"Lord, have mercy" --- a story i

The Schaaps are moving back home--a one-story version anyway--so I figured I'd run an old story of mine, taken from the pages of Reformed Worship, a magazine that, once upon a time, ran a story of mine with every issue. Most all of us, back then, were engaged in battles that accompanied what people called "the worship wars." This story features such a skirmish, and is, therefore, something of a historical document. 

It's also meant to be silly. Giggling is encouraged, even in church.

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The council, very much on edge as they talked about it, concluded that the turmoil in the congregation had begun with the Sibbelinks, after they two of them had visited Lizzy’s sister Heather up north and worshiped at Heather's church on Cutler Avenue.

“Cutler Avenue’s not a real wild place either," Elder Swart claimed, remembering his own father's pastorate there when he was a boy. "That church is not known for anything outlandish," he told the others. "It’s a fine place–quite soft-spoken. Not usually on the cutting edge." On that basis they concluded that what the Lizzy Sibbelink and her husband saw and experienced in Cutler Avenue church probably had to be quite widespread already up north.

Here’s what happened. Lizzy had brought her husband along to Heather's this time, and both of them came back carrying such hot blood people considered it something of a fever. What they'd seen at Cutler Street Church, as the consistory already knew, was good Christian people–even men–with their hands raised, during singing especially and sometimes even during prayer.

“You mean they all do it at Cutler Avenue?” Elder Swart said.

"That’s what I heard,” Elder Wilmot said. “A whole church of them-–like Texas longhorns."

“Just a matter of time before it creeps down here,” Wilmot said, “like hoof-and-mouth.”

What had happened was clear: in a church full of arm-raisers, good Christian people like the Sibbelinks started to feel almost apostate if they didn't chuck their own up themselves, so Arn Sibbelink must have looked around and seen what looked like a celebration. Not wanting to be the odd man out, he figured “when-in-Rome,” so he shot ‘em up himself, and, almost immediately, felt an infusion of something right through the tips of his fingers, he said. Now Arn, people say, for years already, has been subject to all manner of spiritual displays. He’s a man, it is said, who’s never seen a church fad he didn’t want to adopt.

The only downside to this was, in joining, Arn made his wife, Lizzy, the odd woman out, not a role she’s ever sought to play. Elder Swart said he heard from others that Lizzy had hesitated for about a minute and a half, looked around at all the others, including Arn, who suddenly took on the brightly-lit face of brand new convert and thereby made Liz feel as if she wasn’t spiritually blessed. Lizzy shifted her weight from foot to foot, but, finally, reluctantly--after two verses of "Our God Reigns" -- jerked her up arms too. Wasn’t so bad once they were up there either, she’d told Arn later, even though she’s been smitten with pain in her lower lumbar for more than a decade.

That's where the problem began, the consistory determined. Arn Sibbelink they could have dealt with, coming as he did from a family given to outlandish displays of things, the kind of people who pray well in public and shed tears the way some people do dandruff. But once Lizzy raised her hands--something no one could believe, Lizzy being Lizzy--she started to like it. That's right. Arn smiled at her and pointed two fingers in the air as if, in tandem, the two of them had just linked up for a Cotton Bowl touchdown. There they stood, armpits exposed, a picture, people figured, of praise and piety.

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Tomorrow: And so the Sibbelinks bring spiritual enrichment back home with them.