Osler's Razor

For a while, I was attending a church here in Edina which I enjoyed in some ways. The building and grounds are beautiful, the minister is bright and funny, and they have excellent music.

Those were the bright spots. On the less bright side, for three months no one in the congregation introduced themselves (other than the ministers or during the passing of the peace) or made an effort to reach out. On that one, I share the blame-- I didn't make much of an effort either, and this has always been a failing of mine as a congregant, too. In ten years at 7th and James in Waco, I rarely sought out visitors, and I deeply regret that.

The thing that really drove me away, though, was a near-total absence of the gospels from the service. In the times I attended, there seemed to be more discussion of Leviticus than the actual teaching of Christ, and the reading for the sermon was uniformly from the Epistles of Paul.

I understand that there is much wisdom to be gleaned from those sources, but in the end they do not nourish me the way that Christ himself does. I am a Christian, and that means that I give primacy to the teachings of Jesus. That's what I need to feed my soul. The context and history of the Old Testament are essential, Paul is an important teacher, but the necessary discussions of those sources are empty wineskins without the animating presence of God's own Son. It is not the same to hear what others (such as Paul) taught about Christ as to hear what it was Christ himself taught.

There is something that resounds in me about those gospel stories-- they are counter-cultural, surprising, complex, challenging, and time and again lead us to principles which can still inform our own choices. Perhaps more importantly, they are to me the clearest revealed word of God, and that in itself demands my attention.

This morning I will go to St. Stephens Episcopal, which is a short walk from home. The liturgy there is a far cry from my Quaker days, but I bring the same heart. It is a heart that thrills to one part of that liturgy, the presentation of the Bible before the reading from the gospel. The book is held aloft with reverence, and the congregation stands for the reading. I remember Scott Davis doing this in Grosse Pointe, and last week my soul responded when this was done at Holy Comforter in Richmond as I sat by the pulpit. That presentation reflects the ordering of truths I believe in-- that it is the teaching of Christ that we hold aloft as we precede in this life, and it is those same teachings that rise above us, always demanding that we aspire to more from ourselves and this world.