Giving the Sunday best
This morning I was reading a blog post which deliberately caricatures the tradition of churchy politeness and Sunday best in order to make us think about the place of reality in Christian worship and preaching. Whilst its description of ‘mincing niceness, all scrubbed up Sunday best image with its faux piety‘ may be overstated, the point was a good one. However, as I read it I was instantly whisked away from my computer to another time and another place. It was Sunday November 24th 1996, and I was just coming out of a prayer meeting in the vestry ready to lead worship and preach. As I did so, the leader of a key mission agency took me to one side and explained about a tragedy which had unfolded on the other side of the world. Ethiopian Airways flight 961 out of Addis Ababa had been hijacked and had crashed into the Indian Ocean, killing 120 of the passengers on board. Amongst them were some Christian aid workers who were good friends of his.
After the service was over, he apologised profusely for ‘distracting’me at such an important moment. I was having none of it though. As I explained at the time, and as I maintain now – if our worship and preaching cannot accommodate the world’s worst then it is not our best, and it is not worth having. We can either worship God and preach his word out of the mess in which we live, or give it up as lost.
So why, then, am I preparing to preach later this morning on a story of magic and dream interpretation from 6th Century BC Persia as seen in the Book of Daniel? How dare I speak of 4th Century Persia when 21st Century Syria is destroying itself? I do so because these ancient stories have eternal truths. Daniel was a clean-living young man in a dirty world. Hijacked from his home, his culture and his language, he found a way to live for God in the midst of it all. His example of faith, fortitude and courage is one to which every Christian worshipper, in or out of their ‘Sunday best’ should aspire.
All those years ago, as the beleaguered Captain of the Ethiopian airliner explained the plane’s hopeless situation, a man called Andy unbuckled his seat belt. With the plane tilting at a crazy angle as it pitched towards its fatal collision with the ocean, he worked his way down the aisle. In his remaining few minutes’ of life he prayed with people, comforted them, and led many to put their faith in God. His name was Andy Meakin, and he was a good man in a bad place – a bit like Daniel. As Saturday night gave way to Sunday morning – he had given of his best…which is the only kind of Sunday best which counts.
Image:nazret.com