worship 101

People are yearning for God to show Himself in their situation. This expectation has formed everything from the Jewish hopes of the Messiah to the present cries of Pentecostals. But the fact remains that more people than ever want God to just DO something. Move, heal, give. Show me where I should go. I need you to come and be here. Where the heck are you oh God?

But maybe God works in our need for Him. Simply because when we ask him for something, that’s the closest we ever get to treating Him like a real person. I mean, we ask people for things in all sorts of different manners, but by asking we acknowledge their value as a person and their ability to grant what we desire. Asking is a recognition of personhood. Admittedly, it’s an elementary conception of God, but sometimes it’s the best we have. I would even venture to say that the words, “God I need You,” are the core curricula of Worship 101.

God I need You.

Here’s an essay for Greenhouse about social justice, worship and engaging the culture we live in. I hope this helps somebody……

“The Gospel of Jesus isn’t the Gospel of Jesus if it doesn’t help the dump kids.” That phrase etched its way on my heart, through tears, until it wouldn’t allow me a moment’s peace. I fled from my meeting sobbing and screaming with the voice of my heart. Anything that doesn’t help those children is not Christ’s Gospel. Anyone who says different is a liar or a fool or a monster or a…words failed me at this point. As I leaned against the shed sobbing and staring angrily at the sun-swept sky, my inner knowing scrolled through the litany of torments for the comfortable who allowed THIS to happen. (It doesn’t matter that I was one of those comfortable). What monsters!

The meeting I ended up ‘excusing myself’ from was one of the night programs for Concordia Language Villages’ Spanish Camp in which I was a counselor. The subject was child labor and the millions of children all over the word who were denied basic human rights, such as school, friends, and a childhood in order to ensure their survival.

Now I tend to get overly dramatic about such things, and I certainly don’t want to portray the idea that I am some sterling saint who cries about injustice all day long. (I live quite comfortably). I had spent the last three odd weeks with a bunch of screaming kids, fighting to create the language immersion environment Concordia is famous for. I sat in this meeting physically, mentally, spiritually drained of just about every resource I had. I felt like I had reached my limit, and you expect me to deal with this again?

The last time I had to deal with poverty of this stripe was the dump towns of Nicaragua. Children sniffing glue, wandering among piles of trash, haunting the smoke from the slowly combusting garbage as if they were the living dead—these tragedies have a way of undoing even the strongest souls. You want to help things, to fix them, so these kids don’t have to hurt any more. The thing is, I can’t do all I want to ease my conscience. It’s not about easing my conscience anyway. Besides, these problems require more than overnight solutions. Yet you don’t think of that while you sob for the dump kids. You only think of doing something. But what?

Last Tuesday, we watched The Village and pondered what it would take for the Church to leave our village and impact culture. I would venture that the answer lies somewhere in a compassion, however you chose to help, for the dump kids of the world. This is where culture gets affected, in the shirt given to the street child, the change given to the beggar and the piece of bread given to those who have none. People see and understand that Christ is very real to do something. He’s not like the gods of this world that demand and consume but never give back to the people who promise their lives. This revelation of Christ not only changes culture; it also changes us. This is how we meet God.

Christ meets us in the poor. He said that whatever we do for the least of these, it is as if we do it for the Lord Himself. Thomas Merton called it the “mystical presence of Christ in the poor”. For whatever reason, our Lord delights to ‘dress up’ as these dump kids. He communes with us ardently as we minister to Him, Our God who hides in the gaze of the poor.

I conclude with the words of Che Guevara. He penned these words about his journies through South America, on much the same mission as Christ has charged his church.

“This isn’t the story of impressive deeds… it’s a piece of two lives which ran together. A man… can think of many things that range from the most elevated philosophical speculation to the face yearning for the a plate of soup, in total correlation with the empty state of his stomach.”

There are millions of empty stomach in this world that Christ has commanded us to fill. What are you going to do about it?