| CROSSING
THE BAR - XIV Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site. “Pussycat,
pussycat, where have you been?” Years ago, I remember telling my dad and mom about something that had happened in the Bull’n Bear that was of the “crossing-the-bar” type - maybe a story about my friend Ed or someone else who was (in a timely way) surprised to find a former preacher owning a saloon. My mom, ever the supportive mother, said that she could see that there are good things to be done even in a “place like that.” My dad, ever the realist, said he thought I was just trying to justify being where I shouldn’t be in the first place. Dad wasn’t trying to be mean. He wasn’t even being insensitive. He was simply telling the truth as he understood it because he cared about matters of the Christian faith as well as me. He thought I had gotten “mixed up” and had fallen into the trap of being not only “in the world,” but “of the world” as well. In dad’s well-considered view (part of which was tempered by his having had a father who was an alcoholic), saloons did not exist in the Kingdom of God. I’ve thought about that for a lot of years. If the premise of “crossing the bar” is true, that 1) there exist in our congregations those unexpected children of God already out among those whom Jesus came to seek and to save, and 2) that our Lord Jesus seeks to work through then to reach those who do not yet know Him, then we must consider how the church has seemed to interpret what it means to “live a life worthy of your calling;” and to be “in the world, but not of the world” as my family’s pastor used to put it. We also must ponder if perhaps there is another way of looking at this issue that has more to do with the freedom of the Christian than it does with being, as a well known politician has said, the keepers of the public morality. It is time to look at and wonder whether the interpretation of these words (“being in the world, but not of it”) has placed the church firmly within a system that is more “of the world” than of the Gospel. One doesn’t need to look any further than how politicians seem to view the role of the Church in our culture (hence the term “keepers of the public morality”) to see that the unique Gospel which we are called to preach has been boiled down and reduced to something other than what it really is. What I mean is this: Is the interpretation that says, “of course we have to live in the world, but that we keep ourselves from being of the world by living morally upright lives” what Jesus really meant when he was praying for his disciples in John 17? Or is this way of interpreting Jesus’ words imposed by those who have other fish to fry? Most notably those who wish to control the behavior of others rather than seeking, as I believe Jesus did, to free them. No reasonable person in the church would say that being “keepers of the public morality” is all they are. Whether we like it or not, being about right living (“keepers of the public morality”) is the primary perception of both those inside and outside of the church. If you question the truth of that statement, simply ask yourself, “Do most people in our culture, either church people or bar people, believe that the life of a Christian is primarily characterized by freedom in Christ or by rules of behavior?” And if you have trouble answering that, ask yourself, this time regarding the church alone, “Is more serious attention paid to how we expect our pastors to act or encouraging them to be examples of freedom lived out in the love of God through Christ?” Please understand, I am not advocating that our behavior as Christians or congregations or church-wide systems is not important. Quite the opposite is true. How we as Christians live our lives is incredibly important, especially to those who do not yet know the freedom that has been given us in Christ, those whom I have called ”bar people.” Our behavior has everything to do with how, or whether, they will hear the Gospel of Jesus crucified and risen, or some “other gospel.” How we are in the world must always represent whose we are. This is not, however, how my friends the bar people understand the church. That’s because, when a message is given about how God wants people to live their lives, either from American pulpits or in the media, we are found to have made that which is penultimate, ultimate. Simply stated, we are most often heard proclaiming how we are to live rather than proclaiming that freeing, unique-to-Christianity Gospel that tells us why we live as we do. To be “in the world but not of the world” or to “live a life worthy of your calling” does not mean that we are under the law of which Paul spoke. It means that we are now “of God in Christ;” “…transformed by the renewal of our minds;” Death no longer holds dominion over us; we are “Born again;” “A new creation!” “…the old has passed away, behold the new has come!” Perhaps the apostle said it best in writing to the Galatian church, “For freedom Christ has set you free. Stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Paul was speaking of those who wanted to require circumcision – basically submission to the Jewish Law and becoming Palestinian Jews – before Jesus would be of any real benefit to them. Today, at least in my world, we are not so very far from being seen as doing exactly the same thing. Let me show you what I mean. Buck, a customer and friend of mine, is a self-described 56-year-old, “$120-dollar-a-month cowboy.” Except for the amount of his pay, his self-description is pretty accurate. Think of the hired hands in the old westerns, and you’ll get a pretty good start on Buck. When he was growing up, going to church meant getting your ears scrubbed on Saturday nights and twisted on Sunday mornings in order to get you to behave in church until you were old enough not to have to go (like the other men, usually around 6th grade). “…So when I grew up,” Buck has said to me on more than one occasion, “I knew the difference between right and wrong. I just liked the wrong a whole lot more! I s’pose that’s why I’ve been married 4 times (my favorite wife – except for the one I have now, of course, was my four-day marriage to a Las Vegas hooker. Now that was a woman…).” Buck could go on for hours with the stories about his life, and it has always been unbelievably entertaining to listen to him go on about the trouble he’s gotten himself into and how he has gotten himself out of it. One day, however, after he had told me once again about growing up knowing the difference between right and wrong, he said to me in a forcefully accusatory tone that took me by surprise, “But YOU, you were a preacher,” he said. “You’re not s’posed to play poker and drink whiskey!” Inferring I think, as my father had feared, that my credibility as a witness to the Gospel was too tarnished to be believable. It was clear that Buck had learned what he thought a Christian was - and wasn’t! - supposed to be like, and I didn’t fit the bill. What he had never learned, of course, was how one’s relationship with God in Christ will often set you free in the most surprising of ways, even ways that lead in the back door of a saloon. (I, after all, am not the only one who has taken heat for spending time with and being a friend of sinners.) Yet this has made it very hard for any “crossing of the bar” to take place with Buck. He believes he knows what Christians are, just without Christ. Exactly the same Christianity I think many in our culture have experienced, some on their own but most simply because we’ve taught them that way. It is easier, of course, to put forth rules for living – protecting the public morality – than to speak of freedom. Rules are cut and dried; you either follow them or you don’t and “judgments” (like Buck’s) are made based on which you choose. Freedom, however, is fluid. It flows from its well-spring and goes wherever it needs – and is needed – to go with the love of God. It is what we saw in the very life and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. The freedom to live in relation to God’s creation the way you were meant to live because you are now free to be in a right relationship with the Creator, with all that it so wonderfully means. This is the message that we ought to be preaching; this is what is ultimate. And while it has everything to do with how we live our lives, how we live our lives is penultimate to that which is the saving, freeing, vast and wondrous message of this unique Gospel of Jesus our Lord. So where am I going with all of this? I am nailing a note on the door of the Holy Church of the Penultimate, hoping to strike a blow for both those who do not know the real and deepest message of the Gospel of Jesus, as well as for those “unexpected children of God” who are (probably unwittingly) poised to take that unique message to them—those who know that they are children of the Gospel even though their lives aren’t your stereotypical “Christian” lives, for they too are the friends of sinners. How we live our lives – each of us alone and all of us together as the body of Christ – is indeed important. We should never fail to live lives “worthy of our calling,” whatever that might mean in our own situations. More importantly still, however, is that we hold on tight and never let go of that which is most ultimately important; that is, why we live lives worthy of our calling: Because we have been reconciled to God through Christ, and sent to carry the ministry of reconciliation wherever we live and move. This is why we exist. It is the calling each and all of us share. If we settle for presenting a Christianity that is without Christ (whether in reality or simply in the perception of others), filled with matters that are penultimate, we will end up at best no smarter than that stupid cat who, having an audience with the Queen, settled for frightening a mouse sitting under her chair. At worst, we will be unfaithful to the Lord’s calling to go into all the world with all that Jesus came to give. |
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