26 April 2010
What's a good reaction?
So, what is a good reaction to worship -- if we can speak in terms of "good" reactions? What does it mean when someone attended a service elsewhere and they say that it was "cool" or "awesome"? I heard those reactions to the highest of the high services and the most bizarre of the contemporary. What does it mean when one says that you had an excellent sermon [Hollywood can skip responding to this specific part due to the fact that he's probably never heard these words =o)]? What's a good reaction? Or is there one? Is there anything you look for in your folks to be a reaction to what they received in worship?
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9 comments:
Isn't worship itself the reaction?
The best is when a person walks out exclaiming:
WHAT a great God! What mercy! What love and compassion He has shown us!
I keep waiting...
In the Te Deum panel by artist Ed Riojas at Our Savior in Grand Rapids, one portion depicts a preacher with the hearers all having different reactions. Some are standing up boldly with a fist to their chest, some are weeping, some are face down and kneeling, some are prayerful, and one flat-out looks unaffected.
The point is that our reactions may be different. They're not what matters. The Word is what matters, and it accomplishes its work in us. The work isn't a feeling or attitude or emotional response, it's forgiveness life and salvation. Repentance, faith and holy living.
If the Word is Absolution, it may galvanize you to live faithfully, it may cause you to weep with joy, it may cause you to feel worse about yourself, or it may have no A-ffect at all. The E-ffect it has is justification, a new creation, true forgiveness, and all that God's creative Word bestows.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31530966&l=357d5e1ab2&id=11401592
P.S. - the *word* I was looking to use was "the Gospel." I sound like a fundamentalist in that post.
I think it is part of our fallen nature to look for the superficial. Hopefully, the Holy Spirit does bring to fruition the acknowledgement of the Gospel when the believer comes to listen to God's word in the service often. The believer becomes attuned to listen for the Gospel being preached.
Now a days, the best response is when a person comes back the next Sunday. Church attendance is not very good at the moment in all Christian denominations of the world. Just coming to church is to me a wonderful reaction. If they get more involved afterward, so much the better.
That's a tough one because for many of us it's hard, if not impossible, to articulate what exactly about the sermon was excellent. If I tell my pastor his sermon was excellent, it probably means I would never have seen all those deep meanings in the Gospel reading on my own, or seen the connection to Christ's Body and Blood or something like that, and now I'm strengthened to continue in the "love your neighbor" part of life. Or I was able to clearly hear Law and Gospel. Or that it felt like he knew what I was thinking this past week and was speaking directly at me.
The best reaction I ever got was when a woman walked out and said that the service was like a seamless garment, with every element woven together, to the glory of God..." At last I thought... somebody really got it...
For what it is worth, most every Sunday, my "reaction" is a mighty battle to stifle my desire to stand up in the pew and plead for everyone to sit back down so we can do it all again...
But, then again, I am rather greedy about having the Living Word poured out over me in such a feast.
I know it is an egregious generalization, but I really do find myself mired in puzzlement that confessional Lutherans in liturgical Divine Services very often do not seem to realize how GOOD they have it! When I think of all the services I had in Protestant Churches that had little Living Word spoken, music based on human actions (I will do this or that), sermons steeped in works-based righteousness, and what amounts to a snack bar on the rare occasions "communion" is served, I am filled with great sorrow...for what I missed all those years and for all those precious lambs of Christ who are still being starved each and every Sunday, though they know it not.
I would be lying if I said how much I long for the blessings of Divine Service had me in the pew each Sunday since first experiencing such. I often struggle with feeling unworthy to walk through the door, feeling the penultimate fraud or interloper.
Still, each time I do manage to find myself in the pew, I am never ready to leave when the final note sounds. I want more hymnody, more sung Liturgy, more Scripture readings, and more proper division of Law and Gospel.
Like I said...I am greedy.
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