Happy with Ordinary

Even if I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today. (Attributed to Martin Luther)

These words sum up for me Michael Horton's main theme in his book Ordinary. Even with the Next Big Thing coming, Luther continues in the work of ordinary life and ministry today.  Using St. Paul's example to the Thessalonians, he writes:

As the day of the Lord approaches, he [Paul] says, believers are “to aspire to live quietly, and to mind [their] own affairs, and to work with [their] hands” (4: 11). It doesn’t sound very world-transforming. Yet it is precisely in the habits that make up a life like this that believers live “properly before outsiders and [are] dependent on no one” (v 12). (p.207)

 "It doesn’t sound very world-transforming." How often do I sit in my study, or while driving to the next meeting,  and think these very words. My ministry will never be written up in a glossy magazine. It doesn't seem like it is going to transform the world. So I sit, and pray, and try to ward off the envy of those whose ministry seems so much better.

But Paul is telling the Thessalonians, and us, that our call is different. In some ways we do not have to transform the world, or even our little piece of it. Because Christ has already done that. And because Christ has done it, we can go about the habits of an ordinary, lived-in ministry. Sitting with a dear old saint in the nursing home who lights up only when she hears Amazing Grace, and knowing that you didn't transform her world. Christ did. And you are there to witness to that.

And imagine what that will mean not only for us, but for our work. The struggle to keep up with the culture is never-ending. You cannot stand forever on the cutting edge. Result-oriented ministry will always end in disappointment or compromise. I leave you with these words from Horton which are words I will tack to the study wall, to keep my focus where it belongs...on Jesus Christ and his world-transforming call.

Now we are free to do the little things that matter, without anxiety about how it all turns out in the end. (p.208)

 Into Christ's hands I place my ministry. Amen.

In the Garden (not the song)

In spite of persecution and milder disincentives to conversion, the ancient church pursued a pretty rigorous program of teaching and evaluation that preceded baptism and membership of adult converts (Horton, Ordinary, p.179)

It is in chapter 8 of Horton’s Ordinary that the garden metaphor comes into its full flower. Using examples from the Old and New Testament, Horton shows that the garden is one of the chief ways of looking at life in the church. From Isaiah’s vineyard to the parable of the sower to the example of the barren fig tree, God has showed the way of teaching and discipleship by the example of a garden and how it grows.

Much of this is lost on me. I live in a farming community, but personally don’t really garden. It involves three things I disdain: digging in dirt, time outside, and constant failure.  I do have a peace lily that I have managed to keep alive through two moves and about 10 years, but I could forget to water that plant for weeks and it could bounce back. Onions and carrots aren’t quite as forgiving.

One thing that I did find helpful in this chapter was Horton’s use of the modern slogan “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” He uses this to show us how it can work in God’s eco-system. (p,177-178)

Reduce the distractions and voracious consumption.
Reuse the resources God has given us in the past
Recycle: return to the sources and adapt them to our time and place.

This involves the big word that Horton says is lacking in Christian circles today. Discernment. Discernment is the first casualty when the church only exists to be nice. But discernment allows us to make use of the rich traditions of the past. I love the Puritans, but would never preach like them. Discernment is what needs to be found within Christians today, so that we can determine how to best use the resources of our Spiritual ancestors, without having always to start fresh with each new generation. Or these days, with each new technological advance.

We are called to tend the garden. And that requires a patience sorely missing from our culture.  Just as the gardener says when asked to tear out the barren fig tree, “Let’s give it another year.” Let us keep trying with the tools God has given. His Word. His Sacraments. His disciplines and accountability. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”  (1 Corinthians 3:6-7 ESV, emphasis added)

 

Transforming culture, step by step

None of these songs has been born again, and to that end there is no such thing as Christian music. (Jon Foreman, lead singer Switchfoot)

One of the things reading Ordinary has done for me is make me think. One of the great issues that we face as a church today is our relation to the culture. Much of our thinking about this topic goes back to H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic book Christ and Culture (1951). Niebuhr espouses the view of Christ Transforming Culture, be it high culture or low pop culture. 

But Horton sees today’s Christian caught in a bind, and he blames an “unrealistic call to cultural transformation” (p.159).  Younger Christians may change their political stripes but their end goal is the same, making” the kingdoms of this age the kingdom of Christ…done through direct (especially political) action” (p.159). But Horton knows this is an illusion, and only leads to disenchantment and cynicism. 

But the alternative to cultural transformation is not passivity. Nor is it a separation of one’s calling in Christ from one’s calling in the world. There is a sense of eschatological confusion, which Horton draws out in his discussion of the “already” and the “not yet”, this present age and the age to come. And then he comes to the idea of faithful presence, which he gets from James Davison Hunter.

The first Christians did not seek to change their culture. They lived their lives as Christians in the world, and people noticed. And people wondered why? And people found out, and were converted. And as the church grew, the culture did change. Sometimes in massive sweeps. Sometimes in gradual steps. But as the water drops  from the raging torrent and from the massive glacier both end up in the ocean, so the culture is changed in small and large ways every day by the faithful presence of believers in the world. To paraphrase Jon Foreman above, “Not because I make Christian music, but because I am a Christian making music.”