Sweet!


If you’re like me, you love sweets.  One of the very first jokes I ever heard was about the guy who came home late from work, but handed his wife a box of chocolates.  “Sweets for the sweet,” he offered, and was promptly handed a bag of nuts. I thought it was funny anyway.  We usually reserve the word “sweets” for something we taste. But it also applies to other senses.  An early praise chorus, “I Love You, Lord” concluded with the phrase: “Take joy, my King, in what you hear. May it be a sweet, sweet sound to Your ear.”

Want to hear something else that’s sweet? Try digesting this from John 8:36: “If the Son sets you free, you are truly free.”  Pretty sweet, huh?  Becoming a child of God releases us from every chain and form of bondage we can imagine. That process begins with re-learning who we are.  A relationship with Christ frees us to pursue our true identity and to shed the need to be conformed to others around us.  This goes for our personal life and our life as part of His body, the Church.  We all know how strong the world’s collective voices can be in defining success and value for us.  And even in the local church, we can often fall victim to a cloning process which attempts to make all Christians think, talk and act alike. 

For starters, consider our corporate worship experiences. Formally or informally, every local congregation determines what is appropriate and valuable when they come together. Certainly, some non-negotiables come into play here, when we use clear passages of scripture to hedge certain speech, conduct, and practices.  We don’t, for instance, find much value in barking like dogs, crowd surfing, or bringing one of our favorite pets to be sacrificed.  But to be honest, scripture is fairly non-specific in laying out what is and is not to be allowed in corporate worship.  Even so, that does not deter many from trying to institutionalize behaviors which are really nothing more than cultural preferences, or worse, simply the will of the most powerful influences in the local church.  Unfortunately, these are often presented as biblical mandates demanding universal acceptance. 

We hear phrases like, “we don’t do (allow) that in our church,” or “that’s what they do in such and such a church.” As a child, I learned this lesson first hand when I observed a worship posture which felt “foreign” to me and not widely practiced in my conservative Lutheran church.  It was really rather simple, and certainly within the bounds of scripture.  A highly respected man (actually one of my godparents and the choir director of our church) returned from communion (we came forward back then) and simply knelt by his pew to offer a whispered prayer of thanks.  Had our church had “kneelers” in front of the pews as do many other more formal churches, it probably would not have even caught my notice.  Since we did not have such devices, you can correctly deduce that we were never on our knees—at least not on Sunday morning. 

And yet here was Mr. Reinschmidt, kneeling right on the floor…and praying.  By himself.  I waited for the floor to part and for him to be swallowed up.  Surprisingly, he is still alive today!  It never even occurred to me that maybe he was just responding to a move of the Holy Spirit in that moment.  And if that had been the case, he simply would have been one of many in a long line throughout history who have felt the freedom to express with their bodies what was going on in their souls.

Later at lunch that day, I asked my dad (the pastor) what that was all about.  I’ll never forget his answer.  He shook his head and said simply, “O, that’s what Catholics do.”  And his body language was anything but positive.  When I pressed him about what he meant by that, he said ‘Lutherans try to avoid showy, even pharisaical postures.’ (Had that conversation happened today, it probably would have included the condemnation of other expressions, such as hand-clapping, hand-raising, shouting, whistling, even, God-forbid, dancing!)  Wow! Without even realizing it, I had received a cultural explanation for why our church dismissed (even criticized) a very valid, scriptural act of worship. 

My question is this: “Who determines these boundaries or limits we place on the work of the Holy Spirit, especially when we usually begin our services in Jesus’ name and invite the Spirit to work among us?”  Paul says in Galatians 5 that [since] Christ has set you free, make sure that you stay free and don’t get tied up again to the law (man’s rules and rituals). Obviously, this is not merely an issue with the contemporary church.

Consider this gem from the earliest local congregation.  Acts 3:8 records that a man who was lame from birth and spent his days outside the temple begging, responded to his miraculous healing by “walking, leaping and praising God, and then “went into the temple with them”(the disciples who prayed over him).  Are we to conclude that the celebration stopped the moment he went inside?  Well, if this incident were to have happened in 21st century America, it probably would depend on which church he went into. Paul exhorts us, however, to resist the cloning process in our local churches, to not quench the Spirit’s work among us, and reminds us: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 
(2 Corinthians 3:17)

I find that most Christian churches are so far away from the “out of control” freedom of expression which they fear in public worship that it makes me suspicious the Deceiver is more at work in this than we think.  My suggestion:  let’s begin to encourage, even expect freedom of expression which can be orchestrated by the Holy Spirit in our public gatherings and see if we don’t experience more conversions, healings, power for daily living, and transformed churches. I bet the acts of worship that reach the heart of God are as diverse as His very creation. Now that’s sweet.  

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