Let’s pray. Speak, O Lord, for your servants are listening. We admit we are sometimes hard of hearing, sometimes slow to act, sometimes hard of heart, but we are listening. So speak clearly. Speak to our heads, speak to our hearts. And may we receive the Word with great joy. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of 1 John, not the Gospel of John, which is where we’ve been for several months, but taking just a brief hiatus from the Gospel of John and focusing this week and next in particular in this Advent season. We’ll be reading this morning from 1 John, chapter 1, verses 1 through 4. 1 John, chapter 1.
I’ve thought before that if you were to bring a group of, a group of strangers into the church, men and women with absolutely no church background or experience, maybe that’s someone in here this morning, domeone who doesn’t know anything about Christianity, never been to church, never seen one, never heard of one, they’re just coming in here from some other planet, some other country, maybe next door. And they’ve never seen any of this. I think one of the surprising things about being in a service like this would be how much the service is focused on words, words.
Have you ever had the opportunity to maybe sit in the back and watch as a different kind of religious service took place? Maybe in a different kind of tradition within the branch of Christianity that has very different services, or maybe a different religion altogether?
Many years ago I went on sort of a cultural immersion weekend with some folks just to try to understand. We went to New York City and we were trying to understand the Hindu and Sikh community there and meet with some elders and hear about them and just kind of we learn, and then maybe we get to share a little bit about what we believe. And so went to some services, we were able to just sit, and what struck me was how little they had to do with words. There would be young men, priests of some kind, performing rituals. There would be other people watching as the rituals were performed, perhaps they would be genuflecting or they would be some sort of motion, but they were literally going through the motions with things on an altar or incense or circling around or perhaps one man just quietly sort of mumbling to himself, some sort of prayers or in some traditions they spin prayer wheels that are said to be activating the prayers of ancestors. I was struck by how little the service had to do with words.
Now if you’ve been in this church or churches like it, it just becomes commonplace. But if you were to take someone who had no understanding of Christianity or of what Reformed Presbyterian churches are like, they might come and say “wow, this is really focused on words.” We look around and you have some very pretty decorations, but there’s no statues, there’s no pictures. You know, the guy up front doesn’t, he just kind of wears a suit and then he gets up and he stands in a box and he talks for a long time. They would notice the main thing is the sermon, which is different than saying the focus is on the preacher, but it’s on the sermon. And then they would notice that we have words up on the screen constantly, songs, and then there’s prayers, and then there’s readings, and then we respond with words, and then we say together those words from the Nicene Creed. And except when we celebrate the sacraments and there is water, but words explaining it, or we come to the table and there’s bread and there’s juice, but again words to explain it, the services are so focused on words that the main things is not a ritual, it’s not a picture, it’s not a performance, you’ll be glad to know I don’t dance. The main thing is proclamation.
So what are we proclaiming? Why this insistence on proclamation? Who are we proclaiming?
