A Call To Worship

This past Sunday evening our two churches gathered for an evening of worship. It wasn’t to be a performance; there wasn’t going to be a cool worship band, no fog or techno lighting, just a small gathering of people hoping to connect with the heart of God and pour out praise to Jesus.

I came with no expectations. I’d asked Delphine, a God-centered woman, to guide us in musical worship. By her own admission, Delphine doesn’t always hit the right notes on her guitar; she’s not familiar with some cords. I think I make Delphine nervous when I ask her to guide us—nervous like a 16-year-old singing Bye Bye Birdie for the first time in a high school musical while grandma Gert tries to fish a piece of popcorn from her dentures with her pinky.

A few minutes before 5:00pm people wound their way down the stairs to our subterranean meeting place. Our church meets in what was one the basement of a former hospital; I’m not sure what the space was used for but my imagination tells me that maybe it was a pharmacy or a morgue where those victim to tuberculosis once ended up.

There’s something special about Delphine; she simply worships and hopes you’ll tag along and find God’s heart with her.

As we started I thought I heard an echo from the ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi uttering, “I sense a disturbance in The Force.” I felt a great Distraction pressing in on me like Play-Doh being shoved through the holes in the head of a plastic figurine by a 2-year-old to make Play-Doh hair grow.

I found myself getting irritable; I think it was more than irritable, I think it was angry. Yet I didn’t know why. In hindsight I think part of it has something to do with the Easter season. Every year during the Easter season I feel an oppression that’s palpable, as though Something is sitting on my shoulder poking its pointed fingernail in my ear to scratch my brain.

I felt like my brain was being scratched Sunday night.

For a half-hour I seethed, and then a young mother with two small children began to have difficulty with her kids. The mother took her kids to the nursery but the kids seemed to get louder. I allowed the noise and distraction of the kids to fuel my irritability and worship evaded me.

Delphine was fully engaged with God, as I am sure others were, but I wasn’t. I’m not sure if my inner conflict was perceived by others in the room; I felt like a woman going through the motions of intimacy with a husband she’s mad at and faking orgasm just to get him off her.

As the children in the nursery got louder I finally got up and went back to help the mother. I thought that if I could take the 4-year-old into the room where we were worshipping, get her separated from her sister and get her coloring, everybody, including myself could have a better worship experience.

I grabbed a box of Crayons and a picture for the little girl to color and we made our way to a café table; she colored, I sang. We whispered about what she was coloring and I took a Sharpie and drew her new pictures to color; an underwater scene with fish and sharks and boats; an ancient scene with dinosaurs and volcanoes and palm trees.

Within a few minutes my angst dissipated and I found myself able to worship freely, the Distraction abated. Another few minutes passed and the group broke into smaller groups of 4 and 5 people to pray for each other. Delphine made her way over to the café table where we were coloring and said, “Oh Ken, you’re not getting to worship,” in her beautiful Asian accent.

I glanced up from drawing dinosaurs to be colored and said to Delphine, “Worship comes in many forms.” Delphine responded, “Serving is worship, isn’t it?” I just smiled.

For months now I have been in pain; an internal pain. It’s a pain best described as unrequited love. I’ve felt unrequited love in my lifetime, it’s painful beyond description—it’s a love that never finds fulfillment and expression. And, what I’ve been experiencing for months has been painful beyond description.

There’s a crying inside of me.

There’s a ripping inside of me.

There’s an emptiness inside of me.

There’s a longing inside of me.

There’s a desire inside of me.

It’s all very disturbing.

I want Something more. I want Something real. I want Something authentic.

I want to be in community with people who love Jesus above all and love each other in real tangible ways. I want to be in community with people who think nothing of sacrificing for others in the community.

I don’t want to be part of a performance.

I don’t want to be part of something that wallows in tradition because that’s all we’ve ever known and done.

I want Jesus expressed through me and the community I’m part of.

I don’t want forced worship, I don’t want to just sing songs and do stuff because it’s what I’m (we’re) supposed to do.

What I want is hard to put into words.

I want to know the community I’m part of loves me and I love them and we’d do just about anything for each other—including help calm a 4-year-old craving attention as a way of serving a mother and worshipping God.

Sunday evening there was a call to worship; it came from the heart of God and I nearly missed it for what it was. I thought I’d be singing praises for 2 hours on Sunday night as I expressed my love and worship of Jesus. However, his call was that I would worship him through serving a mother.

I want to be in a community of people who recognize that kind of worship.

I want to be in a community of people, who are the expression of Jesus to 4-year-olds and 24-year-olds and 64-year-olds, and each one of us is a needed part of Jesus’ body and we see Jesus in each other.

I think Delphine understands what I want; I think she wants it too.

The disturbance in The Force that Obi Wan Kenobi felt was the destruction of the planet Alderaan, home to Princess Leia and others.

I sense an inner destruction, but it’s a good destruction; one that I think will ultimately lead to life.