There is a profoundly beautiful Sanskrit text that tells us that God could have chosen any means imaginable to manifest the universe and he chose to use his voice. To see the poetry in that idea means that we also see the subversive power and soul-source of our voices, both in what we say and how we say it. No doubt, we as people of God have another poetic connection with this when we remember that Christ is the Word of God, the Logos, the manifestation of God in bone, flesh, and soul.

This idea was part of the great controversy that Luther created in the Church – this tension between teachings that the Scriptures were so mysterious and complex that they could not be understood by a generally illiterate and simple people and the opposite idea that God was present in the Word, in the scriptures, and that all people should have access to these great truths in an unfettered way. Don’t pull out the tar and fire yet, but I have to say that I think both groups were right. Either way, both institutions of God-loving people were inviting the masses into an encounter with God through the mystery of his spoken word; and, like in every great hinge point in history, we flung the door so wide open that we’ve almost forgotten what we’ve passed into.

Something peculiar happened in community worship after the Reformation. The altar was slowly moved out of the way (or taken out completely) and the pulpit began to move its way to the front and center of the room. This is the phenomenon of focus. We are wired to be visual and ritualistic even when we are not cognitive about it. It is a naturally recurring element in nature and design that whatever is at the center of your focus is what you worship, what you venerate. So this not so subtle shift also marked a momentous transition in the faith community’s priorities in worship.

Perhaps the greater shift, however, was the change in how the people experienced the revelation of God, where they tasted the incarnation and mercy. No longer was God to be found in the mysterious yet familiar ritual of sacraments, in the torn bread and bitter wine, but now our soul’s ultimate nourishment was in the spoken word and in the proclamation.

With these new barren altars and re-adjusted priorities, there came another great wind: Pietism. Suddenly, scripture and teaching had a new purpose in the community worship time: to teach people how to live, to give them a moral road-map, to teach them how to be good. This is the tradition from which we have evolved. Three points and an application. Concrete life examples. Quirky anecdotes. Lunch time conversations rating the sermon and its practical usefulness for our lives. People will arrive to church twenty minutes late and leave early as long as they don’t miss the sermon. The “singing” is just warm-up anyway, like a pre-game show, and that’s not really about Truth, anyway, right? This is where we are as a culture and it raises some interesting questions.

Hear me out, I believe passionately that we should be disciples of the Rabbi Jesus, that we should intentionally and prayerfully study the Scriptures and that our world-view should ultimately be shaped by the narrative of Christ’s life. This is an important part of my life. But the Scripture is more than a road-map or moral compass. It’s the revelation of God, the epic story of God’s pursuit of man. So it begs the question: in our ritual of worship, in our celebration and affirmation of God’s presence, what is the role of teaching in our worship time? What is the priority of teaching in our worship time?

Have I hit a nerve yet? Trust me, I’m not questioning the place of proclamation during our community gathering. I’m pushing back on the idea that we gather to get a moral lesson for the day. The great Fathers and Mothers of the Church saw this time (this second movement of Word) as part of the worship service. There was something in the ritual of this practice that was about seeing God, hearing God, and responding in worship. In truth, the teaching time was more pointedly the doorway into the Eucharist, the recognized feast of God’s revelation.

Most of us aren’t teaching pastors nor do we really have any element of control over the length of the teaching time, the topics, the intention, etc. Most of us are there to prop up the sermon well through creative elements, transitions, and the worship planning. But we still need to ask the question: what is the role of Word, of spoken proclamation, in our worship gathering. If it’s simply a teaching time, we’ve somehow missed the boat. Beneficial time, sure, but not transformative.

What if we could all agree that the teaching time is ultimately rooted in revealing God through the story, drawing us closer to Christ through some flicker of new introduction to his heart and his face? This is very abstract but we’ll talk about it more next week. In the meantime, this could be a powerful meditation for the Church. Your ideas may be the sparks to light a fire somewhere else. Share your ideas. Ruminate on the Narrative. Find God in the sacred spoken things. Next week, let’s start a conversation on practicing the revelation of God in our teaching times and in our Scripture readings.

May the voice of Yahweh peel through the fog and the din of our false realities so that we may be people of honesty and intention.