Now and Then...

From The Letters of Paul: Conversations in Context...(probably not a book most of us have laying around on the coffee table):
In the secular West, we tend to view time as an ever-flowing stream that bears its sons and daughters away.  But in the [corporate worship] in Paul's day, time stood still...Time stopped and was even reversed as the celebrant repeated the acts of God or shared in the sacred deeds of an earlier day...Through the [worship] act, the worshiper participates in what is real for all time...[In worship] also an order is imposed.  The order is not just any order but the order deemed true, the only order that is fundamentally real.


Time standing still, perhaps reversing, might be new church advertising campaign.  Bet we could fill the pews with aging boomers.  But I really was thinking about the deeper concept as our Sunday worship was led by youth yesterday.

The young women who preached were not at all sure they could do that.  The passage from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians reflected that very issue...(v. 3, The Message) "I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate--I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it--and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else.  But the Message came through anyway.  God's Spirit and God's power did it, which made it clear that your life of faith is a response to God's power, not to some fancy mental or emotional footwork by me or anyone else."  (um...spooky?--let me tell you...God is trying to tell us something!)

So, as "preachers" for Sunday, they are challenged to go to the text on behalf of the congregation, listen to the Word of God, and proclaim what they have heard to the worshipers.  What they proclaimed was their own experience of God's love and grace--in their own lives and the lives of others.  No degree necessary, no "magic" words...just a sharing of the Message.  And God's power, in fact, "did it."

We sang, confessed, were assured of our forgiveness, listened to the Word, shared communion, lifted our voices in prayer, and left to serve others.  And we did that with millions of other worshipers yesterday, and even more before us...and even more yet to come.

Time stands still.  We stand with Abraham, Moses, Mary, the Samaritan woman.  We stand with parents, grandparents, and others who nurtured us in the faith.  We stand with children who we nurture.  We stand with those unavoidably absent, and those absent because they have not yet heard the message.  The message we speak brings into focus the reality that this is God's world.

We stand together in God's love when we cannot find common ground in any other place.  We stand together in the reality that we are called together in God's name.  We stand humbly in the reality that we are sinners called together, and we stand joyfully in the assurance that forgiveness is ours.  We stand ready to hear the claim of the Word on our lives.  We stand ready to be sent to do God's work in the world.

In the midst of all the mess that wants to claim us, economic worry, job stress, child challenges, conflict at home and beyond, death, illness...and, of course, we could go on.  In the midst of all of that, we are reminded of the reality that grounds our lives and our faith--two young women, representative of us all, speaking of their experience of God, re-calling us to the only order that is fundamentally real.

In worship, time stands still.  We become the past, present, and future in God's world.  We are reminded that God is the past, present and future in ours.