Are you ruled by your heart
or your head? Are you known for your impulsive, devil-may-care attitude to
life, or do you weigh up every decision with the pros and cons on a spreadsheet
before you do anything? Do you love to be in a wild crowd, carried away by
emotion, or are you happier when you know pretty much what’s going to happen
next?
Of course, it’s not really an
either/or. It’s a spectrum, but we probably all have quite a good idea where we
are on it. And correct me if I’m wrong, but my guess is that quite a lot of us
in this congregation probably err more on the side of caution rather than
wildness. And that’s especially true, I think, when it comes to worship.
When I first came to this
church twelve years ago, I was told again and again that “we’re not a happy-clappy church”. Actually I think that is only
half right. I’ve discovered that there’s plenty of happiness around, and a warm
welcome – there’s nothing stiff or unfriendly about Seal. But I think I’d be
pushing my luck if I expected you to do too much in the way of clapping along
to the hymns. Please, by all means feel free to do so if you want to. Dance in
the aisles if that’s what you feel like doing…Raise your hands in worship if
you’d like to – I often do behind the altar! But I’d be a bit surprised if Seal suddenly
turned into a place where displays of unbridled emotion and ecstatic worship became
the norm. That sort of style has never quite made it into the DNA of Seal
Church.
So how would we feel if what
happened to Jesus’ first disciples on the Day of Pentecost happened to us? There
they were, gathered in an upper room, waiting, praying, but not really sure
what for. Jesus had told them them that God would send his Spirit on them to
help them in the mission he’d given them, that little task of taking the good
news of his love to the ends of the earth. At this point, they probably didn’t
even know how they’d take it to the end of the road, so how would they even
find the courage to begin?
But then, suddenly something
happens. They aren’t sure what, but it’s a pretty emotional experience. Luke is
obviously struggling to find images to describe it. It sounded like a
rushing wind, he says, but there was no wind. It looked like they were
on fire, but no one got burned. And somehow their stumbling Aramaic words communicated
to people from all corners of the known world, each in their own languages. They
can’t explain exactly what is happening. They can’t control what is happening.
All they know is that they have been suddenly swept off their feet. Their rationality
has been bypassed. They’ve been caught up in something bigger than themselves,
something that blows them out of their comfort zones, physically, emotionally
and spiritually.
It’s a dramatic story. And we
might enjoy hearing it. But how would we feel about experiencing
it for ourselves? Like I said earlier, it seems to me that we, at Seal Church,
generally prefer a rather more “measured” approach to worship, shall we say.
That’s not the case in some
other churches, of course. I spent much of my late teens and early twenties in
charismatic churches where ecstatic, exuberant worship was standard. Church
wasn’t church without some singing in tongues and people standing up to
prophesy and pray spontaneously. I’m glad to have had that experience;
sometimes it’s good to put aside our English reserve and I needed to at that
point in my life. But I quickly realised that emotionality isn’t the be-all and
end-all of being Spirit-filled or Spirit-led. I’ve also heard the voice of God
in a Book of Common Prayer Communion service with two or three people present, and
felt the touch of God’s hand in our ordinary Sunday morning worship. Often God
comes to us in the still, small voice, not the wind and the fire.
The tension between emotion
and reason in worship – the heart and the head - goes back to the earliest days
of the Church. Paul tells the Corinthian church that they shouldn’t all pray or
speak at once, no matter how excited they are. “God is
a God not of disorder, but of peace” he says (1 Cor 14. 31) But in his letter to the Romans he tells them
that when they haven’t got the words they need, “the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words”. The fact that they couldn’t, with their
rational minds, think of what to say, didn’t mean that they couldn’t pray. They needed to “let go and let God”.
In the third and fourth
Centuries, a Christian movement called Montanism caused huge controversy. The
Church was just beginning to be accepted as respectable by the Roman Empire,
but Montanist worship was often spontaneous, led by anyone who felt inspired,
including women. It was seen as rather scandalous, and eventually declared
heretical. I suspect that the problem wasn’t so much its theology as its
worship style.
In the Middle Ages emotionalism
in worship bubbled up again in movements like the Franciscans and many other
lay spiritual movements. Ordinary people, not monks or priests, felt inspired
to preach, teach and pray. They developed new forms of worship, like the
Christmas crib, which originated in this era, things that appealed to people’s
hearts. Often, though, these initiatives fell foul of the Church authorities.
They were suspicious of anything they couldn’t control.
In the eighteenth century it
was John and Charles Wesley who were in trouble because of their outdoor
preaching and their energetic, popular hymn tunes that anyone could pick up and
join in with. John Wesley dated the turning point in his faith as 24th
May at 8.45pm – it was as precise as that - when, during a prayer meeting he felt
his heart “strangely warmed”.
Suddenly the faith he had known in his head connected with his heart, and it
changed everything. But for the rather staid Church of England at the time, in
the midst of the rationalist Enlightenment, this was all too much to take. The downtrodden masses in the Industrial slums
or the impoverished countryside thought it was great, but the powers that be were,
at best, embarrassed and at worst afraid this emotional excitement was the
precursor to revolution. The Wesleys were accused of being “enthusiasts” - and not in a good way. “Enthusiast” literally
means someone with God - “Theos” -
inside them. Who did they think they were?
The same kind of tensions
have divided the church in modern times. Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians
sometimes look down on those who worship using set liturgical forms, calling
them the “frozen chosen” or “high and dry”. They describe themselves as
“Spirit-filled” as if those who worship differently aren’t. The more
traditional churches, though, write off their more emotional forms of worship
as – yes – “happy-clappy”, as if that’s
all there is to it. It’s hard to find the right balance. If our worship is all
head we dry up, it lacks reality, but if it’s all heart, all emotion, we risk
blowing up, disintegrating into a touchy feely mush. It’s hard to get it right. But I think that
even if we did, we’d be missing the point of today’s readings, missing the
point of Pentecost.
The symbols of fire and wind
that Luke used to describe the Spirit on that first Day or Pentecost weren’t
primarily symbols of excitement. Fire and wind, for ancient people, were about
movement and transformation. Wind filled the sails of their ships. There’s
evidence that it was used to power irrigation systems and other machines too. Fire
was an agent of transformation. If you had fire you could turn rock into metal,
sand into glass, mud into pottery, raw food into something delicious and
sustaining.
Likening the Spirit of God to
wind and fire was a way of saying that the Spirit caused real change in real
lives, real movement from somewhere to somewhere else. Jesus’ disciples – the word
literally means learners – were transformed into apostles, literally people who
are sent out.
Our worship, our faith,
should touch our hearts, but it’s not just about stirring up emotions. We may
describe our experience of worship as “moving”, whether it is ancient or
modern, but the question should always be “where has it moved us to?” A roller
coaster moves us- it throws us about and churns us up – but it then deposits us
right back where we started. Genuinely Spirit-filled
worship is worship that changes us, and it can’t be engineered by music, words,
or beautiful surroundings. In fact, it can’t be engineered at all. The Spirit
is God’s gift to us, God himself with us, far more than a passing moment of
excitement. The Spirit , as the Gospel says, guides us into truth, speaks to us
and through us, gives us the words we need when we have none of our own, and strength
beyond our strength and wisdom beyond our wisdom. We can’t make the Spirit come
to us by the way we organise worship. All we can do is know our need and open
ourselves to God’s gift, and then, according to God’s promise, he will show up,
whether that is in wind or fire, or in that still, small voice.
That’s what happened to those
first disciples on the Day of Pentecost, and whatever style of worship we like,
it can happen to us too. And we surely need the Spirit’s strength and wisdom;
in our personal lives, in our families and neighbourhoods, in our world. We
surely need it in a world where millions still go to bed hungry, where people
are still oppressed and marginalised, where people still need to hear good news
as much as they did in Jesus’ time. We
surely need God’s help, God’s Spirit, because we can’t do the work we’re called
to on our own.
So, however we worship,
however we encounter God, quietly or exuberantly, privately or for all to see,
let’s be open to God’s Spirit – in our heads and our hearts. Let’s be ready to
be changed, ready to hear good news, and be good news to those we are sent to, in
the power of the Spirit.
Amen
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