If you are not familiar with the current hoo-hahs within the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), then for minimum context you will want to read Peter Leithart’s letter to Presbytery following the 2007 General Assembly, Rob Rayburn’s supplemental brief to the NW Presbytery Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) regarding their decision and the eventual final ruling by the SJC from this past March 2010. I had been waiting to hear something on the appeal — though, I must confess, I wasn’t expecting (arrogantly and sinfully, I should confess) anything much different than that they would walk in lockstep with the “9 Declarations” (which, I think I recall, were not to be used as the basis for judicial cases … alas … we knew it would happen) but it hurts my heart to the point of sleeplessness to read some the reasoning.

tan·gent
idiom– 7. digressing suddenly from one course of action or thought and turning to another: The speaker flew off on a tangent.

The quoted article below is by Leithart, The Cross of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, in (of all places …) Credenda Agenda. It’s an excellent article, host magazine notwithstanding (its association with Doug Wilson makes me more than a little nervous … but I suppose that puts me in the same boat as those who railroad Leithart without actually taking the time to listen carefully, huh?).

“The Crucifixion is the fountainhead of all my values,” wrote the German-American philosopher and historian Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “the great divide whence flow the processes most real in my inner life, and my primary response to our tradition is one of gratitude to the source of my own frame of reference in everyday life.” He adds, “our chronology of B.C. and A.D. makes sense to me. Something new came into being then, not a man as part of the world but The Man who gives meaning to the world, to heaven and hell, bodies and spirits.” A bride who receives her husband’s name is set in a “new realm” and all her actions are “credited” to that realm. In the same way, “in His name we [as His bride] enter a realm of freedom unknown to mere heirs” (Christian Future, hereafter CF, p. 102).

This paragraph neatly captures the pace and sprawl of much of his writing. He begins with the historical event of the crucifixion, and immediately goes existential, describing how the cross is frame for his own experience. In the next sentence he has moved from inner life to the crux of history, endorsing the division of time between B.C. and A.D. Characteristically, he employs a marital image to describe the historical change that comes with Christ, and, obsessed as he is by speech, he cannot stop himself from inserting something about new names.

From here Leithart continues to touch upon several themes with which I find myself perpetually and persistently grappling with, not least of which is, on the one hand, the pressing sense of urgency to speak of the existential, moment-by-moment reality of the cross for life coupled with, one the fore-finger of the other hand, my own frustrating inability to find words to make that connection and, on the thumb of that second hand, the complementary frustration of our cultural inability – and impatience – to try to hear and understand the connection. Alas …

As I was getting ready to tweet that I was headed to a Session meeting tonight, I was reminded at how foreign that term sounds to folks outside of the church (or even beyond Presbyterian and reformed circles). In fact, I often tell people that I am going to an elders’ meeting, or simply something at church. Below is a good definition of the term “Session,” which comes from our church’s officer contact page.

“Session” – derived from the Latin, sessio, meaning “seated” or “sitting” refers primarily to King Jesus’ shepherdly oversight of His Church, the Body of Christ, from where he is “seated” today at the right hand of God the Father. Secondarily and derivatively, in the local congregation, it refers to the exercise of this oversight through men called, equipped and led by His Spirit, and recognized by the congregation by the work of the same Spirit, for the accomplishment of His Mission and the display of His Glory in and through the congregation.

What strikes me the most here is the clear, comforting and yet sobering statement that Jesus Christ is the head of His Church — not the elders or pastors. Such an understanding of submissive shepherding stands in stark contrast to our culture’s view of leadership, does it not?

sen·tence
n. 1. A grammatical unit that is syntactically independent and has a subject that is expressed or, as in imperative sentences, understood and a predicate that contains at least one finite verb.

A couple of months ago I was teasing a friend about his frequent usage of very l-o-n-g sentences. The particular object of my chastisement was the following 114 word … er, ‘grammatical unit,’ expounding on Ephesians 3.

Since, by our place in Christ by the abounding grace and mercy of God our Father, we have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his Son’s marvelous light, being carried with him, as it were, through our baptism into him, through death and into the glorious light of his resurrection, Paul prays that we would be strengthened to comprehend with all the saints the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that we may be increasingly filled with the fullness of God’s goodness and grace and righteousness, filled with the knowledge of his will according to the wisdom and understanding of his Spirit.

About a month passed before my friend forwarded along the following quote (with vindicated glee I might add). After penning a sentence of 103 words (or 83 if you count the three multi-hyphenated words as one each …), N.T. Wright interrupts himself:

(The reader may be thankful that this is in English. In German, that entire last phrase [a hyphenated "word" of 13 words in length] might become a single word. As it is, I make no apology for the length of the sentence thereby concluded. All these things need to be held together – a task extremely easy in the first century for someone like Paul, and apparently next to impossible for those whose soteriology never had an Israel-dimension and who don’t want to start thinking about one now.) — N.T. Wright, Justification, p 96.

So the next time someone in the church accuses you of being long winded or verbose, rest assured that you are in good company. Smile and then appeal to Paul’s own wordiness demonstrated in Ephesians 1 — there was a reason he did not chop it up like the NIV does!

The following is a conversation that my wife had with our five year old daughter, which she subsequently posted on Facebook.

Yesterday I was talking to the kids about Good Friday and Isabel said it should be called Sad Friday. She thought about it a minute and said that it is Happy Friday because Jesus died for our sins.

Out of the mouths of babes.

Yesterday I was telling some of my co-workers about our church’s upcoming Maundy Thursday service. Typically, our church celebrates the Passion Week with a Maundy Thursday fellowship dinner and communion service; a Good Friday service of confession; and then regular Easter Sunday services (of which most are familiar). As one of the few Presbyterians around the office, all of my Baptist & Pentecostal friends had no clue about Maundy Thursday — in fact, one person even commented that it sounded rather cultish. Hopefully, this ensuing explanation removed all doubt about the Christian relevance of the celebration.

“Maundy Thursday” refers to the Thursday follwing Jesus’ regal entry into Jerusalem on which he gathered with his twelve disciples to celebrate the Passover with them. The Passover was traditionally a time for those gathered to recount to one another and celebrate the great stories of God’s mighty acts of Salvation.

The term Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum (from which we get the English word mandate), from a verb that meants ‘to give,’ or ‘to order.’ The term is usually translated ‘commandment,’ from John’s account of this Thursday night Passover meal during which, according to John, Jesus rose and washed the disciples’ feet to illustrate the unique, upside-down sort of leadership by servanthood that was to characterize citizens in the Kingdom of God. As they walked to Gethsemane after the meal and this surprising illustration, Jesus said:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, you also ought to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. — John 13:34-35

Just as we did in our fellowship around the Maundy Thursday dinner table, I encourage you to recount to one another the great stories of God’s mighty acts of salvation: Who IS this Jesus? When all is said and done, what DID he do — really? And WHY was it necessary for us? We say he is still physically living and working today — tell stories of his continuing work today!