[Some time ago, I found a book lying around down here, The Beauty of the Lord, a 1926 collection of sermons by Rev. D. R. Drukker. I'd never heard of him.
I have a host of old books from the libraries of my learned grandfathers, so I don't doubt for a moment that the volume had its origins somewhere in this house, but I'd never seen it before. Its sudden appearance--there it was on a table in front of the TV--was a mystery that, you might say, bid me read.
The Beauty of the Lord seemed an intriguing title. Drukker was a minister of the gospel from the denomination I've been a part of for my whole life. I'd not heard his name before, but I knew the wide reputation of the man who wrote the laudatory preface, a "Life Sketch." That man was Dr. Henry Beets. Beets makes clear that Dominie Drukker was a powerhouse.
So, once in a while, I started reading a sermon--and writing. Months ago, I wrote several posts about individual sermons, intending to finish the book. Never did.
Last night, I read the sixth sermon, "Divine Worship." Interesting stuff.]
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There's a passage in Romey's Place, a novel of mine, that makes me smile when I think of it. When the boys get caught "hocking" cigarettes (it's the word we used), the preacher gets involved. They go off to the church on a weeknight to face a grilling from the ecclesiastical powers-that-be. After all, there is a commandment about stealing. The boys are 11 or 12.
Romey's Place does more than cherry-pick from my own life. Its setting is the lakefront where I grew up, and its themes are as real to me as sand between your toes. But the novel is nowhere near memoir. It's fiction.
When I was a kid, we pocketed cigarettes when store clerks weren't looking, and eventually we got caught. All true. But we never faced church authority. I don't think my father, who was a central figure in our congregation, would have even considered bringing the pastor into the punishment, much less an elder or two.
But no reader ever asked about that passage. No one ever said, "Come on now, Schaap--that never happened, did it? You're making things up."
I was. I'd like to think sheer artistry created a world so convincing, readers simply lost the ability to question authenticity in all the high drama. Fat chance. The real reason no one ever asked about the scene is that, back then, mid-fifties--most readers simply assumed it could well have been true.
I'm just about 70 years old, so I get to do what I'm about to--make some judgement. Here's something I've thought about a lot. The institution we call "the church" is almost powerless today when compared to what it was when I was a boy. I never feared civil government; the constable who kept tabs on community sins in the town where I was raised was a joke. Dutch Calvinists rarely got in trouble with the law anyway. Jail didn't scare me--it was another world all together.
But the church--that was a power that didn't back down, that let you know when your ayes and nays weren't what you said. That the church might have called the naughty boys in after they were caught "hocking" cigarettes is not at all beyond imagining. "The church" held immense power--and used it. The church was to be feared, as was the God it spoke of.
That's the church Rev. R. B. Drukker knew, and that's the church he describes in the sermon titled "Divine Worship." For better or for worse, that church is no longer the church as we know it.
Of the Drukker sermons I've read, this one is most conventional. "The Lord is in his holy temple--let all the earth keep silence before him": a thousand worship services in my life started with that line from holy writ. Even though we weren't Old Testament Jews or supplicants at a Catholic mass, it was impossible for me as a boy not to believe that the church wasn't "his holy temple," or that somehow, someway, God was there.
And therefore not at the lakeshore or in the factory or even in Christian school. Drukker's commentary presumes "the church" as God's abode. I don't think people believe that anymore. "The most precious of human experiences is when a human soul meets its God in loving and reverent worship." I just don't think that's what people think, in part because it doesn't cover what most of us know to be true in our own lives. "It is in church that a man can truly meet his Lord." I don't buy those kinds of property lines. Do you? I know of very few people who would say that, who could say that, even if he or she wanted to.
"It is in the church that we discover the tie that binds our hearts in Christian fellowship and purpose." Does that fellowship happen? Yes, thank God. Do I want that for my children? Absolutely. Does it happen only there? I don't think so.
The Reverend Mr. Drukker most certainly did. He was, as we all are, citizens of time and place, a pastor writing both tenderly and forcefully about the primacy of this particular institution of human life. He treasured the church more than silver and gold. He invested in its rhythms, loved the silence of its meditative moments, felt the Holy Spirit in the chant-like rhythms of the psalms the people sang. "Here we take off our shoes for the place is holy ground," he says.
In Japan maybe, but today most people lug insulated coffee cups along in, wear shorts, and disdain quiet. That's okay. I'm not criticizing. All I'm saying is, church, to the Reverend D. R. Drukker, was a whole lot different entity than it is today. And that's why, of all the sermons of his I've read in this admirable little volume, "Divine Worship" is seemingly most conventional and, sadly enough, most dated.
"All I'm saying is, church, to the Reverend D. R. Drukker, was a whole lot different entity than it is today." I would like to borrow this line of thinking and state that, "all I'm saying is, church, to the Apostles, was a whole lot different entity than it is today."
ReplyDeleteAfter-all the "veil of the temple" was torn when Christ was on the cross. It changed everything, no more animal sacrifice, no more going to a place or tabernacle to worship, and no more High Priests! Hebrews 9 & 10
Let's visualize church leadership the way it used to be.
The apostle Paul was told to appoint elders and deacons in the early churches, town by town, with no particular hierarchical order. No clergy/laity thinking. No more High Priests. No more robes, white-washed walls or vipers. No "Reverend". No Senior Pastors trained in a seminary. The elders were the husbands of one wife and were each apt to teach. No need to establish a 501(c) with the government for tax exemption. They did not see themselves as a business.
Jesus Christ was considered the Head of the Church, no Classis, denomination or Vatican. This early church did not have to defend apostolic succession, infallibility of a pope, or a college of cardinals or experience a reformation that caused them to define themselves as to how they were different from another man-made church entity.
The early church was simply a group of Christians who worshipped in homes, no more "The Lord is in his holy temple--let all the earth keep silence before him". No narthex, pulpit or canned order of worship. Each church was lead by appointed elders and deacons as designed by God Himself. The early church was a living organism, the actual Body of Christ, not an organization. No hired pastors to act as a CEO implementing a business model within the church. No more employer-employee relationship between the minister and consistory.
The building was simple, people's homes. No more heating a structure all week which was occupied 20 hours a week, maybe. No edifice complex. No more elders meetings that were focused on the "church parking-lot lighting" instead on the spiritual growth of the attendees. Each elder was "apt to teach." No more vocational pastors.
"All I'm saying is, church, to the Reverend D. R. Drukker, was a whole lot different entity than it is today." I would like to borrow this line of thinking and state that, "all I'm saying is, church, to the Apostles, was a whole lot different entity than it is today."