Liturgy: “Not How it Should Be”
At a climax of despair, I heard Him clearly, “Give up.” I did not invite God into my heart on that day in 1993, I gave up. I said, “OK, if you’re real, then I’m done. I’m ready to be different.”
What is the King’s Liturgy? King’s Liturgy defines our experience together as a Christian community. It outlines the rhythms we celebrate with the Church at large: Scripture readings, Sabbath habits, and celebration of Holy Days and historical events.
This Week’s Lectionary Readings:
Isaiah 9:1-4
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
Psalm 27:1, 5-13
This week’s liturgy is contributed by Rev. Dr. Dru Johnson, Associate Professor of Biblical & Theological
Studies:
“Even if my father and mother have forsaken me, Yahweh (the LORD) will take me in.”
“And for those dwelling in … the shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.”
My goodness, what a statement! Would a father or mother ever abandon their child? Maybe not if everything is as it should be. These readings (Psalm 27, Isa 9, Matt 4, 1 Cor 1) highlight that the world is not how it should be. We are stumbling around in the darkness, innovating new types of harm and addictions between us.
When I “became a Christian,” it was not because I prayed the Sinner’s Prayer. I did try the Sinner’s Prayer—kneeling in my barracks floor in tears over how wrong my world and heart were. But, it didn’t seem to work. A year later, I wasn’t trying to invite God into my heart. No! It was God hunting me down, compelling me to give up and find my rest in Him.
I was in the Air Force at the time and volunteering for combat deployments in South America. As a young man, I witnessed and participated in some of the deepest stumbling darkness of humanity. The horrors of what humans do to each other when they have the power of force and weapons became vivid. The sex trades flourished in military deployments and we had ready-made alcohol-fueled justifications for everything we did: “What happens on deployment, stays on deployment.”
After multiple rotations to Honduras and Colombia, the darkness around and within me grew to be overwhelming. The thin veneer of my justifications was evaporating and I was a hollow log of a teenager obsessively pretending to be “manly.” I felt marooned, abandoned by anything that might be truly good. Nothing was as it should be.
But God hunted me down, through Christian family and friends who talked with me, but also directly. I had wild dreams and felt as though the God of the universe was speaking to me directly through a conspiracy of circumstances. I wasn’t going crazy, though I did check up on that. At a climax of despair, I heard Him clearly, “Give up.” I did not invite God into my heart on that day in 1993, I gave up. I said, “OK, if you’re real, then I’m done. I’m ready to be different.”
And then, the lights came on. I saw everything differently. I felt that God had “taken me in.”
I was so miserable at that time that I didn’t even feel proper gratitude to God. I only felt relief. I was deeply happy and my desires all rearranged immediately even if my scars wouldn’t.
God did not see us wandering in the darkness, stumbling to create new kinds of messed up situations, and then chuckle at us. He sent his Son as the Light of the World. It’s simply the most remarkable thing in the universe!