Worship that is making the absent present
Albert Bogle
November 19, 2016
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Part 3
In part 2 of this series, I suggested the radical nature of the Church of Scotland is that we exist for the people who don't go to church. It was Archbishop Temple who is attributed with the remark;
The Church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.
When congregations, presbyteries and councils of the church grasp the radical nature of this idea we will be a different kind of community, gathering to worship a God who has conversations with saints who are also sinners.
So what does it mean to be part of a community that is in conversation with saints and sinners? According to the writer of the Epistle to Hebrews, we are surrounded by ‘a cloud of witnesses‘ commonly known as the Communion of the Saints, the one and the many in Christ. Reaching out to all, urging us to complete the tasks that we have been allotted but reminding us that we are called to make disciples of others as we gossip the gospel.
Leonard Sweet, currently the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School at Drew University, in Madison, New Jersey, suggests in his book ‘Viral', suggests that today’s Facebook generation see the ‘Cloud of Witness’ in a different light;
Googlers don’t approach the ‘cloud of witnesses’ truth as an interesting idea or novel theory. They apply it to their lives, nearly every waking moment. How? Through social networking. Facebook can be a digital form of the ‘cloud of witnesses’
I think we are driven back to the picture so vividly described in the CWW Report, when describing the core calling of the Church.
That core calling takes us back behind the secondary identities of denomination or tradition and calls us to turn again to be people with Jesus at the centre, travelling wherever Jesus takes us. It is so simple we cannot miss it. It is so profound we can never exhaust it. This calling invites us to risk the way of Jesus. (CWW Report Section 1 page 8)
Travelling wherever Jesus takes us may well mean we become men and women living in real time connected to a cloud of witnesses that channel the wisdom of the saints and the joy of redeemed sinners into an eternal community of hope and reconciliation that is being manifest in time and space. Building a different kind of network or community of discipleship whose hallmark is sealed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Recently I was asked, is it possible to create community through a flat screen? Is it possible for individuals to mature as Christians if they are unable, or even unwilling to meet up face to face with other believers. Instinctively I wanted to affirm community as I know it, and maintain the traditional values and advantages of face to face communication and fellowship. Yet, the reality is that hundreds of thousands of believers are not experiencing community in our local traditional formats of church meetings. Being open to experiment with new building blocks that for some are creating community may well be Spirit led and worthy of our examination.This in turn may require that we begin to redefine what we mean by a worshipping community.
If we are to risk the Jesus way, as suggested in the CWW Report, perhaps we will require to see community from another perspective? We cannot see the historical Jesus face to face, yet we can recognise and feel his presence in word and sacrament, and in the life and action of others. This is a revelation through the power and presence of the Spirit being manifest in the life of the believer. If we risk the way of Jesus we will find ourselves listening to Jesus in conversation with people who may be very different from ourselves. People who may be more honest and open on a keyboard and more connected to the ‘cloud of witnesses’; through instant messenger than those sitting passively bored on a church pew.
On a keyboard they are discovering aspects of community, sharing ideas and asking honest questions. Clicking a ‘like button’ affirming their presence and their willingness to communicate, sharing their lives their hopes and fears perhaps with outsiders who are becoming insiders ; willing to be vulnerable, to share and to trust, in order to be known. It could be that for many there is greater engagement and fellowship in front of a flat screen than might be first anticipated.
To recognise this dimension of community is not to detract from face to face encounters, but it is to acknowledge ‘presence’ can be encountered in a variety of ways, and that technology can be seen as a gift from God to renew his people through a alternative perspective on community and communion.
Could the presence of the Word be revealed through the word on the screen by the power of the Holy Spirit? If that could be the case, could the fellowship of the congregation of Christ’s flock be communicated by the Spirit through a screen? The Apostle Paul reminds us that all our knowledge of God is limited, as seeing through a glass darkly, but then face to face we will know as we are known. (Corinthians 13.12) Could a glass darkly be substituted by a screen? While this text suggests that all communion with God in time and space is limited the striving to see more clearly is implied and commended and the promise of true communion is offered as an eternal reality still to come.
An interesting response to the question regarding, ‘presence’ and flat screens, is found within a conversation Jesus had with his disciples. Jesus tells them that in a little while they will no longer see him - yet he promises the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit to guide them. ( John 14.18-19). In another conversation he tells them that where two or three are gathered together in his name he will be there. ( Matthew 18. 20) His presence didn’t require to be a physical one.
Could prayer be described as God’s internet without a modem? Think of the fellowship and the communion that is experienced when people are praying along with one another from a distance. Blessing each other in prayer without a face to face encounter. Jesus even told Nathaniel that he saw him under the fig tree - what did he mean? Was he not relating to Nathaniel a deeper mystery of prayer that he knew him because of his walk with God before he saw him in person?
If two or three people are gathered together on the internet in the name of Jesus, is he not surely there? Listen to the voice of Shena as she describes her experience of the risen Christ as she participated in an act of communion that was streamed out over the internet from St Andrew’s Bo’ness.
The Communion we shared over the ether was a wonderful experience. It was deeply meaningful to the four of us to be together and to be reaching out in fellowship to yourself and other participants. The idea of many people in many different places literally combining with each other and taking part in the service together, is, in itself, amazing and speaks to me at least of true “communion” as well as “Communion".
We truly took part in the service and the act itself and, as four believing adults, we valued the fact that we could be together one with the other in a profound spiritual experience. I thought at the time that one need never feel left out of true fellowship with other Christians whether or not one was able to physically attend a Communion service in an actual church building. It was different from “home Communion” where the minister brings Communion to the housebound. Robert and I have assisted at this service too, but it is quite different for there is not the reaching out in sharing with others in the same way. So the answer is, yes, we felt truly involved in participating in a valid Communion service. Had I been alone, the feeling of participation would have been even more important to me.
Shena’s description highlights that it was the sense of being brought together through time and space that made the experience so real and authentic, The absence of physical presence was highlighted with the presence of absence.
Could it be the reaching out of the Holy Spirit to bring us together - to constitute what has been instituted by Christ himself becomes the common act of communion? God in Christ is reaching out through the internet to sinners making them saints and citizens of a Kingdom that cannot be seen but has been constituted by faith. What an exciting time we are living through; the ubiquity of Christ is being illustrated through the technology of a modem, making the absent ones present. God is certainly in our world reconciling it to himself.
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