True Religion
FROM THE RECTOR
The Arkansas Razorbacks are having a great season so far. The football team is 3-0 and ranked #16 in the country. Two weeks ago, they celebrated a victory over a long-time rival, the Texas Longhorns, and now they enter a difficult stretch of games with a confidence we have not known for years. Our coach may not win a national championship, but Sam Pittman is beloved by fans as a humble, hard-working leader who knows how to build a program from the ground up. By all measures, things are looking up for the Arkansas football team.
Why does that matter? Colleagues from churches in other parts of the country are surprised to know that our church schedules things around the college football schedule. We try not to hold a parish workday on a Saturday when Arkansas is playing a morning game at home. We try not to have trainings for lectors, eucharistic ministers, and acolytes on weekends when people will need to choose between the training and a tailgate. We try not to schedule our Celebration Sunday for a weekend when Arkansas is likely to suffer a resounding defeat. We make those decisions not because we care more about football than Jesus. We make them because we know that Jesus can’t compete with our community’s true passion—our true religion.
Of course, there are plenty of people at St. Paul’s who care nothing at all for the local football team. Except to note when traffic in and out of town will be swamped and when lines at the local supermarket will be nonexistent, they pay no attention to the Razorbacks’ schedule. They may not like football, but I bet they have other pastimes that ebb and flow throughout the year, interrupting the normal rhythms of life with spurts of intense participation. Birders flock to the woods and lakeshores during spring and fall migration. Gardeners are married to their plants from late spring until mid-summer. Runners become consumed with the rigors of preparing for a big race.
What has the power to disrupt your routine completely? What would make you cancel all your plans, clear your schedule, and make yourself fully available at a moment’s notice? Recently, many of us have had to do that because of Covid. Our child’s school calls because of a potential exposure, and now we are required to stay home with them for a week. A colleague texts us because they found out they were positive, and now we must wait for a negative test before we can go anywhere. Those necessary pandemic adaptations have us yearning for the times when we could drop everything because of an unexpected invitation to a weekend at the lake with friends.
What if God held that kind of sway in your life? What if your relationship with God was the thing you built the rest of your life around rather than trying to squeeze in a few minutes for prayer on the go?
The funny thing about God is that, although God would be justified in demanding all of our time, all of our energy, all of our money, all of our resources, God does not ask for much at all—only that God comes first. God just wants the first part of your life—the first share of your harvest, the first portion of your day, the first expression of your gratitude. Even stranger than that, God does not really want the fruits of your field or the slice of your income. Instead, God wants that part of you that matters most—the part of your heart and mind and soul and hopes and dreams that you hand over whenever you make God the first recipient of your time, talent, and treasure. If you will make God the most important thing in your life, everything else—family, friends, career, pastimes—will be left over for you to enjoy fully as the abundance God has given you. But, if you only give to God what is leftover when all the other demands of life have been met, will your life ever truly belong to God?
Because of the pandemic, many of us have gotten out of the habit of making time for God. Some of us are physically, medically vulnerable and cannot come back to church. I hear from these folks all the time about how eager they are to join us again—how they would give anything in exchange for a Sunday back in the pew. But there are others who have just stopped showing up for no real reason at all. Maybe they have forgotten what it feels like to have a weekly rhythm that revolves around Sunday mornings and Wednesday night at church. Or maybe they just feel disconnected from the parish community. The pandemic has made it easy for us to miss church without being missed. Whenever you come back, there will be no finger-wagging or sackcloth-wearing—only a celebration that befits a homecoming.
The start of the football season has been an excuse for many of us to revive some old patterns of celebration. Two Saturdays ago, fans even had a chance to rush the field after an unlikely win. Maybe that is a sign that, for some of us, life is returning to something that looks more like normal. If that is true for you, maybe it is time to put church back into your routine.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan