Copyright: © 1998 Paul F. Bosch.
This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

A couple of seasons ago there was a series of commercials on TV that advertised, I think, some headache remedy Anacin or Bufferin or Tylenol.

The commercial I remember most vividly presented you with a little 30-second drama, featuring a harried, stressed-out young woman, who's trying to cope with a crying baby, and a telephone that's ringing off the hook, and a pot on the stove that's boiling over.

Presently an older woman in the room tries to help out the younger woman. But she suddenly turns and snaps, "Please, Mother! I'd rather do it myself!"

As you can see, that little drama, and its tag line, "Please, Mother! I'd rather do it myself!" has stuck with me over these years, partly because I've seen it related to Christian worship and to Christian life.

The fact is, as I see it, that attitude -- "Please, Mother! I'd rather do it myself!" -- represents the death of Christian community. And the death too of Christian worship. The Christian community -- and Christian worship as well -- is precisely a place where you don't do it yourself.

You depend on another. You learn to depend on Another.

That's part of the meaning of the term atonement, as I understand it: There is Another who takes my place, and does it for me, who serves in my behalf.

And to reject that gift, that serving, is to reject the gift of grace. It's a kind of pelagianism, a kind of works-righteousness to insist, before God, and before God's Messiah, "Please, Mother! I'd rather do it myself!"

You get my point, I hope: The Christian life is nothing if it is not a life of gratefully accepting God's gifts, the gifts that Another wants to give you.

That's part of the point, too, in all Christian worship: you're here to accept those gracious gifts that God wants to give you, in Christ, that another human being wants to give you in Christ's name.

In my retirement I've set up a programme of Daily Worship at one of the downtown churches in our city. Visitors there are sometimes puzzled, and sometimes downright offended, not incidentally, when they see the Assisting Minister or an Acolyte hold the book for the Presiding Minister.

Here's Linda up here, for example, holding Paul's book for him. "Hey, Paul: Can't you hold your own book?" That's the question I sometimes hear.

Well, sure. Of course I can hold my own book. But that's not the point. The point, as I see it, is this: Here's Linda and me, up here, presenting the Gospel among you.

And, significantly, representing the Gospel: We're trying to model the Gospel for you. Not just speak the Gospel, that is, verbalize it, or read it, or proclaim it, but model it, too: act it out in front of you, in our bodies, in our persons.

And that means, as I see it, one serving another.

It would be instructive to speculate, incidentally, which one of us represents Christ in that moment. I'd argue, for example, that when Linda holds my book for me, she's the one who represents Christ. She's the one who's serving as Christ would serve.

And me, in that moment? I represent Mary, maybe. Or Peter. Or John: the one Christ serves.

The Christian life is being modeled up here in front of you. And you take your turn too, believe me, in modeling the Christian life.

Further: Maybe there's a wide streak of pelagianism in those pastors and worship leaders who don't recognize this dynamic in worship; those who steadfastly refuse to allow anyone to hold their book for them. At the very least, they're missing out on a splendid opportunity to model the gospel for their people.

The Christian life, before it is a life of giving and serving, is a life of receiving and of being served.

There's a rhythm there, a rhythm of giving and receiving, of serving and being served. And I'd be willing to argue that the receiving, the being served, comes first.

I've lived long enough to learn that some Christian people have a hard time learning how to give, how to serve. And the Christian witness is the more impoverished because of that.

But there are other Christian people -- maybe more of them than you'd guess -- who have a hard time learning how to receive, how to be served: "Please, Mother! I'd rather do it myself!"

And I'd even be willing to argue, in this regard, against the Apostle, who said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

I'd say just the opposite, in this context: I'd say: "It is more blessed to receive than to give."