College Union

I read Garrison Keillor’s Writers Daily Almanac every morning. It’s often a great poem and some interesting literary giant birthday connections. For instance, today it was this tidbit that captured my attention:

It’s the birthday of the comic-book writer and essayist Harvey Pekar, (books by this author) born in Cleveland, Ohio (1939), who created the first-ever autobiographical comic-book series, American Splendor, about Pekar’s daily difficulties at the supermarket, at his job, at home and in his dating life. The first issue of American Splendor came out in 1976, and Pekar continued publishing a new issue every summer, printing 10,000 copies of each new issue himself and distributing copies to independent bookstores and comic-book shops across the country. After 15 years, he was picked up by a publishing house. His work inspired a whole generation of artists to write autobiographical comic books. An anthology of his work called American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar came out in 2003.

When asked why he wanted to turn his life into a comic book, Harvey Pekar said, “I wanted to write literature that pushed people into their lives rather than helping people escape from them.

That last quote captured me. That defines the difference between good worship and bad worship. Good worship draws us deeper into our lives. I find that a lot of worship is really an existential escape from the world of pain and suffering into a nirvana like state of ecstasy. (i.e. get me to my happy place) Real worship takes us through the journey of our own pain into the passion of Jesus and outward into the suffering of others.

Only the epic adventure story of Father, Son and Holy Spirit promises this kind of journey. Everything else is an escape– a cheap romance novel.

The task is to design and lead worship that escorts people into this story where joy confronts suffering rather than settling for a temporary experience of ecstasy. It’s the difference between Nirvana and Narnia.

Categories: Worship
Tags: Worship