March 23, 2011: Reverence

In George MacDonald's The Musician's Quest, 14-year-old Robert Falconer finds a violin in his attic and brings it to a local shoemaker who knows how to play. The poor man had pawned his own violin a year earlier and had not touched one in a while. But as Dooble Sanny began to play a tune on the attic fiddle, young Robert, enraptured, resolved to become a musician himself. MacDonald writes,

What added considerably to the excitement of his feelings was the expression of reverence and awe with which the shoemaker took the instrument from its case, and the tenderness with which he handled it...The moment he began to play, the face of the shoemaker grew ecstatic. He stopped at the very first note, let his arms fall, one with the bow and the other with the violin, at his sides and exclaimed solemnly, "The creature must be a Straddle Various at least! Listen to her! I have never had such a combination of wood and catgut between my fingers before."

As to its being a Stradivarius, the testimony of Dooble Sanny was not worth much. But the shoemaker's admiration roused in the boy's mind a reverence for the individual instrument which he never lost.

The reader cherishes the hope that Robert, inspired by reverence, would go on to become a conduit of that same feeling in the hearts of others. Good reverence begets more. Seeds of reverence find fertile soil in the hearts of good people who want to be awed.

I believe that all of us who make it our business (or accept our calling) to minister the goodness of God to the souls of men must never forget the desire he has placed within them to be overwhelmed by that which is grand and holy. People are tickled by spectacle and stimulated by entertainment, but they are unlikely to be moved unless they revere. They must be moved genuinely, not by contrived attempts to manipulate their emotions but by being allowed to see, through us, quiet glimpses of wonderful things.

A friend who is thinking about going to church regularly told me that last week someone invited him to a giant church in Chicago's western suburbs. He said that they didn't actually go into the sanctuary (or is it stadium?). The church had a cafeteria or restaurant of sorts, and they ate breakfast there as people milled around and shopped and watched a live feed of the worship service on a large screen. The service featured an as-seen-on-TV inspirational speaker and (in honor of St. Patrick's Day) a professional troupe of Irish dancers who kicked up a storm. Glancing at me, my friend said, "I don't imagine that's your kind of thing, is it?"

No, I can't say that it is. Leave aside the question of whether a bacon-and-eggs, Riverdance-and-God approach to worship reflects the kind of corruption that so infuriated Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem (John 2:13-16). Just ask this: how can anybody be drawn into the presence of God in an atmosphere so deliberately casual and carnival? St. Paul wanted first-time visitors to be convicted of sin and fall down and worship, saying "God is truly among you!" (1 Corinthians 14:24-25) - not, "I kind of liked how non-threatening it was, and I must say I really had fun."

But "fun" seems to be the driving force behind many churches today. Note how many times that word appears in the following blurb for a church that recently opened in Naperville:

At Resolution Church, we believe that faith should be fun and relate to everyday life! While adults enjoy our modern worship experience, the children are having fun a few steps away in their very own theater with some of the most creative programming today...So whatever your spiritual background, we invite you to join the fun and explore Christianity at your own pace.

Like Hamlet contemplating Yorick's skull, "my gorge rises" at such a revolting trivialization of Christian faith and fellowship. Concerning fun - which I like as much as the next man - it would be good for all evangelists to remember C. S. Lewis' wise comment in Mere Christianity: "Repentance is no fun at all."

Reverence and awe, not fun and games, provide the right atmosphere for a sinful soul's approach to God. In The Supremacy of God in Preaching, John Piper writes, "I have seen a strange silence begin to come over a congregation and watched the preacher, seemingly intentionally, dispel it quickly with some lighthearted quip or the use of a pun or a witticism" - as though the holy hush of reverential silence were a thing to be ashamed of rather than embraced.

But reverence rightly cultivated opens the soul to receive the benefits of all that is good - whether that be the goodness of violin music or the goodness of God.