I heard a story about a friend of a friend who, during a charity barb-i-que, spent the good part of an entire morning and afternoon monitoring, marinading, and flipping a vast amalgamation of burgers, steaks, and wings for an astonishing crowd (talk about a feeding of the 5,000). What was funny was that, when all was said and done and all the hot dogs and cuts were served, that he never even got as chance to eat himself. The tragedy! To be so preoccupied cooking a delicious meal for hundreds that you'd forget to feed yourself.
That's what it's like to study God's Word at time: you get so preoccupied you forget to eat it. Not LITERALLY of course, but it seems that sometimes our study and dedication blinds us to the gaping need for Christ that still persists; with or without our acknowledgment. How ironic that we prepare such a banquet to the finest detail only to forget to nourish ourselves in what God has provided.
This morning, I went, for the first time, to a Syriac Orthodox service. The Syriac Orthodox tradition is Eastern in origin, deriving from the first Antiochian Christian communities established by St. Peter, and maintain one of the oldest liturgies surviving today. This was not your usual Reformed service consisting of a couple praise songs, a three point sermon, and a dose of Midwest simplicity all compressed together in an hour and ten minutes in order to get everyone home in time to watch the Lions stumble through another Sunday. It was beautiful, regal, and poignant. The smell of incense lofted throughout the sanctuary and the voices of priest, deacons, and monk alike sang the liturgy in Syriac, calling us to sing along at certain moments in praise to God. The phrase Kurie Eleison is used frequently, Greek for "Lord have mercy" as the entire congregation engages in meaningful prayer. The bread and the wine are blessed by beautiful melodies and are the central focus of the entire service: Christ's compassionate sacrifice always in the forefront. The message was short, ten minutes at most, which called for us to, by the grace of God, to stand and praise without fear or self-regard.
It was then the monk came and spoke, telling of the horrific slaughter and persecution of Syriac Christians only days prior in Baghdad (http://www.persecutionblog.com/2010/11/iraq-muslims-attack-church.html) leaving 59 Christian brothers slain; murdered for their faith during the worship of Christ. These people were not simply innocent statistics or a handful of words printed on page 7 of a New York City newspaper; they were family. They were fellow Syriac Christians; people whose tradition bears many memories to persecution through every century. This act of violence was nothing new for these people, but it was still heavy and burdensome. How often we ignore such events in our comfortable, American-Christian atmosphere? How often we, as comfortable middle-class citizens fail to realize that those who share our deepest life blood are dying for the very same God we believe in, for the very same Savior we hold our hopes in, and by the very same Spirit which works in us? How often have I become disjointed, displace, and dishumanized not only to my fellow man in general, but my fellow Christian brothers and sisters?
Christianity is a family. We are not a building or a composite of members. We are not conjoined through common activity and liturgical preference. We are not individuals drifting in through their own existence through ritual which holds no meaning. We, as Christians, should be bound not through our culture, our ethnicity, our preferences, our individuality, or the factors of our entertainment. We are bound through who we are and who we are becoming in Christ Jesus our Lord, who died for us.
He died for us! God died for me! As the communion was passed and the bread and wine touched our lips through the hands of the priest in the midst of our crossing I realized I had let myself starve lately; that in the midst of such abundance of spiritual food I had disassociated myself with my fellow Christians and my need for Christ and instead indulged on the fickle matter that is my individual. As I rose and was blessed with the Eucharist, I pondered my Syriac brothers and sisters; those here and those far away, those living and those having moved on, and realized that I was starving for my Lord, starving for salvation, starving for the hope of the coming kingdom.
So I tasted. I ate. I was filled.
How good is our God? Even in the shedding of our family's blood, He always provides new life, new hope, and new compassion. He prepares a broad place for us, He tends to our wounds and heal us, makes us whole, and yet leaves us the scars in order to suffer with those who suffer; to be truly human. In our true humanity, it has been far too long that we've, that I've, sat comfortably by as I see my brothers and sisters die at gunpoint for the very Lord and Savior whom I worship safely and repetitively without worry. God is never safe. He is good, but never safe. To be full implies a danger, implies a stepping-out, implies going against the grain.
And it implies we take a moment to truly fill our spirits.
Qadishat Aloho
Qadishat hayelthono
Qadishat lo moyutho
destlebte hlofayn
ethrahama layn
Amen - The Qadishat Aloho in Syriac
Holy God
Holy Almighty
Holy Immortal
Who was crucified for us
have mercy upon us
Amen
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