Holding By A Thread
What do you miss most about your church? Hearing the music? Singing the hymns? Sitting in your favorite pew? Shaking hands or exchanging hugs at the Peace? Receiving Communion? Serving as an acolyte? Baking the bread? Teaching Sunday school? Going to a Bible study? Sharing your struggles with people who care about you? Holding those burdens that people you love ask you help them carry?
How long has it been since you came to church? How long has it been since you got into your car, drove into the parking lot, made your way around to the door, received a bulletin from an usher, continued down the aisle to your pew, bowed reverently to the altar, pulled down the kneeler, knelt for a moment of quiet prayer, and then sat quietly before the prelude began? Or, if you are one of our parishioners who cannot regularly come to church, how long has it been since a priest or lay Eucharistic visitor has been able to come into your home, greet you in the name of our congregation, open the little Communion kit, read the gospel lesson, lead the prayers, and share with you the body and blood of Christ?
Online worship—if you can access it—is great, but it is not the same. Several people have acknowledged to me that, while grateful for the opportunity to tune into the service, they find the experience to be lacking in authenticity. Going through the virtual motions is becoming its own habit, but, still, something is missing, and I think that is especially true in a time of societal struggle.
This is a time when we need to come together as a church, yet it remains a time when we cannot do that in the traditional way. In this time of intense isolation, we need to stay connected with a community that speaks hope and love and promise into this time of trouble and fear. The experience of separation in the midst of struggle reminds me of those who have endured the loss of a spouse. Their pain is doubled because the person on whom they depend for comfort is the very person who has been taken from them. Right now, when society itself is being turned upside down, being apart from each other is its own added grief, and the consolation we seek from our place of belonging is the very thing that we cannot have.
Some of us are heartened by our church’s call for justice and action, but others are struggling to find their place in that work. I presume that some of you feel pushed away by words that I have preached or words that I have written. Actually, in the life of a congregation, that is not unusual. Preachers regularly push us to places of discomfort by challenging our assumptions about God, about ourselves, and about our church. What makes this situation unusual is our inability to stay connected despite those challenging words. We can’t walk through the door and see all of our friends and sit in the gorgeous building and hear the beautiful choir and approach the sacred altar. We can’t experience the myriad of ways that the Holy Spirit holds us together and shapes us into one body despite all of our differences.
The apostle Paul spent his time travelling from one church to another, teaching and preaching and raising up leaders who could hold things together after he left. The primary record of his ministry that we have, however, is from his time apart from those congregations. Accordingly, his letters to the various churches are full of hope and pain, joy and struggle, encouragement and despair. The truth is that maintaining relationships across distance is difficult, and it should not surprise us that Paul had a hard time holding diverse groups of Christians together despite his absence. Likewise, it should not surprise us when we experience that same struggle. But Paul knew that God’s love for us in Christ Jesus has the power to overcome anything that would seek to pull us apart, and, like any faithful pastor, he wanted his congregations to know that, too.
I wonder how you are maintaining your connection with your church. Are you watching the online worship? Are you saying the Daily Office? Have you called some church friends to check on them? Have you thought about driving up to the church and walking through the door and sitting in your pew for a few minutes? In normal times, we go through stretches when we feel a little bit distant from our church, and the remedy for those periods of separation is usually as simple as showing up and saying our prayers. When we go through the motions, God meets us in them and uses them to bring our hearts and minds back to God. Right now, however, we cannot rely on familiar practices to close that gap. We have to go out of our way and try new things, and sometimes they do not work as well as we hope.
If you are struggling to stay connected with your church, give me a call. We may not be able to look each other in the eye, but we can listen to each other and pray with each other over the phone. We can remind each other that this, too, will pass and that, with God’s help, we will persevere together.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan