Fish Piper

A number of members of the church I’m part of regularly visits the local nursing home and runs a church service. This is for the residents who are unable to get out and go to church on their own, or even accompanied. These occasional services consist of a number of (traditional) songs, a short talk, some prayer, and afternoon tea. It’s quite lovely, and there are a number of residents who quite obviously look forward to it all month (we can only go every four weeks or so).

I went for the first time on Sunday, and gave an abridged version of the sermon I preached at church. When we were sitting around before the service started, I overheard one of the ladies, who looked a little sour, complain to no-one in particular. She exclaimed “I wish she would shut up! She does it all the time - it’s constant! It’s driving me mad!”

It was only then that I overheard another of the ladies humming, slightly out of tune. She was in a bed-chair, with almost no ability to move herself. She couldn’t speak.

All she could do was make noises in her throat - in this case, she was humming.

I’ve been in nursing homes before, and it always scares me that I might end up so debilitated one day, unable to move or speak… only hum. Yet at the same time I was comforted and a little awed at these Christian people, many of whom had been Christians for twice or even three times my lifespan.

This woman was aged, crippled, unable to speak or move unaided, and hummed all the time. Constantly.

What was she humming?

Amazing Grace.

I’ve started reading Mark Driscoll’s Confessions of a Reformission Rev., his story of the birth and growth of his church in Seattle, Mars Hill Church.

In the introduction he talks about Seattle:

‘one of the nation’s least-churched cities, where only 8 percent of the population is evangelical Christian and 86 percent does not attend a worship service of any religion during an average week‘

(Confessions, p. 9)

Compare and contrast to the goal of the Sydney Anglican church mission (note that this is the goal, not the actual mission statement itself):

The second step was to adopt a primary ‘goal’ to help focus all the activities of the Diocese’s congregations and organisations. So, under God, and together with other like-minded churches, Sydney Anglicans have adopted ‘10% in 10 years’ as a memorable slogan to summarise their aims.

The Goal >>
To see at least 10% of the population of the region of the Sydney Diocese in Bible-based churches in 10 years.

(http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/mission/articles/what_is_the_mission/)

So in the US an un-churched city has ‘only’ 8 percent in church, while we’re hoping and praying to reach 10% of the population.

And people say that Australia’s culture is a copy of America’s.

At youth group the other day we watched the first two Spiderman movies. It was good fun, with (in my estimation) both movies capturing quite well the comic book graphic novel feel of the original.

There were, however, a couple of things that occurred to me as I watched. One was the way that the dorky, nerdy Peter Parker is transformed into a powerful superhero. As Peter, he is a bit of a hopeless case. As spiderman, he is everything that Parker is not - cool, calm, witty, strong, able to get the girl, in charge of the situation, everyone likes him.
His power, though super-human, is still a very human sort of power. He’s strong and fast in ways that people are, just very much more so.

There’s a real contrast to how real power is displayed, at least in terms of how the Bible presents it. Paul wrote a couple of letters to a church in a city called Corinth, recorded for us in the New Testament. He talks at one stage about the troubles he has had in his ministry, which have been pretty considerable. But the word from the Lord that is his comfort is “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

The way that God works seems weak. When we talk about Jesus, it seems like a stupid thing to do. It feels like it’s something that will never change anything… but God uses the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection to change lives. Even the message seems crazy - the Lord of all things captured, beaten up, tortured, and killed like a criminal - that’s supposed to be God’s power displayed? Absolutely. God’s power is displayed at the cross, for that’s the point where the most fundamental change happens - our relationship with God is restored. Talking about Jesus feels stupid and weak and insignificant, but it can be the most powerful thing that we can do. God’s power is displayed in our weakness.

And that’s the thing about Spiderman. His power is displayed in, well, his power. He is a radically different person when he’s in his spidey suit. His power is just human strength amplified. God’s power is far beyond anything a human might do. And it’s made known in ways that don’t seem like human power, so we can’t confuse them. God’s power is clear, and can’t be mistaken for anything else.