Sing to the Lord…

Whilst here in the Holy Land we have had the opportunity to experience a wide range of worship styles and traditions. Each day at Tantur there is morning and evening prayer led by people staying here (which in itself has been a feast of variety!)

On the first Sunday we headed to Abu Gosh a crusader church with fantastic acoustics where nuns and monks chant Catholic mass in French, Latin and occasional Greek. Apparently, so those that understand French tell me, the sermon was fantastic… but since the only word I picked up was Jesus I will have to take their word for it! The music was heavenly though and in such beautiful surroundings it was a real winner.

We have also been to Armenian Orthodox vespers where I had absolutely no clue what was going on but was seriously impressed in the military precision that the acolytes had when going out in pairs to sense all the icons. Crisply clipping across the church in a liturgical military two step they swung their thurifals in perfectly matched timing – its was a sight to behold!

My absolute favourite those was this last Sunday when we attended Immanual Evangelical fellowship in Bethlehem. The church meets in a basement but they have got it well set up with projectors (yes they still have the cheesy Powerpoint backdrops when projection Arabic worship songs!), a full band, sound system etc. The service was in Arabic but they provide simultaneous translation into English via wireless headsets so we were able to participate. The congregation was a whole mix of ages, but with lots of young families that gave the whole things lots of energy. Lots of worship songs were sung – (we joined in loudly with the hallelujahs as that was the one word we could recognise in the songs!) and some really good and sound teaching was given – though the preacher had clearly been taking tips from American tele-evangelists as he could certainly ramp a crowd up!

Particularly moving was his teaching from Psalm 27 (Here is you are not familiar with it.) Given the state of siege that they live in and all the difficulties they face being Christians let along Palestinians in this land their total faith in the Lord, their desire to forgive their enemies and live at peace in the land is incredibly moving.

Also wonderful was the children who had been given the teaching slot that week. The younger ones sang songs and recited memory verses – they were sooo cute and the older ones put on a dramatic presentation of all the issues that they face as Christians. This was actually a pretty sophisticated message for ones so young and there was a definite sense that they don’t shy away from the tough stuff when teaching the children’s groups, there is a real sense of needing to equip the children well for the many challenges they will face ahead.

But best of all…. well that prize had to go to the wonderful man at the back who was providing the simultaneous commentary. It started off quite staid, translating the opening greetings and the words of the first few songs but it rapidly descended into what can only be described as the religious equivalent of Terry Wogan commentating on the Eurovision Song Contest – When the children came up to do their slot they starting shouting their song into the microphone as small children are want to do and all we heard in our headphones was “They are shouting, why are they shouting I have no idea what they are saying!” and when they were reciting memory verses instead of the verse we heard “oh he is trying John 3:16, that is good, oh he is doing well, amazing he has managed to remember it all – how good” rather then actually having the text translated. We also got the various asides to other people at the back about such topics as the state of the batteries on our headphones “we need atomic batteries these are no good they should be atomic” and we also got to hear is excitement at what the preacher was saying and so when the preacher was ramping things up and starting to shout so was our translator such was his excitement - bellowing in stereo - its amazing we didn’t go deaf. Needless to say we kept getting fits of giggles at all of this – it was great.

For all their difficulties there was a real sense of the presence of God in that place, among that congregation. It was spirit filled, true and courageous and it was an honour to be able to worship alongside them.