1 & 3 with 2 & 4

As a part of my class, The African American Religious experience, the professor brought in an African American worship leader to talk about worship in the African American tradition. The way that this leader taught was to lead us through a typical worship service, stopping along the way to add commentary or explanation.

This was going along quite well until we came to a song that caused many people to want to clap. For you to fully appreciate the humor in what happened next, you must know that my class is about 90% white, and all but one of them regularly worship in a predominantly white congregation. We began clapping along with the song, but then the leader brought the song to a screeching halt. "There is something you should know," he said, "You white people, you always want to clap on 1 and 3, but in the African American church, we like to syncopate, so you are going to have to clap on 2 and 4."

This doesn't sound like a tall order. After all, we are all adults, adults working on masters degrees. To watch what happened next, you would have thought that he asked us to do the impossible. We tried, oh, did we try. It wasn't even the song, the song was familiar. There was just something about clapping that way that was unfamiliar, or unnatural, or just plain difficult.

All of this has given me cause to stop and think. If you will scroll down, you will see that in a recent post, I said that one of my favorite passages of scripture comes from Revelation 7:9. It is a scene of all of the people of God, gathered together singing praises. John doesn't mention it, but I suspect that some people will be clapping along. Some will clap on 1 and 3, others on 2 and 4. Yet, the effect is the same. God is praised.

What a lesson for us to take with us: 1 and 3, 2 and 4, it all praises God.