It’s Sunday Again: Sabbathing

[Readers who check in regularly at this blog have noted that I have taken a break from regularly blogging during the first half of January.  I plan to resume more regular blogging and postings in the next week.]

Today will be more restful to me than most Sundays–thus the title of this posting. A guest teacher and speaker this morning will free me from my normal teaching and preaching routines, and Jan and I will be able to sit together and worship together for most of the assembly. I seldom use my Sunday morning blog to write about the Sunday evening sermon, but today’s schedule gives me that opportunity.

How do you think? Asked another way: What is the key signature of your faith? Is yours an indigenous, personalized thinking that issues forth into real living for Jesus? Faith suggests thinking about God and about self. Ultimately faith finds us thinking about the cross, and about the Christ, as the single event in history that integrates history and integrates our lives. Jurgen Moltmann said it aptly, “Theologia crucis is not a single chapter in theology, but is the key-signature for all Christian theology (thinking).”

Let me explain a little about the metaphor of musical key signatures.

I was/am a clarinetist–B flat clarinet. Instruments have different key signatures.

Music is written in different key signatures. In the band, symphony or orchestrra, one must make sure all of the instruments are in tune.

The music is written so that all the instruments, with different key signatures, are playing in the same key.

I can play the music of the B-flat baritone saxophone with my B-flat clarinet and it will be in tune with the rest of the group.

I cannot play the music of my sister’s C-flute with my B-flat clarinet and it sound right with the rest of the musical group.

If someone plays a musical piece solo in another key, it will still be the same song, but it will not be quite right.

To the untrained ear, when someone is playing solo in the wrong key, the difference will probably not be noticed. It sounds about the same.I am challenging us to an investigation of the key signature in which we are singing the song of our life. What key are you living in? Are you in the major key of C–Christ, for cross, for church, for community, for commitment, for Christ-likeness, for Christianity.
Equally important is the question, “Where do you get your key signature?” What philosophers, value system, goals, Bible verses….Christian living suggests that we are using the same key signature that Christ used–we are his disciples, followers, imitators. We have the same values and goals. We think the same way; thus we act the same way. If we read Scripture through the eyes of culture, we may miss the real point. How do you think?