Sacramental Nazarenes?
My friend Brannon has an interesting new blog that intends to encourage liturgical renewal in the Church of the Nazarene. Even though I am a life-long Lutheran, this is something that is especially heartening for me. Both of my grandfathers were pastors in the Church of the Nazarene. I remember the many worship services that I attended in my youth, waiting for the familiarity of the liturgy or for some sign of sacramental reverence. Yet most of these services consisted of a few praise choruses and a lengthy sermon, which left me sorely disappointed. I am still a bit confused by worship among Evangelical protestant churches; it often seems to me that they have jettisoned much that is good from our 2000 year old tradition. When we can't stand in continuity with the majority of our forbears, don't we cease to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
Still, as a seminarian, I have come to appreciate much about the formation I received from my grandparents (and my Evangelical friends). They take the Bible seriously. They take the Christian community seriously. They seem to hold onto the Church's public character (despite emotivist appeals in worship, and an over-emphasis on the personal spiritual life), when we mainliners are hard to distinguish from our secular culture. As an inhabitant of a mainline Church body (the ELCA), I received more formation from television and my secular intellectual schoolteachers.
We Sacramental Lutherans have much to gain from our Evangelical brothers and sisters. They can help us to take the public claims of the gospel more seriously. And we offer much to them, as well. For Luther (and Sacramental Lutherans) the sacraments are the locus of our encounter with the Holy Spirit, the "assurance" of our salvation-- not our own knowledge of our faith, as Philip Cary pointed out in an excellent recent article in Pro Ecclesia. The sacraments-- the Holy Eucharist in particular-- are what bind us together in Christ's body, uniting us despite our distinctions and disagreements.
My friend Brannon has an interesting new blog that intends to encourage liturgical renewal in the Church of the Nazarene. Even though I am a life-long Lutheran, this is something that is especially heartening for me. Both of my grandfathers were pastors in the Church of the Nazarene. I remember the many worship services that I attended in my youth, waiting for the familiarity of the liturgy or for some sign of sacramental reverence. Yet most of these services consisted of a few praise choruses and a lengthy sermon, which left me sorely disappointed. I am still a bit confused by worship among Evangelical protestant churches; it often seems to me that they have jettisoned much that is good from our 2000 year old tradition. When we can't stand in continuity with the majority of our forbears, don't we cease to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
Still, as a seminarian, I have come to appreciate much about the formation I received from my grandparents (and my Evangelical friends). They take the Bible seriously. They take the Christian community seriously. They seem to hold onto the Church's public character (despite emotivist appeals in worship, and an over-emphasis on the personal spiritual life), when we mainliners are hard to distinguish from our secular culture. As an inhabitant of a mainline Church body (the ELCA), I received more formation from television and my secular intellectual schoolteachers.
We Sacramental Lutherans have much to gain from our Evangelical brothers and sisters. They can help us to take the public claims of the gospel more seriously. And we offer much to them, as well. For Luther (and Sacramental Lutherans) the sacraments are the locus of our encounter with the Holy Spirit, the "assurance" of our salvation-- not our own knowledge of our faith, as Philip Cary pointed out in an excellent recent article in Pro Ecclesia. The sacraments-- the Holy Eucharist in particular-- are what bind us together in Christ's body, uniting us despite our distinctions and disagreements.
posted by Vicar Lisa at 8/03/2006 05:49:00 PM
1 Comments:
Nate: thanks for the free press. I greatly appreciate your reflections here (and in your kind email, to which I will eventually respond). My hope - my only hope for the COTN, actually - is that through becoming more authentially sacramental in our worship and in our theology, we become more unified with all of the great traditions of the Christian faith. I believe the bankruptcy of the isolationist mentality that most evangelical denominations share, this desire to "withdraw" from the world that is so characteristic of churches who emphasize things like holy living and sanctified hearts, is beginning to be identified, and it is this very realization that is causing many to look beyond for something more. And they (we) are finding it in sacrament, in liturgy, in common prayer, in beginning to discover what it means to practice spiritual disciplines.
Okay, I've rambled on enough for a blog comment. Your final words in this post relate to what I've said about a wonderful hymn in my most recent post - check it out.
Our best to your wife. And to you, too. :-)
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