Waiting For Fire

I have been in almost every type of Christian worship setting you can imagine. I grew up in large and small Pentecostal churches. The kinds with praise bands and loud organs and drums and preachers who weren't really preaching until they were shouting.  I spent many summer nights in revival services at my grandmother's South Georgia church. I've seen people dance, fall out, jump up and down, and shout in worship. (For the record, I have never seen a snake in a church.) I've seen people weep in church as they pour their broken hearts out to God. I've seen lives changed in church. I've seen healing take place in church. I've had moments where you just knew, with every fiber of your being, that something sacred was near. Something bigger than big and realer than real. Something from whom you cannot hide. 

(My Grandma, who taught us all how to pray)

I've also spent years and years in more "respectable" churches. I've read liturgies. I've recited creeds. I've stood. I've kneeled. I've broken bread, taken communion, and partaken of the Eucharist. I've celebrated infant baptisms and adult baptisms.  I've lit candles. I've walked the labyrinth.  I've gone round and round the church calendar and found comfort in its rhythms. White, red, green, purple, white,  green, purple, white, red....

(After this post, they may ask for my M.T.S. degree back)

I love when ancient worship is resurrected from our past. When I hear time tested words of faith come to life again, I feel anchored to the mysterious and timeless Body of Christ:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds,

God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten and not made; of the very same nature of the Father, by Whom all things came into being, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

                    -(from the Nicene Creed of 381)

What would it have been like to recite this creed in the fourth century? To stand in worship with those who knew that to publicly declare faith in the Nazarene could be their very own death sentence?  (I guess to answer that question, I need only travel to other parts of the world.) I believe there is a richness hidden in many long lost liturgies and hymns that are waiting to be rediscovered by new generations of church goers.

 I often wonder why God allowed me to become such an ecclesiastical hybrid. I sometimes get jealous of people who are comfortable with their church and its style and feel completely at home wherever they are. Because truthfully, I don't ever feel completely at home in any church. Not really.  I usually leave church feeling like something was missing. Too much of some things, not enough of other things.  If anyone has found a charismatic-liturgical-emergent-diverse-inclusive-justice oriented-church with a decidedly Wesleyan theology, then please point me in its direction.  

What I am coming to see is that we often worship our worship more than God's own self.  We take pride in it. We define ourselves by it. But really, true worship is an intangible thing that we cannot create on our own. Nor can we claim to "do it right."  Nothing we bring to it makes our worship better than someone else's worship. Not our style, not our liturgy, not our lack of liturgy, not our theology, not our politics, not even our diversity.  

Christians like to celebrate Pentecost Sunday as the birthday of the church. Some people may not realize that the church didn't begin at Easter.  Jesus died and then he wasn't dead and lots of people got to see this newly resurrected Jesus in the flesh. That's a pretty amazing story. Enough of a story for people to start talking. You would think something like that- a crucified carpenter/ rabbi who is no longer dead- would send people running far and wide just to tell what they had witnessed.  But that is not what happened. They didn't go anywhere. They didn't write any songs. They didn't preach any sermons. They did nothing except pray together.  (I think the Quakers have this part figured out.)

Then God moved in a big way. We all know the story- rushing wind, tongues of fire, people speaking different languages. In the old days, God's presence among God's people was called the Shekinah.  The Shekinah was the visible dwelling place of God's Spirit. It was wind and fire and unapproachable glory.  (For those who think God is always a "He"- Shekinah was a feminine word in the Hebrew language.)  When Moses saw the burning bush- Shekinah.  When Jacob wrestled all night with the stranger and walked away blessed but limping- Shekinah.  In the temple, only the priests could come near Her and only on the holiest of holy days. Until that unexpected Pentecost day, when a rag-tag group of Jesus followers decided to gather together and pray. They didn't know what they were waiting for. How could they? Maybe they thought Jesus would reappear. That's what I would have prayed for. He said he was coming back, right? How could they know that God would rush in? How could they anticipate the complete unraveling of every barrier they had ever known between the Holy One and themselves?  They couldn't because they didn't know what we know now.  They didn't know that the Holy Spirit had decided it was time.  It was time for the church to be born and it was time for true worship to begin.  It was time to redefine Shekinah. 

The church was born when those who were gathered together became dwelling places for the Spirit.   I don't understand it, but this is what I know- the church was birthed not in our worship but in spite of it.  True worship does not begin with us.  We don't plan it. We don't create it. We don't even get to define it. No matter how we like to sing, chant, recite, or pray- it is all meaningless if it does not make room for God's own self to breathe, speak, and move right in.  

Worship isn't about us or our ideas about God, and it certainly isn't an elaborate production created to please God. Worship is what brings us together and centers us around God. Every single time Christians gather together, we should be listening for the wind. We should be looking for the fire. We should be expecting the living, breathing, resurrected God to show up once again in a real and unimagined way.  Because that is what we believe, right? Don't we believe God is still working and acting to bring about good things here on earth and that God is present in all things, big and small? Then why shouldn't we also expect God to show up when we go to church?  Why have we stopped looking for the Shekinah?

That is where I want to worship- with people who come together like those confused and lost disciples came to the Upper Room, bringing nothing but their hurt, their fear, their brokenness, and their disappointment.   People who gather together for no other reason than to carry each other's burdens straight to the heart of God.  People who remember hope.  People who come to church every time expecting the unexpected.  And most importantly, people who are not afraid of wind and fire.