What is offensive?

I had a great post and then it was gone into cyberspace... let me try to recreate it...

I had a discussion last night about an offensive practice of a congregation. The person visiting mentioned this offense to the Pastor and the Pastor agreed to change the practice while the visitor was there but was to go back to the offensive practice after the visitor left. Lets think about this.

We are so accustomed to thinking of offense in personal terms -- your words or actions hurt me, they offended me and my sensibilities, or you did something that shocked me... In this case it was not a personal offense -- it was not something directed to an individual. The person was not offended -- it was Christ who was offended. Think about this...

We are so careful not to offend. Pastors are taught to preach to the we and us instead of the you so that you do not offend when you speak pointedly of sin and wrong. We make sure that the stranger off the street corner is not offended in any way by what we say or do in worship (we try to be not only transparent but inoffensive). We take care not to offend people who offer crazy ideas or who have stayed away from worship for this or that or whose children had to be disciplined in Sunday School... and this is not all bad.

BUT... are we equally concerned when our words or actions offend our Lord? What about when our practices are in conflict with our confession -- is this not an offense against the faith, against our Lord?

I remember once when there was an accidental spill of some of the chalice during the distribution. Christ is not offended by this -- He is understanding of accidents. But what we do after that spill may offend him. Do we tell others to walk around it so they do not fall and consider proper care to be given? In this case, the assisting minister informed me and I knelt down on the floor with the linen purificator and began deliberately and reverently cleaning up the spill. Now if I had done nothing, few in the congregation would have noticed. In this way the whole congregation noticed. But what they noticed was not simply me kneeling down. They saw the visible implications of our belief in the Real Presence of Christ. They saw this reverential attitidude toward the Sacramental presence of Christ. I was concerned about offending our Lord not by the spill but by what we did or did not do about the spill. Later a person from the parish told me that watching me it hit home in their heart what the Sacrament was about by the attention given to the small spill.

Many times we are concerned about offending people, relationships, etc... I wonder if we should not be more concerned about offending our Lord by our words and actions -- not in the legalistic way of those worried about wrath or punishment but in the reverence of faith that desires in everything we say and do -- especially as a church -- to be faithful and to honor our Lord Jesus Christ... It is not always what we do but what we do in response to these things that brings this whole thing into focus...

Just a few thoughts...