Wish You Were Here

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell?

Blue skies from grey?

Can you tell a green field From a cold steel rail?

A smile through a veil? Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?

Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

Did you exchange a walk on part in the war,

For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.

We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year.

Running over the same old ground:

What have we found?

The same old fears.

Wish you were here.

--‘Wish You Were Here,’ Roger Waters of Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd was one of my favorite bands B.C. I loved the guitar accompaniment to this song: an acoustic 12 string with a simple lead guitar solo. Nothing fancy, yet very pretty. The words always seemed a bit strange, but hey, this was Pink Floyd, and this was the sort of tuneage that they played on that ‘hippie drug-infested FM station’ back in the 70’s. If Mom hated it, that’s reason enough for me to like it. Some things never change. I later learned that this song was sort of a goodbye to a band member who left the group to explore new spiritual worlds via psycho-altering substances.

I’ve been reading several textbooks on preaching in preparation for classes next week, and I came across a phrase in Michael Quicke’s ‘360-Degree Preaching’ that knocked me out of the chair. ‘The church is an 8-track in a CD world,’ the author quotes. The book’s author is discussing how the institutionalized church has become rigid in the face of a fluid society, and now appears hopelessly old-fashioned and undesirable to a postmodern culture. ‘I am the Church, I change not!’ is its’ cry.

Another textbook opines that a preacher should be attuned to his listeners so that he will know when they are ‘satisfied’ and he can wrap it up. Use a lectionary, they urge. Edwards. Spurgeon. Wesley, Whitfield. Emulate them, I am told. Can’t go wrong with the classics.

Two classes, two opposing views.

I must confess that I am more closely aligned with modernity than with post-modernity, and the ‘model the ancients’ theory makes rational sense to me. But I’m not so stupid as to deny the fact that my church looks nothing like Jonathan Edwards’ congregations. Don’t think I’ll be whipping out ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ anytime soon. If a preacher provides no connection between his message and the lives of those who are sitting in front of him, what good is he? It is not adequate anymore to just provide ‘proof’ of God: the hearer wants to experience Him. The postmodern’s credo: no experience, no God.

Back to the first book. Quicke quotes Robert Nash as he says, ‘(the church) still swims in the fishbowl of modernity. Traditional churches advocate a carefully constructed and rational system of belief. Worship is well-ordered and devoid of spontaneity. The focus of the church is on force-feeding propositional truths about God to an American public that is crying out for an experience with God.’

Ouch.

He just described me and my manner of teaching. Gathering facts and truths and organizing them nicely and neatly, then disseminating them…..to listeners who have heard the same truths and facts for the entire 70 or 80 years they’ve been coming to church. Granted, I don’t get too many postmoderns in my classes. But shouldn’t we all desire an experience with God? I mean, hey, I’m not a preacher, I have spoken on a handful of occasions with mixed reviews, but doesn’t the same construct apply in teaching as in preaching?

This brings me to Pink Floyd’s ditty. ‘Two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year.’ A fishbowl is safe, but restrictive. Secure, but limiting. Predictable to the point of boredom. As I look at the song now, I think of someone who has become comfortable with complacency; whose life is devoid of growth. Maybe you can tell the difference between blue skies and grey skies, but what does it mean? What significance has a green field over that of a steel rail? Do you think you can tell? Am I so stuck in the Joe Friday ‘just-the-facts-maam’ routine that I am missing a movement beneath the surface? Or worse yet, one exploding above ground?

I know that those in my classes would benefit from the experiential God, even though they aren’t necessarily postmoderns. Sometimes I feel like I exchanged a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage when I agreed to lead this group. Don’t misunderstand me: I enjoy it. I like burrowing into the Word to extract nuggets we never knew were there. I relish sharing my discoveries with others, and they claim to enjoy it when I do. But I miss the experiential God who frequently visited the other group. How can I get Him to join us, too? I don’t want to go on the next umpteen years running over the same old ground and finding the same old fears.

So how do we invite God into a traditional evening study without driving people away? Suggestions are welcomed.

Wednesday evening, 7 pm. Holy Spirit, wish you were here.