I’ve been thinking, recently, about the Episcopal Church. There’s a lot that makes me cry and makes me want a glass of wine, but it’s the only place where evangelical zeal, mystical drama, and universal, historical order meet–as my friend Andrew Petiprin says here.
reblogged from the Covenant Blog.
– the point of liturgy.
I’ve heard worship in the Episcopal Church described as a method of “fake it till you make it.” I think this is close to right. There’s no requirement or expectation that a person will come every Sunday or walk through the church door and feeling something every single time; there’s no lofty ambition that every attendee will be bowled over by the mystical mind-body-soul connection and the deep meaning of what their bodies and voices are doing during the service. But there is a sort of trust that something profound and shaping is going on at an almost-imperceptible level when our voices are saying the psalms and when our bodies are bowing and folding our hands.
However, unlike the popular adage, it’s not about our own effort, or our feelings about the experience, or even about our own experience of the moments at all.
When learning to cook something new, or trying a new cleaning method for the bathtub, or working on a new regimen for exercise, the steps are clumsy and take a long time and feel foreign and unproductive. It’s frustrating and unfamiliar–sometimes we even give up, trying this new thing, because it feels so totally useless. Think of all the things you’ve tried, and worked for, and gained proficiency in, though–these have become second-nature. Maybe it’s cooking eggs, or swiffering the entire house in just a few minutes, but these things have had a real impact on your everyday life as they were practiced. They made you into a person who was a master omelette-maker, or a whiz with dusting. These skills might even prove useful in other realms of life, giving you an edge when volunteering in the soup kitchen or providing a subject of conversation when seated next to a fellow shedding-dog-owner.
How much more do we hope and intend for daily Scripture reading and repeated meditation on psalms to change the way we understand the world around us, make us more attentive to the God revealed in Scripture, realign our habits and instincts to be centered around the God who came to be with us.
What a comfort to trust that it’s not up to me to “make it,” but to show up, as willing as I can be–and sometimes it’s not willing at all–for the sake of being trained, habituated, realigned toward Hope.
“In the midst of life we are in death.”
You know the feeling in the pit of your stomach that comes when you hear that someone has died? Like the feeling you got when you read about Robin Williams’ end, or perhaps the death of a very distant relative, or a vague acquaintance. It’s a feeling of sadness, and maybe even a few tears, and it might even be a sort of cloudiness that hangs around you for a few days.
How much more we are overcome when someone truly dear to us dies. The void is indescribable, the feeling is one of physical illness (if it can be put that mildly). This is a universal human experience. Everyone everywhere learns at some point what happens to a person when a loved one dies. No one that I’ve come across has been able to say that this was truly a good thing–that there is somehow happiness and joy in this event. Platitudes about the end of suffering and being in a better place do not provide salve for the jagged wound ripped in our hearts. Remembering the good times does not erase the horror of a cold body and eyes which won’t twinkle anymore.
Many modern funeral services try to take buttery platitudes and whip them with sugary remembrances and frost over the whole ugly, dark, mess of death.
The problem is that this is not only unhelpful to the grieving, but simply unchristian. Psalm 23 declares that even in the valley of death, God is near, humanity is never alone. Why, then, run from death’s shadow? Why gloss over the pain of loss, dragging the mourning from their loved one’s still-warm body back into sunshine if we trust that God is with us in darkness, too?
Our culture denies death at its every turn. Exorbitant hospital bills which accompany the last 2 months of life, super-scientific cosmetic cream advances, putting away senior citizens in nursing facilities–these distract us from the reality of death and continually shove us into the eternal sunshine (of the spotless mind–a film with a very applicable commentary on this problem).
If the church cannot stand with the grieving in the shadow of death, who will stand with them? Jesus does, of course. If the church is not standing with the mournful, the church is not standing with Jesus.
The powers of sin, darkness, despair, depression–these are forces that destroy and kill; they are the second-most-powerful forces in existence. There is one force which defeats evil and that is God’s love. God does not sush the grieving or pat the mourning on their heads; God stares death in the face without fear because it is no match for the power of his love. This is the love for which the world thirsts.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;” the only hope for humanity is in God’s life and love. The point of worship is to bring our creeping despair, our nagging sadness, our disorienting grief and to lay it on the altar of God. In order to give up our fear of death and our horror at the chasm it leaves in our lives, we must be able to fully bring it with us into the midst of God’s courts.
The purpose of the service for the Burial of the Dead in the Book of Common Prayer, as it has been for centuries, is to allow us to pour ashes on our heads and to sob in the streets and to take the shadow of death which steals the sunshine and to notice that God is with us in that shadow, and then to let God destroy death through his own resurrection. Like all other services in the Book of Common Prayer, it is not about us or about any impressive member of our number (or even a pair of our number–in the Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage); worship is about God–always.
Yesterday in church, we reflected on “church.” The prayer of the day asked our merciful God to allow his church, gathered together and enlivened by his Holy Spirit, to be an effective witness to his power throughout the world (Collect from Proper 16, in the BCP).
gratuitous St. Paul’s, London shot; via me.
Our Epistle reading, from Romans 12, highlighted how each member of God’s church has a specific job–not anyone doing everything. In the Gospel, Peter proclaimed Jesus the Messiah, Son of the living God, and Jesus, in turn, declared the foundation of the church. Our hymns and psalm addressed the same theme.
One hymn especially took me, “The Church’s One Foundation,” it’s been a favorite of mine for awhile, but this verse made me cry in both services, because of its immediacy to our current situation, and also the realization that this sad state has been the “current situation” for 2000 years or so:
“Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!”
Maranatha–Come, Lord Jesus; save your church.
Choir Camp is still knocking around in my head and heart, I couldn’t help but write more about it! Today, I reflect further on how God is at work in Trinity’s Choirs of Boys and Girls over on Covenant, The Living Church‘s blog. Check it out here!
hope of things not seen 