Sic Semper Tyrannis

A Month of Sundays Part III

The tour amongst the devout continued yesterday morning. Once again I marveled at how late church starts for a visiting person. (Granted, as of now, I have no plans to attempt Sunday School at these places, which would admittedly push the start times up an hour or so), but a relatively leisurely morning has been the best benefit of these experiments thus far. I went to the city’s most notoriously political, liberal Congregational United Church of Christ (whatever that means) service on Mother’s Day and it was quite an eye opener, intellectually-speaking.

Size: I’d say probably in the 300-400 range? [Caveat: I am horrible at judging numbers of people. My markers are my living room, which can contain about 8 people and Owen Stadium, which can hold 75,000. Any groups larger or smaller than that and I get overwhelmed by estimates.]

Service style: Kinda old-school—featuring hymns, a little bit of the “written out prayer” and “responsive reading,” sermon, end. The highlight for me was a focusing device which I had never heard of: the singing bowl. It’s basically a handheld, resonating bell that was struck with a mallet a few times and was VERY effective for yours truly to slow down his mind and adopt a less critical, analytical mindset and enter into a more trancelike, prayerful, reflective, reverent state. Listening to the oscillating overtones slowly devolve to silence was a beautiful, sparse moment for me. It turns out that I’m the kind of guy who craves silence. I could go on and on about how much our culture fears silence and blah blah blah. I won’t.

The People: this group of folks trended about 10-20 years older than the gathering at the last church I visited. Still, well-dressed and pasty white.

Unlike last time, I did have one exchange with another human. I present the drama in its entirety for you right now:

Me: "Is this seat saved?"
Guy about my age, with two kids: "Nah. No, of course not....saved it for you!"
Me: "Well, all right!"
-THE END-

The Sermon: I don’t imagine anyone goes to this church’s services and leaves unaffected by the sermon in some way, based on anecdotes I have heard in the past. This is definitely a pastor who harps on social justice issues and is unafraid to talk of politics and government from the pulpit. While the idea of the people of God working for social justice is nothing new to me, this type of presentation, without talk of Jesus and salvation WAS new. Granted, this is a rather sweeping generalization to make upon just a single listen to a sermon.

Here’s what I was really thinking while the preacher talked about Mother’s Day’s origins as a radically anti-war American observance: “What if I were sitting in this very same pew listening to a preacher deliver an equally persuasive polemic from a conservative standpoint?” Well, I would have been ready to burn down the building of that bizarro church! “How dare they fire up the base by sullying religion’s name with crass politics!” I would have said to myself. But since I agreed with the thrust of what those old women were saying back in the 1800s when they were inventing Mother’s Day and what Mr. Preacher Man was reading from his script, ‘twasn’t that big of a deal.

I also found it kind of odd that such a “progressive” message (at least in Christian circles) was delivered in such a “traditional” feeling place- among wooden pews, a center aisle, choir in robes, organ and piano- amidst “traditional” music and amongst some grey-hairs. Context is so important.

But I left with one big question and one big lesson for myself.

Question: Do people ever listen to a sermon so as to disagree? Or do we like one preacher over another when they say what we already believe? Do we like having our ideas confirmed?

Lesson: On liturgy- I have finally figured out how to talk about my problem with responsive readings and reading prayers. I’m still fiercely independent. I loathe the idea of reading aloud someone else’s words as if they were my own. This is why I tend to not personally utter a script written out for me at least not until I’ve had a lot of time to review the words, think about them and decide if they are reflective of something I really do believe or even aspire to believe. For what good is served if I lie to both God and myself? And, on a purely aesthetic level, the sound of people monotonously reading aloud is absolutely chilling to me and not in a good way.

Yet another interesting day amongst strangers, but in the grand scheme, not strangers.

posted by Mike @ 4:36 PM