Filed under: Essentials Red
Communion is one of those things that i think God will either be laughing or crying about (maybe both). We all seem to get caught up in our little human details!
what type of bread, juice or wine, transubsantiation or consubstantiation, before worship, after worship, during worship, serve yourself, serve your mate, be served, dip your bread, shot glass of juice, sip from a big old chalice…does the detail really matter?!?!
Call me crazy (but wait until i’ve finished) but how about this.
I believe that communion is a time of remembering what Jesus Christ did for us, of how he suffered for us and saw us as worthy to die for. I’m sure that’s what most people believe too at a basic level but shouldn’t we be constantly reminding ourselves of what he did for us? In a similar vein to how we should be living lives of worship, constantly worshipping. What if, instead of eating and drinking bread and wine as our scheduled time of remembering Christ’s broken body, “communion” was in fact a focus point of a life spent thinking of our Lord Jesus? Just as our sunday morning worship is a focus of a life spent in worship.
Now this may sound basic and obvious but truly, besides us “holier-than-thou” leaders in the church, i wonder how many of our congregations would follow this. I by no means am any where near living a life in constant focus on the cross and what it means, let alone living a life of worship in spirit and in truth. Thank you Lord for saving me!
In a light change of subject, haven’t we been gleaning!
I’ve been thinking a lot about gleaning from the past and how i can successfully do this. For me, a lot of the time i can’t figure out if what i would love to reproduce is the action, or the contextual understanding and sentiment attached to that action. Does that make sense? Every time i think of something i can glean from the past i have to remind myself that a modern congregation lives in a totally different world with a totally different understanding and way of learning.
Take Cathedrals for example, back in the day these pieces of architectural innovation were used as a way to worship God and declare his sovereignty. However, if you put, comparatively, the same amount of money and skill (you know we’re talking full backing from a monarch and work from modern geniuses, take a bow michelangelo et al) into building a new church building, i think the symbolism behind it would go right over this generations heads and into the part of their brain that thinks of all the poor that could have been fed with that money. maybe.
Just my thoughts on some things…eh
So today i did all that discussion question replying stuff, all formal and neat and polite….so i think i’m gonna just rant for a bit and let off some steam.
You know i just really felt like i needed to echo Matt’s discussion question reply and come out and say that i really love the vineyard, and i love how the vineyard “does church” and i love the heritage of worship in the vineyard. Call me a young, naive, skeptic but i think the church has been around for nearly 2000 years and in that time it has been constantly evolving and refining itself and for the most part we’re doing OK.
I loved this week’s question because it was all about creating a FRESH application of public prayer and scripture reading to our contemporary worship expression. Totally challenged me!
With out trying to be rude, I think we all know there is very good reason why we don’tdo the majority of the stuff a church service would do 300 years ago. In other words our facilitation of worship is totally different. Old school hymns, they just don’t cut it for me in a modern church service. I went to a private school and sang in the choir and yeah the music is beautiful (i mean if you know anything about music, it’s quite stunning) but i just don’t think it’s relevant or accessible to my generation. I can take an out of tune guitar and belt out a good vineyard standard and i’m worshipping. Furthermore, the documented shift in our worship music style over the last 20 is crazy! Go ahead and check out some of the old winds of worship stuff and your gonna be hearing cheesey-chorus lead guitar and slap bass, where as now we’ve evolved into our soft-rock-snow patrol -indie worship.
Yes, obviously we’re just moving with the times, but the fact of the matter is a lot of these old traditions aren’t any more and that’s why the youth of today is an alien in a cathedral.
After reading St. Patrick’s Breastplate in this weeks booksheet I was inspired to research more written prayer and was blown away by it; the language, the imagery, the humility, the fear, they are like modern psalms! and let’s face it the psalms are great because everythings there, speaking of lifting scripture and putting it into song how about……
psalm 13 (a personal favourite)
How long, Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise
for he has been good to me.
….i mean…wow……”Will you forget me for ever?”….
Remember all that nonsense of it being “bossy” and demanding to say “come Lord”, how about you try “Look on me and answer” on for size!
Finally i think I’ll spare a thought for scripture reading.
James 1v25 “but those who look intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continue in it–not forgetting what they have heard but doing it–they will be blessed in what they do.” Says it all really, does it really matter how and where and when and with whom we read the scriptures? or should we all just turn off american idol and do it?
Allllll right rant over
