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November 1, 2009
I Corinthians 12:27-31
All Saints DayRev. Dr. Dave Davis
“Sunday Morning Music”
Two Sundays ago I attended worship at the Uniting Reform Church in Clitusville, South Africa just outside the university town of Stellenbosch. Jaco Coetzee has been the pastor there for 25 years or so. The church is one of our hunger offering recipients. We partner with that congregation in the hot meal program that runs twice daily out of the church’s kitchen. The church has a couple of thousand members and two weeks ago every seat was full, chairs in the aisles, young people on window sills, folks pressing in around the doors. It was Confirmation Sunday.
51 young people were confirmed. 8 or 10 were baptized. Each of the 51 was called forward to receive a certificate and to have a particular biblical text read to them. The confirmands offered a song of praise and a word of thanks to their advisors. At one point I was invited to join the prayer circle along with the consistory (the elders). We surrounded all 51 kids and joined hands while one lay person prayed. The entire service was in the language of Afrikans but I picked up that the sermon was based on Ephesians 5:18b… “be filled with the Spirit as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts.” Worship lasted three hours.
Later in the day around the dinner table in Jaco’s home with his family, he light-heartedly apologized for the length of the service. “But I wanted you to see it because confirmation is special in our community.” He told me he would be going to many parties that evening. I commented about how sharp all the kids looked, most dressed in white and teased him about how they all wanted a picture just with him. “Did you notice the labels on the suit coats?” he asked. I had and I thought it was a kind of youthful fashion statement. “Most of the families rent the outfits for the morning.” Jaco explained. “You wouldn’t believe the poverty. You would never know it on Confirmation Sunday! That’s how important it is around here.?
We talked about it some more, confirmation, I mean. I shared Nassau’s practice and celebration. Another guest at the table described how in a local Dutch Reformed Church, the emphasis had become much more on the individual and the rightness of faith and examination on doctrine. The large numbers of kids coming through had shifted to folks coming before the congregation in groups of twos and threes, when they were ready, with increasing numbers never coming through, never being ready. The conversation turned toward the challenge of adolescence and faith development and the meaning of confirmation.
After a while, Jaco offered something of a conclusion on the matter. “I guess in this community confirmation comes with more a sense of urgency.” He referenced poverty* (squatter camps) and HIV/AIDS* and poor education* and the larger challenges facing the nation of South Africa*. “There’s an urgency for the church in South Africa.” Then he paused and offered a sigh that comes with 25 years of ministry in the same congregation. “When you joined the consistory in that prayer circle around all 51 kids, from where I sat I could look into every face as the prayer went on. And my prayer was that each of those young people would know deep, deep within, that they are part of the Body of Christ, right now.”
Now. Now you are the Body of Christ, Paul writes. And I confess to you I never paid much attention to the Apostle’s “now”. If we are honest in reading I Corinthians, Paul tosses them around a bit, especially in transition. He tosses around the word “now”. “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement” (chap 1). “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote” (chap 7). “Now concerning food sacrificed to idols” (chap 8) “Now these things occurred as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (chap 10) “Now concerning spiritual gifts”(chap12) “Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters of the good news that I proclaimed to you” (chap 15) “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead” (chap 15) “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (12:27). It easy to let the “now” of Paul’s Corinthian theology roll off the ear, a kind of toss of word, a rather empty transition. You know. Like. So. Totally. Seriously. Awesome. Uh. Umh. Now. Now. Now. Now.
I hear my mother’s voice and the word “now.” When I fell and scraped a knee, or woke up with a bad dream, or I was just having a bad day; “Oh, David, now, now, now.” But when I delayed in taking out the trash, or cleaning my room, or feeding the dog. Or folding the laundry; “I said, now, David!” Now. Now. Now.
Now you are the Body of Christ. I Corinthians 12:27. Tucked in there between Paul’s familiar teaching on the body and all the parts being essential and then that chapter 13 on love being patient and kind. It’s too easy to assume that it’s just another transition, another conjunction, another toss away. Paul on the workings of the body. Paul on the greatest gift of love. And in between this comment “now, you are the body of Christ.” But what if the “now” packed a bit more of whallup? A bit more emphasis? A bit more umph! Not just a transition, but an exhortation, “NOW, you are the body of Christ.” What if not just a transition, or an exhortation, but a reference to time. “NOW, you are the body of Christ”? The grammar of the text may say “conjunction” but what if the theology of the argument dripped with urgency? Now.
On my I-Pod I have a playlist of gospel music; mostly African American gospel music. One of the songs is a medley of old gospel songs sung by Georgia Mass Choir. Songs like “this Little Light of Mine”, “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah”, “I’m Going Home on the Morning Train”, “Highway to Heaven”. It is a recording of a live performance and as the medley begins, the choir leader tells the congregation that sometimes you just need to hear some Sunday morning music. And he shouts out, can somebody say “Sunday Morning”? And everyone yells back “Sunday Morning”! Sometimes you just need to hear some Sunday morning music!
You get what he means by “Sunday morning music”? Songs that are deeply ingrained. Songs you have been singing since you were knee high. Songs that you know by heart, that are in your bones, that you sing in your head when you are in the shower, or driving to work, or sitting in a waiting room at the hospital. Songs you sing in prayer when no other words come. Sunday morning music. Sunday after Sunday. When joy flows out of you like a gushing spring, or when tears fill your eyes. When your song is more like a shout of Hallelujah or when your song comes through clinched teeth as you and God are about to have a heart to heart. It is the kind of songs that are always there, even when you can’t sing yourself, because come Sunday morning, when you find yourself here among the people of God, we’re going to sing it for you.
Sunday morning music. It’s more than this song or that. It’s more than your top ten list or mine. It’s more than a favorite hymn or two. It is far beyond a question of style when it comes to worship music. No, I take the term Sunday morning music to be a rather loaded one. I take it to be packed with meaning. An image that goes far beyond the music itself. When I think of Sunday morning music, I think it refers to all that happens when the people of God gather on the Lord’s Day to offer praise and worship to the Living God in the name of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Savior. When the children of God gather in the power of and as a gift of the Holy Spirit. When the saints of God know themselves to be called here by God to gather around the Table, and to splash around the baptismal fount, and to experience the eventfulness and the unending relevance of God’s Word.
All that happens here when you gather on the Lord’s Day. It’s in your bones. It comes from the heart. It’s who we are. Knowing, discovering, becoming who we are and claiming the One to whom we belong, Sunday after Sunday. All that goes on here. It is the very work of God. God at work in us, that we might be the Body of Christ now and here! Sunday by Sunday. That’s the Sunday morning music. Or as we claim in our Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition…..the church formed and reformed each and every Sunday through Word and Sacrament…..Now, you are the Body of Christ..is how Paul puts it. It is not a descriptive wish of how things ought to be. It is not a prescriptive prayer of things to come. It is an urgent assertion of who we are!
The Table is set for a meal, a holiday meal, really. All Saints’ Day. Nov 1st. There’s a certain restful anticipation to the Lord’s Supper when you ponder being surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, all those who have gone before, who have kept the feast, run the race, fought the fight, sliding your chair up, elbow to elbow with the communion of saints. All Saints’ Day, when we come to the Table sharing a meal with the Church Triumphant; looking with hope to that Great Getting up Morning, when the Roll is Called Up Yonder, when we will all be together in Glory. There is a certain restful anticipation that comes at the Table on All Saints’ Day.
But we can’t forget, there is this urgent plea that comes when you feast on the promise of God. … “in the power of your Holy Spirit, may this bread and cup be for us the Body and Blood of Christ, that we might be the Body of Christ for the world.” NOW! Trying to care for one another, to pray for one another, to sing for one another. Striving to embrace strangers and entertain angels unawares, always running to welcome a prodigal home. Wanting to teach another generation about the love of Jesus and wanting to tell anyone within earshot about the endless mercy of God and wanting to figure out again and again how the life of the mind and the life of the spirit come together by God’s grace. Trying. Striving. Wanting. All of it, not because we’re particularly good at it, but because we are the Body of Christ. Now.
Feasting together on the bread of life here and together praying and together giving and together working to see that all of God’s children are fed. Sunday by Sunday, yearning for the eyes to see that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female” for all are one in Christ Jesus. Standing up in the light of Christ, each and every Lord’s Day, knowing that no principality or power or empire shall ever separate us from the love of God, and the radical inclusion of Christ himself, the turning the world upside down wisdom of his cross. Walking knee deep into the baptismal waters of God’s grace, believing that one day the kingdom will come where swords are pounded into plowshares and we will neither hurt nor destroy in all of God’s holy mountain, and lions and lambs will lie down together. Wading into God’s grace and leaning hard on the promise of God’s justice and God’s mercy; all of it with a palpable sense of urgency because we are the Body of Christ.
Sunday by Sunday, dipping, and sipping, and splashing, and praying, and hearing, and singing what it means to be the Body of Christ in here, so that we can be the Body of Christ out there. NOW.
Now you are the Body of Christ. It’s Sunday morning music.
© 2009, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission