Where’s the Chorus?
Stories
Contents
“Where’s the Chorus?” by C. David McKirachan
“An Inclusive Gospel” by C. David McKirachan
Where’s the Chorus?
by C. David McKirachan
Mark 6:14-29
I write. So does anybody who puts worship together. A lot of times we use ‘resources,’ like this one. But we’ve got to cut and paste and put the insights and information into some sort of context, we’ve got to weave this and that into the Word for our situation and our people. That’s writing.
I also write books. Two published. Now I’m working on the higher art form, the novel. Whew. In the midst of a recent go at the keyboard, it suddenly dawned on me that I was using a classic form, I mean classic, like ancient Greek. Back then, when you went to the theatre there were actors and a chorus. The actors acted, fleshed out the roles, gave them personality and life. The chorus set the environment, spoke of what was happening, laid the ground work, hung the scenery with words, “It was a dark and stormy night.” That’s them.
I realized I’d set up a reoccurring meeting in this novel that was serving the role of chorus. It explained the order of the world, the metaphysics, the context in which these characters were duking it out. Did I have a classical education or what? My father would be proud.
We’re all storytellers. We’re weaving the tapestry that our folks use as default programing. We’re creating a context that lifts the details of their lives into an order that allows them to say, “Oh…” We remind them of the tides and the rhythms of life, of their mistakes and their glory and their hope. We contextualize their agony. And we warn them of their infatuations and seductive addictions.
But where’s the chorus? Are we the chorus? Or are we the actors? I know, I’ve run that one till it dropped. Apples and oranges.
But in our preaching, our presentations every Sunday, who’s setting the boundaries, the contexts within which we present? The Bible can be bent any way we want to bend it. It’s used every day to justify the very sin it condemns.
A member of one of my congregations asked me once, ‘What is the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this church?’ Such questions are the bane of any pastor and the seeds of God’s growth within the body of Christ.
I don’t know about you, but pastoral ministry for me was an all-consuming journey into a swamp of tangled expectations, impossible choices, analytical nightmares, agonizing confrontations, unavoidable disappointments, successes crushed by criticism, a constant diet of demeaning comments, frailty, boredom, and silliness lifted to a fine art. (With the ever present possibility of an alligator to tear me apart, life and limb.) And just when I was convinced that it wasn’t worth it, there would be a moment of glory that transformed the time and unveiled the presence of God. And let the chorus say, “See, we told you so.”
This passage is contextual. It’s part history, part soap opera, part tragedy, part forewarning of what is to come. It’s the chorus. It isn’t fun, but it’s real.
If I’m going to set the context and be an actor, I’m a lonely dude, trying to hold it all together while I move it along. No. We need an over story. We need a larger context to depend on. And that my friends is our Reformed faith, founded in our confessions and in the traditions and theology of our community of faith. We need to have courage to witness to that, so our monologues are not only about daily struggles, but about the warfare that God is waging with us as warriors of the light. We need to teach it honestly -- sin and glory. We need to celebrate it courageously, standing with the poor and the outcast. We need to let the cloud of witness thunder and be the lightening that shows that the light has shined in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit that can be lifted up in all our churches and in our pulpits.
And let the people say, Amen!
There’s the Chorus!
* * *
An Inclusive Gospel
by C. David McKirachan
Ephesians 1:3-14
The argument against an inclusive church has been going on since Paul had arguments with Peter over pork chops at pot luck dinners. Jews and Greeks, blacks and whites, women and men, we’ve been fighting about putting up walls to defend the holy ground since the beginning. The battle over gays and straights is just another iteration of the same battle.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
Robert Frost heaves into mind like roots under our steadfastly maintained constructs. He’s not sure, he never is, but there’s a feeling underneath all the carefully maintained conventions that there’s something there that makes him itch.
Paul never has a hard time being sure. He probably wouldn’t do too well in a china shop. It’s obvious to him, clear as a running stream through which he can see the pebbles washed clean on the bottom. He sees the “…plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Christ…” There’s no rumination in his consideration. There’s no middle ground to be considered. God set it up, laid it out, put Christ in the world as the proof and the pudding. What is there to debate or fight about?
But we do, don’t we? I think it starts back with letting God be God. We are very uncomfortable with something telling us that our boundaries and walls and piles of whatever it is we hold precious are made of the same dust that we are. And God isn’t.
That’s hard. So we sharpen our swords and our spears, we load our guns and wave our flags, we put up our barbed wire and lock our doors, we count our money and clip our coupons, and we teach our children that some are better than others and we intend to keep them in the holes where they belong.
I wonder sometimes what God thinks of all our dances and games. Paul knew. He knew with the conviction of one who’d put people in jail, sent them to die. He knew with the sureness of a studied and well defended world view that proved he was superior and correct in his attitudes and judgements. He’d seen the cross as an appropriate strategy for keeping order. He’d approved and consented.
And then he’d come to know the one on the cross. The one who was the proof in the pudding that God was in the process of tearing down all the walls, healing the breaches, redeeming the idiots, like Saul of Tarsus. It must have torn his heart out to face himself. To face all the pain and ugliness he’d sponsored. Maybe that’s why his name changed. He was never the same.
None of us wants to face ourselves. We’re too busy defending our walls. But God keeps at it. And in the midst of the best laid plans we get inklings, messages in a language that doesn’t match our neat and tidy prose. Poetry, music, compassion, and hope have a way of eroding all that reinforced concrete. They bring tears and giggles at the worst, most inappropriate moments.
Of course they do. The plan is set and in spite of our useless arrogance it is working its purpose out as year succeeds to year.
Have confidence as you preach. It is nothing less that the truth. Let them fight and fume. The proof is there on that cross and here among us.
“And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song
And hearts are brave again and arms are strong
Allellujah!”
*****************************************
StoryShare, July 15, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Where’s the Chorus?” by C. David McKirachan
“An Inclusive Gospel” by C. David McKirachan
Where’s the Chorus?
by C. David McKirachan
Mark 6:14-29
I write. So does anybody who puts worship together. A lot of times we use ‘resources,’ like this one. But we’ve got to cut and paste and put the insights and information into some sort of context, we’ve got to weave this and that into the Word for our situation and our people. That’s writing.
I also write books. Two published. Now I’m working on the higher art form, the novel. Whew. In the midst of a recent go at the keyboard, it suddenly dawned on me that I was using a classic form, I mean classic, like ancient Greek. Back then, when you went to the theatre there were actors and a chorus. The actors acted, fleshed out the roles, gave them personality and life. The chorus set the environment, spoke of what was happening, laid the ground work, hung the scenery with words, “It was a dark and stormy night.” That’s them.
I realized I’d set up a reoccurring meeting in this novel that was serving the role of chorus. It explained the order of the world, the metaphysics, the context in which these characters were duking it out. Did I have a classical education or what? My father would be proud.
We’re all storytellers. We’re weaving the tapestry that our folks use as default programing. We’re creating a context that lifts the details of their lives into an order that allows them to say, “Oh…” We remind them of the tides and the rhythms of life, of their mistakes and their glory and their hope. We contextualize their agony. And we warn them of their infatuations and seductive addictions.
But where’s the chorus? Are we the chorus? Or are we the actors? I know, I’ve run that one till it dropped. Apples and oranges.
But in our preaching, our presentations every Sunday, who’s setting the boundaries, the contexts within which we present? The Bible can be bent any way we want to bend it. It’s used every day to justify the very sin it condemns.
A member of one of my congregations asked me once, ‘What is the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this church?’ Such questions are the bane of any pastor and the seeds of God’s growth within the body of Christ.
I don’t know about you, but pastoral ministry for me was an all-consuming journey into a swamp of tangled expectations, impossible choices, analytical nightmares, agonizing confrontations, unavoidable disappointments, successes crushed by criticism, a constant diet of demeaning comments, frailty, boredom, and silliness lifted to a fine art. (With the ever present possibility of an alligator to tear me apart, life and limb.) And just when I was convinced that it wasn’t worth it, there would be a moment of glory that transformed the time and unveiled the presence of God. And let the chorus say, “See, we told you so.”
This passage is contextual. It’s part history, part soap opera, part tragedy, part forewarning of what is to come. It’s the chorus. It isn’t fun, but it’s real.
If I’m going to set the context and be an actor, I’m a lonely dude, trying to hold it all together while I move it along. No. We need an over story. We need a larger context to depend on. And that my friends is our Reformed faith, founded in our confessions and in the traditions and theology of our community of faith. We need to have courage to witness to that, so our monologues are not only about daily struggles, but about the warfare that God is waging with us as warriors of the light. We need to teach it honestly -- sin and glory. We need to celebrate it courageously, standing with the poor and the outcast. We need to let the cloud of witness thunder and be the lightening that shows that the light has shined in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit that can be lifted up in all our churches and in our pulpits.
And let the people say, Amen!
There’s the Chorus!
* * *
An Inclusive Gospel
by C. David McKirachan
Ephesians 1:3-14
The argument against an inclusive church has been going on since Paul had arguments with Peter over pork chops at pot luck dinners. Jews and Greeks, blacks and whites, women and men, we’ve been fighting about putting up walls to defend the holy ground since the beginning. The battle over gays and straights is just another iteration of the same battle.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
Robert Frost heaves into mind like roots under our steadfastly maintained constructs. He’s not sure, he never is, but there’s a feeling underneath all the carefully maintained conventions that there’s something there that makes him itch.
Paul never has a hard time being sure. He probably wouldn’t do too well in a china shop. It’s obvious to him, clear as a running stream through which he can see the pebbles washed clean on the bottom. He sees the “…plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Christ…” There’s no rumination in his consideration. There’s no middle ground to be considered. God set it up, laid it out, put Christ in the world as the proof and the pudding. What is there to debate or fight about?
But we do, don’t we? I think it starts back with letting God be God. We are very uncomfortable with something telling us that our boundaries and walls and piles of whatever it is we hold precious are made of the same dust that we are. And God isn’t.
That’s hard. So we sharpen our swords and our spears, we load our guns and wave our flags, we put up our barbed wire and lock our doors, we count our money and clip our coupons, and we teach our children that some are better than others and we intend to keep them in the holes where they belong.
I wonder sometimes what God thinks of all our dances and games. Paul knew. He knew with the conviction of one who’d put people in jail, sent them to die. He knew with the sureness of a studied and well defended world view that proved he was superior and correct in his attitudes and judgements. He’d seen the cross as an appropriate strategy for keeping order. He’d approved and consented.
And then he’d come to know the one on the cross. The one who was the proof in the pudding that God was in the process of tearing down all the walls, healing the breaches, redeeming the idiots, like Saul of Tarsus. It must have torn his heart out to face himself. To face all the pain and ugliness he’d sponsored. Maybe that’s why his name changed. He was never the same.
None of us wants to face ourselves. We’re too busy defending our walls. But God keeps at it. And in the midst of the best laid plans we get inklings, messages in a language that doesn’t match our neat and tidy prose. Poetry, music, compassion, and hope have a way of eroding all that reinforced concrete. They bring tears and giggles at the worst, most inappropriate moments.
Of course they do. The plan is set and in spite of our useless arrogance it is working its purpose out as year succeeds to year.
Have confidence as you preach. It is nothing less that the truth. Let them fight and fume. The proof is there on that cross and here among us.
“And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song
And hearts are brave again and arms are strong
Allellujah!”
*****************************************
StoryShare, July 15, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
