Bapticostals

It’s Pentecost, and I’m thinking about my late teacher, Frank Stagg, who wrote a book some years ago in response to what he perceived to be a crisis in Baptist life precipitated by an elitist group with a mind toward imposing their piety on everyone else. The crisis was glossalalia (Greek for “speaking in tongues”) and the book was titled The Holy Spirit Today. In the book (and I’m going from memory here; I gave my considerable theological library to the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies when I retired), Frank distinguished between two different manifestations of the Spirit – one he termed “Pentecostal” and the other “Corinthian.” The former was consistent with and characterized by the movement of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit, in fulfillment of Jesus’ promise, descended upon the Church to empower them to be Jesus’ witnesses “…in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This Pentecostal movement of the Spirit was characterized by its outward momentum: it was centrifugal, other-oriented, inclusive, unifying, self-abnegating, and constructive. He contrasted this Pentecostal expression of the Spirit with what he called “Corinthian” spirituality which, in contrast to the Pentecostal, was centripetal, dispersive, self-aggrandizing, manipulative, coercive, and destructive. The church at Corinth, you will recall, was fragmented and divided largely due to the influence of a group of self-styled “spiritual elitists” who believed that their expression of the Spirit (glossalalia) was the only legitimate expression of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, and they insisted on coercing everyone to conform to their perspective and practice. It proved so destructive that Paul had to devote three whole chapters of his Letter (1 Cor. 12-14) to quell the controversy, essentially arguing that when it comes to the presence of the Spirit, there is no “one size fits all” piety that can be coerced on everyone, and that no single preference or practice should be set up as a “litmus test” for spirituality. Frank concluded that the contemporary practice of glossalalia in Baptist life was more “Corinthian” than “Pentecostal” and was, therefore, counterproductive.

Well, it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. There is a new practice of piety among the spiritual elitists in the church that has all the earmarks of “Corinthian spirituality.” I speak of the popular practice of raising one’s hands in worship, especially (almost exclusively!) during the singing of praise choruses in contemporary worship services. This practice was, until recently, confined to the so-called Pentecostal denominations. But lately, due to the pervasive influence of the so-called “praise and worship movement,” it has become equally ensconced in Baptist piety as well. “Bapticostals” some have taken to calling themselves, and the question is, “Is this practice “Pentecostal” or “Corinthian?”

Well, you tell me. Is it centrifugal, other-oriented, inclusive, unifying, self-abnegating, and constructive, or is it centripetal, dispersive, self-aggrandizing, manipulative, coercive, and fragmenting? Are you made to feel somehow “less spiritual” when everybody around you is raising their hands and you’re not? Turn it around: Do you look around to see who’s not raising their hands? And here’s the clincher: Do you ever raise your hands in praise to God when the Scripture is being read or when the sermon is being preached or when (gasp!) the offering is being received, or is it only when you’re being whipped into an emotional frenzy by a praise chorus? And finally, do you ever raise your hands in praise to God when you’re alone and no one is watching?

Pentecostal or Corinthian? You decide.

The Circle of Grace

My sister-in-law loves to shop on QVC. Saw something the other day, she did, that made her think of me. It’s a bathroom scale that not only weighs you, but also calculates your total body fat, muscle mass, and bone density. She saw it and thought: “That’s Wayne; he’s gotta have one of those!” So she sent me one, God love her.

And so, now every morning I step on the scales and weigh myself; calculate my total body fat; compute my muscle mass. I count every pound, measure every inch, agonize over every failure. Some days I measure up pretty well; some days I don’t.

It occurs to me that many people in our world wouldn’t understand my problem.
We weigh the world in a lot of ways. We divide up the human race into winners and losers, rich and poor, black and white, East and West, young and old. But it is an indictment of you and me that we can also divide the world into “weight watchers” and “starving.”

Jesus told a story about you and me. It is sometimes called the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31-46). Among other things, it says that on Judgment Day God will weigh you and me by one criterion: “I was hungry and you fed me….” Apparently, when you have some people who eat and some who don’t, you can’t have the Kingdom of God.

Maybe we can’t eliminate hunger in our lifetime, but we can make a start, can’t we? We can do our part, can’t we? “Live simply so that others might simply live,” goes the slogan. As slogans go (and I think you know my policy on slogans), it’s not bad. I can eat a little less, drive a little less, consume a little less, and give a little more. And who knows? Maybe by making all the difference in the world for someone I can make all the difference in the world.

One of the things we’ve learned in the last eighteen months or so is that resources are finite and limited. There’s only so much to go around. To constrict the conduit of God’s grace to me and mine is to forget that we all, all of us, stand in the circle of the grace of God. What I pass on in the circle eventually comes back to me, and when I stop the circle of God’s grace, sooner or later I am the one who is deprived.

There’s an old, old story about a man who, in a dream, was transported to the afterlife – heaven and hell. First he went to hell and was told, in advance of his tour of the nether regions, that the only thing death did was to lock the elbows. Other than that, all was as it was before. But in hell he witnessed a scene of horrific havoc and torturous misery. To be sure, everything was as it was on earth, except for the fact that everyone’s elbows were locked in position. All about was a bounty of food within easy reach; but with locked elbows, they could pick up the food but could not feed themselves. Consequently, everyone was starving and in horrible anguish.

From there, he was taken to heaven, and the scene could not have been more different. Where chaos and misery and starvation had reigned in hell, in heaven there was peace and harmony and mutuality. Oh, to be sure, everyone’s elbows were still locked; but there they were in a circle – person-to-person, face-to-face…feeding each other, and being fed. It was the circle of the grace of God.

And so, you ask, just what is your weight and total body fat and muscle mass? Some things I take to the grave.

People of the Sound Byte

A friend came over to see me the other day; bought my dinner to pick my brain about preaching. I told him that everything I know about preaching I published in an article titled “Glimpses of Glory,” Review and Expositor, Vol. 99 (Winter 2002), 71-87. Then he told me something that brought me up short. He said: “Among pastors forty and younger, preaching is virtually dead.” He oughta know; he’s in lots of churches. I asked him why, and essentially he said: “They just don’t want to work that hard.” What he meant is that people’s attention spans have now been reduced to that of a millipede and so, preachers reason, about all they can stomach is a sound byte or slogan or cliché. No time for serious engagement with the Word of God. If it won’t fit on a bumper sticker or a church sign, it’s just too deep to use on Sundays. I lost my appetite.

But I had to admit, he was right. Preaching these days has been reduced to a bit of banal blather for the benefit of the bored. At least part of the reason, I suspect, is that a shift has taken place in the last fifty years or so about wherein lies the essential meaning of the Word of God. Back in the 50’s my late mentor and teacher, Frank Stagg, wrote a book titled Understanding the Bible. He begins the book by noting the diversity of perspectives and opinions among biblical scholars, “but,” he says, “there is virtual unanimity about one thing; namely, the meaning of the text is the author’s meaning.” My, how things have changed in fifty years!

Today, virtually no one believes that the meaning of the inspired biblical author is the meaning of the text. Rather, the text is an inkblot meaning whatever I want it to mean. Practically speaking, that means that most Sundays, when you listen to your pastor preach, you’re not hearing him interpret the text at all; rather, you’re hearing him interpret himself! The text is a mirror in which the preacher finds whatever he wants to find. And to think that we Baptists pride ourselves on being “People of the Book.”

Part of the reason for that, I think, is laziness. It’s just plain hard work to live yourself into the world of the inspired biblical writer so as to hear the Word of God as he heard it. It’s both more fun, and a whole lot easier, just to play “free association” with the text and find in it a word or an idea or a concept that you can exploit in behalf of a slogan or a sound byte. People just don’t want to think that hard anymore.

Or do they? When the preacher takes the time and the effort to live himself into the world of the original inspired author, an amazing thing happens. He no longer hears in the text his own little voice, or even the voice of the original inspired author; rather, he hears The Voice the original inspired author was listening to – a Voice that haunts him and hunts him and hounds him into submission; a Voice that claims him and captures him and consumes him. It’s called preaching, and for want of it the church languishes and, alas, perishes!

And so, for all you forty-somethings out there looking for a Word for Sunday, I’ve got a word for you. Save the sound bytes for Dr. Phil and Oprah and the church sign. I’ve waited all week for a Word from God, so for God’s sake, spare me the sound bytes! Give me a Word with some SIZE. Please!