Worship on Sunday at the General Assembly is always a stupendous event. Three thousand Presbyterians in one great hall, all singing "Every Time I Feel The Spirit" is not to be missed. Liturgy is wonderful, preaching is challenging, spectacle is in the air. I wouldn't miss it.
Today was no exception. Worship opened with a call to worship that had us face in the four cardinal directions of the compass, and welcome the Spirit of God. Following that was a liturgical dance procession that re-enacted Genesis 1 and God's creation of the world. Chills ran down my spine when above my head there fluttered a bright red and yellow streamer, held aloft on a long flexible pole and whisked above the congregation. I was sure I felt the breath of the Creator, blowing across the face of chaos, bringing order and possibility in my soul.
Then there was the moment when we baptized a baby. This was a first; no General Assembly has, at least in my knowledge, ever celebrated the sacrament of baptism. But the pastor of Kwanzaa Community Church in Minneapolis, Alika Galloway, baptized little Alexis Rene Sanders, while the whole Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) accepted the obligation to be the church for her. I wonder whether, in thirty or forty years, a grown-up Alexis will find her way to another General Assembly as an elder or a minister, and bring that promise to completion.
But the moment that literally brought me to tears - and does even now, as I think about it - was the minister necrology. Every Assembly does this in some form: remembers and gives thanks for the ministers of the Word and Sacrament who have died since the last GA. This year, the names were displayed in slides on great screens above the hall - the name of the minister, followed by that of his or her final presbytery of membership. I found myself looking for the names of those we've lost from our own Presbytery of St. Augustine, and as they appeared, a discovered I was saying them aloud, even as their faces materialized in my memory and their voices echoed in my ears: Pat Cadwallader. Neil Howard. Graham Hardy. Ed Montgomery.
But I wasn't the only one doing this. A row ahead of me, I saw one of my colleague executives from another presbytery saying the names of her ministers, and then over a few rows in the next section, another doing so, as well. It suddenly dawned on me that somewhere in that hall, probably there was someone saying the name of every person on the necrology, and remembering, and giving thanks. And my friend Ted Wardlaw, sitting next to me, said just then, "You know, it's almost like they're sitting above us, looking down on us from a sort of balcony."
The writer of Hebrews spoke of a "great cloud of witnesses." That's what the names on those screens were to me this morning: a great cloud of people who were not in the room, but who were very much with us. Their witness was not to what we were doing in worship, but to what God in Jesus Christ has done through their ministries and is doing and will yet do through ours. It was a powerful moment. I realized that we had an audience called the communion of the saints, and I could distinguish some of their faces.
When you worship in your own sanctuary next, think about the people who are watching you from the balconies of your memory. Remember them, and give thanks.
Paul
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