We had a very good time in the Lord's presence today at church. But who is 'we'?
Every summer in my ministry life these July Sundays present an exaggerated version of the constant challenge - where is he/she gone and why? No response to this ever seems to me to work very well. Blithely assuming that usually healthy people are healthy later uncovers some sudden illness and a sense of neglect; unwisely imagining that someone who is a strong Christian could not be lapsing yields a later story of having witnessed too lazily the first signs of decline; pursuing the absentee on the other hand provokes a sense of Big Brother and loss of freedom - in short, July presents like a multiple choice question where each answer is wrong.
In general it is not, in my general experience, wise to assume the best (which is why many services begin with confession). Any reading of history yields support for the view that many a non-engaged Christian is simultaneously disengaged from the Word of God and from God himself as, centuries upon centuries ago, the great Eastern preacher John Chrysostom, preaching on John remarked;
If a harper, or dancer, or stage-player call the city, they all run eagerly, and feel obliged to him for the call, and spend the half of an entire day in attending to him alone; but when God speaks to us by Prophets and Apostles, we yawn, we scratch ourselves, we are drowsy.
And in summer, the heat seems too great, and we betake ourselves to the market place; and again, in winter, the rain and mire are a hindrance, and we sit at home; yet at horse races, though there is no roof over them to keep off the wet, the greater number, while heavy rains are falling, and the wind is dashing the water into their faces, stand like madmen, caring not for cold, and wet, and mud, and length of way, and nothing either keeps them at home, or prevents their going there.
But here, where there are roofs over head, and where the warmth is admirable, they hold back instead of running together; and this too, when the gain is that of their own souls. How is this tolerable, tell me? Thus it happens, that while we are more skilled than any in those matters, in things necessary we are more ignorant than children. If a man call you a charioteer, or a dancer, you say that you have been insulted, and use every means to wipe off the affront; but if he draw you to be a spectator of the action, you do not start away, and the art whose name you shun, you almost in every case pursue. But where you ought to have both the action and the name, both to be and to be called a Christian, you do not even know what kind of thing the action is.
