A Feast of Presence
We love feasts. We love gathering. We love gathering and feasting. The size of the gathering and the food on the table matter little because we love gathering and feasting.
But we really need to talk about something important: it seems like someone changed the menu when it comes to church. Now the house specials are full-on sensory experiences: high-energy performances cranked up with loud music, dazzling light displays, and plenty of haze. Hey, remember to order the haze!
I get it. I’m old-ish heading quickly to older! But before you dismiss this as the rant of an old guy shouting at clouds to get off his lawn, it is—I hope—something different: a gentle nudge to remember what worship is all about—the Real Presence of the Living God no matter the style that fills the room and forms of worship.
What I learned from George Fox
George Fox, who by the way is much older than me — he was born in 1624 in the English Midlands. His heart was hungry for God. He didn’t have vocabulary to describe his hunger, but he eventually would realize he was eager to feast on God. But he encountered a problem: the churches of his time didn’t offer that kind of feast. They offered beautiful outward forms, but didn’t know how to prepare and serve the feast he was craving.
One day he made a discovery that launched the fastest growing Christian spiritual movement in England and began to spread around the world. He was in a field, feeling frustration about not finding a community that offered a feast of God for his soul. And then, seemingly from nowhere, a revelation came:
“There is one, only Christ Jesus, who can speak to your condition.”
In a flash, he identified his hunger: he had been hungry his whole life for a deeper life with Jesus. He had been longing for deeper communion with God. He had been craving a soul-deep awareness, of the Real Presence of God. His soul had been famished from head-deep knowledge of God and sensory-driven experiences that skimmed the surface of God. As he gained some clarity, he shared what he was discovering with a few others, and a spark was lighted.
The Feast of Presence
Here is the goal and purpose of our worship gatherings: to restore deep, transformative awareness of the Presence of Living God to our souls and lives. It is this intimate awareness of Presence that has been stolen from us in what Christian theology calls the fall of humanity. In that intensely spiritual moment, our predecessors told God, in essence, that they believed they would be better off without Him in their lives. They told God, the Creator, to leave them, the created, alone. They made a deliberate choice to live their lives separate from Him. The personal, cultural, and global problems that have beset humankind ever since are not accidental. Fundamentally, they are the result of our choosing to feast on meals other than the Presence of God. The story of God that weaves through scripture is about the graceful choice He made to restore the original feast for our souls—living life in deep communion with God.
Four Things You Can Do to Prepare for the Feast of Presence
Today, contemplate this 3,000-year-old poem that begins with these words, reading the words several times:
Just as a deer longs for running streams, God, I long for you. I am thirsty for God, for the living God! (From Psalm 42)
Today, turn the words into prayer:
God, I long for you because…
God, you are worthy of my deepest longing because…
God, I have thirsted for you when (or because)…
Tomorrow, ask God to keep your heart longing for him no matter the form of worship
Tomorrow, look around and find a few others who are longing to feast on God. Pray that they will be filled by the Real Presence of God.