May 05, 2015
Not Yet Ready
When I visited one liturgical
church I found it so fast paced and choreographed that I had no time to look up
the Scripture text in my Bible and follow along. There were no overhead projectors
displaying the passages of Scripture and I found it somewhat disconcerting to
listen to a sermon that lacked documentation, reference and foundation. However,
no one in the congregation carried a Bible and they seemed content to just listen
to the message as it was presented. The image of Paul addressing the
Corinthians came to mind, “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not
yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready” (1 Cor 3:2 NIV).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----I attended a Christian Church when I returned to Montrose after my Senior year of High School. I had been worshipping with Pentecostals for six months. Actually, the first experience I had with consistent church attendance was at this Pentecostal Church. It wasn’t just the mystique of “being newborn” in the Lord. I admit, that was part of it. But there was a sense of the Holy Spirit’s movement amongst everyone there, grandmas and grandpas, moms and dads, and kids.
-----It was the Winter and Spring of 1972 when there was a dawning upon the more honest of the brat hippie movement that all this talk about peace and love and stuff had to be more than talk for the self to be more than charlatan. So, some of the hippie movement was turning to the Lord. I may have been sucked in by the emotion of this trend. If I was, then good enough. And some of the feeling at this Pentecostal Church was that emotion of a trend. But more than that, the entire ambiance of what was happening in there was different than anything I had experienced before. It was like it was honestly wet.
-----”Liturgical” is a good word for what I found the dried up Christian Church to be after six months of dripping Pentecostal showers. The first week or two I thought about whether I should go find a Pentecostal Church to attend. But this wasn’t just a Christian Church. This was the church my dad attended. And there was something more right about being in church with my dad than being in a church I more felt. And I think it was that perception which opened my eyes one Sunday. For the first time I looked around and did not see a bunch of automatons mumbling recitations and singing all simpleton-like to chop-sticky piano plinking. I saw people making meaning for the Lord out of what they were doing in that church; they were being unto the Lord what they understood. I pondered how that meaning in their church’s air was as meaningful to them as the meaning I enjoyed in the Pentecostal Church was to me. I decided to search for what that meaning might be and try it. They liked it; I could, too.
-----I look forward to being whole. Being a quarter of a third of a half of an eighth has always left me with dicey feelings about what I should do and perceive regarding whatever’s going on in any particular situation, if I were even fortunate enough to understand what’s going on. And worse yet, it wasn’t until many more years before I realized all the people around me were no more whole in their being than I was in my tiny piece of what it was to be human. And I still feel frail and broken and insufficient in this tiny part I am.
-----But this is where God has raised up for me good out of ashes. We all who will be forever with the Lord will be forever whole then. But for now we are just pieces and parts. Therefore, our expressions to the Lord and impressions of Him make numerous different varieties of the vast assortment of parts of whole-human we are. Liturgy has a purpose. Drippy wet has another. So does everything between and around the two. As do plinky-plunky hymns and sing-song-n-moan-and-groan contemporaries. If ever a set of us reached the full potential of being the human He made humans to be, our worship service would be deep with all of the dimensions we now hold in great diversity, all sequestered into a thousand walled off little churches.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment