I do wonder, as I read this story, whether anyone at the temple that day would have understood the meaning of what was taking place. Did they understand what was going on as that bustling court emptied out its patrons and as the noise that had only moments ago echoed against its walls became eerily silent? Today, these questions have become even more poignant. And that’s because, right now, we find ourselves in a nation of empty and silent churches.
In bizarre times such as this, we need what Richard Lints calls theological vision where our theology becomes the lens we look through so we can see clearly the world around us and how we ought to live within it. We develop our theological vision by capturing “the entire counsel of God as revealed in the Scriptures” and then using that counsel to shape how we think and how we live in our world today.
Lots of words are competing for our attention: social media posts, political debates, advertisements, and news, to name a few. During the COVID-19 pandemic the influence of social media and news loom large. But while social media can keep us connected and news can keep us informed, they can arrest our attention in unhelpful ways and feed the chaos and confusion we feel.
The act of making meaning cannot erase the reality of suffering, but must acknowledge it as a constitutive element in the very act of making any meaning at all, for that is the deep grammar at work in all of creation as made by and sustained by the triune God.
Morning and evening prayer have become a way in which the common prayer of each congregation, now scattered in quarantine, is carried forward by those called to the pastoral vocation. I trust that those in my charge are praying, reading Scripture, following our Lord, but this daily practice continues somehow as an anchor for us all, a daily offering. “My prayer be set before you like incense,” I ask.
I’ve learned to view being burdened beyond my strength and feeling the sentence of death as a gracious and comforting gift from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of all comfort.
We can temporarily suspend gatherings and settle for the cheap substitute of video worship services and conference call prayer meetings, and this may be suitable for a season––and there seems to be much wisdom in adopting this approach during a global pandemic. But it is alarming to realize that some governing authorities regard church as little more than a form of entertainment akin to a movie theater, so that even as shutting down a theater can be replaced by streaming a movie at home, so also shutting down a church can be replaced by streaming a service at home. And it is alarming how many churches have jumped on board as if they agree! Is not our gathering as a church far more substantial than a one-hour production of two-bit worship-tainment?
Just as multiple viewings of “House” or “Grey’s Anatomy” do not satisfy as sufficient training to work in the medical field, neither will a crash course in Christian ethics lead to a moral life or snap decision making. Everyone is a theologian, good or bad. Everyone is an ethicist, good or bad. The key to good ethics is not immersion into ethical theory, but immersion into the church and into Christ.
True worship must be dialogical, not monological. People need to speak to God, and God needs to speak back. People need to hear from God. Then people need to hear from each other, and speak love to each other. That’s what makes church church, not the building (platform).
If there’s one thing we learn from how manna, that strange stuff or bread or substance (what is it?), worked throughout Israel’s time of traipsing through the desert, then it’s that trust is a major issue, trusting each other in our communities, trusting our local and national leaders and trusting the faithful triune God who is committed to us and present with us in Christ by the Spirit.
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