I spent a couple of hours at the Hancock Shaker Village in
Massachusetts yesterday. The Shakers, a religious sect founded in 1774, came
together around the belief that they would usher in the Millennium and see the
return of Christ. They were called ‘shakers’ because they matched their
personal piety with worship that included ecstatic dancing and singing. They lived
in communes where everyone worked as able, but where the ‘family’ was the group.
Marriage was not permitted and those who ‘converted’ were separated, their
children raised by the community. In their spiritual pursuits they lost sight
of orthodoxy and within a few decades had drifted into mysticism, rejected the
deity of Jesus, and denied the reality of the bodily Resurrection. As I sat in
their meeting house (church) I ‘listened’ for echoes of their fervent singing
and tried to imagine their dancing. To the end (that particular village finally
saw its last inhabitant in 1959) they maintained a rigid separation from ‘the
world,’ but the great tragedy was their spiritual delusion.
How do we keep a fresh, living relationship with God, the
Holy Spirit as part of our lives while remaining anchored in orthodoxy? That question
persisted in my mind after that visit and into this morning. Rigid dogma and
rejection of anything that hints at ‘new’ will lead us to a stale, dry ‘faith’
without the power to confront the culture or to change us into the people of
God! Casting off the body of thought that the Church has confirmed through two
millennia will set us adrift, likely to end up on the shoals of a shallow spirituality
based on our ‘experience’ that cannot survive the storms of life which
inevitably come our way.
Thomas Oden, A Change
of Heart, made an interesting journey. Born into a pre- WW2 conservative
rural Methodism in Oklahoma, he was educated in seminaries where his mind was
infected with humanism, replacing the Gospel with social activism. He became enthralled
with Marxism and progressive political change. In his encounters with others of
faith and in his honest reflection on the limits of human ideologies, he heard
the call of the Spirit and turned, in the second half of his life, back to Jesus
Christ and the foundations of ancient Christianity. He makes it his goal not to
reach to create the ‘new,’ but to affirm the Scripture’s wisdom for life,
valuing the weight of the collective thoughts of those who have gone before us
on this Way.
This word speaks loudly to me as I think about life,
Shakers, and truth. "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus
as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in
the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to
it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which
depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than
on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,
and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every
power and authority." (Colossians 2:6-10, NIV)
One of the areas in my own Christianity that was woefully
lacking was the appreciation for the breadth of the Body of Christ and the
value of learning from those who have gone before. The strength and weakness of
Pentecostal experience that shaped me was the emphasis on individual spiritual
experience and the ignorance of the developed wisdom of the church from
centuries past. It was, at least to me, as if God fell silent in 100 AD, only
to speak again as the 20th century dawned! In fact, He has never stopped speaking,
making the Scripture alive, keeping the Gospel’s transforming Truth alive in
the hearts and minds of those who loved Him. I am thankful for the fervent
faith that was handed down to me and for the foundation of doctrine that has
helped me to grow in the Word.
Don’t be deluded by your own ‘visions’ to the exclusion of
the wisdom of Christ’s Church. Here is a word from the Word. "So, chosen by God for this new life of love,
dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility,
quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick
to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave
you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic,
all-purpose garment. Never be without it. Let
the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other.
None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness.
Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it
plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common
sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your
lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus,
thanking God the Father every step of the way. " (Colossians 3:12-17,
The Message)
Lord, call us to a living faith that is anchored to the
Rock. Amen.
__________
On Christ, the Solid
Rock, I stand,
All other ground is
sinking sand!
His oath, His
Covenant, His Blood –
Support me in the o’erwhelming
flood.
When all around my
soul gives way,
He, then, is all my
hope and stay.
