Relocating To Elfland

“We praise thee, we hymn thee, we bless thee, we give thanks unto thee, O God of our fathers, that thou hast brought us in safety through the shades of night, and hast shown unto us once again the light of day. And we entreat of thy goodness: Be gracious unto our sins, and accept our prayer in thy great tenderness of heart. For we flee unto thee, the merciful and almighty God. Shine in our hearts with the true Sun of thy Righteousness; enlighten our mind and guard all our senses; that walking uprightly as in the day, in the way of thy statutes, we may attain unto life eternal (for with thee is the source of life); and graciously be permitted to come unto the fruition of the light unapproachable.

“For thou art our God, and unto thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“O God, our God, who hast brought into being by thy will all the powers endowed with speech and reason, we beseech thee and supplicate thee: Accept our praises, which together with all thy creatures we offer according to our strength; and reward us with the rich gifts of thy goodness. For unto thee every knee doth bow, whether in heaven or on the earth, or in the regions under the earth, and every breath and created being doth sing thine ineffable glory. For thou only art the true and most merciful God.

“For all the powers of heaven magnify thee, and unto thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“O Lord our God, who hast granted unto men pardon through repentance, and hast set us, as an example of the acknowledgment of sin and of the confession which is unto forgiveness, the repentance of the Prophet David: Do thou, the same Lord, have mercy upon us according to thy great mercy, notwithstanding the manifold and great iniquities into which we have fallen; and through the multitude of thy bounties, blot out our transgressions. For unto thee have we sinned, O Lord, who knowest the secret and hidden things of the heart of man, and who alone hast power to remit sins; and as thou hast created a clean heart within us, and established us with thy guiding Spirit, and made known unto us the joy of salvation, cast thou us not away from thy presence. But inasmuch as thou art good and lovest man, graciously vouchsafe unto us that even until our uttermost breath, we may offer unto thee the sacrifice of righteousness, and an offering upon thy holy altars.

“Through the mercies and bounties and love toward mankind of thine Only-begotten Son, with whom thou art blessed, together with thine all-holy, and good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“Illumine our hearts, O Sovereign Master, who lovest man, with the pure light of thy wisdom, and open the eyes of our understanding to the comprehension of the proclamation of thy Gospel. Implant in us, also, the fear of thy blessed commandments; that trampling down all carnal appetites, we may lead a godly life, both thinking and doing always such things as are well pleasing in thy sight.

“For thou art the sanctification and the illumination both of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and unto thee we ascribe glory, together with thy Father, who hath no beginning, and thine all-holy and blessed and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

As Reformed Christians, we’re excited about what God has done for us in His courtroom. And we should be. It’s unbelievable. “That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me”? The righteous for the unrighteous? Constituted righteous by one Man’s obedience? Utterly amazing.

I believe there exists in our circles, however, a kind of preoccupation with the divine courtroom that is terribly unhealthy. I refer to the preoccupation of some of God’s people with the question: am I really forgiven? (It takes varying forms, actually: is God really for me? does He really love me? am I really His child? did Jesus really die for me? etc.) Now, this is not the same thing as a believing soul’s continual hunger for, and delight in, the gospel; the normal Christian life is one lived “by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” What I have in mind is something else: a settled unsettledness about the eternal state of one’s soul; a regular revisiting of the courtroom verdict, not with joy but with anxiety; a feeling that if one doesn’t feel a certain measure of angst, of desperateness, in approaching the issue of justification, one is near to compromising (and is certainly at least devaluing) the article of the standing church; or more insidious still, belief that talk of anything beyond the courtroom is a step away from the gospel.

I know Christians who are spending their entire lives on the courthouse steps, looking over their shoulder, wondering if they can really trust the pardoning verdict, or even if it actually occurred. They desperately need to hear it again and again, not because they believe it, but because they don’t. They stubbornly refuse to move off the courthouse precincts into the home and family room of God, to claim Him as their Father (and to know He rejoices in this), to eat His bread and wine, to celebrate His gifts and His unfailing love. Indeed, they seem to find pious reassurance in the fact that they are unsure, that they don’t trust the Almighty too much. Their doubts and fears are their insurance against dreaded presumption.

There are preachers – Reformed preachers – whose ministry feeds this kind of spiritual sickness. For them, conversion is the driving theme of every sermon: are you right with God? are you in Christ? where will you spend eternity? It doesn’t seem to occur to them that it could be biblically normative for God’s children to regard the question of their eternal state as settled in Christ (this is, after all, the point of the gospel); or that the summons to faithfulness might be better grounded in assurance than in uncertainty; or that a secure, conclusive answer to the courtroom question might open the way for some other highly important considerations (from God’s point of view) in the living room.

There is a kind of preoccupation with the question of God’s love that calls His love into question – that in fact impugns His character as Father and makes Him appear hard, even loveless. There is a fine but important line between faith’s normal struggles in this world, and a spirit of wicked unbelief that is really a subtle form of pride: I believe my own doubts (and Satan’s whisperings) more than the Word of God who cannot lie.

Take Jesus’ statement, “I am the Bread of Life.” For some Reformed saints, eating the Bread is simply a matter of life and death. Fine. It is that; no question about it. But I don’t eat my dinner simply because I will die if I don’t, true though that may be. I eat it because it is good, because it is nourishing, because (dare I say) I like it. It doesn’t simply stave off death; and in fact if I am really healthy, I don’t think about death while I am eating; I have other things to think about. There is more to the Bread of Life – there is more to life – than not dying. There is more to the good news in Christ than bare forgiveness of sins, a favorable courtroom verdict, as fundamental as this is. To change the metaphor, an engine doth not an automobile make: yes, our lives are lived by faith in what Christ accomplished for us in His death and resurrection, but believing we live. The car goes somewhere! We live in covenant with the Lord our God, we and our seed; and precisely because His salvation is sure, beyond question, we live with Him faithfully and well.

To put all this yet another way (I’m on a roll, you see), there is more than one way to undermine confidence in God’s courtroom verdict: one can doubt it, question it, or deny it; or one can make it the be-all and end-all of life with God, as if to think about anything else will render it null and void. But the way to truly enjoy God’s verdict is to skip down the courthouse steps and take up residence in His family room, to enter into the familial life He intended when He announced the verdict. In a certain glorious sense, we ought to take the Judge’s verdict for granted (which is to say, trust it), and get busy living with our Father. Don’t stop with justification; go on to embrace the whole salvation of God.

“O Lord our God, who hast banished from us the sluggishness of sleep, and hast assembled us together by a holy bidding, that in the night-season also we may lift up our hands, and make unto thee thankful acknowledgement of thy righteous judgments: Accept our prayers, petitions, confessions of thanks and nocturnal worship; and grant unto us, O God, faith invincible, love unwavering, hope unfeigned. Bless our goings out and our comings in; our deeds and works, and words and thoughts. And grant that we may come to the beginning of this day praising, singing and blessing the goodness of thine ineffable beneficence.

“For blessed is thine all-holy Name, and all-magnified is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“O God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hast raised us up from our beds, and hast gathered us together at this hour of prayer: Grant us grace in the opening of our lips, and accept our thanksgivings as we have power to make them; and instruct us in thy statutes. For we know not how to pray as we ought unless thou, O Lord, by thy Holy Spirit, dost guide us. Wherefore we beseech thee: Pardon, remit, forgive whatsoever sins we may have committed unto this present hour, whether by word, or deed, or thought, whether voluntarily or involuntarily; for if thou wilt be extreme to mark iniquity, O Lord, Lord, who shall stand? For with thee is redemption. For thou only art holy, a mighty helper and the defender of our life; and our song shall be ever of thee.

“Blessed and glorified be the might of thy kingdom, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

Blessed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, hear now our prayer in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ:

How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! Our souls long, yes, even faint for Your courts. We long for these moments when, in the stillness of Your presence, we are reminded that You are the Builder, the Upholder, and the Governor of all things, and we are not. We long to be reminded that though the floods have lifted up their voice, though they lift up their roaring, the Lord on high is mightier than the thundering of mighty waters, mightier than the waves of the sea. We long to hear that though the nations rage, though they set themselves against You and Your Anointed, they are but men, and You laugh at them. We long for assurance that though our sins mount up to heaven, though they prevail against us, and we stink in our iniquity, You cast all our sins into the depths of the sea, and there is forgiveness with You that You may be feared. We long to know that when we sink in deep waters where there is no standing, it is You who draw us out of the miry clay, and set our feet upon a rock, and establish our goings. We would gaze upon Your majesty; we would bow before Your righteousness; we would marvel at Your wisdom; we would revel in Your love. Your beauty and bounty are wondrous to us, our God; Your grace and glory are marvelous in our eyes. Even the sparrow finds a home in Your house, great Lord, even the swallow a place where she may nest her young; how much more we, whom You have claimed to be Your children and Your inheritance forever! Blessed are those who dwell in Your house, O Lord; blessed are those who put their trust in You! Meet with us here, as You have promised, and show us Your glory in which alone our hearts can rest. We ask in the name of our beloved Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Last winter I was shoveling snow with my neighbor, who’s from Brazil, and I asked him how he thought his country would fare in the upcoming World Cup. “Ah,” he said, “they are a team full of stars; but can they play together? That’s the question.”

Personally, I thought the Brazilians played very well as a team before their shocking elimination last week. But my neighbor put his finger on something I have observed more than once during the proceedings in South Africa: there is a huge difference between having a skill set and having “game sense.” You may have a player who handles the ball as if it’s attached by a tether. He may have more speed, power, agility, and elusiveness than anyone else on the pitch. But if he doesn’t have game sense – if he doesn’t have a “feel” for the game as a whole: the field, the movements of teammates and opponents, where he is and everyone else is, and where the play is going next – any contribution he makes to winning a tournament will be more or less accidental.

There’s a lesson here, I think for Christian discipleship. A lot of Christians I know are working hard on their “skill set” (or at least they know they ought to be working on it). They work hard at Bible reading, prayer, attending worship, being a faithful husband and father or wife and mother, being more honest, being a more diligent employee, etc. And practice makes skillful. But there is such thing as a fairly skillful Christian who hasn’t got a lick of game sense. He works hard at the things he has been told good Christians do; but he has little sense of what game he is playing. He doesn’t really grasp, for instance, what it is to be a bearer of God’s image; he doesn’t understand what humans were created to be. He doesn’t have a good feel for the story of God’s restoring His image in a new humanity, or of the part he and others are to play in this story. He doesn’t see clearly who and where his opponents are, because he hasn’t mastered the movements of God’s kingdom in history, or in his own time. He doesn’t, therefore, live with a deeply informed sense of calling, of the “goal” toward which he and his “team” are driving, of what he and they have been redeemed unto. And thus he tends not to grow much beyond the items on his holy checklist. Put him through the paces of Christian disciplines, and he may look like a star; but in the “real world” of kingdom engagement he looks disconnected from the main action, even confused.

Of course, Christians without a skill set are guaranteed disasters at game time; but soccer is far more than kicking a ball well, and Christianity in the world is so much more than making all the right moves in my practice sessions with Coach Jesus, or even on the pitch. There is a sense of what the game as a whole is about, of what’s going on in this particular moment of this particular game and how it relates to what’s happened before, what’s happening elsewhere on the field, and what’s coming next – and without this sense, we end up with a lot of individual practice sessions, while the game itself is never played. I may be going off my rocker, but then again maybe I’m on to something. You sure know the difference when you see it on the field.

“We give thanks unto thee, O Lord God of our salvation; for thou doest all things which are for the welfare of our life, that we may ever look upward unto thee, our Saviour and the Benefactor of our souls. For thou hast refreshed us in that part of the night which is past, and hast raised us up from our beds, and hast led us to stand here in adoration of thy precious Name. Wherefore we entreat thee, O Lord, vouchsafe unto us grace and power, that we may be enabled with understanding to sing praises unto thee, and to pray without ceasing, in fear and trembling working out our own salvation, through the succour of thy Christ. Call to remembrance, O Lord, those who cry aloud unto thee in the night season; hearken unto them and have mercy, and crush under their feet invisible and warring enemies.

“For thou art the King of Peace and the Saviour of our souls, and unto thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)