I have been pondering the question of place lately–the matter of belonging. Or, we might even say the space of meaning.

This became especially salient when I finished Robert Capon’s notoriously and oddly named book, “An Offering of Uncles: The Priesthood of Adam and the Shape of the World.” The thing about strangely named books is that after a while, they become more endearing. The book was kind of a metaphysical tour through the role of place in the Bible and its unique purpose in shaping our priesthood.

And while Capon delved initially into place as a synonym for his own town and home, he moved into some description of parish life. Parish life is where I think place is most soberly discussed. It’s, in fact, the place where place finds its culmination. It’s the parish, stupid! Not economy. Not even, ultimately, the oikos.

I wish to simply opine on three features of parish life that mark our lives and confirm our place. Again, to quote my favorite gastronomist, Capon:

“Every person I meet has a history which threatens or promises involvement in my history.”

To call somewhere “my place” implies a dance; the intermingling of realities. I think the three features which most confirm place are faces, words, and postures.

Walking into the sanctuary, I am introduced to faces that confirm my place. Faces come with structural dimensions. Faces are architectural. Human smiles provide symmetry to the project, but more, it provides familiarity. To see the smiling faces of little children during a doxology is the kind of ritual that confirm the place. “Yeah, this is my people, my place, my party.” Faces are like living decorations that confirm the reality of place.

Then, there is the exchange of words. In a dialogical worship, words are exchanged like divine currency because husband and wife–Christ and his Bride–are talking. Each back and forth give meaning to each other: “The Lord be with you” “and also with you.”

One word can confirm place. One loud “amen” can seal place. One speech rightly administered and rhetorically delivered can make all things well. And that speech received makes all things new. Don’t take words for granted, even if they are small and a token of the day. Those words threaten involvement in your history and you should be happy with that.

Finally, there are postures. Hands lifted, hands receiving, kneeling, rising, passing, taking, qui magis. Postures are articulations of reality. If everyone kneels and you dare stand, you admit you have no interest in place or that you want to find another one. If you put your hands in a receptive form in a benediction, you confirm place. Not in isolation, mind you. But in togetherness. Places are made in togetherness.

When I meet you in my place, your history will threaten or promise to be in mine. It’s the structure of life. No place, no rationale for life. No place, no salvation.

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The Church celebrates the Ascension of our Lord today. Since most churches do not have Thursday services, many traditionally celebrate Ascension on Sunday. But today, the Ascension of Jesus is barely mentioned in the evangelical vocabulary. We make room for his birth, death, and resurrection, but we tend to put a period where God puts a comma.

If the resurrection was the beginning of Jesus’ enthronement, then the ascension is the establishment of his enthronement. The Ascension activates Christ’s victory in history. The Great Commission is only relevant because of the Ascension. Without the Ascension, the call to baptize and disciple the nations would be meaningless. It is based on Jesus’ enthronement at the right-hand of the Father that we image-bearers can de-throne rulers through the power and authority of our Great Ruler, Jesus Christ.

The Ascension is a joyful event because it vindicates the Church’s triumph over the world. Further, it defines us as a people of glory and power, not weakness and shame. As Jesus is ascended, we too enter into his ascension glory (Col. 3:1). This glory exhorts us to embrace full joy. As Alexander Schmemann once wrote:

“The Church was victorious over the world through joy…and she will lose the world when she loses its joy… Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.”

A joyless Christian faith is a faith that has not ascended. Where Christ is, we are. And we know that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. He is ruling and reigning from his heavenly throne. The Father has given him the kingdom (Psalm 2), and now he is preserving, progressing, and perfecting his kingdom. He is bringing all things under subjection (I Cor. 15:24-26).

We know that when he was raised from the dead, Jesus was raised bodily. But Gnostic thinking would have us assume that since Jesus is in heaven he longer needs a physical body. But the same Father who raised Jesus physically also has his Son sitting beside him in a physical body.

As one author observed:

“Jesus has gone before us in a way we may follow through the Holy Spirit whom he has sent, because the way is in his flesh, in his humanity.”

Our Lord is in his incarnation body at the right hand of the Father. This has all sorts of implications for us in worship. We are worshipping a God/Man; one who descended in human flesh and who ascended in human flesh. He is not a disembodied spirit. He is truly God and truly man.

As we consider and celebrate the Ascension of our blessed Lord, remember that you are worshiping the One who understands your needs because he has a body just like you, and he rejoices with you now because he has a body just like you.

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While negative aspects of evangelicalism emerge quite easily due to its diverse expressions, sometimes we are left with an image less than flattering and under the impression that evangelicalism is about to give up the ghost.

The reality, however, is quite different. By “evangelical,” I include churches that affirm the supreme authority of Scriptures and believe in the classic Christian doctrines of the Creeds.

Recently, I wrote about 26 weaknesses of the evangelical church; so, here are 26 strengths of the evangelical church that we need to be grateful for in the midst of our critiques:

a) It has a zeal for propagation. However opposed one may be to certain methods of evangelicalism, the evangelical church continues to thrive in our day and grow numerically, especially among faithful, Bible-believing congregations.

b) It preserves ol’ time religion. It has no interest in following progressive agendas for the church but in preserving the free offer of the Gospel as articulated in the Scriptures.

c) It strongly opposes sexual visions contradicting God’s view of man and woman. It roots its premise in Genesis 1, not on modern sexual mythologies.

d) It promotes male leadership in the Church. I know this is not thrilling for many on the left, but the way forward is through qualified liturgical males.

e) It opposes Roman Catholic paradigms, which elevate hierarchy and tradition above biblical authority and add unbiblical rituals to the church (see my post on cranky Protestantism).

f) It preaches about the atonement and vindication of Jesus frequently.

g) It is not afraid to confront scientism and liberalism before and after the COVID era.

h) It produced one of the greatest evangelists in the history of Christendom, namely, Billy Graham, whose crusades drew thousands, if not millions, of people to Christ.

i) It has a high view of the Spirit’s work in the saint’s life.

j) It produced one of the most prolific hymn writers in Christian history, namely, Fanny Crosby, whose hymns still bear witness to the life of Jesus and minister to millions in church and is remembered and sung by the aged in nursing homes with greater frequency than any other hymn-writer.

k) It was bold to break from liberal mainline churches when many encouraged them to stay (see the PCA in 1973).

l) It defends vehemently the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible in an age of competing authorities.

m) It upholds classic Christian moral issues such as the dignity of life from conception to death.

n) It is driven by a vision of preserving or conserving the Classical and Western Christian heritage.

o) It cherishes personal piety and a life of devotion.

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We cannot begin to think of mothers without speaking of our first mother, Eve. Eve was given the task of beautifying Eden. Her duty was to make Eden a place where God would dwell forever. Eden was meant as a preparatory home for the reign of God over all creation. It was to be a test case for future glory.

The first task of a mother is to consider her actions in light of future glory. She prepares the home as a garden-glory in progress. Her labors and offspring are gifts of gratitude to Yahweh for creating the world and beautifying it with his Triune presence.

But motherhood was confronted in Genesis 3. The first woman suffered from poor eschatology. She did not prepare her home well for future glory. The first lesson mothers need to understand is that the future matters. This is why mothers are called to live in such a way that influences their place and their children and their children’s children.

On this Mother’s Day, we begin to restore Eden’s eschatology by blessing mothers! Children must speak benedictions to their mothers. Husbands must praise their wives and thus restore their vision and vigor for the eschatology of glory.

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The evangelical view of the church–my piece of the ecclesiastical pie–is weak on a number of levels. After 43 years on this planet, and growing up in an evangelical home, and as someone who is deeply invested in the success of Gospel churches, I have seen much.

These weaknesses, in my estimation, lead to lesser and lesser influence in the modern world and dysfunctional ecclesiology. Here are at least 26 weaknesses to be followed by another post with their strengths:

a) it views church worship as a funeral procession for Jesus rather than a triumphant resurrection procession,

b) it disincentivizes male participation,

c) it makes the Bible secondary and human creativity primary,

d) it views Jesus’ authority over the world in similar categories to Satans’ (a misunderstanding of II Cor. 4:4), which means it minimizes the power of the resurrection in changing the world in the first century (I Cor. 15:26),

e) it treats the themes of worship as preferential rather than objective (see letter c),

f) it belittles the sacraments,

g) it is not future-oriented, so it’s bound to do theology only for the present,

h) it is content to keep Christians at a basic level of growth, which means it diminishes rigorous theological dialogue

i) it forgets its origins, thus minimizing the lessons of history,

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We need to begin moving our liturgical efforts into the realm of hospitality. What I mean by this may appear obvious, but it is quite complicated on a large scale. Some congregations may desire to move into that arena but find themselves paralyzed by self-inflicted wounds. They are more interested in showing their distinctness than in proving their distinctives by tangible actions.

We have a saying we use in our inquirer’s class that goes something like this, “We need to bathe our weirdness with a deep sense of commonness.” Internally and behind the scenes, we don’t view ourselves as weird, but we are quite aware that the perception exists in a thoroughly de-liturgized culture.

This came across in an observation from a mother who raised her daughter in a Reformed context and saw her daughter go into a different tradition altogether. Now, mind you, the daughter was not antagonistic towards Reformed Theology, but she found the practices of this largely evangelical environment more friendly and more inviting. For the record, I am the last person to give much credence to an impressionable young adult. Still, I do want to take the opportunity to offer some general thoughts on the art of commonness and why black coffee Calvinists like myself think our churches need more than mere liturgism.

The first observation is that our Reformational theology/liturgy should be inviting. However it is communicated–paraments or stripped tables–it must carry on the gravitas of joy from beginning to end. We live in a culture that craves the normalcy of joy. If we are inviting younger generations to taste and see Geneva’s God, we also need to make sure that we don’t portray Geneva as some ogre attempting to tyrannize conscience. Geneva needs to show up with smiles and greetings, not five points of inquiry.

The second note is that the sweetness of worship ought to give folks a sense of the holy. We need liturgical worship that brings people to see the sovereignty of God resting in every element of worship from beginning to end, in every line and every response.

One time we had a visitor who told one of our congregants that it was one of the most joyful experiences they’ve had, even though much of what happened was foreign to him. But even if the impression is viscerally oppositional–and it has happened–we should still communicate a culture where the holy is a common ritual of the people. You cannot control reactions, but you can control interactions. You can control a sweet disposition towards a visitor. You can sit next to them when they walk in alone, and you can guide them through the order of worship.

Third, and finally, if the liturgy really is a living liturgy–contrary to modernistic ritualization experiences in mainline churches with alternating “Mother God” lines–then that liturgy must breathe life into the home. It needs to be perpetuated with food and drink for those strangers who visit. If they are not invited to see your lived-out liturgy, it is unlikely they will find pleasure in your acted-out liturgy on Sunday mornings. It will continue to be strange and foreign rather than warm and inviting.

Out liturgical efforts must move into hospitable efforts. In fact, I wish to argue that liturgy necessarily moves into homes. Ultimately, we may still appear to be strange, and our songs may still give a Victorian vibe, but at the very least, we will have given visitors a sense of the holy and an invitation to joy. Our Reformed churches should contemplate that model in our day.

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