Truth and Spirit

Unlike past General Assemblies, rather than have an assembly-wide Sunday worship service, this year area Presbyterian churches invited commissioners and other attendees to worship throughout the city. This is quite easy here in Pittsburgh where there are perhaps more Presbyterian churches in the city than in the entire bounds of many other presbyteries.

This was a wonderful idea and I believe a wonderful experience for most of us. It allowed for women and men from all over the country to experience worship quite locally. While the usual pomp and sometimes “over-the-top” presentation of GA corporate worship can be no doubt inspiring, often it can come perilously close to worship-as-performance.

Some of us worshiped at Shadyside Presbyterian Church and heard a flat-out terrific sermon from Craig Barnes, who is generally counted as one of the leading lights of contemporary preaching. One way to express its big idea was this:

The arguments of our souls cannot be resolved by debate or structure or doctrine, but only through receiving the Spirit and Truth – Jesus Christ – which is God’s gift to us. 

Seems to me a pretty important and timely idea.  

During the celebration of the Lord’s Supper the choirs of Shadyside and Princeton Seminary sang an anthem composed by K. Lee Scott called The Tree of Life. The original text was written by Pescelyi Kiraly Imre, a pastor in a Reformed Church in Kamarom (Slovakia), for a Good Friday service around 1615. In 1974, the composer, hymnologist, writer and theologian Erik Routley paraphrased the original Hungarian text and gave us a remarkable vision of what it means to receive God’s Spirit and Truth:

There in God’s garden stands the Tree of Wisdom,

Whose leaves hold forth the healing of the nations;

Tree of all knowledge, Tree of all compassion, 

Tree of all beauty.

It’s name is Jesus, name that says “Our Savior!”

There on its branches see the scars of suffering,

See where the tendrils of our human selfhood 

Feed on its lifeblood.

Thorns not its own are tangled in its foliage;

Our greed has starved it, our despite has choked it.

Yet look! It lives! Its grief has not destroyed it 

Nor fire consumed it.

See how its branches reach to us in welcome;

Hear what the voice says, “Come to me, ye weary!

Give me your sickness, give me all your sorrow, 

I will give blessing!”

This is my ending, this my resurrection;

Into your hands, Lord, I commit my spirit.

This have I searched for; now I can possess it. 

This ground is holy.

All heaven is singing, “Thanks to Christ, whose Passion

Offers in mercy, healing strength and pardon.

Peoples and nations, take it, take it freely!”

Amen, my Savior!

God’s  Spirit and Truth – Jesus Christ

Take it,

Take it freely!