Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-231

From ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco), Rowland Croucher’s book of daily meditations. Feel free to use or adapt it.

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! Zephaniah 3:14.

When you were a child, and started making a noise, your parents said ‘Shh! You’re in church. This is God’s house. You must be quiet!’

Protestants associate restricted expression with reverence. We must not sing too loudly, speak too forcefully, or move too excitedly. We are to conduct ourselves as decorously as we would in an eighteenth century drawing room. But with Miriam beside the Red Sea, David before the ark, or the Prodigal with his homecoming friends, Scripture pictures reverence in the form of excited dancing. Reverence to the psalmist thunders with full-throated, orchestral praise.

Our worship is not a solemn memorial service for a dead hero, but the joyful celebration of the victory of a living Lord. In the primitive church ‘Jesus is Lord!’ was at first a shout of triumphant praise to Christ the King. Only later did it become the church’s first creed to be affirmed by those about to be baptized. Just this morning I read the litany towards the end of the Church of England’s Morning Prayer in their 1980 Alternative Service Book – Minister: ‘Let your priests be clothed with righteousness.’ People: ‘And let your servants shout for joy!’ – and wondered what would happen in an Anglican church if the people actually did that!

So apparently, Lord, I’m allowed to be joyful, to get excited when I worship you! Amen, amen, amen!!!