Witnesses

“Why is it, do you think that people get married?”

In the movie, “Shall We Dance”, this question is asked by a relieved Beverly (Susan Sarandon) when a private investigator reports that her husband is not cheating on her, but rather is taking dancing lessons. After rejecting the investigator’s theory that passion draws people together, she answers her own question, “Because we need a witness to our lives.”

I believe this to be true. We all long to know and be known, to love and be loved. We long for significant others who will journey through life with us, and remind us of the joys and achievements, the learning and the loving, the suffering and the beauty. We need those who will remind us of who we really are, and continue to call our best selves out into the world. Marriage, at its best, gives us this. So, too, does the Church. As we share our lives with other people of faith, we commit to be witnesses for one another, and to hold one another accountable to Christ’s call. Being Church leads us all to be better, more Christ-like people. And this Church includes both those who are alive with us now, and those who have died and entered the life beyond the grave.

In the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter Eleven, the writer speaks of the great heroes and heroines of the faith, and the example they set for us who seek to follow Christ now. Then, Chapter Twelve starts with these words: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” (Hebrews 12:1 NLT). Earlier this year I wrote about our ancestors in faith and how they teach us to live according to eternal values. But, these ancestors are also witnesses to our lives, according to Paul. They watch us, perhaps even pray for us, and they call our best lives out into the world.

One such witness, for me, was my dear friend, Barry Marshall, who died a year ago this week, in a tragic paddling accident. When he was alive, Barry and I had worshipped, debated, laughed and played together in a variety of situations, and he had always challenged me to be honest and true to myself, and to live my faith in ways that bring life to the excluded and poor of the world. Through this year, I have often thought of Barry, and felt his challenge once again. I have been both sad and joyful in these moments which have been more than just memories, but real experiences of his life and ‘spirit’ which abides with me still. Barry was, and continues to be, a witness to my life - and one which challenges me to reach for my most Christ-like self.

Thank God that we are not required to walk this road of life alone. Thank God for the gift of witnesses who share this glorious, painful, awesome journey with 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.

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.

The Gift of Lament

Last week I wrote about the little deaths we all endure, and how important it is that we face them head on, trusting in the resurrection which is sure to come. The problem with this is that we sometimes take faith to mean that we shouldn’t grieve, express doubts or acknowledge our pain. We seem to think that the truly faithful rise above these dark emotions and go through suffering with a blissful smile. I’m not sure where we got this picture from, but it wasn’t from the Scriptures.

In the Bible we discover a lot of grief and suffering, and often it is the most faithful, devoted people - the prophets and apostles - who face the worst of life. We might expect them to handle this calmly and gracefully, but instead what we find is a liberating honesty. These men and women of faith had no problem expressing their raw anger at God, their complaints and questions, their doubts and fears.

Take Jeremiah as an example. When faced with persecution for his message, he tries to keep silent, but finds that he can’t do it - which means that all he can expect is more persecution. He feels angry that he wasn’t told that it would be like this, and so he complains to God in Jeremiah 20:7-9, essentially calling God a liar! But God doesn’t strike him with lightning. Rather, Jeremiah’s faith remains strong, and he goes on to have one of the longest and most difficult ministries of any prophet.

Lament is a healing practice. Here the realities of our lives and the realities of our faith come together, and this always leads to a renewed faith. There are four basic parts to any true lament. First, a complaint is laid against God, expressing the details of the suffering being experienced. Second, God’s promises and previous gracious acts are remembered and offered to God as both the basis for the complaint (because God doesn’t appear to be doing what God promised) and the basis for hope that God will intervene. Third, a request is spoken for God to act on behalf of the suffering one and bring healing, liberation and comfort. Finally, a commitment is made to continue to trust, to hope and to praise God, no matter what the outcome may be.

It is unfortunate that worship has all too often been seen as nothing other than celebration. Joy and inspiration are emphasised and any signs of grief, doubt, pain or fear are to be hidden or left outside. The result of this is that worshippers are forced into a double-life in which their real feelings and experiences are either ignored or concealed. We get good at pretending that we are “blessed” on Sundays, and we cling to our faith with white-knuckles, hoping our grief won’t overwhelm and betray us - which it inevitably does.

Perhaps both we and our churches would be healthier if we just learned to lament more - to express our grief, to make our complaints against God, and to commit to faith even in the dark times. We all face both the little deaths and the big ones, and to try and deal with grief without the gift of lament is to rob ourselves of both healing and comfort. But, if we trust God enough to be honest about our pain, we will find the comfort we seek, and the light of hope will continue to shine in our hearts.

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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 Little Deaths

Here in South Africa winter is in full swing. We are just approaching the coldest part of our year (which, granted, is not nearly as cold as other parts of the globe), and the world around us is dormant. Trees are bare, and the whole countryside is tinged with brown. The world as I know it has entered a little death.

In ages past winter was a frightening time of year. Resources were scarce, food was hard to come by, and illness frequently led to real death. The ‘little death’ of winter was a time when life was under threat, and it took every bit of faith to believe that the world would come alive again. But, come alive it did - as it always does. Although I am fortunate enough to live in a time when the fears of winter are small and insignificant, and although I enjoy the winter months in Africa, I still long for the outbreak of new life - the resurrection - that awaits the Spring. The world is in a little death, but the resurrection is not far off.

This cycle of death and resurrection is built into the universe, and it is a gracious, God-given reminder of a fundamental principle of our living. Jesus put it this way: “People who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives will save them.” (Luke 17:33). It’s always tempting to hold on, white-knuckled, to the things we value, to the moments of joy and celebration. But, inevitably, if we try to do this, we simply lose both the thing we are trying to save, and our ability to really live.

As we see the signs of a ‘winter’ approaching our lives, whether it’s a time of suffering, the loss of something or someone of value, or some sacrifice we know we must make, it is all too common for us to try and build protective walls around us to keep the little deaths at bay. But, Jesus’ words are a comfort and a challenge. Instead of seeking to save our lives, we must lose them - willingly embrace the little death, and enter into its pain. It sounds completely ridiculous, to our pain-avoidant minds, but it is in this losing - this dying - that we find life. Like the earth that needs the winter in order to nurture new life and growth, we need the little deaths, the times of suffering and sacrifice, in order to find abundant, vibrant, deep, meaningful life. So, in whatever little death you may be facing, you may want to consider what it would mean for you stop trying to save your life, and to surrender yourself to the loss.

The practice of worship is a profound gift to those who face a little death. Each week we are given the comfort of a community which can share our grief and sustain us through the pain. Each week, we are invited into the life of faith - of placing our lives and well-being into the hands of God. And each week, we are reminded that resurrection is alive and real among us, that resurrection is always at work where there is death, and that as we lose our lives, we also find them. And, then as we leave the sanctuary, we are encouraged to live out our resurrection faith in every moment and every situation.

So, if you’re facing a winter - a little death - in your life, perhaps now is the time to find your way to a church and to allow worship to give you the gift of faith, the gift of resurrection and the gift of new life. You may not see it right away, but if you continue to open yourself to it, life will emerge again, in all of its colourful glory.

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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.

Sabbath

I don’t know when we began to believe that being busy was better than resting, that busy people are somehow more important, and that being exhausted was somehow noble. I suspect it goes back to a thing called the “Protestant Work Ethic” which proclaimed, among other things, that “the devil finds work for idle hands”. It seems that our world has become obsessed with busy-ness, with working long hours and with not resting enough. We fill our time with all sorts of stuff to do, afraid that we might end up being bored if we don’t, and we live with a constant soundtrack of noise, because we can no longer stand the silence. Try asking people to observe a whole minute of silence next time you’re in church and see how that goes down!

Perhaps I’m preaching only to myself, but I don’t think so. I see the stress on faces as I walk down the street. I read the statistics that show that our relationships are breaking under the strain. I can still remember the days when shops closed at one o’clock on Saturdays and were not open on Sundays at all, so I can’t help but see the difference now that shopping is almost 24/7!

I know that, for many of us, the pace at which we live is not our choice. We work for bosses in an economy that gives them all the power. If we won’t work the hours, they’ll just find someone else who will. But, even in the face of this reality, we need to hear the Bible’s call to Sabbath - which is really just a call to rest. If there is anything that can help us to hear and respond to this call, it’s worship. What worries me, though, is that so often our worship feels no different. We cram as much into the time as we can. We’re driven to grow the church numerically and financially. We want to make sure we’re in touch with the latest “cutting-edge” technology, or style, or strategy, and it all becomes just as much of a treadmill as any other organisation on any other day of the week.

So, here’s an idea. What if we slowed down a bit? What if we began to allow our worship to follow the rhythms of Sabbath - times of work and intensity, but also times of silence and rest? What would happen if we began to put our energy into healing and strengthening and feeding the souls of those who worship with us, and left the “growth” to God? What if we stopped trying to be “impressive” and just worked smarter at being Church?

What would this mean for us? It might mean that we plan and prepare worship with the Gospel as our main focus, and God’s glory as our main desire. It might mean that we would learn that the important thing is that we just show up - just observing the Sabbath changes us, even though we may not always see it. It might mean that we let ourselves off the hook a bit and allow worship to be a time, not of striving, but of resting in God’s grace, soaking in God’s Spirit, and just enjoying loving and being loved by God.

There is so much more I could say about this, but I’m off on holiday in a couple of days, so it’s time to slow down, to stop, and to rest.

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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.