"Thinking Eternally, Acting Locally." - Neal August
At church on Wednesday night I participated in the weekly youth group meeting. The youth have been doing a summer series on the Christian Basics: prayer, worship, service, Scripture reading, etc.
This week’s Christian Basic was about worship and how one should worship God. Two of the verses we used were Romans 12:1 and 6:13. One of the great lessons taught was how Christians must worship with their whole body and not just parts. To stress this point to the youth, Andy, the junior high youth pastor, had all the students rise for a rendition of “The Hokey Pokey”.
Occasionally in life we are confronted with moments of sublimity that usually goes unnoticed by most if not all others. One has to be aware of these moments – aware that they can exist – in order to enjoy them. Of course, you may be the only one but do not let that keep you from the experience.
What was this moment of sublimity?
“The Hokey Pokey” is a game-song whose name derives from the word hocus-pocus. Hocus-pocus commonly references a “magical incantation”. The word itself derives from the Latin phrase hoc est corpus. This phrase comes from the Roman Catholic Mass where the priest holds up the sacrament of Christ’s body and says, hoc est corpus, “this is the body”. The idea that the Roman Catholic priest was changing the substance of the bread into the body of Christ resembled magic to many, thus hoc est corpus became hocus-pocus.
So when the youth were doing “The Hokey Pokey” as an object lesson of using your whole body as a living sacrifice to God, they were unknowingly referencing the body of Christ which became a pleasing sacrifice to God (in an obviously non-penal substitutionary atoning manner, I might add). And of course, just as putting your whole self into “The Hokey Pokey”, we can say the same about the corporate nature of Christ: “that’s what it’s all about.”
But the sublimity did not end there. At the start of the evening, we received a telephone call over the loud speakers from the group of youth and trainers who had gone on a mission trip. Where were they? You guessed it: Corpus Christi, TX.
It’s his sort of thing that makes my own life so much more enjoyable.
2 comments:
Ah...I remember why we are friends. You and I are the only people I know who think like this.
Joining the Baptists for a recent servcie that featured a more contemporary "praise and worship" style, I was struck by a song that was essentially a jazzed up, evangelical-ized version of the Apostle's Creed (they added "I beleive in the Holy Bible" and took out the bits about Jesus descending into hell and the "Holy Catholic Church.") Nevertheless, in true H.J. Holtzmannian fashion, I recognized the source material. And I was struck by an experience of the profound: here was this rag-tag group of Baptists on the edge of American civilization, many of whom have no idea of the Apostle's Creed's existence, singing this song with these old doctrines that have been handed down for nearly 2 milennia. Ecclesia aeterna! Fides catholica! Through all the twists and turns of church history, here was the ancient and the modern come together in the most unlikely setting, the "one faith once delivered for all" united by the unchanging God of all of history. It was a deeply spiritual moment.
I suppose the ability to experience the profound in the mundane is a blessing for us--though probably a curse to our long-suffering friends who must listen to us draw tenuous connections between apparent non sequitirs!
Let's discuss this sometime over a stiff brew, preferably dark and foreign!
Blessings,
Fr. Pat
Generally, neither Baptists nor Roman Catholics know what “descending into hell” means, but at least the Roman Catholics try to believe it.
I’ve always found that “coincidence” has been “sufficient” evidence of God’s existence for – particularly when my personal relationship with God in Christ has been strained. I much prefer the personal, but, I must admit, I find “coincidence” far more intellectually stimulating. Thank God, one can have both at the same time! Anyway, both types of evidence are still subjective.
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