Passing the Peace of Christ: More than ‘Meet & Greet’

Apparently it’s a hot topic of late on church blogs and elsewhere where churchy things are discussed: whether or not to have a time during worship for what most call ‘meet and greet’, but what in the church I serve we call the exchange of the peace of Christ.

Checking in to one of those blogs, I read this comment:  Once the service of worship of the Triune God has begun, that is my purpose for being there.  Not to fellowship with others. . . Once worship begins, that should stop.

I was, I have to admit, stunned at the idea that fellowship could be seen as something having no place in worship.  After all, I reasoned, what is communion?  Is Jesus our only boyfriend when we come to the communion table?  In my tradition the answer is as simple as it is clear: no.  Thus there is never a time when someone has communion alone – not even just them and the pastor.  An elder is always in attendance, for example when serving to the home-bound, as a representative of the entire body.  In our way of understanding, communion is, by definition, a communal event we participate in with the whole body of Christ across time and space.

Thus the very idea of a collection of islands, each alone and surrounded by their own particular sea, seems odd indeed to me when thinking of worship.

And then I remember how I was when I first started attending church.  I went church shopping.  And just like Goldilocks (without the larcenous intent), I had a difficult time finding a place where they got it ‘just right’ (meaning to suit me).  

One church never greeted me.  Another church-stalked me (with the best of intentions, I know) at work with a plate of cookies.  The church where I finally landed, however, taught me by example and I returned, in substantial part, not because of how they greeted me, but because of how they greeted each other.  

I didn’t think about it that clearly at the time, but the fact is that I was an outsider as someone new to their community.  How could I not be?  And that’s not about cliques.  Or about being welcoming or unwelcoming.  All of those things can matter.  But even when a church gets it ‘just right’, as a newcomer, I am exactly that – new to the experience.  

It’s just not realistic for me as newcomer to expect that I’ll experience worship like I’ve been there all my life, for the simple reason that I haven’t.  

It is realistic to hope and expect that I will be treated like what I am: a visitor, a guest; that I’ll receive hospitality; that ‘they’ will be good hosts.  Of course, it’s also reasonable to expect from myself that I act as a good guest.  And that includes being open to the experience of what they have to offer me, whether it’s what I’m used to or not.

Being a good guest is how I learned that I actually do like asparagus.  I’m a very picky eater.  Always have been.  Probably always will be.  But my mother did teach me that when at another’s home, I eat what’s before me.  So there came the day at a friend’s house when they had asparagus as their vegetable.  And it was a small enough gathering that what I ate (or didn’t) would definitely be noticed, even with all my usual tricks.  So I swallowed my distaste and took a bite.  And turns out it was good.  It was fresh (rather than the canned I had known as a child) garden asparagus and it was delightful to my palate.

Now it could have turned out that I still didn’t like it.  My eating really didn’t have expectations, for I was doing the part of being a good guest and partaking of what was on offer.  The bonus for me was that I actually did like it, which I would have never known had my mother not taught me the good guest rule.

So to the folks visiting a church that meets and greets far outside your comfort zone, you might consider a few possibilities for what’s happening, rather than presuming that it’s done in disregard of your feelings as an introvert, or done thoughtlessly, or as an interruption to worship rather than as a part of worship:

1. Some people – as a pastor, I would say lots of people – in church on Sunday morning (or whenever their usual time is) are lonely.  They live alone.  They may not get out as much as they used to.  Their families may have moved away or died.  And they are lonely.  Fellowship before and after worship matter, but does nothing to alleviate the loneliness of sitting by one’s self alone again during worship.  The passing of the peace of Christ offers a unique point of contact, done in the context of the worship of God, serving as a physical reminder of the real and comforting presence of Christ in our midst.  It is a comfort.  And the Gospel promises us God’s comfort.

2. Some people are carrying burdens of resentment against others, at least some of whom are in the room with them on Sunday during worship.  Jesus’ call to reconciliation was so strong that he enjoined us to actually leave worship to go and work out our differences with others before coming before God’s altar.  Passing the peace can and does operate as a place, a space, within which to mend those relationships with something as simple as a handshake.  I know it works because I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes.  

3. The peace of Christ is that thing which, while true, surpasses human understanding.  The Word is conveyed by preaching, but proclamation comes from our actions as well as our words.  We proclaim Christ’s peace with our greeting of one another in Christ’s name (whether we say it literally or not) whenever we pass the peace.  And in the doing, something holy happens.  It may not always ‘feel’ like it.  But Christ is present in the exchange.  And we could all use a little bit more of the real presence of Christ.  Or so I’m thinking.

4. We worship God in the act of caring for one another.  When it comes to passing the peace of Christ, as in all other human endeavors, we will never, all of us, do it perfectly all the time.  So some may be too enthusiastic in their greeting.  Some may wander off task.  Some may feel their particular cocoon of safety threatened because some of those coming to them have less pastoral awareness than others.  There may be days when we simply cannot find it in our hearts to be at peace with anyone.  I am one who believes that Christ’s peace is big enough for all of our shortcomings and so much more.  

5. As part of a church’s liturgy, passing the peace of Christ is a public work of the people and as with all worship, is an offering to God.  Thus do we offer to God not only our time, our attention and our resources, but also our relationships with other people.

6. In the words of Paul Ryan, passing the peace “trains ours hearts, hands, and tongues in the ways of peace. . . [There is a] cumulative impact of weekly passing of the peace.  By regularly practicing this gesture, our hearts are shaped in the form of the words.  Consider the daily practice of training toddlers to say “please” and “thank you.”  Though at the beginning the toddler mechanically repeats the words, eventually her heart fills the words with grace and gratitude; indeed, her heart is shaped in the form of “please” and “thank you.”  In the same way, passing the peace gives us the vocabulary for expressing peace as we mature in faith and, in fact, shapes our hearts and minds in the form of peace.”  Reformed Worship  In other words, over time, we become what we do.  Becoming Christ’s peace is a call in the life of every believer.

To the gentleman writing that worship does not include what he conceives as fellowship, my own take is that fellowship (as in a body of believers worshiping together) is actually a part – an integral part – of worship.   Worship is not something we do alone, but in community. 

In the order of worship in the congregation I serve, we exchange the peace of Christ immediately following the prayer of confession and assurance of pardon – I understand this in the movement of worship as a way of extending to others that which we have ourselves received - the very peace of Christ himself. 

I have always understood worship to be participatory rather than observatory. The passing of the peace is an obvious aspect of participation in the work of the church that we call worship. 

On a less liturgical note, I often imagine worship as I'm planning it as a conversation around the kitchen table – focused on the topic/purpose at hand, but open enough to allow for the comings and goings we humans do when in our kitchens, with children a part of the family as opposed to strangers to the process, helping and participating as they can. 

When a visitor comes into my kitchen, they're usually given a task to do – it's a form of welcome,  as in 'can I help?'; 'sure, cut this onion for me, would you?'  

The idea of standing and moving around as disruptive of worship, it seems to me, conceives worship as only possible in quietude, in orderliness, in structure. All of those can and often are part of worship.

But for me, envisioning the whole, the ebb and flow from sound to silence and back to sound, from standing to sitting to standing again, from moving to stillness to back again, is integral to worship, which I understand more as a movement (think symphonic here) as opposed to a singular event. 

And may the peace of Christ, which surpasses all human understanding, be with you all, now and evermore.  Amen.

Go & Worship

[NOTE:  I wrote this reflection in the fall of 2006.  In the eight years since, so much has changed and so little.]

My thought today is a simple one: go to worship this weekend.  Not out of burden or duty, but out of gratitude that you can.  I spent time with a Christian group in Iraq and was struck by how difficult and sometimes impossible it is there to go to worship.

I was unable to attend church more often than not in Iraq – I missed church because the times of worship change to accommodate the before-dark curfew.  Another week I was on the Syrian border with Palestinian friends running for their lives.  Many times a priest friend would tell us not to come, that it was not safe today.  ‘Maybe next week’, he said week after week.

And then there was the day we actually made it  – the day that churches instead of mosques were bombed.  On our way, we saw the black smoke of car bombs at churches in the area.  Six in all.  But that day, it wasn’t the church we were going to attend.

Never before have I had to risk my life to worship in community, to go to church.  It has given me a profound gratitude for the privilege of gathering with the communion of the saints.

One evening at Mass in a nearby Catholic church, I wept at the courage of the gathered community who risked their lives to gather.  This night the priest said, “You are the result of God’s love, not it’s cause.”  I will never forget his words.  For such love, my Iraqi friends, Christian, Muslim, Yezidi, and others, gather still.

Pray for them, please.  Pray for us.  Go and worship.

Jesus Schooling the It Boys

Matthew 23.4-10:  They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.  They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues,  and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.  But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.  Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. [NRSV]

“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’  “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ. [The Message]


Religion cannot be about showing off, or it isnt’ religion at all.

Showing off shifts our faith away from the worship of God (its very purpose) to the worship of ourselves.

The most insidious, the sneakiest way we have of doing this fools (even) ourselves.

The sneaky voice of the pretender is the voice of condemnation: look how bad he is! . . . I cannot believe she goes to church and acts like that! . . . And she calls herself a Christian! 

Here’s the thing: whenever I recognize myself in your sin, I am much quicker to lean toward mercy, forgiveness, compassion, love, understanding, forebearance, grace.

It is only when I do not see myself in you that I feel so free to condemn and judge.

In this way might we understand that our condemnation of others is just a slick way of pointing out how wonderful we are, for surely in our condemnation of others is at least implied a celebration of how very lucky we are not to be (like) them.

Remember how much Jesus liked that?  Not so much.

Why should it matter so to God?  After all, aren’t we better than some folk?  Aren’t there people just begging for a little healthy criticism?

Perhaps.  But by whom?  Is not God the judge?  And if God is THE judge, then who are we pretending to be when we get all judging?

Exactly.

Because once again, we are making ourselves the focus (spiritual narcissism), making of ourselves gods (or at the least, demi-gods), to be admired (which is perilously close to being worshiped) for our wondrous selves, if for no other reason that at least we’re not that guy.

But we are not the judge.

If it’s a legal model we so desire, what we, all of us, are, are co-defendants.  But the metaphor will only take us so far.  Life is not a courtroom.  And we do not get off more lightly for our wrongs by rolling over on the other guy.  It doesn’t work that way.

Condemnation of others is the adult version of tattling – we’re the kid and God’s the Dad.  And he doesn’t want to hear it.  The only person’s inventory we are responsible for is our own.  And God isn’t just Dad.  God is The Dad.  And he already knows.

Ultimately, condemnation of others is evidence of the absence of love in our hearts for another.  And we are commanded to love others, just like we love us.  To condemn another is to find them wanting in the courtroom of our own minds and appoint ourselves the judge.

And there we are, slipping into the judge’s chair again, forgetting that our job, our only job, when it comes to other people, is simply, merely, only, to love.

Anything else just isn’t our business.

On Seeking Forgiveness

God forgives us.  We forgive ourselves.  We allow ourselves to be forgiven by others.

Matthew 5 (The Message): This is how I want you to conduct yourself . . . If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.  

What The Message calls ‘making things right’ is usually translated as “be reconciled”.  Seeking and receiving forgiveness are biblically understood as reconciliation, a restoration of something that was lost.

Hence the practice of the passing of the peace taking place before coming to the communion table arose in the very early church – passing the peace is not merely a handshake or greeting among friends – it is the opportunity to restore one’s self to fellowship with someone wronged.

As noted in the Pulpit Commentary: “Our Lord is insisting that it is so important to lose no time in seeking reconciliation with a person whom one has injured, that even the very holiest action must be put off for it.”

There is a sense of urgency about the importance of seeking out forgiveness from someone we have wronged.  It requires Honesty, Haste and Humility.

Our job is to do the work of seeking out that forgiveness. But how?  Today’s passage suggests some obvious, clear, simple – not easy, but simple – steps:

(1) acknowledging/admitting that we have done something that needs forgiving

(2) asking the person or persons wronged to forgive us

(3) doing what we can to make amends

(4) leaving the decision to forgive to the person from whom we seek forgiveness

(5) making this a priority in our lives

1. Acknowledging that we have done something that needs forgiving.  It’s about getting honest – with God, with ourselves and with the other person.  It means saying it out loud.  It is an act of humility to admit we’ve done wrong by someone, leaving out all the self-justifications, reasons, and resentments. It’s no accident that Jesus speaks of ‘remembering’ what we’ve done wrong while we’re at the altar.  Where better to be reminded of our wrongs than standing before God? Thus, when we are reminded of something we’ve done that hasn’t been addressed, we might do well to also remember who reminded us.  If God’s Holy Spirit is bringing something to our attention, chances are it’s because the matter needs our attention.  Whether the other person has a part or not is irrelevant to your apology, your admission, your acknowledgment.  Their part is just that – theirs.  When seeking forgiveness, seek it.  Don’t shift the blame.  Don’t rehearse all your justifications.  You’re caught.  Live with it.  Admit it.  Seek to redress it.  Period.  Anything else takes you away from the land of honesty as well as humility.

2. Asking the person or persons wronged to forgive us Here’s the really humbling part: ask to be forgiven and walk away.  Don’t demand it.  Don’t beg for it.  Don’t wheedle, whine, carp or nag for it.  Simply ask and leave it at that.  Maybe they’ll need to think about it.  Maybe they’ll forgive you right away.  Maybe they’ll even have forgotten what you’re talking about.  In seeking another’s forgiveness, grace would suggest that we give them the space to do their work.  After all, we’ve been thinking about this for some time.  Shouldn’t we give them the same opportunity?

3. Doing what we can to make amends Reconciling, making things right between us really means making things right between us.  If I have wronged someone, it’s not their job to erase the debt – it’s mine.  And that may well include some form of recompense.  I may not be able to do it all at once, in which case I outline what I am going to do – and then, and this is most important, do it.  There is no credit here for my good intentions if they remain nothing but intentions.  Sometimes there really is nothing we can do to make up for what was done.  But we can refrain from repeating the same mistake.  We can change.

4. Leaving the decision to forgive to the person from whom we seek forgiveness The person we’ve harmed has the choice to make once we have sought their forgiveness whether to forgive or not.  What they should do is not up to us to decide.  We have to be willing to risk being told no, as in ‘no, I cannot or I will not forgive you.”  Once we honestly know we have done our part, we simply have to leave it at that and trust God’s Holy Spirit to begin a work within the their hearts just as was done in ours.  We must accord the one harmed the same freedom given to us – the freedom to say no.  That, too, is grace.

5. Making this a priority in our lives  What the Holy Spirit brings to your heart requires your response – now.  It is so urgent that Jesus speaks of literally walking out of church in order to go and seek the person out.  “Lose no time.”  The act of reconciliation is more important to God than what we might think of as the most holy act of worship.  How we are with each other, then, we might understand as a form of worship itself.  How do we worship God?  By seeking the forgiveness of those we have harmed.

We do this work in the constant companionship of God’s own self, God’s Holy Spirit, who begs us to remember and act, that nothing, not even ourselves, might separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Amen.

MoneyChanger Mondays

Monday of what we Christians call Holy Week was a bad day for the moneychangers of Jesus’ time.  Turns out it’s the same for Wall Street.

In their book The Last Week, Marcus Borg and John Crossan make a compelling case that Jesus’ action at the temple on that fateful Monday was not so much a cleansing (making ritually pure) as it was a symbolic prediction of the destruction of the temple as fruitless (fruitless is worse than being useless, as the thing – fig tree or temple or society – projects itself as useful but isn’t – and the lie has dire and bitter consequences for those deceived, those who believed the lie that fruit could be found where, in fact, there was none).

Borg and Crossan quote from Jeremiah 7 for the phrase ‘den of robbers’, arguing from the linkage between Jeremiah and Mark 11.12-19 (the moneychanger temple incident), that God insists not merely on justice and worship, but that God prefers justice over worship.  I would disagree (it may be hairsplitting, but I don’t think so) and say that in fact, God would have us understand that acting justly is itself an act of worship, of lifting our voices in praise to God and all that God has created.  Borg and Crossan distinguish (rightly) between justice and the forms of worship in quoting from Hosea 6.6, I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.  

But sacrifice and burnt offerings are the external evidence, the forms, of worship and they may (or may not) evidence actual or genuine worship of God.  But we know this: in all facets of life, we often act contrary to our hearts.

Jesus’ emphasis throughout his ministry is to get our hearts and our hands acting in concert – with each other and most importantly, with the heart of the divine.

And that, I think, is the problem of Mondays for we Christians in our time: our Sunday hearts and our Monday hands so often find themselves at odds with each other.

Not always.

But often enough to make Mondays a real problem.

Borg and Crossan interpret the events at the Monday temple as underscoring that we human claimed believers and followers cannot run and hide in our Sunday temples from what we’ve done on Monday.

I’m with them on this: this is a social justice commentary by Jesus on what’s happening in his time and in ours.  It’s a matter of public morality, decency and politics.

But to turn it towards private piety for a moment, I am wondering who or what my Monday moneychangers are and where they’re hiding within the Sunday temple of my own heart.

What is it that I hope you don’t know about me, especially when it comes to how I treat others?

Is Jesus Christ really President* of all my Mondays?

I want to think so.  I want to believe that the Jesus moment I had in church yesterday is with me in all my todays.  I want to think to that I am not Wall Street and that I don’t succumb to the worries, fears and behaviors of the world whenever Monday comes around.

May the wish become prayer.
May the prayer become thought.
May the thought become reality.
May the reality become my wish.

Amen.




______________
*which is just another way of saying ‘Lord’.  Listen to Woody Guthrie’s Christ for President on the YouTube link below.

***

Christ for President – words by Woody Guthrie

& music by Jeff Tweedy & Jay Bennett

performed on YouTube by Billy Bragg and Wilco

Let's have Christ our President

Let us have him for our king

Cast your vote for the Carpenter

That you call the Nazarene

The only way we can ever beat

These crooked politician men

Is to run the money changers out of the temple

Put the Carpenter in

O It's Jesus Christ our President

God above our king

With a job and a pension for young and old

We will make hallelujah ring

Every year we waste enough

To feed the ones who starve

We build our civilization up

And we shoot it down with wars

But with the Carpenter on the seat

Way up in the Capital town

The USA would be on the way

Prosperity Bound!

Life is My Religion*

Not mine . . .

Life is my experience,
but it is most definitely not
my religion.

my life is how I worship
but it is not what I worship

I celebrate my life,
but I do not worship it.

I celebrate your life,
but I do not follow it.

Even the more amorphous but broader ‘life’
does not claim my allegiance – my allegiance
is to God – and thus do I honor, respect and
rejoice in life, because it is God-created

Life, wonderful life, finite
with an end-date
a wind-down-the-clock
bound-by-time
frame
out of or around which
I cannot see
for all of us,
and not just for me

I don’t spend much time
thinking about or even
talking about my religion –
my ways and means of
observing, celebrating,
co-creating, entering,
living into –
the reality that is God

God is the subject
as well as the object
of my worship

religion is how I go
about that

it’s the day-to-day
of it all
so maybe life actually
is my religion
my how-to
my show-and-tell
of the guy-gal I call
God


____________________
*FB friend Jim Palmer has a blog Life is my religion.  Jim posts many amazing photographs to accompany his FB posts.  They always catch my eye.  They are often accompanied by the simple one-line tag:  life is my religion.  My own reflection above was a literal journey of words, thoughts, movement away from and movement towards.  Here's where the journey took me:  whether life is or is not my religion, religion is not my religion - of that I am sure.  So perhaps life actually is my religion, my steps both towards and away from, God -- the ways in which I worship God, describe and enact my experience of and encounter with God.  I think Jim may be on to something.

Worshiping Me

what is the purpose of worship?
of my worship?

Is it about me –
what I get out of it
or don’t?

Is it about recentering
the would-be
all-powerful
roaring
Notice!
Respect!
Heed!
Accommodate!
Focus!
Over-here!
Ever-shouting
me?
–about gently shepherding
that me
to the margins
the very edges of things

to the place
the space
where
the I-ness
of it all
begins to slip
and slide away
just a wee bit
into the quiet
and the sound
the darkness
and the light
the calm
and the raucous
the tender
and the violent
that
is
G-d?

What
is
worship?

Who
do
I
worship
when
it’s
all
about
me?

What
is
worship?

ScotlandDay39: It is well

The woman on the mountain stopped in her tracks
by Karen’s* Metropolitan-Opera-sized voice
singing It is well with my soul
We thousands worship in the valley
so too does the lone hiking woman
on the mountain
frozen for a moment in time
by a voice too big to be contained
        and the truth it sings.
As the last note fades,
on she moves
back to her journey
up the mountain
But for a moment
we were bound together,
she and I,
in that worship space
of the two- or more gathered
Both of us stopped in our track-making
on this planet
we call home
And it was well with our souls

The woman hiker is in the center of the photo

_____________
Opera singer Karen Cargill sang some hymns during worship at Heart & Soul 2012, the Church of Scotland kick-off event for their annual General Assembly in Edinburgh.  This is the third GA of the Church of Scotland that I've been able to attend at least a portion of.  During the closing outdoor worship where thousands gathered together (a first for me), Edinburgh Castle and the mountainside approach faced us as the background to the worship stage area; and as I listened to one of my own favorite hymns, I noticed a woman hiker standing rock still while Ms. Cargill sang.

Scotland -- Day Four

Worship!

Halleluia!

I’m in church

and I’m not in charge!

Now that’s

a Halleluia!

moment!

Singing praise

looking upward

eyes guided by the song words

on the screen

looking upward

and seeing the high windows

joining the roofline

and spying

the blue sky

beyond

lifted eyes

lift spirit

upward

ever

upward

***

Shopping for clothes

for Ruaridh

and Zara

and Liz

and me

yes - the one

who can’t shut

her suitcase

decided that she

wanted --

nay

needed

more clothes

"Do you think it’s a sin

to love to shop for clothes?"

she asks her fellow minister

and friend

more friend than minister 

in the moment,

Liz reassuringly answers

“No”

I love this woman

***

Afternoon Sunday

just like back home

once the church scurry

is over

it’s total sabbath relaxation

whether hanging the laundry

washing the car

pulling weeds

or relishing the

nothing doing

of the moment

and it is glorious

Dance Into The Light

Do you see the sun?  It’s a brand new day

O the world’s in your hands - now use it . . .

Come on and dance into the light

Everybody dance into the light

These words from Phil Collins’ song Dance Into The Light are what I think of when I hear Psalm 30 . . .

There’s a recognition in his words of a painful past . . . what’s past is past – don’t turn around . . . brush away the cobwebs of freedom . . . the idea that there will always be a cost to living life into its fullness, but to not be captive to that past . . . that cost . . .

It is the idea the psalmist expresses in telling of lament and trouble, of the sense of abandonment and hopelessness being washed away in the simple act of worship and praise . . .

Having a great day?  Feeling the love?

Dance into the light.

Having the worst day of your life?

Dance into the light.

Loving everyone you see and meet?

Dance into the light.

Just not seeing it today?

Dance into the light.

Praise . . . the joy-worship of God . . . is itself an act of faith . . . sometimes you feel it, sometimes you don’t . . .

Either way . . . Dance into the light . . . Dance into the light. . . Dance into God . . .

It's All Pie!

I spent the day gathering data from last year, preparing for next week’s congregational meeting.

From 9laughs.com

It’s tedious work, but there’s something in me that likes to measure things.  Somehow, it makes me feel as if I’ve accomplished something.  I’m that way with lists too – there’s nothing quite so satisfying as checking some chore off the to-do list.  And today, I made a pie chart! (I really need to get out more!)

Today’s data focused on how I spent my time as pastor in 2011.  The results are interesting to us, perhaps, but hardly surprising: most of my time was spent in (1) worshiping and preparing for worship; (2) pastoral care – things like visiting the sick; (3) Bible studies (well, we are a church after all);  (4) young people ministries; and (5) outreach.

Young people coming in #4 may not sound all that impressive to you, but when you consider that we only have 5 young folk under the age of 18 who regularly attend our country church, and that the average age of the congregation is surely above 60 (some Sundays, at 56, I’m the youngest one in the room), I think that’s actually pretty good.

The thing that I really don’t like is that I spend more time in meetings than in  missions.  But that’s a bit deceptive, not as to my time, but as to the church’s.  I am not spending much time dedicated to mission work; but the church is.

Close to 20% of our giving goes to one form of mission or another.  Some members of the church could truthfully be said to literally be living-in-situ missionaries.  We collect shoes sent to Kenya, food for the local Food Pantry, serve as a drop-off point for the recycling of used batteries, organize Thanksgiving baskets of food for local needy families, organize dinners to raise money to meet medical expenses for a local family, Angel Tree Christmas families, and join with other local churches to meet emergency needs as they arise.

But I keep going back to #1 - worship.  And I wonder: is worship only when we gather on Sundays and the preparation associated with that gathering?

Do we not also worship God when we feed the hungry and clothe the homeless?  Is God not glorified when we open our doors to welcome the stranger?  Does heaven hear our praise when we gather in yes, one more meeting, to wrestle over the issues of the day and try to come to good, wise and godly decisions?

Maybe I’ll redo the pie.

Maybe it’s all worship.

I hope so.

Call and Response

Call and response, where the congregation verbally responds to the preacher with ‘amens’, ‘preach it’, ‘that’s right’, clapping, laughter, whoops and shouts and spontaneous singing, responses  mostly from the charismatic traditions, contains lots of repetition, because it is a rhythmic thing – it is more a dance than a speech or even a song – and in dance, steps are repeated – there is beauty in the repetition, in the pattern –
      And so it is with worship –
           So it is . . .
      That every Sunday we sing the same hymns . . .
      Say the same prayers . . .
      Listen to the same message . . .
      Repeat the same words . . .
      Fold hands and bow heads in the same ways . . .
      See the same faces . . .
      Stand in the same places . . .
And so it is that every Sunday, we enact the Word of God, waiting to be surprised. . . and often we may not even know what we’re waiting for or even that we are waiting . . .

Drawing Our Lives

Photo by Tim Nafziger, CPT

Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana steps to the podium to bring the message on the second day of CPT's 25th Anniversary Peace Congress in Chicago.  As the worship had begun earlier in the morning, Pastor Shawna Bowman entered the empty space before the podium, knelt before the blank black page taped to the floor and began to draw.

By the time Dr. Shanta came forward, a border had been largely filled by Shawna and my eyes left her for a time, engaged in Dr. Shanta's words.

Theology, he reminded us, is not an abstraction.  It cannot be.  And we help determine the context in which each of our theologies will develop by the simple act of choosing:  who will be at table with you today?

Dr. Shanta was reminding us that the people of the margins are seldom invited to the tables of folks like me.  Perhaps it was the sting of that truth; I don't know.  But it was at that moment that my eyes reverted to Shawna's drawing.  It seemed somehow safer.

My line of sight is drawn by Shawna's actions to the far right side of her work.  There are figures running up the page, perpendicular to the floor.  I'm looking at her creation sideways.  As I look at Shawna's hands, I am captivated . . . she is literally drawing on the margins Dr. Shanta is describing. . . while he invites us to notice who is absent from the table, Shawna is drawing . . . curling, whorling, swirling black on black strokes . . . there, on the margins . . . on the margins of the page as in the margins of our lives . . . there, God is still speaking.

As Dr. Shanta continues to speak of the margin space, Shawna adds . . . more whorls and swirls, but now in vivid color . . . suddenly, the margins are alive . . . the place where movement is happening . . .

It's been there all along . . .

And the age-old invitation comes back . . . Let them with eyes to see see . . .

I am so grateful for the eyes of Shawna and Dr. Shanta and so many, many, others, living out there, at the margins, living and dancing and bringing life-giving color to those like me in the comfortable middle of things. . . that space where colors fade into complacency.

Blessings on us all.