4.23.2004
How to steal the Eucharist
For a while now, I've had this daydream of going to a Catholic church every day before work and taking communion there. The problem with this notion, of course, is that the Catholic church will not give communion to non-Catholics. Their reasoning for not doing so is perfectly sound within the context of Roman Catholicism, so I don't take it as a slight at all.
I suppose I could go to an Episcopalian church--I was baptized an Episcopalian, and they'd look awfully petty to refuse me at this point. But this seems like a half-measure. Plus, I don't think any of the Episcopal churches around here offers daily communion.
We Methodists sure don't. We generally only like to take communion once a month, and even then it seems like a kind of necessary chore, like doing the bills or cleaning the drapes.
I am all for sacred things; I rejoice in the sacred. I believe in setting apart actions and places and time in order to consecrate them to God. I just wish we didn't have to take ourselves so seriously while we did it. We aren't the ones that make things holy; that's God's job. Think how nice it would be if we stopped trying to do it for him.
This frustrates me. In many ways the Methodist church has become spiritually devoid. Mine has at least. Worship is not a sermon. It is ceremony, it is song, it is prayer. I long to have the sacred in our worship. But there isn't much. My pastor went so far as to make fun of communion by calling it "deli-style" ON MAUNDY THURSDAY.
The Longing
It occurs to me that faith is a creative process, like painting or writing or dancing. We don't think about faith that way, and we suffer for it. We think of faith as a thing you have, or maybe a thing that you do, a set of choices that you make. These are both true, in a way, but there's something higher than that, something better than either one of those things that embodies all that faith is.
...
And so it is with faith. Faith isn't simply a belief in something; it is a mode of expression unto itself. Faith is a dance performed for an audience of One. The words of a prayer can become brittle and crack on the tongue, but an act of kindness performed in love can obviate it. A worship service can seem empty and contrived, but a flicker of light through a stained-glass window can sometimes be all the sermon we need. Faith is our way of expressing wordless knowledge to a listener who is understood only in part. All of our prayers and sacraments and icons are a means to that end, props in the play, instruments in the orchestra.
Correction
For a while now, I've had this daydream of going to a Catholic church every day before work and taking communion there. The problem with this notion, of course, is that the Catholic church will not give communion to non-Catholics. Their reasoning for not doing so is perfectly sound within the context of Roman Catholicism, so I don't take it as a slight at all.
I suppose I could go to an Episcopalian church--I was baptized an Episcopalian, and they'd look awfully petty to refuse me at this point. But this seems like a half-measure. Plus, I don't think any of the Episcopal churches around here offers daily communion.
We Methodists sure don't. We generally only like to take communion once a month, and even then it seems like a kind of necessary chore, like doing the bills or cleaning the drapes.
I am all for sacred things; I rejoice in the sacred. I believe in setting apart actions and places and time in order to consecrate them to God. I just wish we didn't have to take ourselves so seriously while we did it. We aren't the ones that make things holy; that's God's job. Think how nice it would be if we stopped trying to do it for him.
This frustrates me. In many ways the Methodist church has become spiritually devoid. Mine has at least. Worship is not a sermon. It is ceremony, it is song, it is prayer. I long to have the sacred in our worship. But there isn't much. My pastor went so far as to make fun of communion by calling it "deli-style" ON MAUNDY THURSDAY.
The Longing
It occurs to me that faith is a creative process, like painting or writing or dancing. We don't think about faith that way, and we suffer for it. We think of faith as a thing you have, or maybe a thing that you do, a set of choices that you make. These are both true, in a way, but there's something higher than that, something better than either one of those things that embodies all that faith is.
...
And so it is with faith. Faith isn't simply a belief in something; it is a mode of expression unto itself. Faith is a dance performed for an audience of One. The words of a prayer can become brittle and crack on the tongue, but an act of kindness performed in love can obviate it. A worship service can seem empty and contrived, but a flicker of light through a stained-glass window can sometimes be all the sermon we need. Faith is our way of expressing wordless knowledge to a listener who is understood only in part. All of our prayers and sacraments and icons are a means to that end, props in the play, instruments in the orchestra.
Correction