This past Sunday night we had a great jazz band perform a concert at our church. All there had a fabulous time. We were so into the music, loving the both the expertise and the interaction with the musicians. While we may have been audience, we were also participants in the evening’s pleasure.
One can always, of course, just purchase a CD or download recordings of favorite music by favorite musicians and listen to them at will. But a live performance brings something so much more than convenient recording. To listen to music in the presence of others means we add their reactions and responses to our own. The experience flowers more beautifully for the connection. Passivity recedes, the present moment fills the space, pushing away distractions and enhancing centeredness.
TV, recordings, on-demand entertainment that can be watched at home certainly can deliver pleasure and distraction. However, they keep the viewers at a distance from the real event. Watching a game on TV may mean a far better view of the playing field and great close-ups of individual athletes, but rarely will a TV-viewed game (unless perhaps viewed with dozens of friends) lead to the exhilaration of the real thing, especially when it is a closely fought finish with all the fans cheering wildly or groaning at a missed pass or blocked goal. At a live game, those in the grandstands become part of the action; the victories and defeats more touchable and memorable.
I know this is why I have an aversion to both TV preachers and to piped-in sermons to remote venues. Yes, the experience may be more professional, more expertly delivered, but it is also removed. Worship is a communal activity. When I announce, “The Lord be with you,” the congregation responds, “and also with you,” reminding us all that we do this together. Some may lead, some may respond, but we’re in this as a community learning how to worship with one another.
Recordings of musical performances, particularly with current technology, can eliminate most errors in performance, and reduce extraneous sounds or other things that might distract. Live concerts, however, must recognize the possibility that humans do not always perform perfectly, and that other members of the audience can make sounds or movements or comments that may disrupt the focus. I think that is part of the tendency to move to more professional worship services–eliminate the possibility of human error, control more tightly the environment.
I just wonder if we have lost more than we have gained. Having to sit next in worship to someone we may not especially like, or who may have a restless child in tow, or who wears too much perfume or not enough deodorant can seem like a distraction from the main purpose, the worship of God. And yet, to intentionally embrace the other, to look past the irritant into the soul, may open the door to much more powerful, more real, more present worship.
To have to wait on the reader to find the passage, to have to focus for twenty or thirty or forty minutes on a message sometimes delivered without professional polish, to have to sing with the clueless tuneless–all these teach us patience and compassion. Or at least, ideally, they do. Just about everyone expects God to be patient with us, and to look upon us with compassion. Could not the experience of live, imperfect, occasionally uncomfortable worship do the same for us?
The more technology intertwines with our lives, the more mediated and less direct our experiences become. FaceBook, not face-to-face. Twitter snips, not full, lengthy, thought provoking articles. Projected perfection, not occasionally stumbling worship leaders. God removed, safe and controlled, not God present and us on our knees before the Holy One, full of glory.
I’m not sure this is real progress.
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