AC/DC's "Back in Black" To Start Worship?!?

Last Sunday I participated in a worship service t.hat ended up being quite an event.  The music mode at this particular service is driven by electric guitars, keyboard, percussion, and both male and female vocals.  We're in a message series on spiritual warfare, looking at the ways that theme surfaces in popular movies.  The focus movie for the day was the 2012 superhero film, "The Avengers."  Going out on a limb considerably, the musicians opened worship time with a hard driving instrumental version of AC/DC's "Back in Black."  (If you're not familiar with historic rock music, trust me - it isn't your daddy's worship prelude!). "Back in Black" is one of the music themes of "The Avengers."

The musician knew they could expect one of two reactions when they were done.  There would be the sound of crickets or the crowd would explode in cheers and applause.  They got the latter.  And from there on it was a service alive with spiritual power.  Many factors contributed to that, I'm sure.  Central among those factors is a Holy Spirit that moves with power.  The service was well planned with prayer and passion, as it always is.  The crowd as unusually large for a summer Sunday and I'm sure that contributed.   Many people were there for the first time.  The hospitality team went over and above to make the environment welcoming, as is their norm.  The musicians and vocalists brought their A-game, as they always do.  As the main speaker, I could have stood up and read names from the phone book and had very little effect on an event this spiritually powerful.

Yet I've been thinking all week about that first song.  What role did the hijacking of a secular rock number play in what happened on Sunday?   I wonder if it was just the right combination of disarming and different.  New people might have thought, "This isn't what I expected church would be like?"  Church veterans thought, "Wow, that's new!"  The playing field was kind of leveled where everyone felt the surprise and excitement together.   Unchurched people come from a world inundated by the same old same old, and a lot of it is negative.  Churched people get in ruts in worship, all styles of worship, and don't expect anything new or different.  Maybe the surprise of a hard-rockin' AC/DC tune sent just enough of a signal that maybe things could be new and different, maybe this is a God of surprises, and maybe there is hope out there.  I think the hunger for hope, real hope unites us all.  And I mean hope that goes way beyond the "American Dream," winning the lottery, getting to heaven and avoiding the other place, getting the next buzz, or whatever.  It's a hope that we really are loved by a real, life-changing God; that we have a place in something that matters eternally; that the worst life has to offer is not the final word.  Maybe that's what sparked in all of us when we were surprised by "Back in Black."

I think it's possible for worship services of all kinds to create expectancy; to cause people to ask each to ask each time, "What's God going to do this time?"  What do you think?  I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Take America Back?!?

One of our leaders at our church recently heard a church leader from a different church give a message on "taking America back."  In the wake of celebrating the 237th birthday of the United States of America, this particular pastor was decrying the present state of affairs in our land, at least as he saw it.  He longed for a return to days gone by, when prayer was allowed in schools, when neighborhoods were safe, when people believed in America and God, and when everyone went to church.  Specifically he wanted us to go back to the days of my childhood, in the 1950's and 1960's.

So I thought about those days, to which many preachers, politicians, and media voices hearken back.  I did grow up believing in our land.  My little heart stirred at words like, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." and "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  Specifically I was taught the value of Emma Lazarus' 1883 poem at the base of the statue of liberty, which ends with, "Give me your tired, your poor; your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me.  I lift my lamp beside the golden shore."  That still squeezes my heart and causes me to tear up.  I believed that these words embodied our nation.  This made us different than any other country on the face of the planet.

And, yes, my childhood was a good one.  I lived in a safe neighborhood.  (I grew up middle-class suburban white.)  Most everyone I knew went to church.  We all believed in America and God.  (Usually in that order.)   My church was a place of peace and comfort.  (To the best of my knowledge Jesus was someone sent to make me behave better.)  And all was well, right up until the new boy showed up in the primary Sunday School department.  Week after week he sat alone; no one made a move to sit near him or talk to him.  One Sunday a group of boys decided to make the newcomer the subject of their taunts.  No one stopped them; not the other students, the Sunday School leaders, or me.  I was taught to never use the n-word, but here it was - right in the house of God.  He was the youngest member of the first African-American family to have the courage to be in our church building, without being on the custodial staff.

And that was my first awareness that something was wrong; terribly wrong.  Tough news at age eleven...And this became the first mile marker in a journey that for several years would lead me away from my church, away from God, and away from my unexamined good feelings about my country.  As our church leader observed after the recent message he heard from another church's leadership, the "good old days" were not good for everyone, and included much that honored neither American values nor God.

For all the ideals that form our nation's bedrock, and we have great ones, we haven't fully actualized them always, and we're not quite there yet.  Many of the original signers of the document containing the worlds, "all men are created equal," were slave owners, knowing no other reality in their world.  As a nation, believing in the "yearning to breathe free," we slowly and systematically denied that to the native Americans who pre-dated us on this continent.  And even the revered phrase, "all men are created equal" presumes that women are little more than livestock.  Now, against all these cultural struggles, our nation has made great, heroic, and sacrificial strides toward protecting liberty both here and outside our borders.  We should be proud of that.  In addition, though, for this nation to continue to be a beacon of freedom, we have to be grounded in something beyond us, more important than us, and more powerful than us.

Many centuries ago, halfway around the globe, a man journeyed back to his hometown.  He was middle-aged, but the standard of lifespans then.  He went to a gathering of learning and worship for the men of his faith - Judaism; a gathering known as a synagogue.  As was the right of any Jewish male in good standing, he got up to read from the scriptures, and was given a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  He read these words:  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind. to release the oppressed..."  (Luke 4:18, New International Version of the Bible.  Sounds a lot like the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty to me.)  When he was done and sat back down he said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."  (Luke 4:20)  This is the truth with which this nation and any nation must wrestle:  Genuine freedom comes as a gift from God through the blood of the cross of Jesus, and by no other way.   Freedom is anchored in this - in that every human being who has ever/does/ever will draw breath is declared worthy of the life, death, and resurrection of God's own son.  This is a worthiness that is not earned or achieved, it is given by the unyielding nature of a God whose very identity is love purer than anything human know or create.  And any regarding or treatment of a person that veers from that anchoring is a denial of the freedom God demands for all.

I love this country.  I love that for which it has stood and for which it has bled.  It is because I love the USA that my allegiance to this God is higher than my allegiance to it.  When we say "one nation, under God," do we really mean it?  Do we realize the priority to which we have sworn?  In the area of the country in which I live, it is common to see church buildings with one flag pole outside them.  Virtually without exception, the flag of the land I love flies highest, with the Christian flag flying beneath it.  Most folks take this sight for granted.  It crawls all over me.  This nation's hope and opportunity to continue to be freedom's beacon on our golden shore is to reverse the positions of those flags and truly let Jesus come first.  He is the author of the only freedom that lasts.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.