I wasn't at church last week – I was in mountains and bogs instead. While I don't think it's a sin for me to miss church occasionally to do something else that has value, I definitely do notice the difference when I come back. Worshiping in community definitely helps me to feel more on track in my connection with God. I guess that's why Christians have been doing it for 2000 year (following in the tradition of the Jews, who also had communal worship).
Today was especially wonderful because it was my first day meeting some of the kids and parents I'll be working with as a youth leader. I won't be able to say very much about that ministry because I think it's important to respect the kids' privacy. Not just to keep them anonymous for safety's sake, but also to honor the sacredness of their individual and very personal self-expressions and explorations. So I won't be telling stories here about what this or that kid did, even without names. What I will say right now is that it's a really good-natured group of kids and that I feel privileged to get to work with them. I hope to be worthy of helping nurture the unique wonder that God has created in each of them.
It was after the youth group orientation as I entered the sanctuary for worship that I got a strong sense of how blessed I am to have such a wonderful community in the the church. That was part of what I had missed by being away the previous Sunday. I've been told that it's impossible to be a Christian in isolation. I don't know that that's completely true – I think if you get stranded on a desert island, you do what you have to do, and it's probably better not to abandon your faith in such a situation if you have the option. And besides that, people are different, and I don't think it's my place to determine how someone else should practice their faith. Maybe some people are called to be mostly alone.
For myself, though, I definitely think that Christianity is a communal activity. I do pray and read the Bible alone sometimes, but I find it more meaningful with others. I guess I buy into the idea that the church really and truly is the mystical body of Christ, and my connection to Jesus is primarily through the church. This doesn't necessarily mean just in formal or “official” settings, or just within my own congregation. The church is one, and so interacting with any other Christians could be being the church. I say could be because I think there might also be some intentionality involved. If I got together with some friends, even just from my own church, and we went out for lunch or something, we wouldn't necessarily be being the church. If our faith isn't informing our conversation or actions or attitudes, then we're just another group of friends out for lunch – which is not a bad thing and can be a very good thing.
And yet, that claim doesn't quite ring true either; I don't feel like you have to be very self-consciously churchy in order to be practicing your faith. And even if a group of friends goes out with no goal except to have a good time, the Holy Spirit can act there however she wants. You could find up being the church even if that's not at all what you planned to do with the evening. And I don't mean just that you could come across someone in need and help them out, though that would certainly be a good thing to do. I mean also that you could have an evening in which the love of God shone through your conversations with one another and your attitudes toward the world. Or you could not – and if not, I don't think that means we're bad people or even necessarily doing something wrong at that time. I think it just means that we haven't yet fully lived into the kingdom of God to the point where it's constantly manifested in and around us. I think a lot of what we do at church is practice making space for the kingdom of God to be manifested, and that making space is a big part of what I think of as being the church. I think it's often easier to do our part when we're intentional about it, but I also think we're human and not necessarily up for being intentional all the time – sometimes we just need to relax. And that's fine because God can still break in wherever God wants to.
So I find myself at a point of confusion. I think that intentionality matters and that it's good to be consciously willing to bring about God's kingdom. But I also agree with C.S. Lewis that there's a kind of importance in self-forgetfulness, of being with God in the present so strongly that that's what fills your awareness and that for a while you're separated from the constant questioning of “Am I doing okay? What am I about here? Is this who I really want to be?”, and that focusing on God is better than focusing on ourselves. I'm not sure how to reconcile those viewpoints; I'll have to think about that for a while.
"I think a lot of what we do at church is practice making space for the kingdom of God to be manifested." Bingo! My Episcopalian priest in Cleveland said something about doing good because you know it's the right thing to do, to practice that until God's will becomes part of your nature. He put it a bit better than that, but the paraphrase is pretty close. There's some Unitarian Universalist quotation about church being the place where we can practice being human (in this context, being loving stewards who commune with others). This blogpost of yours got me to thinking about how I balance churching and social life. Most of my local friends are also members of my church, so it's an interesting balance. We can be purely social or purely churchy, but we often fall somewhere in between. I think we're all conscious (or at least some of us are usually conscious enough about it and positivelya ffect the others) enough to be respectful of other members of the group and of members outside the group. Life is good.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny - I'm in sort of the opposite situation. There are people in the church that I'm close to, of course, and I have a few friends outside my congregation that are Christian, but many are also pagan/agnostic/atheist, sometimes militantly so (granted pagan is theistic and the others are not - I'm not intending to lump them as the same thing here). That has a whole nother challenge of being true to my faith while respecting the beliefs or lack thereof of others. I don't want to join in the church-bashing that goes on in some groups, and I do want to help people understand that not all (or even most!) Christians are intolerant of people who are outside the mainstream. But I also don't want to be so focused on defending myself that I further alienate people from the church. And add to that a dash of still wanting to help as much as I can for people who might be at a place where the church could start to look like a viable option - to at least sort of "hold the door" and let people know that they're welcome and that I'm willing to discuss my faith and theirs. And then still relate to people as my friends - no one wants to be seen as a project, and I don't want to miss out on the joy of interacting with my friends for who they are.
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