The second Sunday in May found us in a congregation of the Presbyterian Church, USA, which is abbreviated PCUSA. During graduate school days in Colorado, one wag among us used to say that stood for Party, Communist, USA, because of its leftward bent. No evidence of that on this visit.
The pastor told a delightful story about his own mother, who had a crush on Fred Astaire during the late '30s. She worked at a bank in New York in those days, and her crush was so famous among her co-workers that when Fred happened to be visiting the bank one day, he found out about it and took the time to go to the secretarial pool and take her for a whirl amongst the typewriters. For that story alone they should have charged admission.
John Varineau of the Grand Rapids Symphony made an appearance with his trio ma non troppo, playing "Trio for Two Clarinets and Bassoon" by Benedetto Carulli, and "Sonata A Trios for Two Clarinets and Bassoon" by Charles Avison, among others. That was a very pleasant surprise. They don't practice too much. They don't need to.
The sermon was in part about John 15:1ff: I am the vine, you are the branches, etc. The Christian life, whatever that's supposed to be or mean concretely, comes down to a metaphor: as a vine must bear fruit, so the Christian must abide in Jesus, apart from whom one can do nothing. By the time it was over, I kept having this image in my head of all these Christians running around needing to re-connect with Jesus as if they were power strips unplugged from the giant Jesus outlet in the sky, their three-pronged heads flailing about in the air as they aimlessly roam the earth.
If anything distinguishes the Protestants from the rest of Christianity anymore, it's this amorphous conception of the Christian life. The vast majority of the world's Christians are sacramentalists, and they don't need no stinkin' metaphors. They've got real, divine, body and blood to eat to stay connected to their God. In fact, eating it pretty much defines the Christian life. This is much simpler, which is why it's more popular. Just show up once a week, shut up and eat. See ya next time.
Abiding in Jesus for a Protestant is much more complicated and time consuming. For one thing, it means studying the Bible because abiding means his words must abide in you. Right there you've created what for most folks who take it seriously becomes a life-long industry for the sheer size of it. And once that starts, life fills up with all the data consumed, which become the spiritual "to do list." All the words on all the pages eventually coalesce and become a construct in the mind which, dare we say it, becomes indistinguishable from the God himself. Prayer becomes a conversation with oneself.
One way or the other, if this is the kingdom of God, I want out.
