March 15th "sermon"

(preached on March 15^th for Lent Midweek Worship)

Our story connections: Share a story of your spiritual renewal. What is your story from unbelief to belief?

Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
John 3:1-17

So one year for Lent, I gave up church.

I have always been the kind of person who goes to church almost automatically—it’s probably why I ended up moving across the street from one! I just can’t help myself. Our family had invested almost ten years in this particular congregation, both the kids had been baptized there, and so even though none of us were happy, we kept showing up, with two little kids who were constitutionally incapable of sitting quietly with crayons and board books the way all the other kids at church did. I’m pretty sure the record Queen Mab set for the number of times she thrashed herself off the pew or out of our arms and cracked her forehead on the pew in front of us is still standing. And I disagreed with just about everything anyone said, and I resented them for saying it, and I resented their version of God, who seemed so small and petty compared to the massive, beautiful, and totally messed-up world. I decided that even if that God was real, which seemed unlikely at this point, he wasn’t worth worshiping and certainly wasn’t someone I could count on to take care of me—this God was only interested in his own glory, and everyone else could go to hell—you know, if that was what would bring him the most glory. I passed lots of angry notes to David, and after we got home I would gripe all afternoon.

And my husband kept asking me, “Well, why don’t you talk to the pastor about it?” And I would answer, “Because I would just be telling him why I thought everything they do and believe here is wrong, and that doesn’t seem helpful,” “Well, then we could find another church.” “I mean, we could….but….” And actually, we did try one Sunday, and we visited a different church, and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t. I hated church, especially my church, and God looked like nothing more than a particularly vindictive authoritarian character that some guys had invented to keep uppity over-educated women like me in our places who I wanted nothing to do with, but I couldn’t quit. I just kept dragging myself back, Sunday after Sunday, and coming home feeling worse than ever, snarly and resentful. My problem is that I am pathologically law-abiding. If I think I’m expected to do something, I can hardly stop myself from doing it. Even when I don’t believe in the reason for doing it.

One gray, chilly, damp February day—no snow even—just the worst and ugliest kind of late winter, I decided I wasn’t going back. I was going to take a few weeks off and then try the most different church I could find. I wasn’t ready to quit church altogether, but all I could pray was “I do believe. Help my unbelief.” and sometimes even that felt a little over confident. I had never gone to a church that followed the church calendar beyond maybe Christmas and Easter, so I only discovered later that it had been Ash Wednesday when I decided to quit.

I didn’t tell anyone at church that I wasn’t coming back. I just ghosted them, even our midweek Bible study attended by my favorite people at church, who tolerated and sometimes, I think, even welcomed our pointed questions. That's a thing I regret.

But that first Sunday morning, waking up and neither scrambling to get ready for a church service I didn’t want to go to nor feeling guilty for not going—just laying bed as long as we wanted (or I guess, as long as our kids let us) and having a lazy breakfast—was amazing. I felt weightless. I wasn’t constantly arguing in my head about what God was like—I didn’t even have to bother to worry about whether or not I actually thought there was a God. Something told me that, whatever the truth was, it was going to be ok.

After sleeping in for a few Sundays, we went to the Episcopal church down the street—that was the most different thing I could find to our old church. They were marking Rose Sunday, which is the halfway point in Lent, so everything was “rose,” and by rose I mean magenta—the paraments were magenta, the vestments were magenta—Mab’s eyes were huge!—she and the priests matched. It was the most flamboyant Welcome To Our Annual Contemplation of the Sin and Brokenness of the World that I’ve ever seen.

So there, in the middle of all this high-level churchy stuff—they had everything but incense—which was so totally foreign to me in every way—I wasn’t arguing anymore. Maybe I was just overwhelmed by the color and pageantry. But we went back the next week, when everything was now purple, and the next. And the God they described wasn’t nearly as grouchy and vindictive as the one I had been railing against for way too long, though while I certainly liked this God better, I kind of suspected that he might just be wishful thinking on their part. But now that my brain had sort of quieted itself down and didn’t feel the need to shout “WRONG!” every few minutes (in my head, of course, not out loud!), God started whispering in my ear. Just a little, once in awhile.

Especially right before communion, and I should point out that we almost never took communion at our old church, because they only had it quarterly, on Sunday nights. They were afraid that if you didn’t believe the right things, you would end up eating and drinking judgment on yourself, so the elders always wanted to talk to visitors beforehand, just to be safe, and this was easier to arrange on Sunday nights. But Sunday nights with our children weren’t really conducive to going out to a SECOND church service, so we usually skipped. And then I’d quit believing the right things, so I quit trying. Or rather, I’d stopped feeling guilty about not trying.

But now, every Sunday the priest would welcome the congregation to the table with the same words:

This is the table, not of the Church, but of God.
It is to be made ready for those who love God
and who want to love God more.

So, come, you who have much faith and you who have little,
you who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time,
you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come, not because I invite you: it is God, and it is God’s will
that you who want God should meet God here.

Hearing this welcome every Sunday morning, I wasn’t sure if I believed in God, but I sure did want God. And it was a relief to hear that I didn’t have to have faith to be welcome. But I wouldn’t get in line, because the flip side of being the kind of person who is obsessed with fulfilling obligations and following the rules is being the kind of person who is paralyzed with terror at trying something new and breaking some secret unwritten rule that will doom me forever. I even signed out a book from the little book cart in their fellowship room that was something like, “How to be a convincing Episcopalian” and I memorized the section with the little diagrams about how to take communion.

But I was still terrified that I didn’t really belong, and that it wasn’t for me, and it was easier to just observe from our back corner, instead of gathering up the kids and herding them down the aisle and through the line—because of course no way were we going to leave three year old Mab in the pew by herself! I wasn’t convinced that this thing that might not even really be for me was worth risking the scene of me doing it wrong or a child breaking free and crashing the beautiful altar with all the candles and that super fancy purple tablecloth.

The Maundy Thursday service, though, was a potluck, because Last Supper, held in the fellowship room instead of the sanctuary. Everyone filled plates and sat around big round tables with ordinary, slightly stained white tablecloths, and all the kids, including Her Highness, vanished pretty early on to go play. We were with some friends from grad school, and there was good food, and great conversation, and then a service while we were still at the tables. Though by the time we got to communion, the Golden Boy, who was about the Caeterpie’s age, had gotten squirmy and kind of squawky, so I was pacing around the edge of the room with him in the carrier. It felt like a good place to watch without being conspicuous about not getting in line.

And as people were lining up, I saw, at the front of the line, Queen Mab. Of course I started to panic, like ya do when you suddenly see your kid doing the thing that you’re afraid to do yourself. She must have been watching the priests’ kids she had been tagging along with, and she put out her hand with total faith that this was hers and she belonged there and she took that little gluten-free wafer—

so I got in line too.