No magic

  

I picked up a book at the library: The Pastor in a Secular Age, by Andrew Root. The subtitle is “Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God.” In our time, when so many people feel they don’t need God, and nothing is “holy,” what is the pastor’s job? Charles Taylor has written about the “immanent frame,” that pervades our culture. That is, we are losing any sense of the transcendent (what we used to call the “supernatural”). The world is no longer “enchanted.” There is no magic. It is what it is.

 

In the 11th century priests were frustrated that so many people refused to swallow the host (the bread at communion). They would sneak the body of Christ out of the church to feed it to their sick cows, believing that the holy bread had healing power. The church used to offer a kind of “magic” – supernatural things. But no more. For many, the Big Man in the Sky doesn’t exist. He is equated with Santa Claus—someone made up to enforce good behavior. So, what’s a pastor to do? Be a vested social worker?

 

Theologian Carl Braaten suggests that instead of saying “Jesus is God,” a better statement would be, “God is Jesus.”

 

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