church demolitions in China with photographs of officials removing the crosses from churches.
• Justin Welby became the first Archbishop of Canterbury to host a live call-in program, but same-sex marriage questions took up 20 minutes of the hour.
• Essay of the Week: Jen Hatmaker writes about parenting troubled teens.  (You might also enjoy the article’s prequel.)
• A recent book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer challenges the idea that he was an assassin that is sometimes used to justify redemptive violence.
• After the passing of Maya Angelou, many Christian writers hand-picked quotations to join the general tributes; but in this clip, her faith was more pluralistic.
• Even as confused Left Behind followers are thinking the “new” movie is actually the fourth in the old series, the trailer for the remake of the first movie is now out introducing Nicolas Cage in the lead role.
• Must read: Proverbs for people who use social media.
• With over 500 comments, here are some reader suggestions on what an all-Fundamentalist TV station lineup might look like.
• This week we decided to ‘love on’ our friends at the Dictionary of Christianese who examine the phrase ‘love on.’
• Did Fred Phelps have a late-in-life change-of-heart on some issues?
• If there’s a modern worship song that’s unique to your congregation but deserves a wider audience, let the writer know about the Sing It Sunday song contest.
• Should church staff be allowed to start new ministries nearby existing ones? Will they take parishioners with them? A look at non-compete contracts.
• A Christian author feels that Franklin Graham’s desire for leaders to stand up on moral issues is based on a false understanding of God’s holiness.
• A former student of Bill Gothard’s ministry now believes the entire ministry should be shut down.
• Your mileage may vary, but this writer thinks the reason we go to church is not sermon and not worship.
• A 29-year old woman describes her bi-vocation as a Catholic teacher and a tattoo artist, “the best of both worlds.”
• …Meanwhile the creators of the Jesus Tattoo advertisement lost their lawsuit over a rejected ad in a school publication.
• If you know someone who faces discouragement in ministry, this story is for them. (It’s also a reminder that results don’t happen overnight.)
• Jefferson Bethke has a new “spoken word” album. (That was the genre that launched Word Records all those years ago.)
• Faced with a “No Prayer” edict at their graduation, these students simply ignored it.
• One in four Canadians belong to the “nones,” but they are surprisingly religious.
• WLWJS or What Language Would Jesus Speak? The Pope and Israel’s Prime Minister squared off over this recently, and a BBC reporter gets two paragraphs in, but then can’t resist asking if Jesus existed at all.
• If you’re a religion writer, you can write about anybody’s faith, but articles about witches are still off-limits.
• From earlier last month, the video of the 20-ton boulder that just missed a Boston area church.
• Among Brad Lomenick’s latest list of young influencers, was Ben Houston, lead pastor at Hillsong’s Los Angeles location.
• Here are some thoughts for those of you who want to get your church to have a Bible study culture.
• Do not do this: Top 5 worship leader fails.
• Starting July 2nd, Churches in Canada need to be careful about sending unsolicited email, as new anti-spam legislation carries fines up to $10M.
• Here’s the teaser: Holiness, toothbrushes, sex and cars.
• Stewardship Department: Is it time to pray about your cable bill?
• It may be an innocent kid ministry song to you, but to Christians in communist China in 1972, it formed a secret code.
• If you need to brainwash your congregation to tithe more, you could take some tips from this guy.
• Classic video: Check out how this church performs How Great Thou Art.
• More recent video: Malcolm Gladwell spoke at Saddleback in March. Gotta catch up on that, but it’s 66 minutes long.
• Finally, after linking last week to Skye Jethani’s piece about long sermons, we’re wondering if a concentration of Sunday morning services ever show up on Wind Map.

So that’s this week’s list. We didn’t even steal anything from iMonk or Rachel H.E. Tune in next week; same bat time, same bat channel; or visit during the author during the week at Thinking Out Loud, C201, or Twitter.

Hitler’s Pants after the assassination attempt. Some feel that surviving the event only empowered him more. Source: Rare Historical Photos

Communion Service: Just Me and God

A variation on this story appeared yesterday at Christianity 201.

So last weekend our friend Brenda — the one who wrote the short poem that’s been in the sidebar of this blog for the past three weeks — took us church hopping.  It was a storefront church in the central business area of a smallish town.

There, we participated in a most unusual communion service. The elements — the bread and juice — were placed on a table in a self-serve style. Nothing unusual so far, right? But to get to them you walked behind a curtain, single file, one at a time. Suddenly, you were in there, all alone, just you and God.

Others were waiting and they joked ahead of time that they’d ‘tie a rope to your feet and pull you out if you stay too long,’ but you had these brief seconds to enter into the ‘Holy of Holies’ and express to God in a whispered prayer whatever you would say to Him, or listen to whatever He would say to you. But you did have those few seconds, and I found it rather awe-inspiring.

It’s a communion or Eucharist that I will never forget.

It brought home the idea that although we worship corporately at weekend services, ultimately, our relationship with God is individual. We’re not saved, or counted among God’s people because of what our church does collectively, but because of our personal response to God.  Consider the difference between these two phrases:

• ‘We had communion at church this Sunday’   or
• ‘While in the service today, I communed with God’

That got me thinking about the broader aspects of making our experience(s) with God more individual.

I think that sometimes people are critical of the phrases “accepted Christ” and “personal Savior,” when the problem can be solved with a rearrangement of one or two words. Consider the difference between:

• ‘I accepted Christ as my personal Savior’   and
• ‘I personally acknowledged Christ as Savior’

But then, the personal has to go beyond the initial conversion experience. It’s got to stay personal. Consider phrases like:

• ‘We’re now part of local congregation’
• ‘I’ve joined a weekly small group Bible study’

Each implies the idea of assimilating into the larger body, and that’s right and good, but total assimilation would mean the loss of personal identity. (We once visited a church that had someone listed among the staff as ‘Minister of Assimilation’ or maybe it was ‘Pastor of Assimilation. Seriously.)

Your relationship to Christ cannot be expressed in terms of a relationship to a Church or study group; neither can it be defined in terms of your place in a biological family.

Rather than concentrating on the body you are part of, these more personal statements on for size; say them out loud if necessary; and see if they fit you:

• ‘I am growing in my understanding of the ways of God’
• ‘I am more fully aware of God’s presence in my life’
• ‘I am increasingly making decisions subject to God’s desires’
• ‘My appreciation for what Jesus did is a daily factor in my life’
• ‘I am so thankful for God’s grace’

These I/My statements — and others like them you can add in the comments — should be at the core of our spiritual identity, not statements like:

• ‘I’m really enjoying the church I’m attending’ or
• ‘My pastor is absolutely amazing’   or
• ‘Our lives changed when we joined this church’

Maybe your pastor is amazing, but he will have to give his own account to God, and you will have to give yours. Maybe all your life you’ve wanted to be part of something larger, but again, your spiritual life can’t be defined in terms of membership in a group.

Or maybe you need your own personal ‘Holy of Holies’ experience to remind you that it’s God that’s amazing.

II Cor. 5:10

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. (ESV)

For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body. (NLT)

Romans 14:12

So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. (NIV)

Exploiting Communion to Make a Political Statement

I believe my good-better-best approach to the whole gay debate is much healthier response to the issue of Christians and homosexuality than the hardline, binary right-and-wrong approach that’s more prevalent.   In that respect, I think the Christian gay community have a better ally than this blog than I might get credit for; though some progressive Christians will consider me conservative nonetheless.

But the decision by Jay Bakker to create a rainbow themed communion bread on the occasion of the opening of his church’s new location in Minnesota clearly crosses a line — for reasons I get into below — though not everybody feels that way.   For example, if you don’t know the story, Tony Jones describes it:

Last night, Courtney and I were on hand to help our dear friend, Jay Bakker, launch the new Minneapolis site of Revolution Church.  You can hear Jay’s inaugural sermon, “Vulgar Grace Throws the First Stone.”

The photo above is a detail shot by Courtney of the rainbow communion bread that we contributed to the service. We baked that loaf — the same loaf that Courtney baked with our friends Rachel and Rachet for our (sacramental) wedding — in support of marriage equality. Jay has been an outspoken proponent of marriage equality and has performed several same-sex weddings. When he broke the bread last night, Jay told us to remember not just the broken body of Jesus, but also the broken bodies and spirits of many GLBT persons who have been persecuted for their non-heterosexuality.

At the blog Juicy Ecumenism (yes, that’s its name) we read another account:

Complementing the rainbow bread, Bakker spoke on grace and inclusion, focusing on St. Paul, who “gets grace the most,” as he was a ruthless persecutor of Christians before his conversion. “The Bible is full of unperfect [sic] people” and it was “murderers and traitors … literally starting a faith, being part of a faith and that’s what I would call the good news,” Bakker said. He added that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi also “Really got the idea of what inclusion was meant to be, what loving your enemy was meant to be, what loving your neighbor.”

At Huffington Post:

Bakker reports that the rainbow communion has gotten people questioning his orthodoxy. He responds that “I don’t think Jesus is insecure about sharing communion with others, including gay folks who suffered. So many lives have been lost because of what Christians say and preach. Heterosexisim and homophobia are deadly.”

I don’t want to give a lot of space to this issue. I know this is an issue about which Bakker and Jones and many others are truly passionate.

However when you are also remembering the plight of people in the LGBT community when you are supposed to be remembering the death of Jesus, then you are creating a mixed meaning to the communion service, and making the remembrance of Christ’s death share the stage with some contemporary social issue.

But there is also the issue of altering the symbol used in the sacrament. True, Jesus lived in a world without food coloring, but we have to believe that when the scriptures say “He took bread and brake it;” we are looking at bread that free and clear of any additional symbolism, references, advertising or fortune cookie message. The formula is: The bread = Christ’s body, broken for you. There is no room here to add anything or manipulate this Eucharistic formula.

And why stop at rainbow coloring? There are other “ribbon” colors. Shall we observe a particularly colored bread on behalf of those who suffered child abuse or are fighting cancer? 

No.  The broken body of Jesus Christ is for the forgiveness of sin. And woe to anyone (see Rev. 22) who adds anything to that.

Wednesday Link List

WLL #99, but who’s counting?  Besides they existed before the name became uniform each week. 

• Fine artist Thomas Kinkade died over the Easter weekend. He chose to highly commercialize his art rather than sell in galleries; and after becoming a Christian many of his works were faith-focused.
  
• Many local churches are discovering how to do what we call The Lord’s Supper or Communion in something closer to its original context as a meal. Alan Knox shares how that happened in combination with an Easter Sunday gathering.
  
• You may have seen the Google predictive search results for phrases beginning with “Christians are…”  Matt Stone tries Google searching the same phrase substituting other religions.
  
• An Ontario school board wants to ban the distribution of Bibles, and now board members are receiving threats which are not coming from the Gideons.
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) ran a report on Easter Sunday on how technology is impacting various world religions. Bobby Gruenewald of livechurch.tv was interviewed, and there was a brief shot of Craig Groeschel, but otherwise, Christian representation was limited to file footage of Billy Graham et al.
• The American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) wandered down the same road on the same day with an interview with Rick Warren, who hasn’t done much media lately.  Don’t miss the part on page five of the transcript where he affirms that dogs and cats go to heaven. Yes, he said that. (Video not available outside the U.S.)
  
• And speaking of heaven, Time Magazine revisits the concept four years later.  Here’s a link to their coverage then and now; the ’08 article is available in full, the current article will cost ya.
  
• The Russian Orthodox Church went to a lot of trouble to airbrush a photo showing Patriarch Kirill I wearing a $30,000 wristwatch, but while they got they watch removed, they missed its reflection in a highly polished table.
  
• Peter Rollins publicly denies the resurrection. But before you quote me on that, better watch the video.
  
• Yesterday at C201 we tapped into a series from Mike Breen’s blog wherein a British pastor reflects on the differences between the church in North America and the church in England.
• A graduate student in theology and support staff worker at Randy Alcorn’s Eternal Perspective Ministries gives a short Christian response to The Hunger Games franchise.
  
• Rachel Held Evans spoofed her own Sunday Superlatives — the equivalent to this Wednesday Link List — on what happened to be April 1st. Too bad; some of the articles looked promising.
  
• Blogger John Shore participated in a “Burning of Resentments” ceremony on Easter Sunday. Apparently in 2013 this is going to take place across religious lines in San Diego County.
• What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him is a new collection of essays from author Byron Forrest Yawn. Check out the book trailer.
  
• 

  The character in this Motts for Tots packaging looks really familiar, but shouldn't that be tomato juice instead of apple juice?

  Jefferson Bethke, aka the “I hate religion but I love Jesus” guy, is interviewed by Trevin Wax on the topic of Student Ministry.
  
• The old church annual report is never the same once it goes digital.  Here’s an analysis of the one from Elevation Church (Steven Furtick) which includes video links, infographics and humor.
  
• Want to take your church service online?  Check out Church Online Platform and also 316 Networks.
  
• It’s been ten months now, and this post about regulations at Perry Noble’s church still draws a lot of comments from both sides.
  
• The Worship Song links in the sidebar at Christianity 201 have finally been updated, and the blogroll here is in the middle of some serious editing. Only blogs with posts within the last 30 days are listed, though some do return after disappearing.
• Christianity Today now requires a subscription in order to read selected articles online. If you find a link here to what is now paid article, let me know and it will be deleted.

Wednesday Link List

• Okay, so the guy who sold you the insurance coverage that looks after your pet dog or cat after the rapture wasn’t actually planning on doing anything after you vacated the planet.  Bart Centre, who lives in New Hampshire, came clean after the state Insurance Department delivered a subpoena because he appeared to be engaged in “unauthorized business of insurance” through his Eternal Earth-Bound Pets business. Just don’t tell Fido and Fluffy.
• Equally ridiculous is the story where a Pentecostal church staged a fake raid on its youth group — to illustrate the conditions faced by persecuted church people  in the third world — and now face felony charges.  Be sure to catch the video where the pastor states he would do it again.
• Jamie Wright may call herself “the very worst missionary;” but when it comes to the liabilities of short term mission projects, she really gets it. The “Hugs for Jesus” people who showed up in her part of the world had no clue what to do if anyone wanted follow-up. In baseball, a connection of bat and ball without follow-through is called a ‘bunt.’ Short term missionaries are bunting where they could be hitting home runs.
• Not a Christian website, but does it count if a Christian told me about it?  Just kidding; anyway, enjoy Ten Lessons Parents Could Learn from the Pilgrims at NetNanny.
• Got 36 minutes to hear a great sermon? I’ve dropped by Joe Boyd’s blog before but never heard him preach; but the idea of Jesus being blind got me curious. When was Jesus ever blind; literally or figuratively? This was videoed while he guested at another church, and his style is somewhat laid back but the content is excellent.
  
• Your Sunday morning service was a communion service.  And after that there was a fellowship lunch.  Which one was closer to being the real sacrament?  Before you get nervous about that question, read what Deacon Hall has to say.
  
• At age 103, Rev. Grover C. Simpson, pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Marked Tree, Arkansas is thinking it might be time to consider retirement. Well, closer to 103½ actually.
  
• Brandon Hatmaker on serving the poor: “I’d consider it more a success if I spent an hour with a homeless guy and he never mentioned church, what he does wrong, or what he doesn’t do right. I know, sounds weird. But, I’d rather him talk about his story, his family, what happened that landed him on the streets. That would be an indicator to me that he’s not performing for me. And that maybe, just maybe, I really cared about his story. And that just possibly, my God might care as well.” Read more.
  
• The post at Rightly Dividing is really short, but the comments add a lot of value to the question: Does anyone die “prematurely?” Does anyone die “before their time?”
  
• Occam’s razor is not the latest personal care product for men. Maybe this will help. Anyway, at Glenn Peoples blog, loved this line: “…that this was one of those instances where a scientist had gone crashing headlong through a philosophical issue and made a bit of a hash of it.”
• Two of the cathedrals destroyed in New Zealand’s earthquake may not have survived structurally, but according to one writer, “Increasingly, they had morphed into tourist temples…They were increasingly irrelevant to ordinary Cantabrians as vital centres of worship.”
  
• As if we didn’t exhaust this topic yesterday, there’s always the website devoted to the forthcoming movie, Jesus Don’t Let Me Die Before I’ve Had Sex. The movie which just raise $32K in its Kickstarter campaign, will be “a feature-length documentary examining the teachings of the evangelical church on sex and exploring the undercurrent of idealism that leaves many lay members feeling frustrated and confused.”
  
• Speaking of edgy movies, some people have seen the Blue Like Jazz movie already and have posted reviews; a lengthy review by Mike Cosper and a shorter one by Tiffany Owens at World Magazine.
  
• And speaking of sex, Joy Eggerichs is the daughter of Dr. Emmerson Eggerichs who wrote the huge marriage book, Love and Respect. She blogs at Love And Respect Now, and offers this explanation as to why a rapidly growing number of women are watching porn.
  
• No specific link, but if you head over to Timmy Brister’s blog, you should be able to catch the letter “Z” as he concludes his “Gospel Alphabet” series.
  
• In Tennessee, when they say “community hymn sing,” it involves Michael W. Smith, Randy Travis, Committed, Marcia Ware, a 150-voice choir and full symphony orchestra. But you get to sing along with the projected lyrics.
  
• If you go to Andy Stanley’s church, North Point Community, you know the worship time resembles a rock concert; hence a warning in your church bulletin: “This service contains flashing lights which may cause problems for people with photosensitive epilepsy.”  (Warning from me: .pdf file takes awhile to load.)
  
• Can’t get enough links? There’s always Brian D.’s blog.
  
• Today’s closing cartoon-type-thing is from Naked Pastor. David’s blog may seem irreverent at times, but tell me this is any different from what’s going on in many of the Psalms.

 

Because People Tend to Forget

September 11, 2011

Seen enough of the TV specials? Tired of hearing of “9/11?”  You should know there’s a good reason why we need those programs and magazine features and internet tributes:

People Tend to Forget

Jesus understood this.  Scripture tells us that on the night he was betrayed he took bread and broke it and said, “This is my body, broken for you; this do in remembrance of me.”

But you already know that. Those words from I Cor. 11 are often the most-repeated words in most churches during the course of a church calendar year. “For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered unto you;” is somewhat how I think the KJV renders it.  The section from verse 23 to approx. verse 30 forms what is called “The Words of Institution” for the communion service aka Lord’s Supper aka the Eucharist.  Even if you attend a church where things are decidedly non-liturgical, these verses probably get read each time your church observes “the breaking of bread;” and even if your pastor leans toward the New Living Translation or The Message, it’s possible that he lapses into King James for this one.

Why did Jesus institute this New Covenant, Second Testament version of the Passover meal? 

Because people tend to forget.

Want proof?

Let’s look at the section we almost never read when we gather around the communion table, Luke 22.  In verse 19 and 20 he tells them to remember. He tells them his life is about to be poured out for them. What a solemn moment. A holy moment. But unfortunately, a very brief  moment.

In verse 24, Luke makes it clear that he’s trying to capture an accurate picture of what happened that night.  Even if it makes the disciples look bad.  It’s the kind of stuff that you would never include in your report to Theophilus if you were merely trying to make Christianity look good.  If you were writing propaganda.

²⁴ A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.

I don’t want to be disrespectful here, but Luke might as well have written, “At this point, one of the disciples looked out the window of the upper room and announced, ‘Guys, you gotta come here for a minute; there’s a girl out there that is totally hot.'”

I’m serious.  It’s that much out of place with all that has just happened.  Jesus is telling them — trying to tell them — all that he is about to suffer in order that a plan laid out from before the foundations of the world will be fulfilled.  And they’re arguing about who gets to be Disciple of the Month.  How could they go from one extreme to the other so quickly?  In a matter of seconds?

Easily.  People tend to forget.

Whether it’s what happened in New York City, Washington, and that Pennsylvania field ten years ago; or whether it’s what happened in Roman occupied territory in the middle east two thousand years ago; we need to continually rehearse these stories in our hearts and pass them on to our children.

This is a day that is about remembering and like the upper room disciples, we can get so totally distracted.  September 12th comes and everyone moves on to the next topic or news story.  We must not let ourselves lose focus so easily.  We must not forget.

Deuteronomy 4:9 (NIV)
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

Image: The Cross or Rubble – Ray Tapajina
at The Art Project – Artists Respond to Terrorism

Wednesday Link List

How about changing the name to “Linkerama”?  Just kickin’ around some ideas.  Looks like the links lynx is back!

• The guy who wrote the book Heaven kept getting asked his opinion about the popular Todd & Colton Burpo title, Heaven Is For Real.  Read what Randy Alcorn thinks about the bestselling story.
  
• I love it when bloggers make themselves available off the blog to help readers through issues, such as Zach at Take Your Vitamin Z discussing the rarely spoken issue of sexual dysfunction in marriage.
• This one’s guaranteed to get you thinking.  Will there be wheelchairs in heaven? Quote: For me, if there is a heaven, it’s not a place where I’ll be able to walk. It’s a place where it doesn’t matter if you can’t. Check out Mark Stephenson’s essay, Will People Have Disabilities in Heaven.
• “…those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.”  Phil Johnson at Team Pyro discusses the idea of True Worship.
• This one is a longer piece, but it’s very worth reading and very balanced.  Matt Chandler tackles: Is Church Membership Biblical?
• And while we’re talking eccesiology, Baptist theology professor James Hamilton considers the frequency of communion services; How Often Should a Church Take The Lord’s Supper?
• Three-for-three on church related subjects:  Bill Mounce mourns the loss of someone who, after much training, leaves the ministry after only a short time, for all the saddest reasons.
• Actually one more; no, two more!  From the Shrink-The-Church blog, Ten Reasons to Tell if People Love Your Church More than Jesus and Five Things We Need To Learn From The Mormon Church.
• Social Justice Department: An interesting video of 24 hours as seen through the eyes of a homeless man outfitted with a hidden camera.
• RB really opened up a can of worms, didn’t he.  This time it’s Crystal Lewis with Seven Reasons Why I Don’t Believe in Hell.
• Just in time for middle school graduation, WAY-FM’s morning guy, Brant Hansen on Seven Myths of High School.
• James MacDonald posts three more clips from the early spring Elephant Room Conference, which brought himself, Steven Furtick, Matt Chandler, David Platt, Mark Driscoll, Greg Laurie and Perry Noble together to discuss everything from soup to nuts.
• Music clip of the week — five of them, actually — is the Rolling Hills Christian Church worship band.
  
• In case you missed it, here are actual ten most posted Bible verses on Twitter and Facebook in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden.
  
• For those of you into church architecture, CBC Television documents a church relocation project, though it won’t be a church when it reopens.  Not even close.
  
• Most of you know we usually end here with a cartoon, so it seemed fitting to mention that this week on Rick Apperson’s excellent ‘Five Questions With…’ series he interviews the star of posters, greeting cards and coffee mugs, artist Cuyler Black.
  
• Our cartoon this week is from Dave Walker at CartoonChurch.com and — since we had all those church-related links this week — takes a closer look at a CHURCH KITCHEN:

• What is about church life that gives us so much material for everything from Christian satire sites to cartoons?  This one is from Tim Walburg at ToonFever.com aka Church and Family Cartoons: