When the Homily is about Immunology

Nowhere to go...

Seraphim has offered some comments to my last post that were of such high caliber, that I asked permission to repost them as a whole. Seraphim is a marvel to me...I have watched him as he was, in my eyes, the the arch-inquirer, then the arch-catechumen, and then more recently the arch-newly illumined. He is on the very top of my list of persons who should have a blog and yet - oddly enough - do not. His critique below (really it is much more than a critique) is personal and positive. I agree with him that much of what the disenfranchised and dissillusioned post-mod Christians are "looking for" may be found in the ancient Church of Holy Orthodoxy. But, by the same token, there is much therein which they may NOT be looking for. Since when has our religion catered to such things? None-the-less, perhaps it is the moving of the Holy Spirit that is just now beginning to inspire people to move East (Did anyone notice on of those "alternative worship events" which focused on things eastern?)

Anyway...Seraphim wrote:

I don't have this word for word... but Fr. Vadim at St Spiridon's (in seattle) tells the story of a group that once came to church on a kind of 'field trip'. (i'm sure many orthodox parishes experience such 'fieldtrips'). One of the members of the visiting group asked Fr. Vadim a question about the difference between orthodoxy and the christian mainstream. Fr. Vadim said... you don't understand. We ARE the mainstream.


Thinking more about this, I have to rant just a little. I was (before converting) highly involved in the evangelical "emerging post-modern church" movement that alt.worship is part of. It was actually my experience in this movement that had me re-consider protestantism itself, which eventually led to my conversion.

The movement, while promoting so many good, beautiful categories of renewal, still seems rooted in two protestant distinctives: the hermeneutic of the individual and the 'protest' of protestantism. And it all feels so awkward because the protest is (this time) not against Rome of course, but against protestantism itself.

It is a dead-end to use the core distinctions of a faith to critique that faith. There is nowhere to go... snake eating its tail.

And while many of these evangelicals have given up sola scriptura (a third key protestant distinctive), the various attempts at replacing sola scriptura with ancient-future-church alt.worship, seem wonderfully inspired by a desire for God, but so painfully self-conscious. I.E., the head of the snake declaring itself an alternative to the tail of the snake. In the end, its the same snake.

Nationwide (and even globally) the evangelicals in the growing alt.worship 'emerging' church movement see their efforts as a re-invention of "church" itself. Of course that is such an awkward and strange phrase to eastern christians... as awkward as the phrase "alternative" worship.

The protestant reduction of worship to 'worship events', however cool or relevant (ie, "worship" is what you call a set of songs after/before a sermon, or the use of ancient icons and cool technology for 'worshipful ambience', or a 'praise gathering' etc...) seems to be connected to the protestant reduction of salvation itself to the mere event of saying the 'sinners prayer'. I know I am exaggerating, as there are 30,000 protestant denomenations, and many variations on the theme.

It would seem that the variations and alternatives-to-those-variations must be continually created by Western Christians, in part because (as Fr Schmemann so powerfully shows) Christianity over time altered its understanding of the Eucharist. This alteration is key. Most protestants teach that the rite of communion is a (sacred) act of remembrance. the East, however, with its emphasis on a NOW eschatology, continues to affirm the Real Presence in the Bread and Wine. It is more than remembrance, Eucharist is a (glorious!) direct experience of and with God Himself. Lord have mercy!

And if the reality of the chief Sacrament of historical Christianity is lost, then it makes sense that you'd have to keep creating "alternatives". Elvis has left the building, so to speak!

In the East, of course, worship and salvation are inter-twined, and ARE the very living dynamic relationship with God over time... past, present, future. How can you create an alternative to that? Worship is holistically bound up in everything we do as Christians, and more importantly, it is both who we are, and who we are *becoming* (Theosis). ie, it is the Eucharistic Divine Liturgy on sunday mornings, but also the "liturgy AFTER the liturgy"... ie, the liturgy of life itself lived as a sacrament.

Not that I am in any way a scholar or eastern theologian (however you may define the term 'theologian'), it still grieves me that core Eastern Christian realities are so little understood by Western Christians. I believe the core vision of life and worship that is Eastern Christianity speaks directly to the heart of all that the 'emerging' evangelical church longs for.

I say all this in the spirit of "we can affirm where God IS, but not where He is not". And out of a deep desire for evangelicals to see the unspeakable Beauty that the Eastern Church affirms... the Beauty that will 'save the world'!