worship or sin speech?

I love Candler. I love the people, and the learning, and the praying. But most of all, I love the worship. I love that it has become part of my daily routine...class, worship, reading, work. It gives me a rythmn for my day, a reminder of why I'm here, and what I'm here to do.

Thursday, however, provided a different worship experience.

The Candler Evangelical Society was leading the service. I don't really know that much about CES. The only real interaction I've had with them was through their t-shirts. The shirts are brown with the UPS logo on the front, except it reads CES. On the back, it asks "Have you been delivered."

No, really. I know.

Personally, I have some major concerns with language like that, and the theology that grows from it. But, I realize that we each have different means for understanding God and Christ and how God and Christ interact in our lives. So, I let it go.

But the service they led on Thursday is becoming increasingly more difficult to let go.

I feel that I am pretty open minded to various forms of worship. I realize and honor the different ways that people access and praise God. That was not the issue here.

I think what concerned me the most was the fact that it filled every cliche' possible. We sang songs about our thirst for God, our hunger for the Divine. A little summer camp-y, but good, and a nice change of pace. Then we got to the text for the day--Romans 12. Just in case you need a reminder:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,by the
mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to
this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may
discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

I couldn't believe it. Perhaps this is more of a UCC thing than anything else, but I have a really hard time with scripture like this, mostly because these are verses that plant the seeds of Christian hate speech. Taken by themselves, they seem relatively harmless, but with the right lens, suddenly we are swimming in the world of sin that surrounds us.

And that was exactly what the sermon was about--sin. In fact, at one point, the student preaching asked the gathered people if we had sinned last night, this past week. He refered to the blood of sacrifices in the "old days, " and how Paul doesn't want our literal blood, but our spiritual selves on the altar. Then, he broke cardinal preaching rule #1--Don't preach at, preach with. He began to tell us how during highschool, he hadn't conformed. He didn't drink or smoke or do drugs or have sex. He had one best friend; he didn't hang out with buddies.

Anyone have a snorkel, because just like that, we were swimming in the sea of sin, our own. "We're called to higher lives," he said. "Don't conform." I had to wonder if the words and theology his was preaching counted as conforming--conforming to language which gives people permission to judge, to hate, and to hurt.

I'm still not sure what to do with it.

blessings.
jon.