Mysteries on the Walls of our Faith and Worship
One of our young woman recently baptized asked for help to solve a mystery that perplexed her to no end. Among the towels, garments, and other items in the baptismal changing room, she noticed two black, curly wigs hanging on the wall. “Why are those wigs hanging there?” she asked. The answer was unclear, but it was suggested that perhaps they'd been put there a long time ago, for women who didn't want to be seen with stringy, wet hair, or for the modesty of older women with thinning hair who might appear balding coming up out of the waterr. Definitive? Nah. Plausible? Sure. Nevertheless, the mystery remained (as did the wigs hanging in the changing room).
Sometimes we have “wigs” hanging around. They may be traditions that were started in other times for specific reasons. For example, you may have seen communion plates covered by runners or tablecloths going back to times when buildings didn’t have air conditioners and the cloths were used to keep the flies off the elements. The circumstances changed, but the cover remained.
There are many traditions we honor that are fine and acceptable, but which are only expedients and may be a mystery to our young, new Christians, visitors, and the like. That is not to disparage them, but it is to say that we should be ready to discuss them.
Whether that is standing before a song or Scripture reading, leading a specific number of songs before prayer, having an invitation at the end of a sermon, having the Lord’s Supper before the sermon (or vice versa), ending worship with a prayer or a song (Matthew 26:30), the way those leading in worship enter the auditorium, or any number of habits and customs congregations settle into, we should never let these simply settle into our subconsciousness.
Periodically, it’s good to explain and discuss these habits and traditions, whether in brief form during the course of our services, at greater length in a Bible class, or certainly in one-on-one conversations.
It is also good to ask if and how we might vary or alter some of these customs, periodically or even permanently. There are acts of worship we are commanded to engage in each Lord’s Day (Acts 2:42; 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2), but for how long and in what order? The Word of God is to be reverenced, but does standing inherently do that? What the people did in response to Ezra was spontaneous, and they followed it up by bowing low with their faces to the ground (Nehemiah 8:5-6).
These traditions may be good, or at the least neutral.
But the point is to keep them from becoming mysteries hanging on the walls of our faith or our worship. Let’s continually ask what we are doing and why!
"And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition. And this is only one example among many others" (Mark 7:13, NLT).
Not Interested In The Nativity?
Scripture is silent on the actual date of Jesus’ birth. Various early church leaders suggested dates as early as March and as late as November. In conjunction with the celebration of the winter solstice and the pagan festival of Invictus Sol (the sun god), the early Church finally settled on celebrating the coming of the true Light of the World on December 25th.
Certainly, most theologians and Christians today would not find celebrating the birth of Christ as pointless. Nevertheless, we can take a play out of the early Christians’ playbook and devote ourselves to watching for his imminent return even as we celebrate his first coming.
Traditional Turkey
We visited our newly married daughter, who was preparing her first Thanksgiving dinner. I noticed the turkey thawing in the kitchen sink with a dish drainer inverted over the bird. I asked why a drainer covered the turkey. Our daughter turned to my wife and said, “Mom, you always did it that way.”