Carl Trueman has a fine piece here commenting on the
declining place of the tragic in Christian worship. What can he possibly mean?
Christian worship should immerse people in the reality of
the tragedy of the human fall and of all subsequent human life. It should
provide us with a language that allows us to praise the God of resurrection
while lamenting the suffering and agony that is our lot in a world alienated
from its creator, and it should thereby sharpen our longing for the only answer
to the one great challenge we must all face sooner or later.
In other words, the better we comprehend how bad
things (including us) really are, the better we can comprehend how great is the
good news of the gospel. Christ descended before he ascended; he died before he
was raised; and he was humiliated before he was exalted.
Perhaps the ho-hum attitude of many Christians
to the glorious truths of God's work of redemption can be explained in terms of
their ignorance of just how parlous is their current state. Of course, it's
easy to forget how bad things are when they aren't. The contemporary Western
upper-middle class surfeit of material goods and pre-packaged experiences
preoccupy many. Many Christians turn to the Church of Moral Therapeutic
Deism (see here and here) and non-Christians to transhumanism (here) but for just about
everyone, discussing the reality and meaning of death remains off-limits in
polite company.
Trueman goes on to describe contemporary
funerals, as I have lamented here and here, that fail to acknowledge that the
person playing the lead role is really dead:
Even funerals, the one religious context where one might
have assumed the reality of death would be unavoidable, have become the context
for that most ghastly and incoherent of acts: the celebration of a life now
ended. The Twenty-Third Psalm and “Abide with Me” were funeral staples for many
years but not so much today. References to the valley of the shadow of death
and the ebbing out of life’s little day, reminders both of our mortality and of
God’s faithfulness even in the darkest of times, have been replaced as funeral
favorites by “Wind Beneath My Wings” and “My Way.” The trickle down economics
of worship as entertainment has reached even the last rites for the departed.
Christian worship doesn't end with tragedy, of course, but with audible and tangible participation in victory. Confession of sin is followed by assurance
of pardon and the Word preached is followed by the Word consumed. And all
worship ends in the blessing of benediction. But we must pass through the
valley of the shadow of death if we hope to understand what it means to travel the road
to paradise.
No comments:
Post a Comment