Tag

Dear People of Christ Church,
This week at our Episcopal Church class we talked about the shape of the liturgy. In the Episcopal Church, that’s also to have a conversation about what we believe theologically—we “do” theology as we “do” church. It’s also to have a conversation about our history, since the way our practices have changed is also part of the story of how our context has changed. The Episcopal Church is part of the Anglican tradition (Anglican just means “of England—we are one of the many branches of a tree that reaches back to the Reformation in England in the 16th century), and the Anglican tradition is very, very wide in its variety of practices.

This past Sunday, though, with our combination of incense and jazz mass, was definitely an unusual pairing. There are places where you hear saxophones in church, and there are places where you smell incense every week, but they are not frequently in the same place. AND we got to sprinkle holy water at the baptism! Putting them together is not so much a “more is better” attitude—it’s not always—so much as it’s a way of thinking about liturgy in terms of embodied experience. Church is the only place most of us ever sing. It engages our souls and bodies in a new way. Watching the incense rise and being enveloped in the sweet smell of frankincense reminds us that our prayer moves out of our sight and into the heavens, that all of our senses are part of our encounter of God in the world. Why in the world would we want church to be less engaging than our regular lives?

Worship, at its best, should be a time to connect with mystery and transcendence. We don’t just go to church to hear a nice sermon (though hopefully the preaching is engaging enough to come back). We don’t just go to church to be fed at communion and buoyed enough to slog through the rest of the week. It’s not just about coffee hour and having good conversation. Hopefully church is about instilling in us a certain way of seeing that can permeate all of our lives. We practice our faith—not just in the sense of completing particular tasks, but also in the sense of inculcating a particular attitude toward the world.

The Episcopal Catechism, which I absolutely adore in its paradoxical duality of precision and openness, tells us that a sacrament is “an outward and visible sign of an inward invisible grace.” We need the sacraments and our embodied worship to remind us to look behind what we see, to remember that what you see isn’t always what you get. God’s vision is exponentially broader than our own. (I did hear recently that the real test of Christian faith in implausible things was not believing that Jesus could be present in bread at communion, but that the wafers we use are actually bread…that’s a point for a different day.).

How does church help you practice your wider vision? How could our practices at Christ Church do that better?

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,

This past Sunday we had our first speaker as part of our stewardship series. These three Sundays of November we imagine what it would be like to be fully offer ourselves—all that we are and all that we have—to God. Maureen Fowler gave us a wonderful beginning in inviting us to think about the barriers that keep us from giving our gifts. Everyone was invited to write their responses to the talk on slips of paper throughout the pews, and we gathered them in a (confidential) offering basket to be blessed with the food for Grandma’s Pantry and our gifts of money for the work of the church.

As you all know, we haven’t distributed pledge cards yet, the idea being to first spend some time thinking and praying about what we will give. In her talk (which you can watch here), Maureen talked about how when tithing was first created, there were no 5 K races for breast cancer. There was no Land Trust or Community Day Center. There was no fundraising for mosquito nets to fight malaria or subsidizing children’s education. There are a lot of things you can give your money to. And, arguably, a la Matthew 25—when Jesus says “when you did it to the least of these you did it to me”—when you give to all of these other fantastic things, you are most certainly saying yes to that call to serve God in others.

So the question you may have asked yourself is why, exactly, giving to church is a good use of your money. The parish heating bill is $20,000. Do you really want to be part of that? As well as we’re growing at Christ Church, parishes all over the Episcopal Church are in decline. Are our pledges propping up a dying institution? Maybe you’d come closer to God staying home and praying in silence. Maybe you’d come closer to the Jesus who is in solidarity with “the least of these” going out into the world and giving to every person on every street corner who asked you to. What kind of positive investment is this, really, apart from all the spiritualized “shoulds” and “oughts?”

Like anything, your answer may not be my answer. But here’s one idea. The reason I give a ton of money to church is that I think being part of church makes me who I am. Being part of a church cultivates in me the vision to see the people on the street who ask for money. Being part of church gives me the vision to see why giving to care for God’s creation is part of practicing my faith. Being part of church helps me to be nourished in ways I didn’t even realize I was hungry. I wonder if giving to church makes it possible for you to be who you are, too.

Being part of church makes it possible for me to make a bigger impact than I could on my own. I can’t invite a yoga class for trauma survivors to meet in my living room, but REACH has organized one to meet in our parish hall every Monday for eight weeks. I don’t want to host an anger management class in my own basement, either, but here on Tuesday nights there’s one that has met for five or six years. I can’t be home every Friday morning to hand out food for seniors or diapers on Saturdays, but my parish pledge goes to that work.

I can’t celebrate the Eucharist by myself—no “Take, eat, this is my body given for you,” eucharistic as sometimes it felt when I was nursing my babies. Practically, I also give to church because when I come to hear Sarah Staley talk about holy gratitude next week, I want the heat to be on, and it falls to all of us to help make that happen. I give to church because no matter where God and I may find each other throughout the week, knowing we will meet at a place and time makes it that much more likely I can meet God in all places and times.

Blessings,
Sara+