I write and share the following because it happened yesterday during our Palm Sunday Divine Service. Admittedly, it does happen occasionally throughout the year. However, it is most prevalent during the Christmas and Easter seasons. What happened? Allow me to explain it this way.

Reverence is a hard thing. I say this because it requires a unique balance of self-awareness and others-focus that the sin-nature does not naturally possess. The sin-nature takes what it believes it deserves. It situates its environment to suit its comfortability and is enraged when it must accommodate something else. It abhors barriers, especially the creedal kinds that protect from self-destruction. It chafes against authority, despises order, and scoffs at sacredness.

Reverence respects the environment into which it has entered, knowing it does not deserve to be there but instead was invited. Reverence is humble. It bows. It quiets the self. It does so to learn, which is far more than merely taking in information. It desires betterment. And so, it listens before it speaks and measures its words with care. It sees holiness and does not demand immediate access but observes with trembling gratitude. It acknowledges mystery and does not rush to assume it understands.

Reverence is hard because it calls a person to submit—to kneel when he would rather stand, to cover his mouth when he would rather impose opinions, and to adore when he would rather be adored.

That said, if you walk into a stranger’s house irreverently demanding what is the family’s to receive and are refused, you are the offender, not the offended. It is the same when you visit a church with which you are not in altar fellowship. The Lord’s Supper is not a right to be presumed but a gift to be received in unity of confession (1 Corinthians 10:14-24; 11:23-29). Reverence understands this. It does not stride to the rail unexamined or uninvited. It does not treat holy things as common, nor does it force participation where spiritual bonds have not been established.

Irreverence, however, is quick to call the stewardship (1 Corinthians 4:1) of these things unkindness and to label fidelity as arrogance (Galatians 1:10). It reframes faithful creedal boundaries as barriers and assumes hospitality demands compromise. But the Church—her doctrines and practices—is not ours to reshape (Hebrews 13:8-9; 1 Timothy 3:15). She is Christ’s (Ephesians 5:25-27)—and reverence knows this. It approaches with open hands, not grasping or demanding fists. Reverence waits until it can say “Amen” with integrity (1 Corinthians 14:16), because it knows that to kneel and receive without understanding is not only dishonest, it is dangerous (once again, 1 Corinthians 11:29).

Reverence is hard because it requires restraint in a doctrinally shallow American Christendom obsessed with the “self.” But it is precisely this restraint (established by the Holy Spirit) that helps human hearts receive what God gives on His terms. It trusts that the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3) is sufficient, and it takes seriously the apostolic call to “stand firm and hold to the traditions” handed down (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Reverence is not offended by these things, but accepts them as gifts meant to preserve and protect the Church in every age. And so, while the sin-nature storms out of a worship service offended that the pastor refused it communion, offering instead a brief blessing and an opportunity to chat afterward, reverence kneels and receives the blessing with gratitude, and then looks forward to the post-service conversation with a man intent on maintaining faithfulness rather than perpetuating spiritual harm.