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There was a big movement a couple of decades ago of ministers vacating those grand elevated pulpits such as we have here in order to preach from a lectern on the floor. Part of the reason for that is how it feels to preach from way up there. Hovering (maybe even sometimes havering) about up there, above the congregation makes us feel conspicuous, overbearing, and stuffy, not to mention cut off from the people. Whereas being down on the floor makes us feel like we’re one of you. It’s more personable and engaging. It even invites conversation. On the floor we feel more like a coach while up there we feel more like a pontificator, even though the Latin root of that word, with a bit of irony maybe, means “bridge-builder”. How do you build a bridge from way up there?
The rest of the reason for the move has to do with what the location of the pulpit says about God to the people in the pew, especially those visiting. The high pulpit can give the impression that God is above us, always watching, distant and unapproachable. No matter how much grace we preach, “the medium is the message”. It is hard to say God has befriended his people when the one conveying the message stays aloof. One can make the argument that the high pulpit is for reasons of visibility and acoustics. Maybe so originally, but couple a high pulpit with an obsequious, ashen looking, dower, pompous pontificator telling you that God is a voyeur to your every sin and indeed your every sinful thought. Woe and curses. It doesn’t work. Some people try to soften that impression by saying that God is watching from above making everything go hunky-dory for you. But what happens when things don’t go hunky-dory? Did God stop watching? Moreover, a distant God is just as easily kept at a distance and then, just as easily dismissed…as has happened in Western Christianity.
Preaching from a lectern on the floor at the level of the congregation on the other hand says that God is with us. Jesus did not make the promise, “I will be above you always, watching until the end of the age.” His promise was that he would be with us.
Just take a second and think about this. What if Jesus’ promise to us really was rather to be above us than to be with us? The effect of placing Jesus above us rather than with us is profoundly deadly to the church. If he is above, then he is not with us. He is not presently involved in the work of his church or present to us in our individual lives. He has simply left us, down here, to fend for ourselves trying to figure out what God wants from us. Trying to forge the way for the church in the 21st Century in the wake of the death of cultural Christianity simply becomes our task rather than our participation in what he is doing. It is like he has left us to our own efforts to save his church from oblivion. That’s just wrong.
If that’s what happens when the church thinks Jesus is above us, then what does it do to us as individuals? If Jesus is above me, distant from me, a complete non-participant in my life, then faithful living is just a matter of my own efforts, of doing what I think best hoping that God will bless it from above. If that is the case, then no wonder we conjure up some sort of magical power we call faith (If you just believe hard enough...), invent rituals which must be followed to the T for them to gain God's favour, and negotiate contracts with God (“I’ll do this for you God, if you do that for me.”). If Jesus is above us, we are simply left to our own. That’s scary. But praise be to God! Jesus is with us. He is not above us. He is with us. We are not alone nor abandoned to our own efforts.
Maybe the most significant change that needs to happen in the church today is a change in our thinking, in our way of understanding the very fabric of reality. Everything about the way we do church and practice our own personal faith in Christ, I believe, is based in an understanding of reality in which God is above us, in which Jesus is above us. Our perception of reality needs to effectively change to that of Jesus is with us. For our churches to make the switch from being the religious institution that undergirded our culture in these days when the culture doesn’t want us to be that anymore into being a church that is out in the world in a missionary kind of way in this land which is now a mission field, we must cease thinking of Jesus as being above and let Jesus retrain our thinking by letting us know he is with us.
I had this change of thinking and this is how it happened with me. I was raised as Christian. As a child, my family went to church on and off with irregularity. Going to church was something you knew you were supposed to do. It was the super-daddy of all New Year’s resolutions. It was a good habit to be into; one that would make the rest of life go better because God, who was way off somewhere up there, would bless you for it.
Well, on New Year’s Eve when I was almost twenty I threw a party and nobody showed up and that just seemed to be the culmination of a life that had been quite emotionally and relationally painful. Things got dark for me that night. I started to think that if this was the sum total of my life, then why is it worth living. I thought about ending it but in consideration of the pain it would cause my mother, I chose differently. I listened to a different tug going on inside me and figured Jesus could do a better job with me than I was. So, I decided my life was his. I called my best friend’s mom the next morning and asked if she was going to church. She said, “yes.” And I said, “I’ll see you there”. That’s when I made the decision to start going to church on my own.
I also started sensing that God was calling me to the ministry and so I made a bargain with him. I said, “God, I will go this route as long as I don’t have to go it alone. Bring me a wife…the sooner the better.” You just got to laugh at that. A year later I was in university and I had just got dumped by the girl I thought was “the one”. I knew I was called to the ministry, but it looked like I was going alone. The bargain I made with God ended through no apparent fault of my own but according to Jimmy Buffet it’s always one’s own damn fault. I sat there in my dorm room, all alone, having a pity party. It is hard to describe what happened next. All I can say is that it was like a door opened in my sense of reality and Jesus stepped in. From that moment on I have had the awareness that I am not alone. That he is with me. Jesus is always with me. I’ve nothing to fear. It was also during those days that I really began to realize that God loved me, that I was one of his beloved children. This change in my perception of reality changed the way I did things. Prayer for example, now when I pray, instead of praying to an old man who is seated on a throne somewhere above the expanse of this infinitely huge universe, I pray to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who are seated in the room with me.
I always feel like people look at me like I’m mentally ill when I tell these stories. And it’s odd because the only place I ever really tell them is at church among church people. As a minister, I get very little exposure to non-church people. Regardless, we church people, we really need to wake up to the reality that Jesus is with us. We shouldn’t think it odd if someone says “it just feels so good here. There’s a peacefulness here at church.” Or, “I was looking out the kitchen window with a world of worry on my mind and a sudden calm came over me.” We shouldn’t think it strange even if someone says, “I heard the voice of Jesus say.” That happens. We, the disciples of Jesus, should expect to have an awareness of Jesus being with us and celebrate it when it happens.
It would also be great if we as congregations gathered really had the awareness that Jesus is with us and that by the power of the Holy Spirit he is leading us. In order to figure his leading out, we need to do things like getting together outside of Sunday morning to study the Bible and pray together. He’ll make his presence felt. Jesus' presence with us isn’t something that only crazy people sense. It is something he has promised to his disciples. He is with us. Amen.
