"How
long will you halt between two opinions? How long can we try to straddle the fence and
still move forward?" (ouch!)"How
long will you halt between two opinions? How long can we try to straddle the fence and
still move forward?" (ouch!)
Every so often we receive a passionate plea that the church choose either old covenant days or Christmas and Easter.
If we keep both sets of days, some reason, we are trying to mix oil and water, stone and Spirit. Some argue we should get rid of the bondwoman, the covenant of slavery (Gal. 4:21-31).
Some ask, shouldn't our festivals remind us of Jesus, not of the errors of our past?
As we know, emotions run high when it comes to worship days. Some threaten to leave the church if we abandon the old. Others threaten to leave if we keep them as options.
No matter what we do, some people will leave. But we must not make our decisions on the basis of who might leave. We must always strive to make them on the basis of what we believe before God to be right.
Some think the church has no clear direction about annual festivals or about the weekly day of meeting.
I feel the frustration of those who see things this way. I certainly am not out to hold back the church from positive momentum in terms of leaving behind our former old covenant legalism and embracing the faith of the new covenant in the blood of Jesus.
Yet there is more to leadership than pulling out all the stops. I feel deeply the responsibility God has given the leaders of this church to shepherd the people God has given us, and not to leave them in a spiritual desert.
We must sacrifice the inherent human desire that everyone do everything the same way. We must give up the desire to have everyone feel exactly the same way about everything, and the desire to have everyone conform to all the same things.
We have to give up the temptation to eliminate or leave behind, rather than bear with, the people who can't see or understand what we think we see and understand.
Please don't misunderstand. Our practices as Christians need a certain degree of conformity. And yet, that conformity needs to be centered on the right things, the central, fundamental, basic essentials of Christianity.
Some diversity can exist within those boundaries. The reason the church needs to provide that room for diversity is not because we "halt between two opinions." It is because Jesus lives in us, and Jesus loves all his people.
We need a Romans 14 style toleration of one another. It is a mentality of "while we all strive for deeper understanding of the Lord's will for us, let's grant one another the freedom to serve the Lord according to our consciences."
Our denomination can pursue two kinds of unity. One is unity that springs from our Spirit-led commitment to allow people the freedom to think. That brand of unity requires a certain degree of commitment to people as people--people Jesus loves and died for--rather than a mere commitment to particular dates of practices.
Another kind of unity is based on conformity, or uniformity. The cost is high in terms of people. It requires a commitment to abandon people for the sake of dates and practices.
Surely, the question of where are we going has got to be bigger than what days we keep, what songs we sing and what we do with our hands during prayer and singing.
Where we are going is to declare and teach people that God loves them, despite their sins, and that for the sake of Jesus, he invites them to his banquet, despite the fact they've got nothing clean to wear.
Where we are going is to teach people that nothing is more important than accepting and believing the gospel: the soul-changing truth that God extends his unconditional love to them.
The more we teach that, the more we can all begin to live among our fellow members of the WCG in the peace and love of Jesus Christ.
The gospel is centered on Jesus' death and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3-4). Many feel that Sunday, Christmas and Easter are more connected to Christ than our old worship days are.
However, the point of the gospel is the significance of Jesus and his resurrection, not which day we choose to worship and commemorate him. We need to distinguish between form and substance, symbol and reality.
We cannot focus on differences over which day to meet on at the expense of losing sight of the real significance of what Jesus did for us and for all humans through his birth, death, resurrection and ascension.
The real significance is that he threw open the doors of the kingdom of God to us, the undeserving, and he purchased God's eternal grace for us.
The New Testament criticizes those who focus on certain days as obligatory. Grace must triumph over conformity, if we are to be true to Jesus.
I am firmly convinced--I am not torn between two opinions--I have one opinion: that we must allow both sets of days, simply because a more important principle is at stake.
The choice is not between this day or that--it is between heavy-handedness and gentleness, between an externally imposed unity and a faith-generated unity, between legalism and grace.
If we try to enforce one set of days over the other and still try to preach grace and freedom in Christ, then we are trying to mix oil and water.
We must distinguish clearly between our traditional festivals themselves and the legalism we applied to their observance.
We have abandoned the legalism associated with our traditional festivals. That is, we have condemned the teaching that Sabbath-keeping and festivals are required for salvation, that they are commanded for Christians, that no person is a true Christian unless he or she keeps them.
On the other hand, we have not abandoned the freedom in Christ to celebrate the festivals themselves, because to do so would be to jump right back into the very legalism Jesus has led us to abandon.
Salvation is not in days. Righteousness is not in days. Salvation and righteousness are in Jesus Christ. We are saved by the grace of God by putting our confidence in Jesus.
Confidence in days, whether Sunday, Christmas and Easter on one hand, or Saturday and the annual festivals of Leviticus 23 on the other, is misplaced confidence. We preach Jesus Christ, not days of worship.
What would happen if we abolished all Saturday services and the annual festivals? We would be compromising the very principles of the gospel, of salvation by grace through faith in Christ, upon which we stand.
Many people would see it, and rightly so, as hypocrisy. This approach still would not guarantee unity, for then people could squabble over whether to observe Pentecost and Maundy Thursday (Thursday before Easter), whether to have All Saints Day and Epiphany, whether to use the Common Lectionary or expository series on books of the Bible. And who knows what kind of disagreements might happen over other doctrines?
Does unity really come from creating a list of rules? No, that is not the kind of unity Jesus wants us to have. Our unity is in him, by his grace.
Now, I do not for one minute imagine that it is easy to have two sets of annual festivals. I do not imagine that it is easy for a church to come out of legalism.
It is not easy to unlearn things, especially when we once made so many things tests of true Christianity. We need patience, and patience and tolerance do not come easy.
We are taking a stand. We do have a position. We are allowing both sets of festivals. We have been patient with people on both sides of this issue. Some are still pushing observance of the seven annual festivals; others are pushing to require traditional Christian celebrations only.
We teach balance and tolerance, with a willingness to learn. Jesus' command is that we love one another, not that we denigrate one another in the name of holy days.
Two principles are involved: 1) We want to pastor all our members, to teach and to help. 2) We teach that God loves all of us and sent his Son to die for all of us. (How excited is God about adding converts to a church whose members have not yet learned how to love one another in their differences?)
While the Jews and Samaritans argued about the proper location for worship, Jesus declared that the main thing about worship is attitude, not place (John 4:20-22).
I believe Jesus would give a similar answer to the question of worship days today: You will worship the Father neither on this day nor that--days will no longer be the major concern.
The time is coming and now is when God's true worshipers will worship him in spirit and in truth, without undue obsession about external things such as place or time.
Those things can be important to us, but they are not necessary for true worship. Knowing that, and trusting Jesus to save us all, we can tolerate this diversity in one another.
This is important about worship: Jesus is worthy of worship. He is the truth and the way. No one can get to the Father except through Jesus, and no one can honor the Father without giving equal honor to Jesus.
He is our judge, our advocate and our source of righteousness. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, and run with patience the race that is set before us.
Let us look to him, listen to him and point to him! Everything else will be much easier to deal with, once it is set in the context of Jesus, the Truth of God.
All you who are weary and burdened, come to Christ, and he will give you rest. Take his yoke upon you and learn from him, for he is gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For his yoke is easy and his burden is light. If it seems too heavy at times, perhaps we are trying to do too much of it by ourselves.
Friends, I love you and pray for you. I thank God daily for your labors of love.
To Jesus be honor and glory forever--and a crown of glory will be given to us, too, when the Chief Shepherd appears.
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 1999