As many of you already knew and as all of us are now
experiencing,
We decided at our annual meeting this year to not move to
our other building in the South Acworth village this year. Last year was a really tough year for us
keeping both building minimally heated during the winter and so we wanted to
cut back this year to try to make up some of the difference.
If you’ve never experienced a move with us before, it can be
quite fun.
We ask everyone to lend a hand – as many hands make light
work.
And at the conclusion of morning worship, after we sing
Grant Us Thy Peace, we grab the hymnals and the Bibles and put them in storage
containers. And we put the storage
containers into the back of Richard’s or John’s or Brian’s truck.
Many probably know this already but Richard and Ella would
always take the hymnal we aren’t using that Sunday down to the Valley earlier
in the week and would make it an easier and quicker process on the Sunday after
church.
Other things that we would need for worship down in the
Valley would be placed into vehicles and we’d all reconvene down in the Valley
for coffee hour.
This was an important part of the process since if we had
coffee hour up here on the hill,
We’d have far less help bringing things down to the Valley.
Having worked up an appetite, we’d enjoy the coffee hour and
the camaraderie of accomplishment.
But this year we arrived and the hall was already set
up. We didn’t put the hymnals in the
containers and we didn’t cart them down the hill. I think we all appreciate the work that the
volunteers who set up the hall yesterday did.
And I think it’s a good idea to recognize that right now.
But the ritual, the memory of moving, of working together,
of delayed coffee hour gratification.
Not this year.
And this is a difficult change to have to take part in. It’s not just a change in a practical sense.
It’s not merely a difference of miles driven over the course
of a year. It’s not merely a relief that
we were saved the labor of having to move.
There’s a loss this year.
We become so used to practices like our yearly moves that to miss them
feels like a loss. And I think it’s good
to recognize that and express that.
Regardless of any practical advantages or disadvantages to not moving
from the hill to the valley, we will miss that space and if you’re at all like
me, and perhaps I am just too sentimental, we will miss the ritual of moving –
that chore that always brought out our togetherness in a way that was almost
like singing a song.
And to make things more difficult we are unable to worship
in our worship space, our sanctuary. The
most practically minded among us will point out how little difference it makes
– we still have the music, the readings, we still have all of the most
important parts.
But this doesn’t recognize the other dimension of change
that we experience.
Someone I was talking to last week mentioned that one of the
most difficult things in the first year after losing a loved one is all of the
firsts.
First birthday without them.
First Christmas without them.
The change that accompanies loss and the loss that
accompanies change is not always obvious to us – we feel it even if we don’t
recognize it. I think it’s really
important to recognize that all changes are experienced in some ways as a kind
of loss. And in however small or large a
way we grieve that loss. And so this year
I experience the loss of moving day.
But as anyone who has been through a major life change or
the death of a loved one can tell you,
Changes not only bring loss but also new opportunities.
When we look with the eyes of faith to God’s abiding presence
and guidance in our lives, we can navigate change and loss and see new life
arise out of the ashes of the old.
Because grass withers and the flowers fade but the word of God remains
forever. Change, as they say, is the one
thing constant. But so is God’s abiding
gift of presence in love.
And so we experience the change of not worshipping in the
beloved Valley Church sanctuary and not enacting the ritual move down the hill
– which as I was thinking about it, in some ways relives the movement of that building
itself down the hill in 1867.
And that move makes me think about the way that churches
adapt and change in order to better serve their community.
Because just as it is difficult for us to give up this year
the tradition of moving down to the Valley,
Can you imagine the difficulty in giving up the location of
the building itself?
The 1860s was a very unsettling time for the Acworth
Baptists.
In fact, they were without a pastor for half of that decade
and would meet for worship on Grout Hill (I’m not sure if this was in someone’s
home or if it was outdoors) and around the time they hired their minister, the
year they decided to move the building, they were worshipping in Union Hall –
which many of you know is the upstairs of the Village Store. That was a worship space for Baptists for a
season.
And I don’t know if there are any journals or letters kept
in some attic somewhere that tell about how difficult it was to be a community
unable to worship together in the church.
But it seems like they made do. I
think they recognized something important about church and about the spiritual
life. Which gives an answer to my
original question.
Church is possible
in a fellowship hall.
And this is good news for us today.
We have as a community worshipped in a fellowship hall
before.
We can worship in
a fellowship hall.
But how is this possible?
So much is different here.
I think a change of space gives us the opportunity to
reflect a bit on what it is that we do when we do church. What is it that we talk about when we talk
about worship? This question might be
familiar for those who were a part of our Lenten book discussion.
What is it that we do that can be done here just as it was done upstairs and down in the
Valley church sanctuary?
When tested by the Pharisees, Jesus replied that the
greatest commandment is actually two:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and
the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Everything else follows from these. That doesn’t mean that we don’t give good
consideration to the particular means by which we love God more genuinely and our
neighbor more authentically. But the
spark-notes summary is this: love God, love neighbor. And that is what I talk about when I talk
about worship and service.
But the question arises in my mind: what do you mean by
love? Love is such a vague word and used
by anyone and everyone and sometimes in contrary ways!
For theologian Phil Kenneson, it’s all about presence.
He writes that a resounding theme of Christian writers has
been the insistence that “there is only one gift that God desires to give us:
the gift of God’s own presence, the gift of being drawn deeply into the very
life of the Triune God.”
He writes that this is what Augustine saw when he prayed his
famous prayer:
“You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless
until they rest in you.”
And a later Christian, Catherine of Siena, echoed this
praying:
“Eternal Trinity, Godhead, mystery deep as the sea, you
could give [us] no greater gift than the gift of yourself….”
And so Kenneson continues, “If Augustine and Catherine are
right, and I think they are, that God has no greater gift than God’s own
presence, then it seems likely that the same is true for us, we who are made in
the image of this self-giving God. For all we humans might offer to one
another, no gift is more precious than our presence, our full-bodied attention,
our willingness and ability to enter into the lives of others and have them
enter ours, our willingness and ability to know them and in turn be known by
them.”
I think Paul understood this dimension of Christian
community when he wrote the Thessalonians about his experience with them: “But
we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So
deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the
gospel of God but also our own selves,
because you have become very dear to us.”
When we sing here.
When we share our joys and our concerns here. When we pray here.
When we sing doxology here.
When we partake of bread and juice together here.
We receive God’s very self within us and among us. And as we receive God’s presence, we offer
ourselves, our presence to God. And this
in a real sense is what I think worship is.
It’s a receiving of God’s grace and an offering up songs of
thanksgiving. And so in thanksgiving we
offer our gifts, we enact our togetherness at the table, and in our praying and
paying attention to one another, we offer ourselves to one another just as God
as become present to us.
In these particular ways worship forms us to love God and
love our neighbor in a time and society that would encourage to devote our
attention to other matters.
This is worship in a general sense: to love.
And in a concrete way we practice that love
at one particular gathering
through particular practices
at a particular time and place in Acworth.
But we can’t forget that that gathering could be at any
time, those practices could be diverse, and that place could be Grout Hill, our
Union Hall, or upstairs, or down in the Valley.
Or right here.
And God’s love would still remain the same.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment