Monday • 2/13/2023 •
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me.
Although this is the sixth week of Epiphany, we’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings this week. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts (sometimes lightly edited) from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.
They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor. We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office next week.
“One Voice”
Sometimes it takes just one voice.
Image: "Shandi-lee {pieces II}" by Shandi-lee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
“You know, some of us in the congregation are visual learners. We’d be helped if you put some art behind the lyrics you project.”
That one voice put me on a quest to craft worship that “shows and tells.”
“I love the contemporary songs we do in worship. But when you include the hymns I grew up with, something special happens for me. The faith I’m figuring out for myself and the faith my folks tried to instill in me stop competing with each other.”
That one voice made me more conscious about trans-generational worship.
There’s another kind of voice, too. I teach. At the end of every course, students have a chance to tell me (and my administration) what they think about my teaching. Nearly every semester, one student hates a course I’ve taught. That one voice makes me reflect on how to do better.
My friend Joel Hunter is one of the most perceptive people I know. One of the wisest things he ever said was, “The way to handle criticism is to listen hard for the One Voice that’s always embedded there. Sometimes you have to completely ignore specific criticisms. Sometimes they are right on target. Always, though, Jesus has something for you.”
Always there is One Voice.
While introducing the concept of “mere Christianity” to his readers, C. S. Lewis acknowledged that the specific forms Christianity takes are myriad, confusing, and seemingly contradictory. Nonetheless, he maintained, at the center of the church’s life “each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine.”
And this suggests that at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.
I think I know what he means. I’ve been hearing that “same voice” recently.
On Sunday mornings I worship at an Episcopal/Anglican cathedral, with full formal liturgy (largely chanted), incense, lectionary readings, a less-than-20-minute homily, weekly Eucharist, gorgeous old school architecture, stained glass windows and classical music.
On Sunday evenings I worship at a trans-denominational mega-church, with infinitely variable “content-driven” worship, a 30-minute story-laced sermon, a state of the art worship center with stunning electronic visuals and polished rock-n-roll music.
One Sunday, both services happened to pivot around the same gospel reading. In the cathedral, the passage simply came up in the normal sequence of the Christian liturgical calendar and its telling of the story of Jesus. Readings in the weeks before led up to this passage, and the OT and the epistle readings of the day illuminated it. The service created the quietly satisfying sense that we were on a journey together, and this week was an expected and encouraging stop along the way.
Later that day in the mega-church, the identical passage seemed at first to come out of nowhere. But it was powerfully accentuated by lights and music, and in the end vividly underscored a point from the sermon. Few eyes were dry, and few people could have missed how Jesus had come to meet them.
On reflection, I concluded that Jesus had made a point about who he is in both services. Through one church Jesus voiced the settled resolve with which he came among us. Through the other he voiced the immediacy of his presence with us. In both, as Lewis might have put it, he spoke with the same voice.
In Christ, every voice matters. Yours. Mine. Those who have been. Those who will be. Big steeples. Little steeples. No steeples. Visual learners. Auditory learners. Kinesthetic learners. Psalm singers. Praise song singers. Hymn singers. Above them all there is One Voice who has spoken in Scripture, who has blessed many distinct voices in the history of his church, and who is now raising up new voices for ministry in a future we know to be his.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+