Missouri in a Fale

I went to church by myself today, to hear an intern from a Missouri Theological College preach and a church plant in Karangahape Road. This church is in a small mall a block from various adult emporiums and strip clubs. It is right in the middle of the apartment blocks on the edge of the inner city of Auckland, full of students, full of couples who cannot afford a house in the suburbs.

The service was held in a Fale, a Samoan meeting house that had been built by the developers of the mall. As the church rents its offices in the mall, they have, as part of the rental deal, access to this space.

And I need to say that the service was old school reformed Presbyterian, and brilliant. I was without the children, and ended up talking until lunchtime, when I had other duties.

Tremble at the Presence of the Lord

When Israel went out from Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
Judah became his sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.

The sea looked and fled;
Jordan turned back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.

What ails you, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
O mountains, that you skip like rams?
O hills, like lambs?

Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turns the rock into a pool of water,
the flint into a spring of water.

(Psalm 114 ESV)/blockquote>

There are two things I particularly liked about the service. One was the sermon, based on the parable of weeds (or tares, it means the same thing). During this the idea that there will be evil within the flock was discussed. It is am embarrassment to us when heretics arise within the church and the very reason that Grace Presbyterian was founded as a denonmination in NZ was that the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand will not discipline those who, by theology or behaviour, corrupt the gospel of Christ, but there will be weeds among the wheat of the church.

And the intern suggest that this was due to the mercy of God. If and when God arrives, and he will, and he will be just, the chance we have to repent will disappear.

For our God is a god of power, and authority. But he also is a God of mercy.

Jesus Heals a Man with an Unclean Spirit

And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

(Mark 1:21-27 ESV)

We all need this mercy of God. We all need to examine our lives and reform, not weekly, or at the next confession ceremony, but daily. We cannot approach the throne of God, nor his table of communion, without first confession, and again commiting to do better, to not let our conscience be seared, but to continue to struggle to do good and refrain from evil.

And this brings me to the final thing I liked about this bunch. They had the table closed. Not to the point of communion cards and elders guarding the table, but a clear teaching that if one did not believe or had unrepented sin, do not partake. If you are penitent and beleive and are baptized, partake. For partaking in communion is a public acknowledgment that we are reliant on the mercy of God and his work, symbolized in the bread and wine.

So the word was preached in a part of Auckland that was the centre of the red light district when I was a child. Not an easy or emerging church gospel, but without any sugar coating: neat, if you will.

Which is, in the end, the only way to take it. For Christ is behind the words, and he is far more glorious, far more powerful, far more just and far more merciful than we can comprehend.

May all our sabbaths lead us to confronting this glorious Christ