Happy Easter
I've been listening to a fascinating series of Ancient and Medieval Church History lectures downloaded from Covenant Seminary in the USA. At the start the lecturer mentioned a comment from a previous student who commented 'it's so good to study Church History and learn what a MESS it was much of the time, it helps me to realise that I shouldn't be expecting any different in my church....'. Another thing I learnt was that there have always been those who thought that the 'church' should be a body of folks all doing and believing the right thing. The problem with this, of course, it that it breeds arrogance and intolerance (though it is an attractive prospect in theory!). Augustine was much more realistic and said that the church was more like a hospital (I have to say that almost made me GASP!) and that all are more or less sick and RECOVERING. Now if I can keep that before my mind surely it will help to make me kinder to others (and myself!). Always the struggle is between abandoning discernment, which I am not prepared to do with a large family to raise, and being persistently picky, which is one of my more 'respectable' and mentionable character deficiencies.
Ambrose is a chap I am looking forward to taking a cup of tea with in Glory. He wrote hymns for the church to use in worship which were also specifically designed to teach sound doctrine. If only the realisation that what we sing forms our theology (would we really be willing to have so many WOMEN teaching in the 'preaching' slot of the morning service as we have instructing us through our Victorian hymns?) we would all be taking scissors to our singing books! Arius (I only heard it so don't know the spelling!) deliberately used this cunning ploy in the very early days of the Church to effectively spread his erroneous view concerning the (non)deity of Christ. People were singing in the streets and market places his catchy little ditties. Well, we can't be on dodgy ground with the Psalms for sure and I am not at all convinced of what one of our recent vistors stated categorically 'it is not enough to sing just the psalms because Christ is not in them...' - however, there are some worthwhile things to sing (though not many!!) apart from Psalms and I wish we could confine ourselves to those in the Sunday worship. However, I shall remember, as I stand to sing (or hold my peace) next Sunday, that this is a hospital after all......