Then the Lord instructed Moses: “Come up here to me, and bring along Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders. All of you must worship from a distance. Only Moses is allowed to come near to the Lord. The others must not come near, and none of the other people are allowed to climb up the mountain with him.” Exodus 24:1-2
A few days ago I had to get an
X-ray done. When I entered the facility
everyone was wearing masks. When I
walked into the room with the big machine the small talk moment was a hello nod.
The first words from the masked man were: you’re wearing gloves?
I answered in the affirmative because it’s hard to ignore robin’s egg
blue latex on all ten fingers. I then
got a lecture on the medical mistakes I was making, such as cross-contaminating
everything my gloves touch, and how, underneath the offending gloves, the unventilated
sweating of my hands was providing a perfect storm of bacteria. It was a monologue that lasted the full 10
minutes it took to look at my insides with the magic machine. I found myself bristling at this sermonic
tsunami of medical expertise coming from a mouth I couldn’t
see, probably quite unventilated, and (I surmised) only loosely
fact-checked. My last bristling thought was: I wonder if he knows how much of a bacteria perfect-storm
is brewing in that cave underneath his face mask?
The technician must have sensed my
bristling (I’m not a good poker face sort when held captive under 3 tons of
equipment, forced to listen to how I’m ruining the universe and Mom’s apple pie
with my blue gloves). He took a little
breath-break in the middle of his diatribe to inform me that he was just trying to
educate [me]. I have to admit my first
words to this man I’d never met surprised even my natural affinity for sarcasm…I
replied...I guess all those surgeons are wrong about wearing
gloves. When I left the room there was no
goodbye nod.
I suppose most people are
registering higher on the Richter Scale of edgy these days. Even though I’m trying my best to stay calm
under my mask, taking deep breaths, not adding to the national debt of angst,
it is getting harder. And, like Aaron
and the 70 elders, I’m not happy with having to stay at a safe distance…especially in worship. I grew up with a prevailing sentence ringing
in my ears every Sunday morning as our pastor’s morning prayer always included
the phrases that thanked God for this land, where we are still free to gather
in worship! I’m a lot older now, and,
hopefully, a little wiser; this land is still a God-given beautiful place. The free part…not as much.
I never thought I’d actually see
the day when we had to close the church doors at the direction of political
fiat. Closing the church
doors was always a euphemism for the consequences of God’s people behaving like
the world, a fate to be suffered by congregations too afraid or lazy to do the
Kingdom work of spreading the Good News.
But, here we are! We have been social-distanced out of the
sanctuary! Only the proverbial resident
church mice abide under the steeples of the houses of worship. Now our altar is an IPad, or a desktop screen,
or (for more contemporary types), a smartphone.
There is no embrace across the pews, handshaking, offering
plate-passing, lingering, or holy hush moments.
The hymnals lie collecting dust, along with the Sunday School roll
book. We have kept our distance.
Now…if that’s the lament, here is
the joyous response of praise. We have
been forced from the forms of worship to which we’d become
stagnated and unprofitably glued, and launched back into the catacombs, finding
dangerous ways to follow the Christ Who still indwells, still calls, and gifts
to do His bidding…no matter the cost.
For You Today
There are times for distancing –
from sin, from forms of godliness which deny the power of God, and so on…but
there is nothing that can ever social distance God’s people from His love. Let’s dwell on Paul’s words on that promise:
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
No comments:
Post a Comment