Lent 2012: A Journey through the Wilderness
Leithart on “The Persistent Marginalization of the Eucharist”

“When the Sign seals the Word, the church becomes a communion of martyrs ready to bear the cross because they have consumed the cross.”

• Peter Leithart, “Do This” (First Things)

• • •

Readers and emailers have brought Peter Leithart’s March 23 article in First Things to my attention in recent days, and it is worth our discussion.

Leithart is pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho, and Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature at New St. Andrews College. His thoughts are especially appropriate for post-evangelicals to consider during Lent, for he puts his finger on a weakness in evangelicalism that most of us have sensed deeply. The wilderness we have experienced is a place of hunger and thirst, and like deer panting for streams of water we have longed for nourishment and refreshment evangelical church culture simply could not provide.

Leithart explains one of the main reasons why.

“I was recently asked to identify the biggest cultural challenge facing American Evangelicals. In my judgment, the biggest cultural challenge is not “out there” in “the culture” but internal — I almost said, “inherent” — to Evangelicalism: the persistent marginalization of the Eucharist in Evangelical church life, piety, and political engagement. Evangelicals will be incapable of responding to the specific challenges of our time with any steadiness or effect until the Eucharist becomes the criterion of all Christian cultural thinking and the source from which all genuinely Christian cultural engagement springs.” (emphasis mine)

Why does Peter Leithart assert that the Eucharist is so important, so central, so significant for Christians and our relationship with our culture?

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Lent 2012: A Journey through the Wilderness
Lenten Prayer Services: A Temple in the Wilderness

During Lent, I’ve had the privilege of leading prayer services at our church on Wed. evenings. Our pastor asked my wife and I to do this, using mostly contemporary music accompanied by piano and guitar. Each week I put a service booklet together and we follow it. The service lasts about 30 minutes.

I thought you might like to see what we’ve been doing. Perhaps you can get some ideas for simple services in your own context for this and other seasons as well.

We’ve been using Genesis 1 as our text. Why? Because the first chapter of the Bible describes how God turned the wilderness into his temple.

In my view, Genesis 1 has two primary subjects:

1. God created everything that exists (Gen. 1:1)
2. God prepared a good land to be his temple in the world (1:2-2:3)

The land began as a wilderness — an uninhabitable place, covered with water and thick darkness. In the first three days, God formed the land by providing the elements basic to life. The the second three days, God filled the land with living creatures. On the sixth day, in addition to the living creatures who inhabit the land, he created humans in his image to be his priests and to represent him (this is what “in his image” suggests). He blessed them so that they would fill the earth with his blessing. On the seventh day God rested, which in ancient near eastern parlance suggests that he took his throne and commenced his rule from his temple. In this way Genesis describes how God transformed the wilderness into his temple that his glory and blessing may fill the earth.

I think this theme of God transforming the wilderness is appropriate for the Lenten season. For the story of our salvation is the same. In Christ, God has inaugurated his new creation. He has taken the wilderness of our lives, formless and empty because of sin, and is transforming them into his temples of light and life. He has called us, his sons and daughters, to be his priests. He has blessed us and given us his Spirit that we might be fruitful and multiply his blessing throughout the entire world. Christ, who died to make this possible, has been raised and exalted on high, where he has sat down at the right hand of the Father. He has taken his place of rest and he reigns over all. We have been raised up and seated with him in heavenly places by grace through faith. Our wilderness is transformed in Christ, and the Lord reigns!

After the jump, I will give a basic outline of how we pray through this emphasis in our services each week during Lent.

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Lent 2012: A Journey through the Wilderness
I Know It’s Not for Everyone, but I’ve Found an Oasis in a Mainline Church

In other essays here on Internet Monk, I have described my own journey through the post-evangelical wilderness. I grew up in a mainline church (United Methodist), but most of my spiritual journey has been in evangelicalism.

I had a spiritual awakening in Southern Baptist churches when I was in my late teens, attended a non-denominational and dispensational Bible college, served as pastor in a Baptist church (nominally American Baptist that became independent), a Bible church (Independent Fundamental), went to seminary at one of the most prominent conservative evangelical seminaries in the world and received my ministry license in the Evangelical Free Church, and served in two non-denominational “Community” churches that were founded by Wesleyans, most of whom had ties to Asbury Seminary.

When I resigned from a difficult church situation, I entered the wilderness. After several false starts and experiments, my wife and I found a lovely ELCA Lutheran church with a simple liturgy, wonderful music, a healthy and grounded pastor, a hospitable congregation, and an emphasis on Christ, grace, vocation, and other Lutheran essentials that answered questions I had been turning over in my mind for years in my evangelical settings. Last fall I wrote a “wilderness update” about coming to terms with the faith tradition to which I now belong and the decision I’d made to pursue ordination in the ELCA.

Though I recognize my debt to evangelicalism and am grateful for what God has taught me on the journey, coming back to a mainline church for me means coming home. I’ve found my oasis. I don’t hesitate to call myself a mainline Christian.

Continue reading “I Know It’s Not for Everyone, but I’ve Found an Oasis in the Mainline”