Theological Digest & Outlook

Selections from the September 2001 issue (Vol. XVI, No. 2)

NOTE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THE SIGNED ARTICLES ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT ENDORSEMENT BY CHURCH ALIVE.

• Editorial (Paul Miller)
• Authentic Worship in a Changing World: What's Next? (Robert Webber)
• The Lord's Supper: Last Supper, Family Supper, Future/Final Supper (Victor Shepherd)
• An Interview on Worship with Tom Bandy
• Running the Race in the Pursuit of Excellence (Victor Shepherd)
• Retirement Address to the Hamilton Conference, May 26, 2001 (Rev. Dr. Graham A.D. Scott)
• Pluralism and the Respect for Religious Freedom: Trinity Western University v. British Columbia College of Teachers (Brad Miller and Iain T. Benson)

I

Clergymen/women assume unthinkingly that lay people understand everything that happens in church life, especially everything that happens in Sunday services. We clergyfolk assume that because we understand the substance and logic of the Lord's Supper everyone else does too. Once in a while, however, we are reminded that this is not the case. The reminder can be a jolt.

Following our monthly communion service in Streetsville (where I was pastor for 21 years) an 85-year old woman greeted me at the door of the church. She smiled sweetly (and kept on smiling) as she said, "Today was communion Sunday. I didn't understand anything of what it was supposed to be about. I never have. I have been in the church all my life. The service means as little to me now as it did when I was a child. I thought you'd want to know."

For a few seconds despair lapped at me: all her life in the church, communion services without number, and still no comprehension? Then instead of despair I found opportunity pressing itself upon me. I chose opportunity rather than despair and vowed that on at least one communion Sunday each year I'd preach on the communion service itself.

And so I began a series of sermons, a series that spanned several years. One Sunday I dealt with the biblical meaning of bread and wine; another Sunday, with the meaning of covenant or promise; another, with the names by which the service is called (Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, Eucharist); another Sunday, with the place of sacrifice in scripture and our discipleship (specifically, with the sacrifice we trust and the sacrifice we make); another Sunday, with the theology of the rite itself (particularly the theology of John Calvin, in whose debt all Protestants stand on this matter.) Today I am going to discuss the service of Holy Communion in terms of a biblical approach to supper: Last Supper, Family Supper, and Future Supper/Final Supper.

II

At the Last Supper Jesus poured out wine and said (no doubt solemnly), "...this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins…." Our Hebrew ancestors knew that "blood" was shorthand for "life given up sacrificially". Now unlike our Hebrew ancestors we are creatures of modernity; we are fastidious; we like things clean and neat, always in good taste. Our foreparents, on the other hand, weren't concerned with good taste at all; they were concerned with godliness; not concerned to see something aesthetically polished, but preoccupied with knowing that their sin had been pardoned. Therefore they didn't shrink from those vehicles of worship which they knew God had appointed, such as the sacrifice of a lamb in the temple. In the temple mystery of atonement ("atonement" means the making "at one" of sinful people and holy God) worshippers brought their best lamb to church; the priest cut the animal's throat, collected the blood in a basin, and threw the blood against the altar. A well-known, popular New Testament commentator, more fastidious than he should be and with more than a streak of anti-Judaism in him, speaks of the repugnance of it all: odour, flies, unsightliness; the slimy, slippery mess. He praises Jesus for having got us beyond this bloody primitivism. Alas, he overlooks one thing: Jesus endorsed the bloody primitivism. Whenever Jesus was in Jerusalem at Passover he worshipped at the temple too -- which is to say whenever our Lord went to church in Jerusalem he showed up with his lamb under his arm. Of course he knew something no one else knew: he knew that what the temple liturgy pointed to would soon be gathered up in his own poured-out blood, since he knew himself appointed the lamb of God that renders animal sacrifice forever superfluous.

Repugnant? Our Hebrew foreparents weren't repelled by gore; they were repelled by their own depravity. They weren't jarred by a spectacle which lacked refinement; they were jarred by a spectacle which lacked righteousness -- the spectacle of themselves in their systemic sinnership facing a Holy God who couldn't be fooled and whose truth couldn't be "fudged". Fastidiousness is the farthest thing from the mind of anyone whose condition is critical.

I admit that the category of sin (that is, the predicament of alienation from God and the spiritual perversity arising therefrom) isn't a category in which people today think. People today think instead in the categories of vice and immorality and criminality. If a deed violates what a particular society deems good, the deed is called vice; if the same deed violates what is regarded as the universal human good, it is called immorality; if the same deed violates a stated law, it is called crime. What it is called is determined entirely by the context which interprets it. From a gospel-perspective the context which interprets us (not merely our deed) and interprets us ultimately; this context is the holy God himself. Not only is the holy God the ultimate interpretative context; this context is also unique in its profundity. So profound is it that when we understand ourselves in it we also understand that what is interpreted now is not deed but being. In other words the ultimate issue isn't what we do but what we are. Our ancient foreparents knew this.

According to the apostle Paul, our Lord, at the Last Supper, poured wine and said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood"; that is, it is the one covenant of God renewed by the blood of Christ. Why is blood attached to God's covenant or promise never to abandon us, never to fail us, never to forsake us, never to quit on us in anger or give up on us in disgust? Why is blood attached to God's covenant or promise not to let anything, not even humankind's outrageous insolence and ingratitude, loose him from his bond with us? In short, if he wants to promise himself to us, why doesn't he simply declare it and spare himself the expense of his Son? Because everywhere in life where promises are made to people of perverse hearts (which is to say, everywhere in life where promises are made), the same promises can be kept only at enormous cost. It costs nothing to make a promise, nothing to declare a promise (talk is cheap); but it costs everything to keep a promise. We promise not to forsake spouse or friend. The promise made costs nothing; but as soon as that person provides incontrovertible grounds for giving up on him, the same promise kept costs everything. God has promised forever to be God-for-us. In the Garden of Eden his promise cost him nothing; but when humankind found itself in the "far country"; i.e., when God's promise meets our rebellious hearts, his promise kept -- still to be God-for-us -- wraps him in anguish.

Then what mood pertains to the Last Supper aspect of our communion service? Surely a mood of solemnity; a mood of sober reflection, of realistic self-assessment; which is to say, a mood of penitence.

III

But the Last Supper isn't the only aspect of our communion service; there is also what I have called the family supper aspect, the ordinary, everyday meals Jesus shared with people in the course of his public ministry. The written gospels tell us on page after page that Jesus spent a great deal of time in kitchens and restaurants. Why did he spend so much time in such places when he knew he had so little time for his public ministry? Because he wanted his meal-companions to know peace with God. In first century Palestine to eat with someone was a public declaration of amnesty; to eat with someone meant you harboured no enmity toward that person; you were plotting nothing malicious; you intended, rather, only that person's well-being and blessing.

A sign of amnesty (supposedly) in our culture is the handshake. When we shake with our right hand the person attached to the handshake knows that our hand holds no weapon and therefore we aren't going to attack. Boy Scouts and Girl Guides shake with their left hand. In the pre-firearm days of sword and spear the left hand held one's shield. To shake with our left hand means we have discarded our shield; we have renounced self-protection. What would it mean to shake hands with both hands? It could only mean that we had forsworn both attacking someone else and defending ourselves; it could only mean, in other words, that we were giving ourselves totally to another person without condition or hesitation. Surely shaking hands with both hands is what we do, in effect, whenever we embrace another human being. To embrace someone is simply to shake hands with both hands. Our affection, our intention, our concern, our heart's unarticulated welcome; it's all poured out on this other person at the same time that there is nothing held back to plot either manipulation of him or armour-plating of ourselves. When Jesus ate with people, in first century Palestine, he embraced them -- both hands! He cherished those people and visited upon them that amnesty with God which was nothing less than their salvation. They sponged it up with that heart-hunger which every last one of us has.

It sounds so wonderful that we couldn't imagine a downside to it. But there was. Our Lord's eating habits "did him in." Those he ate with loved him, while those who refused to eat with him savaged him. We must never forget that Jesus uttered many of his parables in reply to those who faulted him for his table manners. We must never forget that the best-loved parables -- lost sheep, lost coin, lost son -- Jesus spoke when those who were to savage him hissed, "This man receives sinners and eats with them!"

None the less our Lord never backed down. He knew that the provision in the cross, while sufficient to grant people access to God, wouldn't of itself induce them to suspend their suspicion and abandon their assorted safe "tree perches", like Zacchaeus. He knew that because of the cross sinners could approach the holy One. But would they? Would they want to? Only if through the holy One Incarnate they knew a welcome beyond anything they had found anywhere else. They found such a welcome in the one from Nazareth and loved him for it.

Then why did others attack him on account of his dinner-companions? Because he broke down all the conventions by which they, his enemies, had always ordered their lives, all the conventions by which they assigned themselves a superior place in the "pecking order" and credited themselves with a superior righteousness. It is a social convention to classify people as moral or immoral (and no one this morning is arguing the genuine difference between moral and immoral). It is a social convention to classify people as successful or dismissible, religious or irreligious. Social conventions have their place. Nevertheless, when Jesus Christ appears, social conventions are exposed as less than ultimate; decidedly less than ultimate. Jesus eats with the immoral and they know themselves cherished; he would be every bit as happy to eat with the moral too, but moral people won't eat with him as long as he insists on eating with those who are regularly regarded as socially inferior. Jesus eats with the dismissible, those deemed unimportant. He would gladly eat with the successful, the powerful, too, but they don't want to rub shoulders with the dismissible. He eats as well with the irreligious. He would gladly eat with the religious too, but they can't stomach the thought that their reward is no greater than the reward of those who have made no religious effort at all.

Social conventions are a way of ordering society. They have their place. But when Christ the King appears they are exposed as pre-ultimate; they have now been superseded by a new order, the Kingdom of God.

Social convention and the Kingdom of God are simply not the same. Then it's quite plain that either we cling to the social conventions, assuming that the social order they point to is ultimate, or in the presence of Jesus Christ we look beyond social convention to embrace ardently the King who has embraced us already. Either we regard social convention as ultimate or we abandon ourselves to the rule of God exemplified in a welcome we are never going to find anywhere else. It is not the case that Jesus exalts immorality above morality or failure above success or irreligion above religion (as some left-wing preachers try to tell us.) It is rather the case that all such distinctions and categories and evaluations and pigeonholes are left behind as we forget them in favour of a kingdom which transcends them.

Yet we must always remember that men and women are persuaded to forget them and leave them behind, are free to forget them and leave them behind, only as they find both hands shaken, only as they know themselves embraced and want above all to hug forever the one who has first hugged them.

Jesus welcomed his dinner-companions to a new family, what Paul calls "the household and family of God." His family meals landed our Lord in much trouble, but he refused to give them up. Those who joined the family and ate at its table rejoiced and exulted in their new-found exhilaration. Not even the pouting and the sulking and the petulance of those who wouldn't sit down with them could diminish their joy.

The mood of exultation, then, the mood of joy, is another mood we should bring to the communion service.

IV

There is yet another aspect to the Lord's Supper, the anticipation of the Messianic Banquet. There is a supper to come, a future supper which will also be the final supper which never ends. The Messianic Banquet will celebrate one glorious truth: the final dispersion of all that opposes God's kingdom and violates his rule and disputes his sovereignty. Christians are convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, God's agent in restoring a creation warped, a creation disfigured, a creation significantly disabled and occasionally grotesque; a creation rendered all this through the multi-tentacled grip of evil. At the same time, as our Jewish friends remind us, the Hebrew-schooled mind knows that when Messiah appears he brings the Messianic Age with him. Without the Messianic Age it is absurd to speak of the Messiah himself. In the Messianic Age swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks; war will no longer preoccupy us even as poverty, disease and injustice no longer afflict us. Have swords been beaten into ploughshares? Not only does war rage throughout the world; at this moment there are approximately fifty civil wars raging throughout the world: fellow-citizens are slaying each other. Have poverty, disease and injustice ceased to afflict us?

Let us be sure to admit this much: those who dispute the sovereignty of Jesus Christ have a case. Unquestionably they have a case. Nevertheless Christians may and must say this much: in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead the Messianic Age has dawned. To be sure, it is not yet fully manifest (if it were it wouldn't be disputed); but it dawned as the risen one himself triumphed over every principality and power, every human sin and cosmic evil which are bent on denying their defeat and molesting whom they can with their last gasp. In his resurrection from the dead our Lord has guaranteed the healing of the creation's gaping wounds. When the Messianic Age is made fully manifest every evil which besets and bedevils, warps and wounds will be banished. Thinking pictorially as they were trained to do, the earliest Christians depicted this God-ordained event as a feast which never ends. The bedraggled of the world, a bedraggled world itself, will shine forth resplendently as a creation restored redounds to the glory of the God who made it, sustained it through its afflictions, wrested it out of the hands of the molester who warped it, and has freed it for the blessing of his people who will praise him everlastingly for it. Then the mood we must bring to this aspect of Holy Communion is the mood of eager anticipation and steadfast confidence.

V

The service of Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper gathers up three distinct but related meals:

• - the Last Supper, where Jesus signed in his own blood the promise of God that there will always be more mercy in God than there is sin in us;
• - the everyday meals our Lord ate with those whom he gathered into his household and family as he embraced and welcomed all who craved him and his rule more than they clung to social convention;
• - the messianic banquet, the final supper of the future where all that contradicts the kingdom of God will be dispersed.

The mood of the communion service should reflect all three aspects: sober penitence, unrestrained joy, confident anticipation.

Today, in our worship service, we have already tasted the Word of God in scripture and sermon. Now we are to taste the selfsame Word in sacrament.

Our Lord Jesus invites us to his table. Soberly let us renew our repentance in the wake of his astounding mercy. Joyfully let us embrace again him who always delights in embracing us. Confidently let us anticipate that glorious Day when together we behold the holy city, the New Jerusalem, the creation healed; for on that Day there will be neither mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things will have passed away.

TGB: Worship is more important to a thriving church than a declining church. In declining churches, lay leaders are primarily connected to institutional administration rather than worship. Ever notice that key lay leaders never miss a committee meeting, always attend an annual meeting, even demand to vote by proxy while on vacation … but are remarkably inconsistent in worship attendance? In a thriving church, worship is crucial. Every cell group or team must connect with a worship experience … often sitting together rather than with their families. Worship is the motivation for the continuous personal and spiritual growth 7 days a week. More, worship is a primary method in which the congregation embeds its unique "DNA" of core values, beliefs, vision and mission on members and seekers.

TGB: There are three … especially significant in Canada. First and foremost is control. Both liberal and conservative Christians in Canada resist multi-track worship, and insist that they impose personal aesthetic tastes, ideological perspectives, and dogmatic views on what they describe as "good" worship. It is simply a method of control, denying the real spiritual diversity of the Canada. Second, Canadian Protestants in particular are dysfunctionally clergy dependent. They even train their clergy this way! They imagine that worship is something only trained, certified professionals should do, and the laity are amateur observers. Third, Canadian church leaders in particular are too fearful of technology. They hold people back from spiritual growth by limiting them to 16^th century technologies to experience God. The bottom line holding back all North American churches is that, fundamentally, "churchy" people do NOT want to grow. They want worship to foster feelings of contentment and harmony and powerfully motivate church members to go home to lunch in stead of join Jesus in the mission field.

TGB: Remember that leverage points are very contextual. What is first on the list in Newfoundland, may be third on the list in Calgary. Here are four key steps.

a) Open yourself to the uncontrollable Holy … and stop trying to reduce God to rational ideologies and dogmas. b) Recognize that worship is not supposed to entrench membership privileges, but surrender privilege to outreach among pagan seekers. c) In this second apostolic age, credible teams of lay spiritual leaders are the true planners and implementers of worship (not clergy). d) The one-size-fits-all worship service is a dinosaur, and leaders need to diversify and multi-track their worship according to both purpose and style. e) Make worship an experiential event, rather than an informational event.

TGB: The rule of thumb is that you always add on options, never take away options. If people experience the transforming power of God and are motivated to walk daily with Jesus using classical music, Latin terminology, hymnbooks, gowned clergy, do it. If not, what pagan god are you really worshipping? The real conflict is not about worship at all, but control … some folks (of all ages, clergy and lay) insist that everybody MUST worship they way I do.

Leaders need to understand that worship is the most volatile leverage point for change. They may be better off to start with cell group multiplication. Leaders also need to understand that it is inevitable that you will lose some people in transformation. But remember that for every five veterans you fear you will lose in changing worship, you have already lost five hundred seekers whose names you will never know because they cannot experience God or come close to Jesus in the forms those five members insist must be "good worship".

TGB: It's both. The system of a church is inter-related. Transformed worship (indigenous, experiential, multi-tracked) forces the church to multiply cells, diversify budgets, liberate risk-taking mission. Conversely, if you do the latter three things, it will force the church to transform their worship. Churches transform worship, and then one somebody excitedly declares their lives to be changed by interacting with God, and want to go deeper, all the church can say is "Well, there's a vacancy on the finance committee."

TGB: The question is not whether tradition is important. Of course it is. The question is WHICH tradition is important? I find Canadian churches remarkably selective about which tradition they want to remember. Usually it is NOT the tradition of their entrepreneurial ancestors who first took a risk and founded the church. Nor is it the tradition of the earliest Christians in the Acts of the Apostles. The "tradition" they selectively remember is a cautious, stodgy, judgmental, exclusive tradition from around the end of the 19^th century, or from the European religious wars of the 16^th century, which in fact is foreign to the real culturally diverse and entrepreneurial roots of Canada.

TGB: Technology without prioritised adult spiritual growth and team leadership is barren. Never introduce so much as a new sound system without first growing a cell or team of people absolutely committed to spiritual growth who will implement it. Most churches buy a sound system, tell a committee to install it, and insist that only the clergy use it. No wonder nothing changes. Renewed worship will be facilitated by upgraded technology, but only if behind that are teams of spiritually passionate adults, and leaders who desire to be with Jesus in the mission field.

TGB: Everything is contextual when it comes to tactics. Learn from other congregations, but customize the tactic for your situation. That requires serious demographic and psychographic research. The problem is not just that a tactic for one context won't work elsewhere, but that Canadian churches in particular refuse to seriously research their own demographic change and live with out-of-date perceptions of the public. On the other hand, while tactics are contextual, leadership attitudes are indeed transferably. What you need to learn from Willow Creek, Saddleback Valley, St. Luke's UMC, Eastside UC (Regina), Communite Bethel (Montreal), North Bramalea (Brampton), St. Jacob's UC (Waterloo), Queensway Cathedral (Mississauga) and others is their attitude. That's what is transferable regardless of context.

TGB: A long time ago, Micah derided the liturgies and entrenched practices of religious institutions, saying that what God really required was to love kindness, do justice, and walk humbly. These are lifestyle goals. Worship should impact lifestyle. Canadian leaders are right to say worship should glorify God, but wrong to think that the best way to glorify God is by implementing only certain forms. The best way to adore God is to give abundant life away to others. So, OF COURSE worship is about mission. It always has been. Worship that panders only to strengthen the self-righteousness or contentment of a few is the stuff Moses raged against. Obviously, the answer to the second question is "both/and". In multi-track worship, some worship is aimed to draw seekers into the experience of the Holy that will change their lives, and other worship is designed to take people deeper and deeper into the mysteries and lifestyle implications of Christian faith. But make no mistake. Worship is about mission.

In the first century and 21^st century apostolic age, they aren't connected. Theology is largely irrelevant to worship. Christology is everything, however. In the first centuries, the only real question was "Who is Jesus, and why does he matter?" Same thing today. No faithful disciple in an apostolic age wastes time debating how communion should be served, whether staff associates have sacramental privileges, what kind of music should be played, or what formula of liturgy should be imposed in every denominational franchise across Canada. What is crucial is that worship be connected with Jesus: the experience of Jesus, the grace of Jesus, the mission of Jesus. There is a direct connection between the decline of the church in Canada, and their inability to talk boldly, explicitly, and conversationally about Jesus. Which Jesus? The Jesus of the pre-modern Chalcedonian confession: fully human, fully divine, irrational paradox, key to abundant life. Worship, like Jesus, is experiential, relational, non-judgmental, and cross-cultural. Most Canadian churches of all band names either decline to talk about him much, or they limit Jesus by reducing the experience to ideological agendas (liberal or conservative). Worship and Christology are crucial. It's the crux of mission.

You have asked me to speak to you about excellence, the pursuit of excellence. I am glad to do so, for I relish excellence as much as I abhor mediocrity (mediocrity here defined as contentment with less than our best.)

Yet in eschewing mediocrity I am not advocating perfectionism. Perfectionists fall into two classes: those who neurotically pursue perfection yet bewail their inability to achieve it (these people can't live with themselves); and those who neurotically pursue perfection and boast that they have achieved it (no one else can live with them.) Perfectionism, deep-down, is self-rejection born of self-contempt, even where the self-rejection masquerades as self-importance. Let me say it again: when I say I abhor mediocrity, I am not advocating perfectionism.

In the same way, in rejecting mediocrity I am not rejecting ordinariness. We should shun mediocrity; but we should cherish ordinariness. We should pursue excellence, but we should never aspire to be extraordinary. Extraordinary people are those think they have transcended their humanness, think they no longer put on their trousers one leg at a time, think they have risen above the earthbound humanness of inferior mortals. I'm convinced that people who want to be extraordinary, or think they are, are dangerous. Virtually all the damage wrought in the world is wrought by those who want to be extraordinary or think they are extraordinary.

We should aspire after humility. "Humility" is derived from the Latin word humus, "earth." We are created earth-creatures and therefore glorify God by our earthliness, which earthliness, I am convinced, should always include more than a little earthiness. When I speak of excellence I never mean extraordinariness. I mean rather the utter repudiation of mediocrity, for mediocrity is sin.

Let's think for a moment about someone whose entire life bespoke excellence of many sorts, not the least of which was intellectual excellence, particularly intellectual excellence as it pertains to books. I speak now of the apostle Paul.

"I know a man", says Paul, "who, 14 years ago, was caught up to the third heaven.... and this man heard things that cannot be told, which no one may utter." The apostle is talking about himself. He was caught up to the third heaven. The "third heaven" was an ancient way of speaking of the most intimate, most intense, most vivid apprehension of God. At that moment, 14 years ago, the apostle wasn't "seeing in a mirror dimly". (1 Cor. 13:12) At that moment, rather, he was bathed in splendour and scorched by fire. Simultaneously he was transfixed by the purity of God and prostrated by the enormity of God and irradiated by the grandeur of God.

Isn't it odd, then, that the fellow whose experience of God is so intense that he can't speak of it then writes to the young man, Timothy, and asks for books? "When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments." (2 Timothy 4:13) "Be sure to bring me the books." Books? Why would he need books? What could a book do for him?

Paul's experience of 14 years ago wasn't the only time he had had an astonishing encounter with God. Three years before he was "caught up to the third heaven" he had been crumbled on his way to Damascus when the risen Lord had arrested him. In addition to the Damascus road experience Paul had had a vision of the man from Macedonia who had pleaded with Paul to go there with the gospel. In addition to the Macedonian episode Paul had fallen into a trance while praying in the Jerusalem temple, and while in the trance had been told unmistakably to get out of Jerusalem. The apostle's experience of God had been vivid over and over.

And now he wants books? Compared to his experience of God, reading a book sounds so flat, so pedestrian, simply so dull. Yet he wants books! Obviously he thinks he needs books. Books are essential to his discipleship as a Christian as well as to his vocation as an apostle. Obviously (note this point carefully) he thinks that his vivid experience of God doesn't render books unnecessary; his startling apprehension of God doesn't render reading superfluous.

In his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell depicted a society crushed in the tentacles of cruel totalitarianism. One feature of such a society, Orwell insisted, was the banning of books. The oppressor would continue to oppress his victims by many means, not the least of which was the banning of books.

Aldous Huxley, in his novel, Brave New World, didn't fear a society where books were banned. He feared something worse: a society where books weren't banned simply because no one wanted to read a book.

Do we want to read one? read many? Some people who lived a long time before us, and who are foreparents in faith, certainly wanted to.

Like the Jewish people, in whose house all Christians are guests of honour. On Christmas Day in the year 800 Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. At the coronation he was supposed to sign his name to a document. But he couldn't write -- or read. However, he remembered having seeing his name written in Latin: CAROLINUS. He recalled that one letter ("U") had two vertical strokes in it. Whereupon Charlemagne grabbed an instrument of some sort and made two crude strokes on the document. Meanwhile, the Jewish people were 100% literate. In whose house are Christians guests? Abraham and Sarah are our foreparents in faith, not Charlemagne.

And then there are the Puritans. Don't listen to those who defame them wickedly! When persecuted Puritans left the old country and settled in New England, every Puritan minister was given 10 pounds with which to start a church library. Between 1640 and 1700 the literacy rate among men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was 93% -- while it was only 40% in England. (The rate of literacy among Puritan women in the new world was 62%, 10% in England.) Six years after these people landed in Massachusetts they voted 400 pounds "towards a school or college." The "school or college" they built was Harvard (1636).

By 1650 virtually all New England towns had developed grammar schools. As people there learned to read, the effect of the printed page was immense. People were released from the domination of the immediate and the local. People who don't read live in a very small world, a world of the immediate (in time) and the local (in space). Books are vehicles that convey us to a different era, a different history, a different culture. Books free us from the domination of the immediate and the local. They free us not only from the domination of the horizontally immediate; they free us as well from the vertically immediate. On the one hand they free us for a deeper immersion in creaturely riches; on the other hand books -- at least those which speak of the gospel -- free us for a deeper immersion in the riches of the Creator himself.

Books have to do with a word-culture rather than an image-culture. The difference between a word-culture and an image-culture is huge. The word encourages critical reflection; the image encourages uncritical absorption. Words present us with ideas for thoughtful evaluation; flitting images provide for titillation and amusement. As soon as the politician goes on TV what he says is of no importance; what matters is how he appears. Is his tie knotted properly? If it isn't, he can't be elected. When Menachem Begin sought political office in Israel his media advisors told him he had to stop wearing shirts with oversized collars, since a shirt with an oversized collar makes a man appear terminally ill. John Turner's media advisors told him he had to break his habit of licking his lips. Night and day they hammered him, "Who is going to vote for a man who looks like an anteater at a picnic?"

The word encourages thinking; the image, by and large, encourages emoting. Words present us with arguments that we have to assess; images present us with impressions that we merely blot up. Visual stimulation is a shabby substitute for thought, just as emotional manipulation is a shabby substitute for verbal precision.

A society given to mediocrity despises excellence. In resisting all mediocrity I am making a gospel-plea for intellectual excellence; particularly intellectual excellence fostered through books.

Yet I should never want to suggest that intellectual excellence is the only kind. In fact it isn't even the chief kind of excellence. What is? John Henry Cardinal Newman knew what is. Newman tells us that when he was a young scholar he realized one day that he had almost succumbed to the liberal heresy, namely, "prizing intellectual excellence above moral excellence." Now when Newman speaks of "moral excellence" he doesn't mean "moralistic" or "legalistic." By "moral excellence" he means the excellence of a human being who is a spiritual/ethical agent. Our life in the Spirit is lived, lived out, in the integrity of our honouring Christ's claim upon our obedience. This is the excellence.

The excellence of that life which has been apprehended by truth and thereafter aspires to do the truth; this excellence has an inherent winsomeness, attractiveness, appeal.

Have you ever pondered the Greek wording of our Lord's self-description in the fourth gospel, "I am the good shepherd"? Ego eimi ho poimen ho kalos. "I am the good shepherd." "Good"? There are two Greek words for "good", agathos and kalos. Agathos often has the force of "correct, proper, upright." It has the force of "good" in the sense that Mark Twain has Huckleberry Finn pray that God will make all the bad people good and all the good people nice. This isn't quite the sense in which Jesus speaks of himself as the "good" shepherd.

Kalos, on the other hand, has the force of "good" in the sense of all that agathos includes PLUS attractive, winsome, appealing, compelling, comely, desirable, endearing, inviting, prepossessing, fine. That's it: "I am the fine shepherd." Malcolm Muggeridge found himself ravished by the comeliness of his Lord, and discovered the same comeliness in Mother Teresa of Calcutta. For this reason he titled his book about her, Something Beautiful for God.

What seized Muggeridge is precisely what has startled and moved the Israelite writers who speak of "the beauty of holiness." Among our more recent spiritual foreparents no one grasped this, or was grasped by it, more profoundly than Jonathan Edwards. When Edwards has in mind what our Hebrew ancestors called "the beauty of holiness" he rarely uses these exact words. Instead he speaks of the "excellence" of God. And when he speaks of the excellence of God he is careful to distinguish those predicates which describe who God is from those which describe what God is.

What is God? God is spirit. But what if this spirit were demonic? God is infinite. But what if God were infinitely malicious? God is immense, omnipresent, inescapable. But what if God were everywhere lupine?

Who is God, on the other hand? God is infinite, yes, and infinite in mercy. God is eternal, and precisely eternal love. God is omnipresent, which is to say his judgement is inescapable; and his judgement is the only judgement in heaven or earth administered by a judge who is first and last our saviour.

Without any suggestion of saccharine sentimentality Edwards speaks of "the loveliness of God." It is a sign of Christian maturity to love God for the sake of God's inherent, compelling, irresistible loveliness. Edwards insists that when we are newer in the faith we love God because he first loved us; we love God on account of all that he has done for us and continues to do for us. Yet the day comes when the incomparable excellence of God transfixes us; our apprehension of it mesmerizes us and in turn reshapes our love for God. Now our love for God is transmuted as it assimilates to itself the excellence of God himself. The point to which Edwards returns endlessly is this: to apprehend God's intrinsic beauty and glory is not only to love him out of gratitude for his mercy but even to love him out of self-forgetful adoration of his inherent worthiness.

In light of all that Edwards says in this regard we shouldn't be surprised when he insists, "Holiness is the only virtue." Why is holiness the only virtue? Edwards knows that any virtue (so-called) -- chastity, for instance -- can cloak and will cloak ever so much that has nothing to do with godliness unless holiness is its ground and guide. Am I a chaste person? Yes. Do you know why I am chaste? It might be because I'm afraid of contracting an S.T.D. It might be because sexual impropriety could issue in me, a clergyman, being defrocked. I might be chaste inasmuch as I'm neurotically averse to sex. Or I might be afraid my wife would otherwise leave me and thereby deprive me of access to her schoolteacher's pension. It might be because I'm a moralist who, qua moralist, wouldn't know Jesus from a gerbil. It might be because my distorted theology has left me believing that chastity merits "justification" before God.

There is only one adequate reason for being chaste, as there is only one ground and guide: an apprehension of a splendour in God that finds his winsome holiness fostering in me a holiness that I welcome. Holiness is the only virtue. There is a singularity to excellence, a singularity that is the profoundest simplicity.

Now I am as put off as you by an unrealistic simplicity that refuses to admit the enormous complexity of everything human. When genuine complexity is denied (likely because complexity is threatening) we speak of such simplicity as simplistic inasmuch as we know it's false. Then we shouldn't succumb to the simplistic. And I maintain that any simplicity "this" side of complexity is artificial and merely simplistic. But I want to maintain with equal vehemence that on the "other" side of complexity there is a genuine simplicity that is the simplicity of the gospel.

According to two superb philosophers, Emil Fackenheim and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the greatest thinker to arise in Christendom is Soren Kierkegaard. Plainly Kierkegaard can never be accused of being simplistic. Yet just as plainly Kierkegaard knows the simplicity born of the gospel when he writes, "Purity of heart is to will one thing." One thing. Simplicity and singularity ultimately coalesce.

While we are speaking of singularity and simplicity we should also speak of elegance. Elegance -- plainly a manifestation of excellence -- doesn't mean here what it is usually taken to mean: showy, gaudy, ostentatious, pretentious. In the realm of mathematics or logic "elegance" describes an argument whose conclusion is generated from the fewest possible premises. If a conclusion is generated from three premises rather than from four, elegance is emerging. (Obviously the most elegant argument is one that generates a conclusion from one premise only.)

In this sense there is an elegance to excellence just because there is an elegance to simplicity.

"Purity of heart is to will one thing."

Elegance, simplicity, excellence is found in many dimensions and expressions of the Christian life. In the early 1800s a French priest, from the town of Ars, a priest noted for his pastoral diligence, Jean Vuillamy, remarked, "If we knew, really knew, what it is to be a pastor, we couldn't endure it." I was a pastor for 30 years, and in that time I found pastoral work -- excellent with all the meaning that only Jonathan Edwards could lend to "excellent"; I found such excellent work simple. I didn't say easy. I said simple. "If we knew, really knew, what we pastors mean to people in their suffering and bewilderment and sin as we are transparent to the comfort and consolation and mercy of God, we couldn't endure it."

Remember, I said simple; I never said easy. Pastoral work isn't easy. The Christian life isn't easy anywhere at any time. Then for how long are we going to pursue excellence? "Pursue" suggests diligence, ardour, perspicacity. For how long are we going to maintain all this?

The author of Hebrews tells us that the Christian life isn't a sprint that ends in 9.97 seconds; it's a long distance race. A sprint ends so quickly that no runner has time to get discouraged. But discouragement can take any long distance runner out of the race.

In the Christian life all of us face disappointment, frustration, betrayal, unforeseen potholes and pitfalls and pit bulls. Who wouldn't become discouraged amidst all these? Then our discouragement is as understandable as it is excusable.

"Not so!", shouts the author of Hebrews. "Understandable, yes; excusable, no. What would be the excuse?" Then in Hebrews 12:3 this writer points us to what will always render our discouragement inexcusable. "Consider him, Jesus, who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted." Or as J.B. Phillips puts it in his splendid paraphrase, "Think constantly of enduring all that sinful men could say against him, and you will not lose your purpose or courage."

The Christian life, the pursuit of excellence, is a particular kind of long distance race; it's a relay race. Each generation of believers passes on the baton to the next. The one thing we mustn't do is fumble the baton. In the 1992 Olympic Games two women were running side-by-side in a relay event when suddenly one jabbed the other with a sharp elbow. The elbowed woman, in pain now, gasped and slowed up slightly; whereupon the nasty runner surged ahead; whereupon the victimized woman lost her temper and threw her baton at the woman who had fouled her. As soon as she threw her baton she threw the race away; she disqualified herself and her team. Years and years of preparation and training and sacrifice; it was thrown away in an instant. And it all happened because she allowed victimization to deflect her from her pursuit.

In our pursuit we are going to be victimized endlessly. But if it is ever the occasion of our quitting the race, we had better not offer it as an excuse, for we are mandated to keep on looking unto Jesus lest we lose our purpose or courage.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that the relay race of the Christian life is an unusual relay race in that Christians throughout the centuries who have already run their leg of the race go to the finish line in order to cheer on those who are still running. These people, having run valiantly, make up "the great cloud of witnesses." You and I and all God's people have been appointed to be added to the great cloud. We shall be added as surely as we run with perseverance. For then it will be said of us as it was said of another Christian, now himself in the great cloud, "…fought the good fight; …finished the race, …kept the faith. "