Monthly Archives: September 2012

Let Me Entertain You

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A few years ago a new church opened in my town.  I watched with interest as they converted an empty Walmart store into a church building.  They knocked a hole in one of the walls and installed a drive-through window for serving coffee.  They even had a catchy label above the window, but I can’t recall the exact words they used.  I think it was “Java for Jesus” or something like that.  One day, as I drove by the place, I noticed a new sign had been installed by the road and I had to do a double-take.  For a few seconds I thought I was looking at a sign for a new “gentlemen’s club.”  Then I realized it was the sign for the new church.

Well, I had to give them credit for at least trying to draw people to church.  The whole thing certainly got my attention.  About a year or two went by and I noticed that there didn’t seem to be as much activity.  The drive-up window didn’t have a sign anymore.  Today I decided to take a closer look and discovered that the building is boarded up and deserted.  Apparently, the church is gone.  I had not noticed it was gone because the sign is still mounted by the main road where I usually drive by.

I wondered if the church just moved to another building.  I looked them up online to see if they had a website.  They did.  The pastor even had a blog, but when I clicked on the link the blog was gone.  The website was from 2009, so I assume the church just never took off and had to close their doors.  Judging from their website and their sign they tried very hard to market themselves.  “Church like you’ve never seen it before!” The church was “not trying to be like the church next door.”  Gimmicks and marketing techniques were generously employed in an attempt to draw a crowd.  The website claimed that church attendance was at 2000.  It also stated a goal of reaching 12,000 with the Gospel (not sure why they would want to stop at that number).

I never attended the church and I’m just an outsider looking in, but it did get me thinking.  I have heard many Catholics say that the Church needs to do more to attract people, especially younger ones.  Perhaps, to a point.  The above church that is now boarded up seemingly did a lot of things to attract people, especially younger, “edgy” people.  Now they are gone.  It takes more than modern appeal, vibrant rock style entertainment and a celebrity type preacher to attract and keep people.  Lots of people even followed Jesus around in hopes of seeing him do a miracle.  To them it was entertainment.  As soon as Jesus placed demands on them such as, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you” they were gone.

The worship of Catholicism is not about entertainment.  Nor is it about modern appeal, hip preachers or rocking music.  It is about worshiping Christ the way Christ said to worship 2000 years ago, through the Eucharist.  We live in a society that cannot seem to get enough media and entertainment.  Consequently, many churches feel they have to deliver what the people want instead of focusing on what the people need.  People need the written Word, and they need the living Word, Christ in the Eucharist.  That is how Jesus said he would feed his followers.

I’m not making fun of the above church or glorying in its demise.  I just wish they would use all that creativity and energy to help people discover the meal Christ has prepared for them.  I wish they understood the Eucharist.  I want our separated Christian brothers and sisters to come home and stop trying so hard to reinvent what Jesus has already established.

The Catholic Church has nothing against glorifying God through media.  The cathedrals, paintings, sculptures and music from the past centuries illustrate the importance of appealing to the senses to inspire awe and wonder for God.  The difference is that no matter how grand or how small an individual Catholic Church may be, the meal is the same.  The meal is what sustains the Church.  It cannot be improved upon.  Anyone, young or old, that is bored with the Catholic Mass simply does not understand it.  The meal is Christ himself.  Without the Eucharist, there would be no Church.

Are you following Jesus around hoping for some entertainment?  Or do you yearn for The Bread of Life?  One is fleeting and the other eternal.

In Praise of Watermelon Seeds

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One of my favorite seasonal foods is watermelon.  I have lots of boyhood memories of Summer fun eating watermelon.  For a while, we had been purchasing the seedless variety.  It’s nice to cut one open and dig right in without worrying about picking around or spitting out the seeds.  There was only one problem.  It didn’t taste as good.  My wife, not being a big watermelon fan, didn’t notice much.

At first, I thought we were just bad at choosing good watermelons.  After a while, I began to get suspicious.  Yesterday I was at the grocery store and saw big boxes filled with watermelons.  I halfheartedly walked over to them thinking to myself about our track record of mediocre watermelons when I noticed a “seedless” sticker was only on some of them.  Then I saw the word “seeded” marked with a big, black Sharpie marker on the side of the box.  It suddenly became my mission to find a watermelon with seeds in the hope of reuniting my taste buds with a long, lost flavor.  I claimed a small, elongated one and headed home.

The next day after dinner I decided to cut my prize open to see how it tasted.  As I separated it in two I saw all those little black seeds in the way.  Undaunted, I maneuvered my spoon around the seeds and pulled out a red, juicy chunk and put it in my mouth.  I thought I had died and gone to Heaven!  My wife gave me one of her, “You’re goofy” looks as I made my yummy noises and joyfully announced, “This is what watermelon is supposed to taste like!”  As the sweet flavor and aroma triggered precious boyhood memories of childhood freedom and innocence, I decided then and there that dealing with the seeds was definitely worth the effort.  Spitting them out was half the fun of eating watermelon anyway, I recalled.

Today, while digging into the second half of my watermelon, a spiritual and life application occurred to me.  Making things easier does not necessarily make them better.  Every gain has a loss, and sometimes the loss is too much.  This is how we got the expression, “Throw the baby out with the bathwater.”  Maybe I’ll start saying, “Throw the flavor out with the seeds.”

I know people that left Catholicism in favor of a “simpler Gospel.”  They just wanted Jesus.  They didn’t want to deal with all the “stuff” that comes with being Catholic.  I know, because I used to be one of those people.  It took me a long time to realize what I had given up.  What I thought were just inconvenient “seeds” were actually important spiritual pieces of Christ’s authentic Church.  If those seeds are missing, the Church becomes something less than what it was intended to be.  These are not seeds to spit out, however.  These are seeds that provide growth when properly planted and nurtured.

I’m glad I rediscovered seeded watermelon, and I’m glad I rediscovered the Catholic Faith.  I’m no longer annoyed at the seeds.  They are a sign of authenticity and satisfying flavor.  Now I look for them and enjoy them.

Perfect Worship

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I’ve been reflecting on different ways that Christians worship God.  Here are several that came to mind:

-Music

-Prayer

-Scripture reading

-Preaching

-Liturgy

-Giving and sacrificing of self (including money, material goods, time, gifts, talents, fasting, martyrdom, etc.)

Some of these things can be witnessed in any Christian church service.  Some of them are daily activities, such as the self-sacrifice godly parents give their children in service to God, or the work one does at a job with a godly attitude.  Some are more extreme than others.  All of them are good ways to worship God.  We offer all of them to God in worship.  All of them have one thing in common: they are blemished.  They are not perfectly spotless.

There is only one thing we can offer God that is perfectly spotless and without blemish: the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  That’s why a worship service filled with musical praise and inspirational preaching is good, but not perfect.  All of those things involve our hearts and our bodies.  All of those things are both spiritually and physically lifted up to God.  But, even at their best, they are still imperfect.

In the Catholic Mass, Christians are provided the opportunity to join our hearts, our bodies and our imperfect efforts in lifting up to God the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, perfectly spotless and without blemish.  We are not only to lift him up “in Spirit” but also “in the flesh,” for it is his flesh that he gives for the life of the world.  He gave us the Spirit partly so that we could have his flesh transubstantiated into the form of bread and wine and available to offer to God as the perfect worship.

Think about it this way.  Before Christ, all we could spiritually or physically offer God was imperfection.  Now we have a choice: our own physical and spiritual imperfection or the spiritual and physical perfection of Jesus Christ.

No matter how good the music is, no matter how inspiring or convicting the preaching is, no matter how good or blessed a worship service makes you “feel,” the worship is physically and spiritually blemished unless Jesus Christ himself is spiritually and physically (i.e. completely) lifted up to God.  That’s why Jesus instituted the Mass.  He gave us the Mass so that we could worship perfectly with our whole self joined physically and spiritually to him.  The Mass is the height of Christian worship.  “This is my body, this is my blood.”