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Note #6009 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

GA00061

	Blount preaches bold departure from self-service in creative opening
worship

	by Emily Enders Odom

LONG BEACH, June 26 -- Unique blendings of color, texture and sound greeted
worshipers in the Terrace Theater this evening at the first of six daily
services designed for the 212th General Assembly.  From the Confucian chant
employed as the prayer of confession, complete with the tone of a gong, to
the lively and challenging drama sketch interpreting "The Parable of the
Lighthouse," congregants were stretched through the creative and innovative
liturgy developed by the Rev. Steve Yamaguchi and Hanan Yaqub, and moved by
the passionate preaching of the Rev. Brian K. Blount.

	Blount, associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological
Seminary, used the texts of Isaiah 58:6-12 and Luke 22:24-27 to interpret
the theme "For All Are One in Christ... Through Service" with his message
entitled, "Waiting Table."  After "running for cover" from Isaiah's
prophetic pronouncements to the relative religious security he initially
preferred in the Luke text, Blount explored Jesus' image of the one who
serves at table.

	"When I think of prophetically righting the wrongs of our world," he began,
"a servant waiting table is not the first image that comes into my mind."

	With characteristic wit and good humor, Blount insisted that he didn't even
want his server to be a prophet.  "I don't want a message with my mashed
potatoes; I don't want prophecy with my pork chops," he quipped.

	As he continued to exegete the material in Luke, Blount explored the
disciples' need, and by analogy our very human need, to "battle for
position" by taking the position closest to Jesus at the head of the table. 
"The status we have," maintained Blount, "relates to the amount of power we
can bring to bear.  That's why we don't want to serve."  Self-service,
Blount said, is what we do instead.

	Using the model of his "Uncle Buggy," who feasted to excess at family
dinners and then couldn't lift a finger to help with the dishes, Blount
remarked, "When you're that full, you can't help nobody!"  And, taking the
analogy one step farther, he wondered if our "institutional bellies" were
bulging with the same self-satisfaction.  Blount longed to return to a time
of thinking of the church as "a people standing up" rather than as another
impressive building or structure.

	"Our time at the table of our servant Lord gives us the kind of sustenance
we need to become the kind of servants that Jesus envisioned we could be,"
Blount concluded to a chorus of resounding amens.  "The kind of servants who
turn over and wait God's table by turning over and transforming ours."

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