Reverent or Authentic?

A smallish gathering of our 6:00 am Tuesday group last week.  We ended up somehow in a discussion of whether there was some conflict between reverence and authenticity.  The point was made we need to fear God and show him reverence and respect, and at least some of us connect the dots from that to ceremony and formality.  The assumption, based on observation and experience no doubt, is that when we’re “real,” we’re much more casual in our speech, dress, etc.  So the questions evolved toward, “What is true reverence?  Can you be yourself and reverent at the same time?  Has our culture lost reverence in pursuit of the authentic?”

I’m afraid I fall pretty heavily into the “authentic” camp if one forces the issue and makes it and “either/or” proposition.  I find in myself that it’s easier to dress up and be formal than it is to be real, to not wear masks, and pretend to be someone and something I’m not.  In fact, in my own experience, I find that formality and ceremony make it almost impossible for me to be real.  When I put on a suit and tie and speak in a voice and use words that are not my own, I’m playing dress-up, acting a part.  From that place, at least with me, it’s almost impossible for anything to touch my heart or actually come from my heart because that’s not really me up there.  I’m sure it’s not that way for other people.

I really don’t think it’s one or the other.  I think reverence is a function of heart and attitude, not ceremony and formality.  The biblical example of how authentic and reverent co-exist in one man?

And so John came, baptising in the desert region snf preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out ot him.  Confessing their sins. they were baptised by him in the Jordan River.  John wore clothing made of camel hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locust and wild honey.  And this was his message, “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.”  Mark 1:4-8 (NIV)