It has been my privilege to worship in churches all over the world, and at a church were the world comes to worship. At Iona last summer one of my favorite things during Sunday worship was when we would all pray the Lord’s Prayer in our native language and learned style. It was a cacophony of voices raised together saying the same prayer. Here in Cambodia one of their practices in prayer is to all pray aloud but all saying different things, closing with the Lord’s Prayer together. It is many voices in the same language but with different words. It truly seemed to be the whirlwind of the Acts 2 Pentecost experience.
We return from breaks and meals with the band playing, joyous, cranked up music. Like Charles Wesley the Cambodian church has taken popular music and put words to them. So they become familiar praise songs. This morning during opening worship we danced and sang a song that I am sure was “La Bamba.” And it was sedate as a Zumba class. We hopped and jumped and ran in place. And the team doesn’t understand a word they are singing, but it was a joyful noise.
Interestingly, the theme song of the Cambodian church is Bill and Gloria Gaither’s Because he lives. It is the title of the biography of Joseph and Marilyn Chan and tells of their life in Cambodia prior to Pol Pot, during Pol Pot and their escape to the US. It then chronicles their life in the US and return to Cambodia as missionaries for the UMC. It is their Amazing Grace or Oh for a thousand tongues to sing. And they celebrate it with gusto.
This is a thin place.
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