10:30 am, Sun, Jan 28, 2024 ~ FBCA

(Deut 18:15-20; Psalm 111; Mark 1:21-28) J G White

Today’s Psalm starts out - in whatever English translation you read or sing - blazing with the community at worship. Praise the LORD. I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation. (NRSV) We read Eugene Peterson’s translation, which is thought-for-thought, not word-for-word, and it strikes me funny, now. When it says: Wherever good people gather, and in the congregation. I like to think that we, a gathered congregation, are also good people.

Give thanks to God with everything you’ve got. Believe it or not, I think this is what our work is all about, at 10:30 on Sundays. Worship together is at the heart of things for us. It is my job, along with a few others here, to make this hour work for all who gather: help everyone bring everything you’ve got, give thanks with your whole heart.

I’ve been right into this for years; at least, fascinated by church services. Even as a young teenager I started saving every Sunday bulletin. (None were ever this big!) After about twenty years, I finally took my collection to the Baptist Archives at Acadia.

Hallelujah! I will give thanks to YHWH with my whole heart. As the first verse of Psalm 111 got my attention this past week, the CABF Bulletin came to us in the mail. This edition is all about Christian worship. The first little article I read credited the old Christian philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard with the teaching that our worship is for an Audience of One. For God. Apparently, Kierkegaard was alarmed at how services in 19th century Copenhagen had become productions of excellent music and fine speeches. Instead of a spiritual performance for the people in the pews, the whole congregation was to be the performers, guided by ministers and musicians, to offer the service, their service, to God, the Audience of One.

Allan Effa, who wrote this article, wisely acknowledges that we of the pew and pulpit are also the audience. Worship is a dialogue between us and our God.

‘Amen,’ I say. No wonder I am happy with services that have congregational singing, and unison reading together. Even standing or sitting together, and our monthly eating and drinking - all are ways to get everyone involved. In theory. Worship service is no spectator sport.

But we do allow for spectators. We should. At times, it may seem what we are trying to do is a rather extroverted thing. Get people involved, have you respond, speak loud and clear in unison, sing with enthusiasm, pray with intense silence, answer my questions in Children’s Time. I wonder what other ways to get you involved; what activities in worship would work?

But not everyone is keen to do all such things. Not everyone is a singer, for example, or would even dare attempt to open your mouth during a song. I know, I can see you - and not hear you. ;) Or read out loud. Or even pray the Lord’s Prayer aloud with any volume at all.

It is important to remember that to give thanks to God with everything you’ve got happens in many ways. Not everyone is brave and loud and demonstrative. Many people are quiet or cautious, uncertain or introverted. I have quite an introverted side to myself.

So I turned this week to a book on my shelf called Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture. There’s a lot of wisdom here. It is a good reminder that Jesus has called into fellowship people who are not going to stand out in the crowd, and who will not be energized by being with fifty others on a Sunday morning, and who have great wisdom that arises when they take time to ponder it all.

Was Jesus an extrovert? Could He have been an introvert, in His time upon earth? We watch Him perform an exorcism after He gives a teaching session at Synagogue in a town He visited. He was quickly becoming famous for His actions and teachings: He must have had a big personality! People were impressed.

Yet, as we will read next week, in Mark 1, after being flooded with very sick people who seek healing, Jesus takes off to a deserted place where even His disciples can’t find Him. Jesus goes away to pray, Mark tells us. We see Him do this, over and over.

Whatever we think Jesus’ personality type was then, or is now in Spirit, He includes fully people who are the quieter, behind the scenes folk, as well as the take-the-microphone and take-charge type of people. Remember, there is nothing wrong with not wanting to be on a committee, or not wanting to do some public speaking, or not ever singing, or needing to stay away from noisy crowds.

So I want our Sunday mornings to be an inspiring and safe place for all sorts of folks. And our fellowship meals, & our game playing mornings, & our study groups. Etc.

And we should celebrate and be proud to have leaders among us who are the ‘strong, silent types.’ We hear in Deuteronomy the promise, from Moses before he died, that there would be a new prophet like him to take his place. What was Moses like? He definitely had to get over his weaknesses when it came to public speaking. He also spent many intense moments alone in prayerful conversation with YHWH. This is what the stories tell us about him.

How our leaders and our followers give their hallelujahs to God are in so many ways and styles and flavours. I know you; I think you already know how to respect those around you, in their own expressions of faith in Christ. And you have known believers who inspired you and helped you, who were quite different from you. Yet they and you all have been beautiful servants of God.

Among the many people I have known in my life who are now dead, there are a few about whom I felt very disappointed that they departed. It was like this: I wanted them around longer, wanted to get to know them better, felt I missed out on some of their knowledge and wisdom and joy.

There were three or four from Windsor Baptist. One of them was Marj, my Church Clerk. She was more than that, of course, she served in lots of ways at the Church, and simply was always there. She was a formidable, funny, knowledgeable, friendly, unmarried woman, and rather quiet and unassuming in some ways. She was well versed in Canadian Baptist life, and was a keeper of the living history of the Windsor Baptist Church. It was just before she got cancer, in her seventies, and then had the audacity to die on me, that I felt I was truly getting to know her.

She was a person who often, in her pew on a Sunday morning, would get this look of rapt attention upon her face, with eyes closed, during a choir anthem, or the reading of scripture. She apologized and explained to me once that she was simply concentrating and taking it all in. “I’m not falling asleep,” Marj said. She wasn’t. She was a person who could be talkative, yet, you always wanted to hear what she had to say. I remember one time I happened to drive her home from some Church meeting or other, and as we chatted about the human sexuality issues that were a hot topic, she said, “I don’t think the same way about that as other people do.” I dropped her off, and wanted to talk more about that - and many other things - but she up and died on me first. I was not expecting that.

I inherited some books and things from her that told something about Marj. A framed group photo of the Baptist Federation of Canada meeting in Vancouver in 1953. Some scholarly books: A literary Guide to the Bible, The Book of J, The Lost Gospel Q.

I miss her. Marj, so definitely, gave thanks with everything she had, without being a show off, a loud talker, or the centre of attention. So it can be for so many of us.

Still waters run deep. Thanks be to God! hallelujah.