Skip to main content

What kind of church?

Deuteronomy 12.1-10, 26-27
A debate rages within the modern European Church of all denominations. As church attendance and membership fall, and more and more local churches are forced to close, people ask should we give up the struggle to keep as many community based churches open as we can and instead fall back upon centres of mission, from which we could make occasional forays out into the wider area around each one.
People are even asking whether churches might have to take a new form in future. Perhaps we will have to meet together in a virtual church online. Perhaps we will have to commute from time to time to larger gatherings in the cities, just as we commute to work and to shop.
Deuteronomy envisages and indeed champions this sort of religious practice and organisation. The writer aims to sweep away the local hill shrines where people had traditionally gone to slaughter their animals and then offer part of the best animal as a sacrifice to God.
When I was a minister in a small town in Lancashire the butcher would have rosettes hanging up in the shop taken from the 'best in show’ animals which he had bought. And we would help him eat them! That's sort of how it was at the hill shrines. But, for whatever reason, probably anxiety that the shrines would also be used for pagan rites, the writer wants to see one national centre of mission and, instead of the shrines, allows for the ritual slaughter of animals at local butchers’ shops or abattoirs in the towns.
The decision to centralise worship in Jerusalem was made in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. One unanswered question is whether it was inspired by an early version of Deuteronomy or whether an early version of Deuteronomy was inspired by the reforms. A previously unknown book of laws, showing how far the people of Judah had strayed from the true practice of their faith, was certainly discovered in the Temple during the reform campaign.
On the face of it, centralising worship in just one place seems like a backward step and not a true reform at all. Whereas sacrifice had been part of local community life, now it was something set apart which people could only join in on special occasions. But actually the writer is advocating a new way of practising religion, focused more on prayer and Bible study than on sacrifice. It was a bit like the new ways of being church that we are having to think about.
Some people have  tried to say that there was a humane aspect to the reform, reducing the unnecessary sacrifice of animals, but all the reform really did was separate sacrifices from the ritual slaughter of animals for food. The writer isn't a vegetarian or an animal rights’ campaigner.
What the writer does achieve, perhaps without intending to, is a weakening of the link between religious practice and animal sacrifice. Now personal devotion, rather than regular sacrifices offered at a local shrine, becomes the key to an individual's right relationship with God.
For Christians sacrifice does remain important, but only the once for all offering of Christ upon the Cross. The link with animal sacrifice is broken, to be replaced not just by personal devotion but by the celebration of the Eucharist.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a

Meeting Jesus on Zoom

‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ (John 20.19-31 ( https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA) This is my second reflection about today’s Gospel reading but I wanted to write something about meeting Jesus on Zoom. Zoom’s been very useful during the lockdown, but it’s also got a bad press. Various mischief makers have gatecrashed meetings on Zoom, either to eavesdrop or make inappropriate comments. That’s why worshippers needed permission to join our on-line service this week. If they managed to press all the right buttons, and entered all the right codes, they should've found themselves looking at a screen not unlike the cartoon picture below of the eleven apostles trying to meet on Zoom with the risen Jesus. Anyone who couldn't see the service on the screen would've been in good company. In the cartoon Jesus has done something wrong. Either he hasn’t enabled Zoom to t