Isaiah 1:12-17; Romans 12:1-2
Transforming, Holy Space
James Sledge May
12, 2019
The
other day I attended the annual spring luncheon of the Falls Church Community
Service Council at Knox Presbyterian. Some of you bring food for their food
pantry, and our congregation has long supported this and other programs at FCS.
This
year’s lunch celebrated their 50th anniversary. A representative from
Church World Services spoke briefly and reminded us of all that was happening
in 1969, the first moon landing, Woodstock, all the tumult and turmoil. “It was
a time when we thought we could change the world,” he said. But then he added,
“Not many of the people I work with feel that way these days. Many of them are
depressed.” He went on to make a more hopeful point, but I was still thinking
about that journey from expecting to change the world to despair.
Perhaps
it was simply a matter of hopes meeting reality. That speaker mentioned that
the number of refugees in the world is now larger than at any time since the
end of World War II, a rather sobering statistic. But along with being sobered
up by cold, hard facts, I wonder about the source of that confidence back in
1969.
I
was only twelve years old at the time, but I suspect that expectations of
changing the world were partly rooted in a belief in progress and the idea that
we humans could do anything we put our minds to. America had helped win World
War II, become the dominant super power, and put a man on the moon. On top of
that, the 60s saw huge gains by the Civil Rights movement, and a burgeoning
anti-war movement, Between unparalleled scientific advances and great social change,
it was easy to see endless possibilities.
I
wonder if Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King shared the same sort
of optimism. They had a different sense of the difficulties and costs involved.
My impression is that Dr. King’s optimism was not rooted in a belief in
progress or endless human capabilities. It was rooted in faith, in a certainty
that God’s will would ultimately prevail.
Perhaps
that is why Civil Rights rallies often looked a little like African American worship.
Such worship wasn’t so much about personal piety or salvation but about
salvation history, about the power of God at work to free the oppressed and set
right injustice.
The worship I sat through growing up in
the 60s and 70s was very different. Our white, middle class worship fit easily
into American civil religion that often saw the Civil Rights movement and, to a
greater degree, the anti-war movement as threats. Even in churches that were
sympathetic to these movements, faith and worship often served as a respite
from the tumult, largely disconnected from any hope or desire to change the
world.
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For
much of this spring, our worship has focused on the Renew process here at FCPC.
We’ve talked about our missional mandate: “Gathering those who fear they are
not enough, so we may experience grace, wholeness, and renewal as God’s
beloved,” and about the accompanying
strategies of “Gather, Deepen, Share.” More recently we’ve focused on the
specific ministry areas that will form our new structures. Today that area is
worship.
Focusing
on Renew has meant replacing the lectionary readings for each Sunday with
something more fitting, which is why I dug through the Bible to find verses on
worship. The ones we heard this morning are somewhat at odds with my childhood
worship experience.
Isaiah
and other Old Testament prophets chastised faith that engaged in the ritual of
worship without working to build the world that God desires. Jesus sounds a lot
like these prophets. He condemned those who call him “Lord, Lord,” without
enacting God’s will.
In similar fashion, the Apostle Paul
speaks of worship in terms of new, transformed lives offered up to God, lives formed
not by the ways of the world but by the will of God. For Paul, worship is not
something to do or go to. It is an integral part of a life-changing encounter
with the risen Christ, of the new life we discover when we are “in Christ.”
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Recently
I was reading a book on worship. It talked about how worship practices nurture
spiritual growth. But then it said, “Unfortunately, so many people resist the
holy power of worship because it threatens them at deeper levels. Worship is
threatening because it is potentially transforming…” and “many people don’t
want to be transformed.”
The
author says this resistance often gets expressed in complaints about worship
being too boring, too long, the participants being hypocrites, and so on. But
the real issue, he suggests “… is that too few people – whether they attend
worship or avoid it – truly want to be transformed.” He continues, “In
addition, a bigger problem looms: too few churches take seriously their call to
be transforming, holy spaces where God can be discovered and met.”[1]
Our
missional mandate that speaks of experiencing “grace, wholeness, and renewal as
God’s beloved” says that we take the call to provide “transforming, holy
spaces” very seriously. We want to be a
place where people are renewed and transformed, where faith is deepened, where
people experience being God’s beloved in ways that change their lives, and that’s
where changing the world starts.
But
that’s a pretty tall order. Are we really able to transform people’s lives?
Likely not, but that’s not what we’re called to do. We’re called to help one
another encounter the power of God that renews and transforms lives, to provide
“transforming, holy spaces” in worship and elsewhere that open us to the
Spirit, to the power of God at work in the world.
I’ve
seen that power of God at points in the Renew process. I’ve been on retreat
gatherings with the Session where the boundary between worship and work blurred
and things happened that I never expected to happen because the elders were
open to the Spirit.
What
if we were able to open ourselves to the Spirit in our midst every time we
gathered for worship? What might happen that we never imagined could happen? To
us as individuals, to us as a congregation?
Now to the God who by the power at work within us is
able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God
be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.
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