worship disrupted

It’s never my intention and of course, it could never be my fault… !!

On the rare occasion, I would break a guitar string during a worship service. It’s an unplanned event that cannot be foreseen. No matter the design of strings, make or model, all are susceptible to flaws in production and wear with normal usage. Time is ever against the guitar player, and the longer strings are played, the more likely they will fail and especially at the most inconvenient of times… so it seems.

The problem is actually not the breakage of the string, because if that were the case then there would be no disruption. Only minor audible adjustments could be noticed and only then, those would be perceptible primarily to the trained ear. The song could go on unimpeded; a six-string guitar would simply become a five-string fiddle, or the beautiful fullness of a 12-string would be only slightly diminished less one string. Not much loss there.

However, the real problem of a broken string is the collateral damage to the concussed instrument. A guitar finely tuned produces a beautiful harmony; a guitar with a broken string produces another sound altogether. The instrument immediately goes out of tune and becomes useless until otherwise remedied (aka, retuned or restrung!). All the other strings lose their integrity upon the breakage of a single string, and their intonation can no longer be trusted. It’s best to put the instrument back on the stand and try not to draw attention to the annoying loss of use.

When James begins to write his fourth chapter, he turns the heat up onto the interpersonal relationships of members within local churches. Shifting from an individualized focus in the first three chapters, he stresses now the corporate function of the whole Body of Christ. Our connectivity with one another will become the focus of the remainder of his letter.

I suggest this shift from personal to corporate because over and again through the first three chapters, James uses verbiage related to the personal life-expression of every individual believer. He says…

“If any [one] of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God…”

James 1:5

“…let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger…”

James 1:19

“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works…'”

James 2:18

“Not many of you should becomes teachers…”

James 3:1

“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works…”

James 3:13

You can hear/read how individualized this material is meant to be understood, and I’ve underlined the parts in the text that allude to a personalized application. But when we flip to the fourth chapter, we’re introduced to the place in which we express our individual behaviors and attitudes. The local church becomes the location wherein Christianity becomes realized and tested. It is the proving ground for what’s underneath the hood; we might say, it’s where the rubber meets the road, and James spares no words of admonishment for believers (them and us) to put away worldliness in our common pursuit of Christlikeness.

Invoking the flame of the Old Testament prophetic voice, James adjures them, saying, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

If what is exposed within us is a worldly response towards those we're knitted together with in worshiping the Risen Christ, then how worldly are we truly?!

Matthew records Jesus as preaching, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23).

The answer is found in verses 7-10 of James 4: submit yourselves to God… resist the devil… draw near to God… cleanse your hands… purify your hearts… be wretched, mourn and weep… humble yourselves before the Lord. In the middle of the chapter, we find a gut-punch of imperatives, packed with power for Christian unity and Church harmony. Less of me and more of Christ (HE>i)… and by God’s grace, all will be well.

Simple enough to understand; it’ll take a lifetime to practice!