Hiding the Saviour - A New Openness Or A New Closet?

Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

At the church I attend, the name Jesus has been banned from Holy Communion (now just called communion) and from anointing (a healing sacrament we have at our church).

As a Christian, I believe that Communion represents my own involvement in the body of Christ. And as such, that I take part in God's work of making the world a better place.

Now, as an apparent act of generosity toward the non-Christian visitors to the church, the magnificent concept of Holy Communion had been transformed into a sharing of wafers.

We used to be anointed with oil on our foreheads in the sign of the cross to be healed and to be a healer. Now the cross has come to be considered offensive and repressive to some within the church and instead we are anointed in the sign of a rather insipid and generic circle. I understand that the decision to remove all crosses from the building was just narrowly avoided.

For a long time we have had members of other religious traditions in our congregation. I think this is wonderful. If someone was not Christian, they had merely to cross their arms across their chest to indicate that they were not Christian and therefore to get a more generic, God-centred blessing (instead of one centred on Christ).

But now we all get the generic blessings, unless we make a point of stopping the communion or anointing, protesting and pointedly requesting a Christian blessing. Not for us a simple signal like crossed arms. We have to make a small scene.

There are fewer and fewer references to Jesus in the sermons. And we are actually about to start a sermon series on a book which is a spin-off of Chicken Soup For The Soul. I do not mind being challenged - but pabulum is disappointing. In fairness, I haven't started the book yet, but of course I will tell you what I think about it when I do!

Am I wrong that this whole shove-Jesus-in-the-closet thing makes me angry? Why, in order to make guests with other religions comfortable, must Christianity be turned into a dirty little secret? I suppose I have the choice of finding another spiritual community, but I am not ready to do that just yet. I am hoping that there are others going through similar reactions who will support me in protesting this recent demotion of Jesus as the centre of a Christian church.

If nothing else however, this development has made me much more willing to affirm and defend my faith. I just hadn't expected to have to defend it at church.

Written on the wall behind the alter is the line "Let my house be a house of prayer for all people." Did Jesus know that the house might get so full that he'd be asked to stand outside? We don't want your kind 'round here!