Worship as Protest

Public service workers have been on strike in South Africa for some time now, and the opinions and recriminations are flying. There have been deaths in hospitals as a result of inadequate care due to nurses and doctors being on strike. There has been the usual hooliganism and the expected back-and-forth arguments between the ANC government and the union leaders. None of this is new information for most of my readers.

What fascinates me, though, is how we respond to this whole scenario. For those of us who are not employed in public service, the strike has become something of a spectator sport. We watch from the sidelines, pontificate about what should or should not be done, and watch as “they” work it out. And all the while we bemoan the way our lives are upset by the inconvenience of the strike. But, there are two crucial elements to this whole story that we easily and, perhaps, deliberately, forget.

The first is that there are real people’s lives at stake here. These workers make huge sacrifices in order to strike, but the cost is worth it in order to try and win a liveable wage with which to support their families in a tough world and a tough economy where the poor are often forgotten and left to care for themselves. While there is much that can be said about the wisdom, or lack of it, that drives some to acts of vandalism and violence, I believe that there are legitimate concerns and grievances that underlie the strike. Why is that CEOs get the salaries that they do, while those who keep our society running - nurses, teachers and garbage collectors - are so devalued? And behind each striking worker are children and families hoping for a slightly better standard of living, the gift of education or just a full tummy at the end of it all.

The second element we so easily forget is that we are culpable. Yes, we who think we only sit on the sidelines, are actually players in this game. The strikers are government workers paid for through our tax rands. They keep our world operating, and we enjoy it all, with barely a thought for what their quality of life is like. We are the ones who complain when the time comes to pay taxes, even though this is the only way these services can be provided. We are the ones who turn a blind eye to the widening gap between rich and poor in our country. We are the ones who allow this unjust system to continue - through our votes, through our apathy and through our daily self-indulgent and self-interested decisions.

And this is where worship becomes an act of protest in solidarity with all who are poor, exploited and ignored. We worship the Christ whose ministry was formulated around the Old Testament idea of Jubilee - land redistribution, economic restructuring and liberation for all every 50 years (See Leviticus 25:8-19). What this means is that every Sunday as we gather, we are immersed in God’s Jubilee dream, which is not so much a vision of bliss after we die, as it is of bringing God’s reign into this world while we live. As we sing and pray, God seeks to challenge us about how we spend our money, how we treat the “least” in our society, and how we hold our leaders accountable. And then, as we leave the sanctuary, we are called to live the Jubilee vision in the daily decisions we make: paying taxes willingly and even joyfully; treating our employees and public servants with respect and dignity; expressing gratitude for those who serve us, and fighting for a just and equitable deal for them.

If workers need to strike in order to make their struggles heard, we have not truly worshiped, for we are not living the Jubilee dream. May God forgive us, and change us.
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John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the author of the book Food for the Road – Life Lesson from the Lord’s Table. He holds a Master’s Degree in theology from UNISA, and is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is married to Debbie, and they have two sons.
Visit www.sacredise.com for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts.

Facing The Truth

So much has been said and written over the last few weeks about the media tribunal which the government is proposing in South Africa. The fear is that press freedom is being restricted, and that those in power are trying to avoid the usual scrutiny that journalists impose on their leaders. On the other hand, the powers-that-be are arguing that journalists get a free pass to say what they like, and that people who are criticised or exposed in the media have little or no recourse when what is written damages their lives. Fair enough - there’s a point to be made on both sides of this debate, and, of course, there’s the question of who should control such a tribunal should it come to be. These are questions that our politicians will wrestle with, and that all South Africans should have an opinion on - but they are not the reason for my writing of this article.

I believe there is a bigger question that is raised by this story, and it’s the question of how we deal with the truth, especially when it confronts us with things we would rather not acknowledge about ourselves. The reality is that we human beings don’t much like facing the truth about ourselves. We have elaborate avoidance techniques that we use to sustain our fantasies about our (considerable, we think) strengths and our (non-existent, we think) weaknesses. We have brilliant justifications for our foibles or failures, and, if things get really uncomfortable, we always have the back-up of blaming, scapegoating or attacking those who reveal what we would rather not see. Perhaps this is why the prophet Jeremiah wrote, “the human heart is the most deceitful of all things...” (Jeremiah 17:9)

Those in power, especially, tend to prefer to hide the truths that might call their leadership into question, and are often prepared to use extreme measures to silence their detractors. Herod, when confronted by John the Baptist’s accusations, simply had him arrested and ultimately beheaded (Matthew 14:1-12). The Pharisees, faced with Jesus’ truth-telling and his challenging words and actions, called on the power of Rome to help them get rid of him - and so he was crucified under Pilate’s watch (John 19:4-16). The same scene has been replayed again and again throughout history on both public and private stages.

In the face of all this truth avoidance, the Gospel challenges us to embrace a different way - the way of truth-telling, of acknowledging the truth about ourselves, and of seeking to bring the truth - however ugly or shameful it may be - into the light. Paul demonstrates this commitment to truth in Galatians 2:11-16 when he confronts Peter publicly for hypocrisy. John calls us all to live in this open and honest way when he writes that “if we claim we have no sin we are only fooling ourselves...But if we confess our sins to [God], [God] is faithful and just to forgive us...” (1 John 1:8,9).

It is because of this commitment to truth that we include acts of confession in our worship. We need to be faced with the truth about ourselves, and we need a community of loving people who will be brave enough to confront us. Without these things, we remain blind to our own destructiveness, and we are never able to become Christ-like. The act of confession in worship is a powerful discipline which, when done thoughtfully and thoroughly, brings us face to face with ourselves and opens the door to transformation.

Imagine what a world would be like where, instead of trying to avoid the truth about ourselves, we regularly faced the truth and allowed it to set us free? I could live in a world like that - and so far as I am able, I intend to try.
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John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the author of the book Food for the Road – Life Lesson from the Lord’s Table. He holds a Master’s Degree in theology from UNISA, and is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is married to Debbie, and they have two sons.
Visit www.sacredise.com for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts.

The Feminine Face of God

If the title of this article created some discomfort for you, you’re certainly not alone. As I wrote it, I found myself asking whether it was a wise choice. I even wondered whether I should write about a different subject. How strange that, in the month in which we celebrate women, I should be asking these questions of myself. How strange that I should hesitate to explore a clear and life-giving facet of the biblical revelation of God. And yet, when it comes to the language of our worship, few things create more controversy than gender. The Bible has no such qualms, and this month is a good time to allow the Scriptures to speak to us of how we can encounter God from a feminine perspective.

Biblical Images of God:
As we read the Old Testament we discover some deeply comforting and moving images as God is revealed to God’s people. According to George Arthur Buttrick, the general editor of the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, the Hebrew term for a woman’s uterus is used in the Scriptures to describe God’s compassion, as in Isaiah 49:15. In Proverbs, God’s wisdom is depicted as a person who was by God’s side participating in the act of creation (See Proverbs 8:22-31), and is referred to in the feminine – an example Jesus follows in Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:35. But, perhaps, one of the most beautiful feminine images of God comes from Isaiah 66:11-12, where God’s people are pictured as being comforted by God like an infant suckling at its mother’s breast. What a rich heritage of symbolism, metaphor and imagery we lose if we ignore the biblical invitation to learn of God through these feminine references.

Widening Our “Imagery-Palate”:
Flowing from this, though, come two significant considerations for our worship. The first is the invitation to allow these biblical images to speak to us. In our banners, our prayers and our liturgies, we can widen the “palate” from which we draw. Instead of always defaulting to the common masculine images, it can be deeply transforming to employ some of the Bible’s feminine pictures of God. This may require a little more creativity from us, but using our creative energies in worship should be routine rather than exceptional.

Widening Our Language:
The second consideration of these feminine ‘faces’ of God in the Scriptures, is in the language we use, particularly to describe the community of faith. In a country where women are under great threat from rape and domestic violence, including women intentionally in our language is both healing and prophetic. So, instead of speaking only about “brothers” or “brethren”, perhaps we can also speak of “sisters”. Instead of speaking only about “mankind” we can perhaps rather speak of “humanity”. Some of our hymns lend themselves to easily include women in their language, without violating the intent of the writers. One example is Hymn 809 in the old hymnbook. It is neither difficult, nor a change in meaning, to sing line two as “…shoud set his love upon the world’s children”.

However we may choose to honour the women in our lives this month, I pray that it will include allowing the Scriptures to take us deeper into the feminine ‘face’ of God as we worship.

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John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the author of the book Food for the Road – Life Lesson from the Lord’s Table. He holds a Master’s Degree in theology from UNISA, and is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is married to Debbie, and they have two sons.
Visit www.sacredise.com for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts.