The gospel advances through a cloud of misunderstanding. Whenever a remarkable event happens, including events of any spiritual significance, rumors start to fly, people start to talk, and the inaccuracies start to multiply.
The gospel is a message of truth about the truth itself. But God did not give it a protective shield such that no lies, distortions, confusions, or misunderstandings could be ever be circulated about it. People complained that Jesus was from Nazareth, and not Bethlehem, when He had actually been born in Bethlehem. They said that Paul had taken Titus, a Gentile, into the Temple, when he had done nothing of the kind. They said that Paul and Barnabas were Zeus and Hermes, an error they were barely able to correct, and then were later stoned for their trouble.
When this happens to us we should correct whatever we can, but not worry about it otherwise.
With our flash psalm sings a week or so ago, a lot of misinformation came out to play — about what people thought we did, and also regarding what they thought we were trying to do. We don’t have the time, ability, or inclination to correct every false guess. The best way to make everything clear is to keep doing it—stay tuned—until the objective is attained. Then it should be very clear what we were doing.
In the meantime, our demeanor is to be cheerful, respectful, diligent, joyful, and firm. Toward fellow believers who don’t get it, we should be full of grace, not defensive, not angry. Toward the police , we play the role of supporters who want the cops to be allowed to do their appointed job, which is restraining bad guys, instead of disrupting psalm sings. The job of disrupting psalm sings belongs to our volunteer percussionists, and toward them we want to display the sharp contrast that they are trying hard not to understand—the contrast between those who have heard the word of Christ and want to sing to Him, and those who want to beat their drums so that they can’t hear Him, and won’t have to sing to Him.
And in all of it, understand that the energy for what we have been able to do comes from here, our worship of God in sacred assembly, on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day.