Roofworks

‘Roofworks’, in a church context, usually means repairing leaky roofs. But under conditions of quarantine, it sometimes takes a more creative turn.

Often our theology is implicit, not explicit. Frequently, we find ourselves doing something, as a spontaneous response to a situation, but which we haven’t thought out. Action comes before thinking. So, we have to consider what it means, and how it connects with the “deposit” of Christian theology (2 Ti. 1.14). Theology therefore is reflection on practice: praxis. And it’s not just a text, the finished product, but the process we go through to formulate what we think.

Trying to do something meaningful, which communicates something of Christian truth, under lockdown, is a challenge. The usual ways of evangelism are blocked to us. Our worship leader at KCBC, Allan Barbazza, therefore decided to go up to the roof of our church building, and sing his new song, Redeem the Time; as an act of proclamation, prophecy, of God’s glory, over the city.

Activating the unction of urban symbolism, sung worship changes the spiritual ‘atmosphere’ in the city, challenging the spiritual rulers behind the socio-political surface: the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2.2).Not for nothing are the “high places” significant locations for power encounters in the history of Israel (1-2 Kgs.). Music also plays an important role in this spiritual warfare; prophetic musicians establish the victory first in the heavenly realms, before it is manifested in the earthly (2 Chron. 20.21).

This is not just an expression of mad, third world, Pentecostal, fervour. An Italian Roman Catholic priest, unable to celebrate Mass in his Church building full of congregants, chose to do so on the roof as well, holding aloft the host of the Saviour’s body for all the Parish to see. Some of the value in such actions lies in the way the community witnesses it. Our own neighbours commented positively on Allan’s performance, seeing it not as an intrusion on their secularity, but a morale-boosting musical intervention. It also assumes a missio-cultural resonance by repeating the classic, iconic, concert by the Beatles on the roof of their Apple headquarters in 1969.

But who is the audience for such demonstrations? Not just the Audience of One (advocated in Jeremy and Connie Sinnot’s 1999 book). Perhaps the assembled demons of Covid? Or the local community? Perhaps also the many who would watch the video later on social media: You Tube, Face Book, instagram? Mission, and worship, are today both transmitted via technology. But this does not falsify it.

Karl Rahner wrote long ago, about the sacramentality of everyday life. In addition to the official sacraments, God uses earthly means to communicate his presence. For Rahner, this meant God’s “immediacy” was paradoxically “mediated” by created reality. He does not come to us ‘pure’, but via his creation, and our bodied, incarnated, existence. Spiritual experience hence does not ignore, but arrives, through our own particular, psychological, social, cultural, forms. Why not also, by internet, video, and social media?