“My soul
yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out for
the living God.”
Psalm 84:2
Today, in
southern Africa, nearly five million believers belong to a unique movement that
is peculiarly Christian in theology and doctrine, and yet almost indigenous in
polity. They call themselves the Masowe Apostolic movement, and they gather to
worship outdoors, exclusively. They own no churches, but they are one.
They
believe in Christ, in the Trinity, in the resurrection, and eternal life; they
are Christians. But they also believe that the Holy Spirit rides on the wind,
that the unspoiled earth is sacred, that true worship is best offered to God in
open land, in fields and small farms; when they live in cities, they often worship
in abandoned lots or parks.
Sociologists
like to assert that the preferences of the Masowe Wilderness Apostles are
occasioned by their firm rejection of colonialism and the European Christianity
that came with it, a cultural faith which simply assumed that proper and
faithful worship could occur only in a sanctuary, a place with walls and a
roof. In very obvious ways, the Masowe have returned to something of their native
faith by placing emphasis instead on the wind and the earth. Their sanctuary is
open space.
Their
services of prayer and thanksgiving frequently go four hours or more. I don’t
know that I could handle four hours, but I have my sympathies with their
visions.
For most
of my life, I would have immediately assumed that this verse—and this
psalm—refers specifically to a particular building designated by some family of
believers as a church, a “house of God” that held my membership papers, a place
where each week a community of believers came together for worship.
I’m not
sure I believe that anymore, in part because my soul doesn’t really yearn or
faint for Sunday worship. If I try to find within myself the compelling thirst
the psalmist obviously feels in this beautiful song, I don’t necessarily envision
the church down the block, no matter how gorgeous. My soul doesn’t yearn for
that for that building or Sabbath worship that happens within. I go—and I’ll
continue to, as I have for all of my 68 years. But my heart and soul are not
ready to faint to return.
On the other
hand, if I don’t go out and greet the dawn every once in a while, I get owly.
Seriously. If I don’t go out and look for beauty, I feel bereft. That picture down below—that’s what my camera could hold of the masterpiece painted on
yesterday’s sky ten minutes or so before dawn. That’s what was there to be seen, no admission.
When I
think about the Masowe Wilderness Apostles, my heart sings. Really.
Who is to
say what God means by the psalmist’s reference to “the courts of the Lord”? Why
couldn’t those courts be the wide-open spaces just outside of town? Why couldn’t
they be the big-shouldered, rolling hills that define the twisting course of
the hidden river beneath? Why couldn’t the “courts of the Lord” be a translucent
morning sky that spreads east to west, north to south?
Are the
Masowe wrong? Are they apostate because they believe the Holy Spirit actually rides
the wind? Are they pagan to respect the earth?
And what
about me? Am I somehow less of a believer if I long to see his glory detailed
on the broad canvas of the sky?—if I want to go back again and again?
“My soul
yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord.”
Welcome
to the morning.
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