(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Amen., originally shared on February 1, 2021. It was the eighty-sixth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Have you ever said “Amen.”? Do you know what
it means? Today we’re going to talk about that word, and how to say it with
gusto!
How do you say, “Amen!”? at worship? It may
have a lot to do with what worship means.
I grew up in a liturgical church. That is, a
church whose worship service is structured in the same way that the synagogue
services in which Jesus took part all his life were structured: Gathering,
Word, Sending.
Only Christians added one element: Meal. AKA,
Communion, Holy Communion, The Eucharist, The Sacrament of the Altar/Table, The
Great Thanksgiving, etc.
Structure is one of the strengths of a
liturgical worship service. You know what’s coming so you can fully worship. There
is a rhythm to the seasons of the Church Year (The Advent, Christmas, Epiphany,
Lent, Holy Week and Easter, the Easter Season, Pentecost, and the months that
follow, and a few odd ones thrown in here and there). The lectionary, or 3-year
cycle of proscribed readings, expose one to a lot of different passages from
the Bible, the feeding of the senses, the standing a sitting as full-bodied
expressions of worship, and so on.
Structure is also one of the weaknesses of a
liturgical worship service as well. You know what’s coming so you can put your
mind on autopilot, like driving on the freeway and suddenly realizing your 20
minutes from your most recent conscious thought, it assumes a fair degree of
literacy or at least the ability to hear and memorize, it requires some
training and time to understand, and you might be embarrassed to find yourself
to be the last person standing or sitting.
But, Lutheranism (my denomination of
Christianity) is something of a historical hybrid. I saw a meme a few months
ago that say, “If your Baptist friends think you are a Catholic, and your
Catholic friends think you are a Baptist, you might be a Lutheran!”
One thing we can all agree on, though, is that
we all say, “Amen.” We may say it differently in different places, but I think
that we are all united in a generally tepid understanding of what it means.
Martin Luther wrote his Small Catechism, a
little pamphlet, to help parents teach their children the basics of the
Christian faith, adults to learn the basics or brush up, and clergy to have a
central core from which to teach. He wrote a Large Catechism to provide more
material on each subject, like the 10 Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the
Apostles Creed, Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, and so on, but he read from the
Small Catechism, something he himself had written, every day.
You can buy them online in paper form. And
you can download a digital version for free. You’ll find them in Google Play or
your App Store. I’ll put a link in the comments section.
The format is simple. Each subject is broken
down into small parts, and each part is followed by questions and answers.
At the end of the Lord’s Prayer, for
example, he follows the Prayer’s conclusion, “For thine is the kingdom and the
power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.” With this explanation, “What is
This or What Does This Mean?”
That I should be
certain that such petitions are acceptable to and heard by our Father in heaven,
for God himself commanded us to pray like this and has promised to hear us.
“Amen, amen” means
“Yes, yes, it is going to come about just like this.”
“Amen.” is an affirmation, not a punctuation
mark. It’s a way of saying, “Yes! That’s true!”
The more exuberant forms of worship are
often filled with Amens and Hallelujahs, even in some liturgical worship
services, though I have to say, and I apologize if I am offending anybody, that
it loses its meaning when it is forced and particularly when white people do it
to look cool.. But, even though it seems more like an exclamation point than a
period, it can still be used as a new punctuation mark, particularly when they
become wrote, something you say but don’t really believe.
How do we know when something we hear is
worthy of a full throated, “Amen!”? Well it’s kind of like when a supreme court
justice was asked to define pornography. He said, “I can’t define it. But I
know it when I see it.” I think we are safe to say that it is appropriate with:
Anything in scripture properly understood,
certainly.
Anything that seems like an unexpected or
timely truth.
Anything that comes suddenly like an insight
or a conviction or an epiphany that is contrary to what we thought we had believed.
Anything at all that breaks through as an inspiration
of the Holy Spirit.
The concluding words of the last book of the
Bible contain this double affirmation of the eternal now: “The one who
testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come Lord
Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.” Revelation 22:20-21 The word “saints” in the Bible refers to the
faithful baptized, to you and to me.
Amen is an affirmation of truth. Do you
think that what you believe is true and that, by extension, other beliefs are
false? Do you believe that everybody else’s religious beliefs, as well as the
beliefs of those with no religious beliefs at all, are just as true as your
own? That is the hallmark of a good person today, isn’t it? The one to which we
are all pointed, that there is no absolute truth, just your truth and my truth
and, therefore tolerance. The chief value of our secular culture. Our Empire.
Is it possible to say “Amen” and not be counter cultural?
Why do you believe what you
believe? Do you remember the 1998 movie, The Big Lebowski, now
a cult favorite? It gave the world
the Jeff Bridges’ character Jeff “the Dude” Lebowski, who’s retort, “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like,
your opinion, man.” is
another way to recite the creed of our age.
The thing is that truth is truth. When I say
I believe something I mean that I say that it’s true. A zoom-out look at all
the people with truth claims may say that all truth is relative, but that’s a
clinical observation. A zoom-in look at all the people with truth claims says
that they believe they are right and everyone else is wrong, or they wouldn’t
have any beliefs. Further, “truth” for Christians is a person more than a
proposition. Jesus said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” Truth
comes from God, and can only come from God.
No beliefs can be sustained without a belief
in some absolute truths, that is that are true and true for everybody. Absolute
truth exists because God exists, that’s where it comes from. That’s what we
mean when we say Amen! It’s true.
As the president of the World Parliament of
Religions, a gathering of leaders of all the world religions every 10 years, I
think, said, “Our task is not to agree with one another. Our task is to figure
out how we can hold to rival truth claims without killing each other.” That’s a statement with integrity and a good
start for peace.
At the beginning of this year, at the first
session of Congress after the Christmas break, a congressman from Missouri
ended his opening prayer by saying. “Amen, and A-woman”. He was serious. You
can’t make this stuff up.
There’s an old joke that goes, Why do we say
Amen and not A-women? Because it is said at the end of a hymn not a her.
That’s the same abuse of language.
Are we so far from understanding what Amen
means that we now think it’s appropriate to use it to score cultural warrior
points?
We run into the same willful ignorance with
regard to the pandemic.
What’s going on
with the pandemic? There’s a vaccine, but it’s not available? There have been
over 40,000 COVID-19 deaths in California, or 1 death per 1,000 people. 1 death
per thousand. The curves of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are starting to
go down, but hospitals are still a way past their capacities. As our Governor
has said, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but we’re still in the
tunnel.
Yet there are people around still who say, “Yeah,
well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
The brand of Lutheran worship in which I
grew up is more reserved. These flashes of the Holy Spirit come more like a
flare in a dark room than a lightning bolt on an open plain. They are, though
brilliant, more internal than external.
I’m reminded of the Pentecostal man who
visited a Lutheran congregation and when the assurance of forgiveness was
proclaimed shouted, “Amen!” The congregation stirred uncomfortably.
When the gospel was announced the man
shouted, “Amen!” There were murmurs.
When the pastor said something exciting and
profound, the man stood up and shouted, “Amen!”.
An usher quietly approached him and said,
“Sir, would you mind keeping it down? You’re disturbing the other parishioners.”
“But, I’ve got the Holy Spirit!”, he said.
“Well, you didn’t get it here.”, the usher
replied.
A Pentecostal Christian comes to a Lutheran
church and wonders if they have the Holy Spirit. A Lutheran Christian comes to
a Pentecostal church and wonders if they’ve lost their minds.
It’s the same Holy Spirit, but with
different expressions, including the way we say “Amen”.
What matters is how we say it, not the
volume, but the meaning. Whether in liturgical or non-liturgical worship, our
participation and responses can just as easily become something we just do
rather than something we really mean.
What matters is our engagement in worship.
Our focus. Our reason for being there. Our heart. Yes. Yes, that’s true! Yes,
that’s God! Yes, it’s going to come about just like that! Yes!
This
is our worship, our affirmation of what God has done and is doing to give us
new life through a living relationship of faith with the one true living God.
At the end of his conversation with the
Samaritan women at the well, the same one in which “Jesus answered her, ‘If you
knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,’
you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”, Jesus
says to her in John 4 beginning t the 31st verse:
*John 4:21-24
Can I get an “Amen!”
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