Yesterday, Allan, Jimmy and I had a wonderful time pouring over old hymnals, looking for songs that are not in our current songbook. Our plan was to come up with 20 songs/hymns for last night's Oasis. It was amazing to find such a wonderful blend of old and new songs.
It was also interesting to discover how many of the old hymns are set against the backdrop of suffering. Those songs written in the 19th century and early 20th century when Americans knew the realities of war and loss form a suffering motif that is hard to miss. Agricultural and suffering motifs are prevalent in many of the older, beloved hymns.
But the songs of my youth and many of the "contemporary" songs/hymns lack those features. Gen X and Gen Y didn't generally didn't grow up on farms and haven't experienced the tragedies of war on the same scale as generations before. Consequently, the underlying themes of many of the new songs reflect a different worldview, a different backdrop.
Is the absence of suffering a help or a hindrance to Christianity?
When you get a chance, read Revelation 2 and 3 and the letters to the seven churches in Asia. In the first six letters, Jesus admonished churches who are caught in the grip of suffering. But the seventh letter, to the lukewarm church in Laodicea, calls them to repentance. It is interesting to note that there isn't a hint of suffering in Laodicea.
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The Laodicean experience mirrored the experience of the church in Corinth. Paul's first letter is replete with charges that would bring any modern-day church to shame. The compromise of Christlikeness that is evident in Corinth was born in the absence of suffering.
Jack Reese is spot-on in conveying how the absence of suffering leads us to internal fragmentation rather than harmony:
"I am not sure, but I think this (the absence of suffering) may be part of the problem modern Christians face, especially in America. We lived for a long time under the illusion that our nation was generally Christian, that the values of the surrounding culture paralleled, if not complemented, our own. Christians in business or education, journalism or medicine, could live lives virtually indistinguishable from those who were not Christians. We cared generally about the same things, worried about the same issues, pursued the same wealth, and reflected the same values about race and politics. Few Christians felt estranged from their neighbors. Few had to defend their lifestyle or their choices. We bought into the American Dream and reaped its ostensible benefits. We lived at peace with the world.
As a consequence perhaps, we quarreled with each other. While we did good works, built great edifices, expanded missions, and gave to the poor, we also held at arm's distance, became suspicious, labeled, blamed and accused. When it came to differences among us, a spirit of debate not dialogue became the norm. Like the Christians in Corinth, we divided over issues that were petty and small while we lived in relative peace with the world" (153).
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So how do we recover a worldview that transforms us into Christlikeness while living in a culture where Christian suffering is absent?
Reese calls us back the unity that is found at the Lord's table, the peacemeal, where spiritual formation does its best work:
"Living a godly life was hard (in the first churches generally). The followers of Jesus needed each other. They weren't strong enough alone. They weren't wise enough or courageous enough to sustain their faith without the support of their brothers and sisters. Church to them was not just a pleasant place to come each week, a gathering of friends and other nice folks, where they might dress themselves up, sing songs they liked, hear a nice sermon, pinch a wafer and sip a tiny cup of grape juice before heading back into their busy world. It was not the kind of gathering at which they would likely complain that the auditorium class had been moved, the sermon was too long, or a worship team was positioned up front. They came together because they knew by themselves they were in trouble. They needed someone to help strengthen their feeble arms and weak knees, someone to keep them from being discouraged. For this reason, the unity of the church was not a luxury, not a minor doctrine or a marginal issue that could be ignored until everyone agreed on every issue. Each week, in the midst of their diversity, in spite of their differences, they exchanged with great intimacy the peace of Christ. Then they sat down together and ate and drank.
Such fellowship could hardly be faked. Unlike modern assemblies where many of us don't even know the names of the people with whom we are eating the Supper, where we can pretend to be loving and faithful and no one will know otherwise, Christians meeting in early house churches were bound together by necessity and commitment. They were frequently ostracized by their neighbors because of their faith. Some were beaten or arrested. Many had friends who turned their backs on them, among both the Jewish and Gentile communities. That is why the breakdown of Christian unity among any group was devastating. And that is why divisions among Christians usually showed themselves first in their assemblies" (141)."
"The words 'Do This in Remembrance of Me' are carved into the wood of the communion tables in many churches. These words do not say 'Think This' but rather 'Do This' even though most of us do a lot of thinking and very little doing when we participate in the Lord's Supper. Do what? Participate in remembrance. In the taking of the bread and the drinking of the cup, we re-experience the death and resurrection event. We don't just think quietly to ourselves about what happened to Jesus a long time ago. We don't just tell a story or two about it. We rehearse it, we reenact it, we reembody it. And the very power that nailed our sins to the cross, the power that rolled the stone away from the empty tomb, breathes into our lungs and transforms us into the people of God" (150).
