The Right Balance? (3): Ancient Yet Modern
- Rev Norman Cameron

I remember someone telling me some years ago that they worked for the BBC. I asked did they work in front or behind the cameras. They said no actually they worked on the bins for the Ballymena Borough Council!

BBC immediately makes us think of that famous broadcasting organisation but perhaps in future we will think of it as being not Ballymena Borough Council but as a Balanced Biblical Christian for this ought to be one of our aims in life.

We not only ought to be a balanced Christian individual but in this series we have been looking at how we can be a balanced church. We have looked so far at the balance of being individual yet corporate, and word centred yet world reaching.

Each of these expresses a difficult tension or balancing act. As we grow in maturity we ought to see their importance and make efforts to strive for this balance for the health of our churches, especially in the times in which we live when church life in the West is languishing and attendances are falling in most churches. We see this tension and challenge even more so in our third balance which we are looking at today – the church is meant to be ancient, having its roots firmly in the soil of 2000 years of church history, and yet we are meant to be relevant and up to date with the culture of today. Here is the challenge – to be faithful to the gospel of our forefathers while living in a culture which is different today even from fifty years ago never mind 2000 years ago.

Indeed the pace of change in our culture is going at such a rate that change is happening quicker than ever before. In 10 A.D., Roman Engineer Julius Sextus Frontinus said, "Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments”. He was of course wrong but his words were repeated by Mr Charles Duell, The Commissioner of the United States Patent Office in 1899: He said: "Everything that can be invented – has already been invented”. How wrong hr was too. More has happened technologically in the past ten years than in the previous forty years. The web, e-mail, wireless and digital technology is revolutionising how we communicate, do business, even take pictures. Genetic research, the human genome project, the advent of cloning, the use of micro-chips – these and more make us feel that the ground is always moving under our feet and the old certainties are no longer as certain as they once were.

Where does the church stand in all of this – a church which is viewed often as outmoded and outdated with little to say to these things or to our post modern world where even the idea of absolute truth has taken a battering. And yet I am convinced that the church is still relevant and can be up to date and speak relevantly and powerfully into lives today. But there is a balance we need to work at if we are to speak that ancient word in a relevant way; engaging with the culture we live in but not conformed to the culture in such a way that the distinctiveness of our message is blunted. This is the challenge.

I want to start by looking at what Jesus said in Luke 5:33-39 and to glean some principles from what he said and then seek to apply how we can be ancient and yet modern in three specific areas of our church life – in our worship, in our teaching and in our structures.

A. New and the Old according to Jesus

The Pharisees raised with Jesus the issue of the ancient, tried and trusted practice of fasting. Fasting was one of the things you did if you were serious about your faith. The Pharisees fasted twice a week – on Monday and Thursday. But they noticed that Jesus and his disciples did not fast – why was this? Jesus’ answer was that when people are celebrating, as for example at a wedding where the bridegroom and his friends are together, it was not appropriate to fast. He, Jesus, was the bridegroom, therefore his disciples were not to fast while he was with them – but there would come a time when they would, when he had left them.

It is probable that the Pharisees did not get his point or did not understand what Jesus was saying about himself. And so he goes on to make another point, again by implication it is about himself and the change that he was bringing. You do not take a patch from a new garment to patch an old garment. This would not be sensible for a number of reasons. The colour will be different; also in the wash the new bit might shrink and tear the stitches on the old cloth and into the bargain you have spoilt a new garment. You have neither helped the old or the new, you have spoilt both.

When it came to Jesus and the gospel that he brought it was so radical that it could not be integrated into the existing Jewish system as it was – it was too radical. The Jewish religion was built on law, sacrifice, priesthood and temple. Jesus was saying that all these were now going to be fulfilled in him. The law effectively was reduced to love God and love your neighbour as yourself, the temple was going to be demolished soon, the sacrificial system was now unnecessary for Jesus was the once for all sacrifice to take away sin and as for you priests, a lot of what you do is going to become obsolete – you will not be required as mediators any more. Now that is quite a blow to an elaborate system of religion that had been built up around all these things. You can see why Jesus said you cannot combine the old and the new because he was bringing a new covenant which involved a radical shift in thinking and practice.

He uses another illustration of wine and wineskins. If you try and put new wine which is still fermenting and expanding into the old brittle wineskins then it will crack the wineskin and you have again spoilt and lost both the wine and the wineskin. New wine needs fresh goatskin within which it can expand.

Jesus’ gospel was like a new cloth and like new wine. The old ways could not contain it or hold it. It grew out of the old, it had its roots in the old, but there are some very real and practical differences. So as a principle as we deal with this issue of old and new I think Jesus is saying look some things are the same and transcend time – the gospel of grace and the possibility of a relationship with God is actually back there in Genesis with Abraham, but some things change - the vehicle in which that grace was received and in which the relationship with God was expressed and worked through – law, tabernacle, temple, priesthood and sacrifice – the vehicle, the means of approach to God has changed radically. It is still the same God, the same gospel, the same relationship, but the means to God is now focused and condensed if you will into a person, a relationship with Jesus Christ who satisfied the Law, was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, and who now gives us his Holy Spirit who lives in us so that we are now the temple, God does not live in houses made by men (Acts 7:48). This was a lot for them to handle and take in – indeed they could not take it in and they ended up killing him.

How does this apply to us today? Well I think the principle that Jesus establishes is that there are core truths and there is a core gospel that transcends time. But the means of expressing those core truths about God can change over time. People change and culture changes and God is a dynamic God who is on the move and he can choose to work in different ways at different times and cultures. He is not locked into the language and customs of the middle east of 2000 years ago.

Some ancient things remain, the nature of God, the gospel that we are not saved by our own goodness but by the sovereign gift of God, the scriptures that have been given as an authoritative and sufficient guide for God’s people – these are ancient things that we hold on to, but the forms of expressing those ancient truths may change with time, indeed have to change with time if we are to effectively reach the world of today – we may need to use new wineskins from time to time.

The wine that Jesus brings always satisfies the hungering and thirsty soul but it may not be best presented in certain structures, it may need to be presented in a way which resonates with life today. Some may say we do not need the new wine, the old is better (v.39), but actually the old is not always better. Sometimes it is but sometimes it isn’t. Tradition can be good but traditionalism, which says something that is old is always better simply because it is old, is not better. Someone has put it this way - “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living”.

Sometimes it is good to search out the ancient ways because the new ways are simply fads, all style and no substance, shallows with no depth, more about man than God and they do not satisfy. It is all froth and bubble but no reality. Jeremiah urged the people of his day “Stand at the crossroads and look, ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your souls”. (Jer.6:16) Many today long for substance and a rootedness that is hard to find in our fast paced culture. The gospel gives us this.

But sometimes we need to change how we “do church”. Our wineskins need to be flexible and expand from time to time. Churches that refuse to adapt just die. There is a balance to holding on to essentials of our faith and yet being flexible enough to hear the voice of the Spirit saying I want to do a new thing in a new way encouraging us to change and allow the gospel wine to flow in a new direction and to bless new people.

Now principles are ok until we look at them in practice. And many of you may be nodding sagely inside but it is when we look at the practice things get a little scarier and more controversial. Let us look briefly at three areas:

1. Ancient & Modern in our Worship

I think it is very significant that Jesus gave little or no guidelines for conducting a worship service save saying in John 4 that it was important that we worshipped in spirit and in truth. Also we have only a couple of examples in Acts of the early church at worship and what they did as they gathered. I think that this is deliberate in the mind of God. Contrast this with the immense detail of how to bring sacrifices and offerings to God in the Old Testament. Surely God is not as concerned about style and form as we sometimes make him out to be. And yet style and form are not totally neutral things and depending on our culture and upbringing they can either help or hinder us in our goal of worshipping God in spirit and in truth.

Many churches have split apart over worship wars but I think that churches that work hard on this area and try to get the balance right for the generation which they are trying to reach will find the effort worthwhile. The blending of the best of the old and the new is not easy but is a worthy goal but it requires patience from both leaders and congregation. I think we achieve a good balance here but it is a struggle always to hold together so many diverse musical tastes and such a wide age range but it is worth striving for. Here we see that blending of the individual and the corporate that we have already talked about – sometimes our individual tastes need to be surrendered to the corporate good.

Good worship is a balancing act for we are living in changing days – and so as I am overall responsible for worship I do try and keep in balance style and substance, different age groups, liturgy and spontaneity, formal and informal, joyful yet being reverent, words and pictures. For today is a picture generation, an informal generation (the tie is fast disappearing from worship, the hat went long ago), an interactive generation. We need to keep this in mind. Pray for us as we do this, there are reasons for what we do.

2. Ancient & Modern in our Teaching

This is especially a challenge in the teaching of the word of God. Preaching is good and there will always be a place for the authoritative declaration of God’s word but increasingly in the past thirty years there has been an awakening to other forms of teaching, the small group, the one to one mentoring, the use of drama and creative arts, the use of story and questions, monologue and dialogue. Jesus used all these forms as well as straight preaching. He was ahead of his time, he transcends time.

Today’s post modern generation loves stories, loves interacting and asking questions. The older generation was more passive, the younger generation more questioning. Neither is better – it is just the way it is but as churches we need to respond to different styles of learning and of preaching. Some years ago the best preachers were the best shouters. Today’s generation is turned off by shouting. With the advent of TV people expect a more reasoned style of teaching which is less dogmatic. You are getting the same truth across but in a different way. As John Stott says in the Living Church preachers must have a balance of the authoritative and the tentative, the dogmatic and the agnostic. We are fallible human beings and we have not everything sown up – some things the Bible keeps us in the dark about.

The present generation in some ways is closer to an ancient generation which was more content to live with ambiguity, paradox and mystery. Many of us have grown up through modernism which sought to explain everything and nail everything down. The younger generation can live more with mystery.

3. Ancient & Modern in our Leadership and Structures

There is much we could say here but in the time available I can just say a few things. One of them is that I believe that our Presbyterian church like the other major denominations need to do some serious thinking here, and quickly. Our current strongly hierarchical, cumbersome, overly democratic, clerically controlled structures need to change for they are fast becoming outdated in our culture. If we continue for much longer as we are we are at risk of losing a younger generation of leaders, shapers and movers who God can use to reach a younger generation which thinks differently from many of us who are older.

We need a balance of old and young. We need the insights, the creativity and the imagination of the twenties and thirties who are leading businesses and who have great responsibility today in the market place. We need them to step up to the mark in the church and we need others who are older to mentor with their wisdom, and yet others to step aside and allow a new generation to reach a lost generation of people who need to see and hear the gospel in a way which resonates with their culture.

We are at an exciting stage of history. It has many challenges but also many opportunities and we need some new wineskins in our leadership structures. We need to adapt or we die, it is becoming as stark as that. It is a challenge for us as to how we can marry the old and the young and use the best of both. This I see as one of the biggest challenges that faces our church today.

But the final word is this. As I grow older I am more and more convinced that Jesus Christ is the one we follow and he is the best and most trustworthy guide to be followed through changing times and seasons. He is a person not a creed, a person who is living and moving and reaching succeeding generations all over the world. He is the Ancient of Days but he walks with us and talks with us today by His Spirit; he is the bread of life who is fresh every morning, he is the light of the world, the beginning and the end, the rock of ages and the king of glory. He is never out of date but always up to date and he will lead us into the best future.

When we have him in our hearts, in our heads and working through our hands we live a biblically balanced life. And that is after all what we are here for is it not? To God be the glory.