September 2, 2018 - Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost - New Season (Fall), New Gospel (from John to Mark) and New Liturgy (Now The Feast and Celebration) Setting Today

Today our normal piano dominated music was led by guitar and four voices; Shirley, Jon, Claire and me singing the Assistant Minister's part in Marty Haugen's Now The Feast and Celebration liturgy. Having Jon back singing was a delightful surprise for all of us leading the music.

This liturgy is as familiar to Creator as the Call Us Home liturgy we sang last week.

Now The Feast and Celebration changes the heart of our worship. Call Us Home, to my ear, is less formal and less conscious of the church setting. What is invoked by the words is the center of that liturgy. Now The Feast and Celebration is more like a sung, collective prayer with frequent leader call and congregation response.  

I wondered how confidently the congregation would follow a guitar rather than a piano. I heard from many in the congregation unprompted afterwards that they didn't even think about the following guitar alone - that it was totally natural.

A musical highlight was the four part harmony for the hymn Just As I Am which came naturally during the rehearsal before worship. This Hymn of the Day was so strong the congregation and musical leaders sang the last verse a Capella. This was after a sermon about the Gospel where the central passage was Jesus saying "(There is) nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but things that come out are what defile". The first thing to come out of the mouth's of the congregation was this simple, beautiful hymn given to God and the universe.

On initial reflection it seems easy to dismiss first century Jewish purity laws as something we should be beyond. Yet purity and impurity still serve as important metaphors for regulating moral and religious conduct pertaining to sex relations, idol worship (material concerns as God) and disreputable behavior.

Striving to be pure what can come out of us may be impure, just as Jesus points out here. An interesting spiritual trap. Like T Bone Burnett writes in his song Trap Door:

It's a funny thing about humility
As soon as you know you're being humble
You're no longer humble
It's a funny thing about life
You've got to give up your life to be alive 

Our attempts to be pure at heart and conforming to standards of piety can be like a trap door or tightrope walking, and lead to a fall resulting in unholy actions. We are better off maintaining our equilibrium and focusing on elevating the good around us.