It is often claimed that the missional church might be loosing the high standard of expository preaching.  And often we don’t exactly help to clarify this when we rail against individualized, overly rationalistic, disembodied information dumps which masquerade as the worst of expository preaching (love ya Dave).  And when we claim that interpretation is a communal activity not reducible to a grammatical-historical method, many think we, the missional church, have given up on the Word of God.  Well…we haven’t.  In fact, we do the real expository preaching!

In our worship gathering the question is not if exposition happens, but where exactly it happens.  Someone new to our gathering, steeped in the traditions of expository preaching, commented to one of our co-pastors that while biblical exposition didn’t happen in the sermon (as classically understood), it instead happens throughout the entire service. I think this is absolutely correct.  Let me explain by walking us through last week’s worship gathering.

Our preaching text was Romans 8.1-8, 12-13, celebrating that for those in Christ there is therefore now no condemnation.  The rest of the lectionary was Isaiah 43.16-21, Psalm 126, and John 7.53 – 8.11 [the woman caught in adultery].

The Life on the Vine Liturgy (03/21/10):

• Before the service, at 9am, we have a teaching class which lays out the basic framework of the morning text to be preached.
• In the service, after the time of silence and invocation we sang the call to worship, Wake Up, (which we recently wrote based in the text of Roman 13), calling us to attend to the work of Christ.
• Then comes the Scripture readings, read from the four walls of the sanctuary symbolizing that we are being surrounded by the words of God, ending with a reading from the Gospel of John and how Christ did not condemn the woman caught in adultery. .
• Between the readings and the sermon is what we call the Liturgion (a litany and motion icon), which in this case was a guided meditation on the painting, “Christ and the Adulterous” by Jan Brueghel, focused on Christ’s non-condemning spirit.  The questions asked were: why is Jesus the lowest in the painting?  Who is at the center of the painting?  What is the significance of that?  Why is the crowd fading into darkness?  Notice that man who dropped the stone…notice that he is the second lowest.  What does his posture resemble?  Notice the shape of the woman’s hands.  What does all this tell us about Jesus?
  
• Only after all this comes the sermon (which for us is only one aspect of the dual apex of the service), which we conceive as a focused time of displaying the gospel of Christ and drawing everyone into the Kingdom of God.  In the sermon there of course will be information conveyed and reference made to grammar and genre.  But the true reference of exposition is always Christ himself and his saving work towards which all our preaching must speak.  This week’s sermon focused on living in the hope that while we are guilty, in Christ we are not condemned.
• After the sermon is a time of response through congregational prayer and two worship songs (Grace Flows Down, Wondrous Cross).
• Then comes the second apex of our service, the Eucharist, or Communion, or the Lord’s Table, which is itself a fully participatory exposition of the non-condemning hospitality of Christ, and a fully participatory congregational response in faith and hope.
• During this time of coming to the Table we celebrate the non-condemning love of Christ in three songs: You are My King, Kyrie Eleison (a song we wrote on Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension), and Let us Love and Sing and Wonder.
• Finally, in the Benediction, we are sent out as the non-condemned people of God, the Body of Christ, offered for the life of the world.

Of course, reading this pails compared to experiencing it.  But for us, at Life on the Vine, exposition happens throughout the entire service, not just in the sermon.  And it is done is a fully biblical, artistic, and immersive situation.  Instead of a 30 minute exposition of the grammar, structure, and meaning of Romans 8, we have a 75 minutes exposition engaging the heart, soul, mind, and spirit, rather than just the mind.

So let it not be said that this missional church doesn’t care about biblical exposition, but rather that we care so much that we make and entire service out of it!

So, then, where does biblical exposition happen for you in your context?  Is it similar or different?

Sin is nothing masquerading as something.  Sin merely preys on something, on anything, but itself it is nothing.  Sin produces desire for what doesn’t exist.  It takes what is good, adds NOTHING to it, nothing but disordered desire, and, BAM, now there is something new, something disfigured and ugly.  Wanton desires warp creation (what is good) and makes something less of it (which is evil).

This is the gist of the sermon on Sunday, at Life on the Vine, on Romans 7: 7-13.  Sin took the good Law and produced disordered desires, covetousness.  But of itself it could do nothing, because it is nothing.  God only created what is good.  And sin is turning away from what actually exists, for what we want to exist. It is Nothing that wants to be Something.

Sin says what actually exists is not good enough.  That God is being stingy in His gifts.  That He is unfairly withholding from us the knowledge of good and evil.  The original lie of the Serpent is not “You will surely not die,” but rather, “What exists is not enough for you.  Desire more!”  In this way the Devil is the originator of the infomercial.  But the truth of the gospel is that God is enough for us, that what exist is good, and that if we could only see what is right before us that we could indeed live with God.

But the problem is that we can’t see what exists, and so the author of existence entered existence, and endured the Nothing of Death, so that we could re-enter the Something of Life.  And this is the great mystery of Lent, and the life of Christ, that now, after the Fall, the only way back to the fullness of life, the only way back to the abundance of all Something, is through the passage of Nothingness, the daily dying to the disordered desires and our false selves, the picking up of our crosses which make nothing out of our mis-created somethings.

He most identified with the picture to the left.  For the season of Lent, one of our artists here at Life on the Vine constructed a wall separating us from the altar, and on the top was a giant sign saying, “Separate.”  On the wall hangs four pictures indicating various ways of being separated: a storm, an abandoned woman, a shipwreck, and this painting by surrealist Rene Magrite (La reproduction interdite, French for “The Forbidden Reproduction“).

This is the picture that one of our youths preparing for baptism most identified with at this point in his spiritual journey.  He felt like he could never see himself, that he couldn’t understand himself, didn’t know why he acted the way he did.  We prayed for a while that Christ would help him to see his own face, and see it in the face of Christ.  It was really the only breakthrough I’ve had with this boys who feels abandoned and broke, struggling with Aspergers (which results in his acting out), disconnected from God.

Like this painting, the season of Lent calls us to look deeply at ourselves, but often the first step is to recognize that often we can’t even really see ourselves.  We look into a mirror and all we see is the back of our heads.  And this is frequently a result of our own choosing because we are afraid of what we might see.  Augustine says of God’s work in his life:

You took me from behind my own back, where I had placed myself because I did not wish to look upon myself.  You stood me face to face with myself, so that I might see how foul I was, how deformed and defiled, how covered with stain and sores. (Confessions, VIII, 7)

Only the Spirit of Christ can take us “from behind our own backs” and place us before ourselves.  Will you, this Lent, seek to see yourself as you really are, deformed and defiled, so that you might be seen as you are in Christ, healed and holy?

Last week I attended a conference in D.C, missing the Ash Wednesday service at our congregation in Chicago.  Instead I attended one offered by the conference.  The service was beautiful and well thought out.  Some words were offered by Dallas Willard, but the only phrase I remember is when he said, “The Cross is the only way home.”

Of course Ash Wednesday is the day we are physically marked by the cross (on the forehead), as a sign that during Lent we are entering into a particular time of repentance of and purification from sin and temptation.  So, at the end of the service we all went forward and receive the mark of the cross.

But about an hour later I noticed that everyone’s crosses had disappeared from their foreheads, mine included.  “This is not how it is supposed to be,” I thought, “What kinda of cheap ashes did they use?”  It seems that there was more oil than ashes, and that my skin absorbed everything.  At first it felt like everything was invalidated, but as I reflected more it seems that this is really what Lent is meant to be, a time where the Cross of Christ is fully absorbed into our bodies and our lives that it is not not seen as a visible sign, but as our every way of living.

My hope and prayer for myself and you is that the Cross would be absorbed into us, that we could say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no long I who live by Christ who lives in me.”

BREAKING NEWS: The 9 Marks of the church, a ministry of Mark Devers is really a front for a clandestine organization devoted receiving to the 9 Stigmata of Christ. While the 9 Marks ministry has received much attention of late, it seems to be based in a serious misunderstanding.  The 9 “biblical” marks of the church are coded references to the 9 wounds of Christ received during his Holy Passion, which this group seeks to experience in their own bodies.  Polemics against liberalism, the emerging or missional church, and bland evangelicalism are really pleas for everyone to experience for themselves the 9 Stigmata as a way of overcome the wounds of ecclesial divisions.

The 9 wounds of Christ to which this order is devoted are the wound on Christ’s back, the two nail holes in Christ’s feet, the two in Christ’s hands, the wound from the crown of thorns, Christ’s pierced sides, the wound of a broken heart, and a ninth secret wound, known only to those in the order.

A high ranking official in this secret order leaked this information because she (yes, she!) feels the message has not be received properly.  In the hope of overcoming the wound of church division by devoting themselves exclusively to the 9 Wounds of Christ, this order actually desire to connect with the emerging, missional, liberal, and ecumenical dialogues so that all might experience the 9 Wounds of Christ from themselves, because as we know, “by his wounds we are healed.”

___

But in all seriousness, the church has been divided enough.  Let us remember the broken body of Christ, torn apart again at each Eucharist, so that we might be united.  As Thomas à Kempis says, “If you can not soar up as high as Christ sitting on his throne, behold him hanging on his cross.  Rest in Christ’s Passion and live willingly in his wounds.”  And as the old poem, Anima Christi, says,

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within Thy wounds hide me.

(The woodcut print at the top of the post is by Sigmund Grimm, Augsburg, Germany, 1520.)

There are at least two levels of silence, if not many more: the silence after the audible sounds have left, and the silence after the accusers and justifiers have left.

The first is just getting to a place or a space, of solitude, of quiet, of silence. This is where physical, or audible silence, or at least something close enough to it to give the mind room to listen. Only utter silence works if I have ear plugs in, because mere stillness still has creaking floors, stepping cats, or distance cars to distract (they actually startle me, which is worse). Often I just use a fan or something that lightly covers over those other noices, something consistant and non-discript. But this is all merely technique preparing for silence by getting rid of the exterior sounds.

The second level of silence I often do not achieve. This is occurs when all the sounds of the accusers and justifiers have left my mind and my soul. Some struggle more with silencing the accurser, other the justifiers. The accusers all the thoughts and memories of what has gone wrong in a day or week, or last five minutes, and the recounting of your responsibility, of your guilt, of your shame within those moments. These voices are infinitely varied for each person because of our different families and contexts. The voices might accuse about failing to love someone, or being responsible for someone else’s failure, or you being the cause of relational problems, or you not raising your children right way, or you saying something just like your mother. It could almost be anything, and often is everything you have done, said, or left undone or unsaid. These voices often take on the persona of someone else, or God, a parent, sibling, spouce, friend, of some other authority in your life, shifting between these persons depending on the situation or infaction. The accuser slips into silence and proclaims that you are unworthy and unacceptible.

The voice of the justifier is usually given your own voice. It is you trying to explain, argue, convince others that you are right about something, that you didn’t mess it up, that they are the ones who don’t understand, that they are the ones in sin and causing all the problems. This is the voice of self-justification, or self-satisfaction before others, knowing that you are superior, but needing to tell yourself again just so that you feel better about yourself and your situation, about your effort, about your life. The justifier replays that past argument at work, and changes it so you come out looking good. It anticipates that future conversation you need to have with a friend about how they were wrong to treat you so poorly and how it offended you. The justifier mulls over a perceived social slighting by another, and dreams about how it might be reciprocated. In all these ways the justifer slips into the silence and proclaims that you are essentially right and good.

But in a sense, both the accuse and the justifer are addictions which we hardly know about until we enter silence. They are manifestations that we are addicted to ourselves, either in condemnig ourselve or approving of ourselves. And don’t be fooled, while it might seem transparent that self-justification is of course odious for Christians, self-loathing is equally as bad. While the former trusts ourselves for approval, the latter does not trust God in his approval of us.

But in any case, passing into the second level of silence is to silence these voices, which is a mental struggle all its own. It is here amid the warring voices heard most clearly in silence that we can turn toward the grace of God, the approval of God, the truth of God spoken in Christ. And this voice of Christ is only heard after the sounds of silence have ceased.