An Anglican Bishop Speaks to The Episcopal Church

A scriptural view of sin is one of the best antidotes to the extravagantly broad and liberal theology which is so much in vogue at the present time. The tendency of modern thought is to reject dogmas, creeds, and every kind of bounds in religion. It is thought grand and wise to condemn no opinion whatsoever, and to pronounce all earnest and clever teachers to be trustworthy, however heterogeneous and mutually destructive their opinions may be. Everything, forsooth, is true and nothing is false! Everybody is right and nobody is wrong! Everybody is likely to be saved and nobody is to be lost! The atonement and substitution of Christ, the personality of the devil, the miraculous element in Scripture, the reality and eternity of future punishment, all these mighty foundation-stones are coolly tossed overboard, like lumber, in order to lighten the ship of Christianity and enable it to keep pace with modern science. Stand up for these verities, and you are called narrow, illiberal, old-fashioned and a theological fossil! Quote a text, and you are told that all truth is not confined to the pages of of an ancient Jewish book, and that free inquiry has found out many things since the book was completed! Now, I know nothing so likely to counteract this modern plague as constant clear statements about the nature, reality, vileness, power and guilt of sin. We must charge home into the consciences of these men of broad views, and demand a plain answer to some plain questions. We must ask them to lay their hands on their hearts, and tell us whether their favourite opinions comfort them in the day of sickness, in the hour of death, by the bedside of dying of dying parents, by the grave of a beloved wife or child. We must ask them whether a vague earnestness, without definite doctrine, gives them peace at seasons like these. We must challenge them to tell us whether they do not sometimes feel a gnawing ’something’ within, which all the free inquiry and philosophy and science in the world cannot satisfy. And then we must tell them that this gnawing ’something’ is the sense of sin, guilt and corruption, which they are leaving out in their calculations. And, above all, we must tell them that nothing will ever make them feel rest, but submission to the old doctrines of man’s ruin and Christ’s redemption and simple child-like faith in Jesus. –J.C. Ryle
Taken from Holiness, chapter 1

Rejecting dogmas, creeds and every kind of bounds in religion sounds so familiar until I realized that once again the good bishop is speaking across time to a people he didn’t know, about truths he definitely understood. And he understood the abandonment of those dogmas, creeds and all bounds in religion would have implications for the comfort that the Gospel brings to this world.

If the teaching of the scriptural view of sin is passe and abandoned, there is no Good News to offer this world. What need would there be for it? Good is only measured against that which is less good or bad. What comfort does Christ’s atoning death for our sins offer to religious people who find that humans are basically good and perfectable, though sometimes making mistakes on the way to perfection? What comfort is the crucifixion of Christ and His glorious resurrection if we are not all marked, stained, and soul-darkened wretches living bound in a marginally lit dungeon and in desperate need of freedom, light and cleansing?

I do not mean to pick on The Episcopal Church, but the example is, unfortunately, obvious. I pray that better teaching and leadership will come to her through the knowledge of the depths, heights, width and breadth of God’s loving kindness and grace. Listening to some of the teaching coming from The Episcopal Church in our day one would quickly come to the conclusion that Christ’s death was meaningless and of no consequence or comfort to our world today. Our sin is meaningless under such teaching.

That is eternally tragic.

Church Membership

Our congregation had a recent discussion about church membership during a quarterly business meeting. Discussion may be understating the case, it was fairly heated at points.

The presenting issue was presenting people to the church and then having the congregation vote on them for membership. A former pastor in the congregation pointed out that he has seen this happen several times in our midst and always wondered what basis this has in Scripture. He couldn’t find any and I have to agree with him.

So when it was brought up, I mentioned my agreement with his viewpoint so the whole congregation could know where I stood on the issue. My concern is setting our membership process up so that it looks like we have higher standards for joining the church than the broader church of Jesus Christ.

The issue for me is not having members recorded in a local church, but how they are brought in. If we could vote “No” to someone who is baptized and can give testimony to their faith in Jesus Christ and desire to be a member in this congregation, even with a letter of transfer from an overseas church, are we not setting ourselves up to be like the Pharisees in Matthew 23 who run to put burdens on the backs of converts?

This church is congregational in government and has four elders who spoke up as well to defend the practice. This had come up in a meeting with the elders a few days earlier and they were not happy. The defense of the practice of voting up or down on new members centers on statues, bylaws and governmental regulations for organizations. It was also pointed out that the missionaries who planted the church 35 years brought this with them when they came to the island and planted this church.

This will be an unhappy period in this congregation as it faces down what it means to be the church locally and a part of the wider Church, the body of Christ. There will be a lot of issues in play, including, are others in different churches and with different theologies from ours, actually people whom we will meet in heaven or not; as well as how to set standards for membership without losing the grace we have all received from Jesus Christ. It will also indirectly affect how leaders are developed within the congregation. This will be bigger than any of us imagines.

Pray for us.

J.C. Ryle on 21st Century Religion

I say, then, in the first place, that a scriptural view of sin is one of the best antidotes to that vague, dim, misty, hazy kind of theology which is so painfully current in the present age. It is vain to shut our eyes to the fact that there is a vast quantity of so-called Christianity nowadays which you cannot declare positively unsound, but which, nevertheless, is not full measure, good weight and sixteen ounces to the pound. It is a Christianity in which there is undeniably 'something about Christ and something about grace and something about faith and something about repentance and something about holiness', but it is not the real 'thing as it is' in the Bible. Things are out of place and out of proportion. As old Latimer would have said, it is a kind of 'mingle-mangle', and does no good. It neither exercises influence on daily conduct, nor comforts in life, nor gives peace in death; and those who hold it often awake too late to find that they have got nothing solid under their feet. Now I believe the likliest way to cure and mend this defective kind of religion is to bring forward more prominently the old scriptural truth about the sinfulness of sin. People will never set their faces decidedly towards heaven and live like pilgrims, until they really feel they are in danger of hell...Let us bring the law to the front and press it upon men's attention. let us expound the Ten Commandments and show the length and breadth and depth and height of their requirements. This is the way of our Lord in the sermon on the mount. we cannot do better than follow His plan. We may depend upon it, men will never come to Jesus and stay with Jesus and live for Jesus, unless they really know why they are to come and what is their need. Those whom the Spirit draws to Jesus are those whome the Spirit has convinced of sin. without thorough conviction of sin, men may seem to come to Jesus and follow Him for a season, but they will soon fall away and return to the world. - J.C. Ryle
From Holiness, chapter 1

I sure wish they knew how to use the journalist's paragraph back then. Two-three sentences and then a new paragraph.

But I think the good bishop has put his finger right on the issue of Christianity at the beginning of the 21st century. We are so afraid of offending our friends and family, not to mention those who listen to us, that we have watered down the real issue in coming to faith in Christ.

Not that we should beat people over the heads with sin and dangle them over the flames of hell, but we should not be afraid to step and note sin when it happens and be willing to name it when we see it. It is hard to offer grace and mercy when the reason it is needed is belittled. Sin is real. Let's call it for what it is using the Bible's standards as our definitions.

Plagiarizing Sermons

Kendall at T1:9 offers us this great post on pastors plagiarizing other pastors messages. I posted the following comments as my intial response to the issue:

Solomon once wrote that there is nothing new under the sun. He might have been right.

I find it hard to believe that after 2000 years of preaching the Gospel that every preacher is saying something has never been said before. Or even required to do so.

I would argue contrary to popular perception in the pew, that the sermon probably has been preached somewhere else depending on the hermeneutic used, linguistic and cultural context and a few other factors. This would especially be so for preachers, priests, and pastors who tend to deliver expository sermons in such a way that they stick close to the outline of the text.

I would also argue as one of my own homilectical Old Testament profs said in seminary, sermon preparation is a lifetime of learning, influences and God-given experiences pouring out into a message for the congregation every week. It is not merely sitting down with the text, a commentary or two (or twenty) and crafting a message for that coming Sunday morning. All of the preacher’s life is in play in sermon development, including things the preacher may have read 15 years ago and barely remembers except for the life change wrought by the Holy Spirit in the words of another preacher.

That said, the preparation of a message that is entirely or mostly drawn from someone else’s material without attribution is sick. As others have pointed out here, just saying “One commentator/preacher said…” goes a long way. Rick Warren and Steve Sjogren have both promoted this mentality of lifting other’s (their’s especially) messages as if their congregational message would fit my congregation.

A few years ago I can remember a well-known pastor, preacher and author telling an audience of fellow pastors from all over the map of Christianity that there were only a few A-list preachers in the U.S. Thus the trend will be to use the messages of those A-list preachers, either via satellite video feed or in the delivery of their message by a local pastor. And he thought this was good.

There is an ego involved in this enterprise. The promotion of sermonic dependency does not create strong congregations, nor bold pastors who can lead their congregations through difficult times. They become what Ayn Rand, I believe, termed “second-handers.” People who live on second-handed experiences and thoughts and thus never truly live their lives.

We need pastors, preachers and priests who are transparent in the pulpit who can speak of their own wrestling with the text and life, even if not with the same style as a radio or TV preacher with a dozen books to their name. Congregations want authenticity from the pastor/preacher, which is why the trust level is broken when the reality of the plagiarism is discovered.

Lots of other good comments and discussion followed. None of this is to say that Sunday morning or any other service ought to be the Pastor’s Preaching Show. I’m a firm believer that the message and worship should not be about who is up front, but rather ought to be pointing to Christ in everything.

Pastors who plagiarize other pastors’ sermons are either insecure in their calling and standing before their congregation due to the inevitable comparisons to other well-known preachers; or they are insecure due to other factors, such as a need to be about growing the church, hitting homeruns with their messages every week, or the inevitable time crunch that comes with being a pastor in the 21st century. It could also be that they are lazy and prefer to do other things with their time.

It is a sad trend unfortunately that has been with us for a while as one of the commenters on the thread noted in mentioning Thomas Wingfold’s being outed as a plagiarizing pastor in George MacDonald’s The Curate’s Awakening (a great book BTW, I would highly recommend it). A book that was originally written in the 19th century. If it wasn’t new then, we shouldn’t think it is new today.

Just so everyone is aware: The original article that Kendall refers to is here.

Modern Christianity, Mega-Church, Community Crusades

It is easy to get crowds together for what are called ‘higher life’ and ‘consecration’ meetings. Anyone knows that, who has watched human nature and read descriptions of American camp-meetings and studied the curious phenomena of the ‘religious affections.’ Sensational and exciting addresses by strange preachers or by women, loud singing, hot rooms, crowded tents [arenas?], the constant sight of strong semi-religious feeling in the faces all around you for several days, late hours, long protracted meetings, public profession of experience - all this kind of thing is very interesting at the time and seems to do good. But is the good real, deeply-rooted, solid, lasting? That is the point. And I should like to ask a few questions about it.

Do those who attend these meetings become more holy, meek, unselfish, kind, good-tempered, self-denying and Christ-like at home? Do they become more content with their position in life, and more free from restless craving after something different from that which God has given them? Do fathers, mothers, husbands and other relatives and friends find them more pleasant and easy to live with? Can they enjoy a quiet Sunday and quiet means of grace without noise, heat and excitement? Above all, do they grow in charity, and especially in charity towards those who do not agree with them in every jot and tittle of their religion?

These are serious and searching questions and deserve serious consideration. I hope I am as anxious to promote real practical holiness in the land as anyone. I admire and willingly acknowledge the zeal and earnestness of many with whom I cannot co-operate who are trying to promote it. But I cannot withhold a growing suspicion that the great ‘mass-meetings’ of the present day, for the ostensible object of promoting the spiritual life, do not tend to promote private home religion, private Bible reading, private prayer, private usefulness and private walking with God. If they are of any real value, they ought to make people better husbands and wives and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and masters and mistresses and servants. But I should like to have clear proofs that they do. I only know it far easier to be a Christian among singing, praying, sympathizing Christians in a public room, than to be a consistent Christian in a quiet, retired, out-of-the-way, uncongenial home. The first position is one in which there is a deal of nature to help us: the second is one which cannot be well-filled without grace. –J.C. Ryle, Stradbroke, October 1879

You would think he lived a hundred years later with this statement and watched the rise of stadium events, mega-churches and TV and radio preachers. I cannot help but wonder if the past 120+ years haven’t proven him right. Can we honestly say that we are witnessing a more holy, and godly culture and world today than we did then? Have all these mega-churches, with their myriads and myriads of programs for every niche of Christendom created more godly people who are influencing their society around them or not?

Bishop Ryle is right. The need of the day is not more programming or better stadium and arena events for Christians, but a return to the basics of simply and consistently following Christ in their local church with a pastor they know and who knows them. There is nothing wrong with zealousness in following Jesus, but when the zeal doesn’t produce transformed and holy lives, then it is not merely wrong it is sinful.

Heard On the Street

Is it still church when the pastor doesn’t show up, but gives his message by video?

The following set of facts is a true story overheard literally on the street last night.

Everything else went as it usually does in this very large church in a very large city. The congregation was led in music by the normal group of people, an associate pastor led the congregation in prayer and the offering was taken while someone sang and again led the people in another song. Then the pastor showed up on the screen, but becasue the place was so big, no one, but those in the absolute front of the church knew he wasn’t stnding in his usual place. It wasn’t until the end of the service when people stood up to leave that they realized he wasn’t there, it was all a video broadcast.

So, again, is still church when the pastor doesn’t show up to preach but gives his message by video?

I’m not just talking about video simulcasting to multiple sites, but actually not being physically present to preach at one of the sites because he’s away, travelling back from a conference, or dealing with prior commitments. Pre-recording the week’s message so the flock still get to see their beloved pastor on the screen and hear his voice speaking to them, just earlier in the week. And making this the standard operating procedure, not just a once in great while kind of thing. All of this taking place in a church of thousands, with some exceptionally gifted and well-known preachers and Bible teachers on the staff who could easily pinch-hit out of the jam.

Have we really reduced worship in the word to a video series? What happens after the beloved pastor leaves or dies? Can we still run his picture and message on the screen as a re-run?

Something tells me this is not going to be a healthy trend for the church. Worship in church on Sunday mornings (or Saturday nights, as is also the case in the above example) must be more than a lecture series centered around the personality and speaking style of one man. This is, in my humble opinion, bordering on idolatry.

I just wish this were an aberration but apparently this trend is growing. We’ll have to come back to this some other time.

Word in Worship

My liturgical church friends will think this post is strange, but having spent the past twenty years or so inside the free-church, low-church, evangelical world I do not think it is so strange or off the wall.

If proper worship consists of Word and Sacrament, how can we do a better job as evangelicals in our worship in the Word? After all most evangelical churches spend a lot of time in the preaching of Scriptural truths or at least offering messages that are hopefully based on those truths.

My experience has led me to believe that the average Sunday morning service at an evangelical church lasts between 75 and 90 minutes. Some go longer, some go shorter depending on the church, the occasion, the preacher and other variables in the service.

Of that time, my experience both as a pastor and as an observer has been that the preaching of the message often takes up approximately 20-45 minutes. The longer the service generally is, the longer the message generally is as well. Thus somewhere between one-third and one-half of the service is the message.

But many liturgical critics of such evangelical service have noted that evangelicals are Scripture starved in their services. In other words the only Scripture read is that which pertains to the message. This is in contrast with more liturgical churches which offer readings in at least two and often three lessons.

When I mention this to some evangelicals there is an immediate defensiveness and quizzical looks flow across their countenance. They are rightly known as the people of the book, they preach Scripture, their authority is Scripture alone. How dare anyone suggest that they are not using or committed to using Scripture in their services!

Yet too often this is just the case. So how might the situation be improved? First, churches should begin a practice of using the readings from an appropriate lectionary. This will often bring up charges of moving into Rome or some such accusation. I would only point out that the lectionary does not belong to Rome. Anglicans, Lutherans, some Presbyterians and even some non-affiliated Emerging churches use the lectionary to their great profit. Such use of the lectionary has the advantage of bringing in readings from the Old Testament, New Testament letters and often a third reading from the Gospels.

Second, I would encourage the reading of the ancient creeds during the service. No, these are not Scripture per se, but they are an excellent summary of God’s Word to us. Part of worship is the re-telling of God’s mighty acts in history to draw people to Himself, His work of redemption in saving sinful people from the consequences of sin. This story is best re-capped in the ancient Creeds.

Reading them in worship would only add to the sense that each passage that is read is a part of the larger story of God’s redeeming work in this world. The Nicene Creed is more detailed than the Apostles’ Creed, yet both cover the same detail. To read the Athanasian Creed would take significantly more time, but is certainly useful to be read from time to remind ourselves of the content of our faith in Christ. There are other creeds found in Scripture or in various church documents which could also be used effectively. (The proposed revision of the EFCA Statement of Faith would be one such document.)

Third, I would propose the music be picked less with an eye to its popularity on Christian radio or sales figures from the Christian Booksellers Association, but more towards a sung Scripture. This would make me old-fashioned and open up a charge of being latter day Puritan, but I can handle that. For starters not every old song is based on Scripture just as not every new song is either. But there are sufficient of both old and new that teach the words of Scripture to the congregation in song that it can’t but help add to the worship.

When thinking about this issue it is best to remember that God says it is His word that is living and active that cuts between soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12). It is His word that is God-breathed and useful for instruction, reproof, correction and training in righteousness so we may be equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). It is His word that does not return empty but accomplishes what He wishes it to accomplish (Isaiah 55:11). Adding more Scripture to our worship services only plants more seed for God to work and grow our faith. And that is what we want is it not?

Rightly Dividing Worship?

If worship is to be divided into two parts, it should not be divided between “worship” and “message,” nor between preaching and music. If we must divide worship, it ought to come between Word and Sacrament. Even then this is no division, but only a means of worshipping in the ways that God has ordained for worship.

This is the division properly made when we come to worship the Almighty. I think this is also the Scriptural division between the parts of our proper worship. We can see this as we read Scriptures. Beginning in the Old Testament, many times we will find worship begins with God speaking to His people. This either happens in theophany, as at Mt. Sinai, or it might happen through His Law being proclaimed to His people as in the days of Ezra the priest and Nehemiah.

When God’s word is proclaimed the people respond with courage and honor for Him. The proclamation of the Word is not merely preaching, nor is it merely the reading of Scripture. It is the telling of God’s mighty acts in history. The Psalms record these mighty acts as songs, so we could even include music under the proclamation of the word. To proclaim God’s work in history is the purpose of preaching, singing, and reading of Scripture and the recitation of the creeds.

We hear God’s work and actions proclaimed and we respond. This is also seen in Scripture as the people respond to the Lord’s word with sacrifice and ritual. The proclaiming of God’s word leads to a response of giving back to God as a sign of their commitment to Him. In the Old Testament these responses were the sacrifices of animals, produce and offerings of money in the Temple. Today, these sacrifices are the sacramental gifts we offer to God as we are reminded of the once for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The sacrifices of the Old Covenant have been replaced with Jesus’ great sacrifice. He came to fulfill the Law, to bring it to completion and through His righteous, sinless life, death and resurrection; He has finished the work of that Old Covenant. There is now no more sacrifice to be offered for our sins of for our relationship to God. He has done it all. He has provided the acceptable sacrifice.

Thus our response in worship is not sacrifice and offerings for our sins, but looks rather to Christ’s sacrifice for our sins. It would be improper to call them sacrifices in the same way as the sacrifices offered in the Old Testament. The sacrifices of the New Covenant could properly be called sacraments.

There is a healthy debate within the church about how many sacraments have been ordained by God for His people at least since the Reformation. No matter where people stand on this issue, there is general agreement that there are two basic foundational sacraments that God has ordained for His people: baptism and Holy Communion.

The sacraments are our proper response to the Word of God being proclaimed. We hear God’s word proclaimed to us as sinners and by His grace we believe and have faith. This response to the word initially comes in the sacrament of baptism. Baptism is our response to God’s saving action in our lives. Our salvation is seen in this sacrament as it reflects Christ’s saving work as a one-time event. He was offered once for all time, we are baptized once for all time as a sign that we belong to Him.

Recognizing that we cannot be baptized every day for our sins, or even every week, God has provided a second sacrament to remind us of His saving work in our lives, Holy Communion. This is the on-going response of God’s action in our lives from week to week or month to month depending on how often one’s church or congregation comes to the Lord’s Table.

In one sense, coming to the Lord’s Table for communion reminds us of our baptismal faith and that we are secure in God’s grace. This does not mean that the Table secures our faith and salvation, it does not. It does mean that we are reminded regularly that we belong to God as His purchased people who have faith in Christ’s work on the cross. Christ taught His disciples on the night He was betrayed to remember him in the breaking of bread and the drinking of the cup. These are the signs of His death for us and the New Covenant we have been given by God through Him. As such they keep us focused on Christ’s saving work in our lives as we remember them. The security in such comes from the reminder; it is not made efficacious with the reminder.

These two sacraments were Jesus’ final enduring commands to His disciples. He told them to break bread and the drink the cup to remember His death and resurrection. After His resurrection He commands His disciples to go into all the world to make other disciples by baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

True worship, then, is not music and message, but rather Word and Sacrament as we hear the word proclaimed of God’s saving work in human history and offer or lives as an act of sacrifice back to God. This is liturgy’s meaning at its deepest level. Liturgy is the work of the people. We need to return to this work of the people in our worship of God.

Music can be an offering and a sacrifice of praise, but it is not the God-commanded offering of response to the word proclaimed. Good worship music is word of God proclaimed. To have true worship that involves God’s word and our response we need baptism and Holy Communion. Forcing music to take on the role of our response pushes it into a role for which it was not designed. It becomes a man-made replacement for God’s gracious and acceptable gift in the sacraments.

Divided Worship?

When did Christian worship get bifurcated between “worship” and “message”? I have heard pastors of all kinds of stripes divide their services this way. I have done it myself without thinking about what was happening with the words I was using. Churches I have attended in the past while in seminary or before also divided their services this way.

In seminary, it was common to hear the unwashed, over-eager, and greatly inexperienced future preachers of America speak of hurrying their churches through the music to get to the main event, their preaching. They were only reflecting their teaching and training that called for a high view of Scripture. Scripture has the final authority in faith and practice, therefore exposition of Scripture must be right next to heaven. Thus the desire to get to the sermon and the musicians out of the picture.

We want to learn from God’s Word. It is imperative if we are going to live as followers of Christ that we hear from God concerning our lives and our relationship to Him. He clearly speaks through His Word to us. Good preaching should focus our hearts and minds on what God has to say to us in Scripture.

For people who are really word-oriented in their outlook on life this view makes sense. Preaching is the most important part of the service for them. They are more apt to evaluate a church on its preaching than any other criteria. This puts a lot of pressure on pastors to hit home runs with their messages every week. Often times that pressure is found inside the pastor as well because he is word-oriented as a basic foundation for his walk with Jesus.

I have heard people in the pews make this distinction between worship and message in the other direction. For these people worship is meeting God in song, really belting out the songs with all of their strength. For some it involves being moved emotionally by the music. If the music doesn’t move then worship didn’t happen. As a result they want to linger on the music and resent the pastor or anyone else insisting on preaching or anything else that brings the singing to an end (like the offering or Lord’s Table). For such people singing and worshipping musically is the main event of the whole service, everything after that is anticlimactic.

Yet to bifurcate Christian worship into worship and message is to miss the importance of the message and the unity of worship. The message should be seen as part of the worship of the healthy Christian. We are commanded to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. (Mark 12:30) All of those are needed for true worship, including the mind. Music may carry the soul to the heights, but the message should carry our minds to new heights as well. I am convinced that God intends the message to carry our souls as well.

Yet to use music and message against each other is to miss the whole purpose of worship. Is not worship supposed to be our response to God’s incredible grace given to us? Should not worship be both music and message as we hear God’s word spoken, the truth about our lives, and respond with joy? We have bought into a mindset that says we need one or the other as primary when both are needed.

Good Christ-centered preaching will lead us to Him and to His grace every time under the power and influence of the Holy Spirit. Good Christ-centered music will prepare our hearts for the message, as well as preach the message of the Gospel in a different format. Both ought to be acts of worship and lead to people worshipping God more deeply than they had beforehand.

We need both music and preaching for good worship. To hold one over the other is to wrongly divide worship and misses the reality that we were made to worship God in many ways. Both should help us grow in grace and godliness. That is real worship.

Upon Further Review, It's Still Not Funny

Just a few further thoughts on the laughing at Jesus suffering in the play in my congregation last night.

My level of being appalled at the laughter in my church last night is still quite high. My sadness that some people would think it was funny that Jesus was beaten or that how it was portrayed was funny is still overwhelming.

Yet, after the play, as we were closing up the church and a few of us were standing around talking, I was listening to some of the younger people talk and realized there may be a reason for the laughter that rests in our culture. They were talking about a new horror movie that has just opened at the theater on our island. This is a movie that is rated R for prolonged sequences of strong gruesome horror violence, rape and language.

I guess there were scenes in this movie where blood flies and body parts come off given the conversation about it. This was conversation among teenagers and young adults ages roughly 13 to 25. And they were laughing about the violence in the movie. They thought it was funny.

As I thought about it later, hearing their laughter about the violence in the flick helped explain why they thought the beating and suffering of Jesus was funny. If they laugh at what the movies portray as gruesome, they will laugh when Jesus gets hit. They will not see what is sad or horrific about either.

In many ways, people who can laugh at such scenes have been desensitized to such stuff or have had their consciences seared by witnessing such things on screen, in music or books for too long. I wonder if they are not borderline sociopaths. I wonder what our society will look like as these individuals grow older and begin raising their own children.

If people see such horror played out on the screen as funny or things to laugh about later, what will happen when such horror and gruesomeness takes place in real life? Will they laugh at the poor soul who was unfortunate enough to be assaulted, raped, tortured and murdered?

Our society is being inundated with extreme violence, and it is not just in the movies, check out promos for network primetime dramas during football or basketball games for example. I know others have probably said it first, but we are deteriorating to the same level as the Romans who were entertained by watching gladiators fight to the death or people get eaten by wild beasts.

The flood of such violence on our society is destroying our compassion for the weak and the defenseless. The very people God says He cares about. The ones Jesus said that when we care for them, we have cared for Him. We can laugh at Jesus’ suffering and torture because we have been taught to laugh at that violence everywhere else in our society.

He came to heal, forgive, and give life. We are promoting harm, vengeance, and death. C.S. Lewis had a character in one of his books who enjoyed tearing apart innocent creatures just because they were innocent and he could do it. He left a bloody trail wherever he went. We are becoming like that character. Lord, have mercy on us and lead us to better paths.

It is Not Supposed to Be Funny

Last night my church put on a drama skit called The Trial during our Sunday evening worship service. It was the culmination of weeks of practice for the 12 people involved in the skit. Overall they did a fairly good job considering only one or two of them have a sense of drama or acting in telling a story. However, no one is going to say they are ready for the big stage as actors or costume designers.

The drama was about the trial of Jesus and was taken as much as possible from the words of Scripture in the four Gospels. One of the ladies in the church had been working on it for a few years putting together the different pieces from the different Gospel accounts to create a harmonized version that told the story of Jesus’ arrest and trial in a simple way.

Given that we are a small church, this was an ambitious undertaking. The hope was that we would use this play as an outreach to the friends and family members of the people of our church. When I looked around, I noticed that the church was fairly full and about one-third of those people were visitors. So I thought it was reasonably successful in being in an outreach.

The idea was to keep the play simple and yet the storyline faithful to the Gospel accounts. In reading the script ahead of time and watching the practices, I thought they had done a fairly good job in keeping to that goal. It wasn’t the Jesus Film or The Passion of The Christ, but for our church and our location it was pretty good.

Yet during the play something unusual happened. After Jesus is arrested and brought to the house of Caiaphas to be tried before the chief priests and rulers, He is beaten by the guards who blindfold Him and tell Him to prophesy who hit Him. It is the first of several beatings in the play that ultimately culminate in Jesus’ scourging as commanded by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

In the play last night every time Jesus was struck people would chuckle. It started early as a little tittering here and there, but by the end people were laughing great big belly laughs every time the actor playing Jesus was hit. When it was just a little tittering I thought that was weird, but by the end I was appalled. It was as if the people weren’t seeing the story played out on stage.

Now I admit no one on that stage was going for an Oscar or a Tony award. It may be that the people were amused by the scene of a very popular elder in the church being struck by another well-liked elder. But when the action was taken off stage but with sound effects continuing to demonstrate the brutality of the beating given to Jesus, the laughing got louder. When the two actors playing Jesus and the Roman soldier came back on stage and the one playing Jesus was covered in stage blood with torn clothes and bloody purple robe on his shoulders, the audience lost it laughing so hard.

How horribly tragic.

Even my almost ten-year-old came up to me right after the play and said, “Dad, that wasn’t a drama. It was a comedy!” What a thing to have left as an impression upon a kid who knows better. The story of Jesus’ trial and suffering became a comedy of laughter for many people. This should have caused us the greatest shock and sadness as we realized what was happening on stage.

The most horrific event in human history should not be seen as a comedy. It is not a laughing matter that Jesus suffered and died in our place. We shouldn’t laugh at His beating or give people a reason to laugh about it as if it were some great form of entertainment like the Romans feeding Christians to the lions.

The seriousness of our sin problem gets downplayed when Jesus’ suffering is seen as entertainment. We dishonor Christ when we laugh or cause other people to laugh about His standing in our place to be punished for our sin and to defeat sin. I am appalled that such a dishonoring of the suffering of Jesus Christ took place in church. I understand when such things happen elsewhere, though I do not like it. But in church? It should never happen.

The suffering of Jesus Christ is no laughing matter. It is not a comedy, people.

Lord, forgive us for making light of your suffering and death. Forgive us for laughing when we should have been crying. Help us to see with better eyes the seriousness of our sin and the greatness of your sacrifice on our behalf. In your precious Name we pray, Amen.