My Church Has Passed Me By: A Psalm of Lament
By Rob L. Staples,
Prof. of Theology Emeritus, Leawood, KS
O God my soul is distressed within me and my heart is sad. Your Church, the Church I have loved and served all my life, has passed me by. Some might attribute my distress to what people down here have called the “generation gap.” That is possible, since I have attained the biblically allotted age of “threescore and ten,” as another Psalmist described it. But I don’t think I am deadened to the needs of the young, since I taught young people for an entire career and always tried to see things through their eyes.
O God, I am sad because it is getting hard for me to worship in your Church today. You know I have sensitive ears, and those booming drums and blasting trumpets really hurt my eardrums. I leave Church on Sundays with a splitting headache. Is this what you want us to endure, in order to worship you? I once tried ear plugs but even that failed to filter out the worst noise. Besides, it seems irreverent for one wanting to hear a Word from you to enter into your presence with stopped up ears.
And, Lord, those choruses we sing! I wouldn’t mind so much if I could just sit. But they often have us stand up so long the arthritis in my knee starts screaming almost as loud as the PA system. If I sit down by myself, I appear uncooperative. I would gladly stand up to worship you, ignoring the pain, if really worshiping you were what we were doing. But we sing those choruses over and over, and over again. Surely, O Lord, your memory isn’t so short that you cannot remember what we say unless we repeat it several times. Even if you didn’t get it the first time, surely you would after the second repeat. But after 4 or 5 repeats of the very same phrase, surely you must think we are like the pagans your Son spoke about who “think they will be heard because of their many words,” or like the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel trying to get the attention of their deity.
O Lord, I know I am “over the hill,” as they say down here. I sometimes feel guilty when I do not enjoy what teenagers enjoy. It seems that young people today have grown partially deaf from listening to what they call “boom boxes” with the volume turned up so loud it can be heard two blocks away. I know I should be sympathetic to such physically handicapped persons. Forgive my callousness, O Lord. But do you really want your Church to be turned into a boom box? Your Son once drove the money changers from the temple. I wonder what he would do with the amplifiers, tweeters, woofers, and projectors in our churches, should he ever happen to drop in.
I guess I could endure the noise, Lord, if there were more substance to those choruses. But there isn’t much substance there. Of course, some of them simply repeat the words of Scripture, and one should appreciate that. Forgive me if I sometimes prefer just to hear the Word read, and hear it in a quieter atmosphere. Or else melt me and mold me and make me half deaf so I can enjoy your Word when it is boomed at me musically over and over through a public address system whose volume is turned up several decibels too high.
I long, O Lord, for the “old paths.” I long to hear the great hymns and anthems that exalt you, and contain great truth about redemption. There is good theology in those old hymns. Of course they aren’t “old” to you! Ha. Ha. Pardon the humor, Lord, but I’ll bet you enjoy a good laugh. I like organ music; it helps me worship. Many of your churches have thrown out their organs and substituted something like what is called a “rock band.” I prefer choirs over what they call “worship teams.” I like to sing from a hymnbook. But many churches don’t use hymnals and the words must be read from what is called an “overhead projector.” And I enjoy historic time-honored liturgies. I like to affirm my faith in the words of the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed.
I know the argument: Young people cannot relate to worship unless the music is like what they sing outside the Church. Isn’t there something wrong with that argument, Lord? Should the world be setting the agenda for your Church? I thought the way we worship should be different from the way secular folks worship other gods. Shouldn’t we be teaching that to our teens?
You know, O God, that I appreciate the attempt to crate what is called “blended worship.” You know, sing one old hymn and then a modern chorus or two, mixing them up, hoping to have something for everybody. You know I have honestly tried to worship that way. But it is difficult, Lord, for just as I am getting truly blessed by the words of “Arise, My Soul, Arise,” we burst into a frothy chorus. Correct me if I am wrong, dear Lord, but I believe frothy church music will promote a frothy faith. I do not want my faith to be frothy. I want it to have a backbone of steel.
What shall I do, O Lord, now that the Church has passed my by? I once worshiped very meaningfully out in the American West where they worshiped the way our servant John Wesley worshiped in England. But there aren’t many places where I can do that. I thought of becoming an Episcopalian, but I find that may of them have also bowed the knee to Baal, becoming pragmatic, giving folks what they seem to want. And Roman Catholicism is not for me, for I believe you are the only Father who can speak infallibly.
I am often told that “contemporary worship” fosters church growth. You know I am all for growth, Lord. But then I remember that some forms of cancer grow awfully fast too. I recall when your Son was tempted by Satan to become a pragmatist in his worship in order to gain the kingdoms of the world, his main concern did not seem to be growth, at least not growth purely for the sake of growth.
Please understand, Lord, that I am not speaking merely of one congregation, but of the many I have visited over the past few years. I love my pastor and the people with whom I worship weekly, in spite of the noise. And I am not pleading for myself. I would not have bothered you just for myself. But most of the folks I have met across the land who are over threescore years of age feel as I do. I beseech you on their behalf. I guess we are too old to be listened to anymore. I hope it isn’t self-pity when we feel lonely, now that the Church has passed us by. But we remain loyal to our Church anyway. There is something to be said for loyalty, isn’t there Lord? As for myself: I guess I can make it, with your help, the rest of my days. But the Social Security life expectancy tables of the IRS (that’s something like Caesar’s tax system that your Son lived under) say I may expect to live another 18 years or so! How long, O Lord, how long can I endure?
Well, thanks for hearing my cry. O Lord. I will not bring this complaint to you again. I will just meditate and “lurk” in hopes of hearing some encouraging word from you.
One of your prophets named Reinhold Niebuhr once said there may be brief periods of religious spontaneity when the lack of liturgy does not matter, such as on the American frontier, but such spontaneity does not last forever, and when it is gone a church without adequate conduits of traditional liturgy and robust theology is lacking the waters of life.
O Merciful Father, I think I see signs (just “a cloud the size of a man’s hand”) that Christians may be growing weary of the recent experimental forms of worship and are turning back to something more substantial, more time-tested, more biblical, and less frothy: Especially less frothy.
Let it be, dear Lord, let it be. But how long, O Lord, how long?
Note: Before retirement, the author had a long teaching career at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, OK and Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City.
