Worship 27 Barbed Wire Fences

[HKHaugan]

1963 saw the release of “The Great Escape,” a movie based on and dedicated to a band of Allied soldiers imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II. Their entire mission while imprisoned was centered around escape in order to keep as many German soldiers as possible busy and away from the 'Front' by their constant escapes. One scene stood out for me in that movie. Toward the end Captain Hilts (Steve McQueen) steals a motorcycle and attempts an escape. He makes it to the Swiss border but there are two huge coiled barbed wire fences and a neutral zone in between. He is able to jump the first but not the second. He lands in the middle of it and his arms and legs are all tangled in it. A German guard runs toward him and, if I remember correctly, says, “Hände hoch! (hands high)” The absurdity of the moment is his arms and legs totally wrapped in the wire, his limbs totally immoveable.

The scene made me think of some of the barbed wire fences that lie before us each day and tend to make us immobile. Take the attempts we make in this world to escape the 'barbed wire' of relational conflict, emotional stress and past guilt. Avoidance is one motorcycle we may get on to jump over what may appear as a possible conflict. The leap might be an excuse, a smile, a change of subject and developing a 'steer clear' attitude if a potential 'barbed wire' event presents itself. We may develop the ability to jump over one 'fence' and into a “I'm-a-good-guy' neutral zone but there is always a second fence demanding honest accountability.

We may also find ourselves building fences to protect ourselves. There is the wire and the barbs that stick in. The wire is sin induced attitudes. Its barbs are fear, pride and their accompanying spirits.

Take resentment for example. Resentment usually occurs as one of those fences to hold others responsible for what we consider offenses against us. The problem is it never seems to trap the one resented. It just rusts and trying to maintain it only does more damage to the resenter. It has no effect on the 'resentee.' It's really a kind of an electrified fence since the object of the resentment has no reason or desire to cross it. They don't even know it exists. Maintaining it drains us.

Rationalization is an interesting fence. Talk about draining. It drains the mind as it looks for reasons to keep us floating in the currents of defensiveness. If we know something is wrong we have a way of manipulating its use to make us look good.

Self-justification is the reasoning we use to make anything we do seem right. I keep going back to the idea that it is our deepest perceived need, even more than being loved. If you really think about it we want to love and be loved in the right way and that kind of 'right' is what I decide is right.

Blame is a tool to shift responsibility to someone or something else. “I was raised in a bad neighborhood.” “My father beat me when I was a kid.” “My mother didn't love me.” “I never got any breaks.” “All the teachers had it in for me.” “People don't like me because of the way I look. I'm too small, skinny, fat, short, tall, average, old, young and on and on.” If there is anything wrong with me, –-here's the clincher---it's 'their' fault.

Judgmentalism is subtle because one has to make judgments about behavior and the thought behind it. The difference between its positive and negative use is who and what shapes it. The negative is bias, prejudice and devaluing of the image of God in another person or group of persons. Ethnic differences, appearances, economic and social standing can separate us from others. The positive use is based on what best addresses the needs of the moment when it comes to the value of any person's dignity and respect due them because they are images of God whether they know it or not.

Resentment, rationalization, self-justification, blame and judgmentalism are bars holding us in the prison of aloneness. Sin locks us in solitary confinement. Here worship is using techniques we value, believe to be worth the effort, apart from God, as ways of surviving from moment to moment in a barbed wired world, a lonely world. We develop a liturgy of self promotion, of practiced choruses and rehearsed responses that fade in the twilight of no response because no one hears or cares. They're in the next cell. The 'Phantom of the Opera' is playing his music in the dark sewers of our deepest fears.

Only one person has the key to open that cell---Jesus, Savior and Lord---He redeems worship and three things happen:

First, personal worship begins when we give these fences, their barbs and their entanglement to Him.

Second, small group worship begins when we allow other believers to know and pray for us as we share our minds and hearts with them.

Third, gathered worship in a congregation begins when we bring them before the Lord and celebrate the tearing down of the fences with others who are mutually leaping theirs as well. He takes them and in Him they become our testimony to His healing us and restoring us to Him and one another. Here in the context of the Lord's Supper we are reminded of the historic one time sacrifice of Jesus who made the whole process of restoration possible by His sacrifice on the Cross and His Resurrection's defeat of sin, evil, the devil and death.

To redeem worship, to make the jump over the barbed wired world, the subterranean caverns of sin, the Son of Man came to free us, bring us into the light of His truth and presence. His Spirit gives us the ability to leap while seated in His Word. Worship is soaring dependently on His thoughts, His character and His action. It is His belief, His trust and His faith that enable us to leap over those glaring, daring, snaring and rusting fences. Those who hear His call in the other cells find their freedom and together we leap fences and come into this new experience of life. Here is where we carry our worship into the world around us inviting others to join us.

In the final analysis it is actually we who are taking the world captive. In Scripture these entanglements are called strongholds. Paul indicates in his second letter to Corinthian believers that we take them captive. Here is his summary on the matter, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2Cor.10:3-5).”