What
can a peanut butter and jelly sandwich teach us about the Trinity
and about authentic worship? Maybe just that the Christian life is
a life of balance and self-control perfectly blended into an active
and growing faith in God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!
My daughter, Aly, won’t eat peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches much in the summertime. I’ve noticed for
the last couple of years that she almost always turns them down during
the months of June, July, and August, which was a minor mystery to
me until I realized one day that she’d probably eaten about 270
of them from September to May! I’ve never heard her complain
about having PB&J sandwiches in her lunches for school, but she
seems to quietly boycott them through the summer months. Maybe she’s
doing it just to balance out her intake quota for the year. Maybe she
just knows intuitively that there’s only so much PB&J a kid
can take before the jelly turns every internal organ to pure grape-flavored
glucose and the peanut butter permanently sticks her tongue to the
roof of her mouth. Smart girl, that Aly. She’s already practicing
the disciplines of balance and self-control in her life, even if it’s
only by monitoring the number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
that a kid should eat in any given year. I should probably take a few
lessons from her and learn to practice more balance and self-control
in my life, too, and I ain’t talking about sandwiches!
Authentic worship in all of its forms is at its
best when practiced with balance and self-control, as well. A common
caution heard throughout our churches is that we must never “worship
the worship” no matter how good it gets and this amounts to a
call for balance and self-control, individually and corporately. We’ve
probably all heard of churches going so far as to split over worship
styles and worship expressions when someone or some element in their
worship has gotten out of balance and “gone off the deep end” so
to speak. It’s easy to do, really, to get out of balance on some
things, especially if there’s no clear doctrinal statement about
worship and its practices in your church. In my Worship4Life Weekends,
I always spend time encouraging the local pastors and worship leaders
to identify the particular beliefs and expressions from the Bible that
they adhere to in their church and to actually write out a unifying
theology of worship for everyone to read and to understand as the guiding
document for worship practices. Without stating out loud or writing
down what you believe as a church about worship you create a vacuum
that others will be happy to fill for you. When this happens, worship
wars begin and the balance and propriety of worship that Paul talked
about in 1 Corinthians 14 can be lost. Come to think of it, a PB&J
isn’t a bad analogy for the balance we seek in worship, or even
for understanding that the goal of worship in its fullness is to the
Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.
The Bread
The baking of bread is an ancient art. The ruins
of Pompeii reveal the highly developed bakeries that existed thousands
of years ago. One of the oldest professional guilds still in existence
in London today is called The Worshipful Company of Bakers which has
existed for over 800 years now. The original company of bakers who
formed this guild worshiped together and formed their guild from the
close relationship they shared in the church.1 Bread-baking goes back
even further in time, of course, as one of the first arts to develop
beyond man as cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers. Some sources even credit
the growing of grain as the beginning of civilization itself.2 But
regardless of where it all started, bread is a daily part of our lives
and quite useful in many ways.
Bread is mentioned in the Bible over 300 times
3 and was used by Jesus on several occasions as a metaphor or teaching
example. He taught His disciples to pray, “Give us this day our
daily bread” (Matthew 6:11) and He called Himself “the
Bread of life” (John 6:35). The resurrected Jesus appeared to
the disciples on a lonely stretch of beach in the early morning, granting
them a great haul of fish (they had caught none so far that morning)
and cooking for them a breakfast of fish and bread (John 21). Bread
itself is a unique concoction of flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast
and people have argued for centuries over whether white or wheat is
better.4 For our analogy of a PB&J, though, I see the bread as
being kind of like the Father – He’s holding everything
together! The peanut butter and jelly wouldn’t make much sense
without the bread, just like Christ lives in us by His Spirit to the
end that we worship the Father. The entire chapter of John 17 is a
beautiful picture of the communion between the Father, Son, and Spirit
where Jesus prayed for us “that they may be one as we are one” (v.
22).
The Peanut Butter& Jelly
Skipping for now the historic and scientific background of peanut
butter and jelly (I like grape, in particular), most of us recognize
that they go perfectly together on a PB&J. Whether you like
crunchy or smooth, grape or strawberry, this sandwich is a favorite
for kids and grownups alike. This sandwich was popular in WWII
rations for soldiers, actually, and the GI’s wanted to
continue eating them after the war ended. Some food makers even
put the peanut butter and jelly together in the same jar, but
I’ve never liked that idea – I prefer to spread them
on the bread myself, the jelly on one slice and the peanut butter
on the other – what a moment when they come together! If
you can make a huge theological and metaphorical leap with me
here, I kind of see this as a way to think about how God possesses
an amazing oneness in Himself as the Trinity of Father, Son,
and Spirit – when you envision them as the simple elements
of a PB&J, they work perfectly together! Of course, it isn’t
that simple, but hey – Jesus used some pretty simple things
like seeds and birds to convey deep spiritual truths to His followers,
too.
A.W. Tozer wrote in The Knowledge of the Holy, “The
Persons of the Godhead, being one, have one will. They work always
together, and never one smallest act is done by one without the instant
acquiescence of the other two. Every act of God is accomplished by
the Trinity in Unity.”4 It is difficult for us to imagine how
efficient this unity is in God as One in Three, Three in One. Tozer
goes on to stress the importance of faith when it comes to embracing
the Trinity as a biblical concept and doctrine. He warns of the danger
of assigning specific roles to the Father, Son, and Spirit, though
each, in fact, manifest or reveal themselves in specific ways at specific
times. The important thing to remember is that they work in complete
communion and community with each other, fulfilling perfectly God’s
unified plan and will for mankind, kind of like a PB&J – it’s
just terribly difficult to separate them once you’ve got them
stuck together!
In Conclusion
So, what does a PB&J teach us about authentic worship and the Trinity?
Probably nothing, really, but maybe the silliness of the analogy will
make some of us think a little deeper about them. Important thinkers
and writers like Brian McClaren have been calling for more songs and
artistic expressions of the Trinity in the last couple of years and
it seems as if God is beginning to emphasize His threeness in oneness
these days in articles, books, and songs. If we ignore the doctrine
of the Trinity in our songs, as worship leaders, I believe that we’re
doing our congregations a disservice. Some of the old hymn writers
knew the value of the doctrine and wrote songs like Come, Thou Almighty
King and Holy, Holy, Holy, but there is still not a large number of
hymns about the Trinity. The ones we have we should use and those who
can write must write more important hymns and choruses that help us
to embrace the unique ministries of Father, Son, and Spirit. Perhaps,
then, we will achieve a balance in our intake quota of great doctrine
in song just like Aly and her PB&J’s. Smart girl, that Aly!
Notes and Sources:
1 http://www.bakers.co.uk/about-begining.php4
2 Click here for source
3 Click here for source
4 Tozer, A.W. The Knowledge of the Holy. Harper-Collins: New York,
1992.
© Copyright
2007 by John Chisum. All Rights Reserved. For reprints or other
permissions contact Worship4Life with John Chisum at 251-414-5832.
|
