Hey good readers,
I am excited.
The Wall Street Journal is going to run an opinion piece by me (Welcome, Once-a-Year Parishioners!) in tomorrow’s paper (December 23, 2010). Here’s the text of it. As is usually the case, I did not get to choose the title.
Welcome, Once-a-Year Parishioners!
Tomorrow night the church will be full. Some will come out of habit—harboring nostalgia for this night. Some will act out of courtesy: “Yes, Grandma, I’ll go with you.” Some will be here because they enjoy the once-a-year music.
But these reasons alone do not explain why the pews will be full.
In recent years, preachers have become anxious cats. We worry over the increasing number of young people who, when surveyed about their beliefs, check “no faith whatsoever.” We tell stories about churches that have closed their doors—developers turning sanctuaries into boutiques. We wonder if we are becoming “like Europe.”
“Religion” derives from the Latin religare, to bind, but in New York City it seems to have lost its binding power. Almost 60% of the New Yorkers who live within three miles of my midtown church claim that they have no involvement in any faith. That’s easily the highest percentage of people in any region in the country.
Yet on Christmas Eve, people will come.
Many will feel awkward. They will be unfamiliar with the motions—the standing, the sitting, the praying, the singing. Some will repress giggles. Others will dab at tears. A few will be tipsy. Some will walk out before it is over. Most will be eager to hold a candle. Nearly everyone will sing “Silent Night.”
I used to resent the awkwardness of the night, the barnyard quality of it. It’s a peculiar crowd and a disorderly service.
This may explain why some clergy choose this moment to chastise people for not being there the other 51 weeks of the year. I know a minister who used to remark, with a pained smile, that there were folks in attendance who think that the only flowers ever displayed in church are poinsettias.
Instead of wagging our fingers, what we really should do is marvel—at the fact that, in spite of our scandals, our hypocrisy and our ineptitude, people will still darken our doors on Christmas Eve.
Karl Barth, the 20th-century Swiss theologian who spent a dozen years as a pastor, said that the institution of the Church is grounded in a claim that seems to stand in grotesque contradiction to the facts. Still, whenever people arrived at his small church on Sunday mornings, Barth sensed an air of expectancy.
In a 1922 speech to a gathering of ministers in Schulpforta, Germany, Barth described people who come to worship as perpetual questioners who nonetheless anticipate that “something great, crucial, and even momentous is about to happen.”
This is the core of religion, the thing that binds us together, the thing we haven’t yet managed to quash—the expectation that something momentous is going to happen when we gather. That’s why people, even the tipsy ones, will turn out tomorrow night. They will come to see if angels are going to show up and proclaim (once again) that there is a God who loves us and that heaven’s great desire for us is peace.
They will come, not simply out of nostalgia or courtesy or routine, but, as Barth put it, “to find out and thoroughly understand the answer to this one question . . . Is it true?”
Let me know what you think.
In the days to come, I wish all of you a Christmas full of unexpected graces!
Be safe, and I’ll see you in the New Year…
Dear Readers of Sharp-About-Your-Prayers:
Read this article. Read the refreshing words and be refreshed. Read the comforting words and be comforted. Read the difficult words and grapple.
My favorite quote:
“This is the core of religion, the thing that binds us together, the thing we haven’t yet managed to quash the expectation that something momentous is going to happen when we gather. That’s why people, even the tipsy ones, will turn out tomorrow night. They will come to see if angels are going to show up and proclaim (once again) that there is a God who loves us and that heavens great desire for us is peace.”
I know I will turn out in expecation tomorrow for God’s miracle to happen as it happens every year, every day, every hour, and every moment.
Thank you Scott!
Charlene
Do I need to subscribe to access the whole piece? Going to find someone with today’s copy.
Matthew,
I think it is now up on the church’s website: http://www.fapc.org
Merry Christmas,
SBJ
Found it here:
http://fapc.org/news
I’ve been thinking about this…is heaven’s great desire for us peace? Or is it the love that can’t help but lead to peace? Am I splitting hairs?
I’ve read the piece twice and got twice as much out of it the second time. As I’ve said, Rev. Scott, God has given you the gift of writing in abundance! I can’t wait to see what you author in 2011, in joyful service to God’s surprises.
Good questions, Laura! I guess it depends on how you understand that fabulous scene in Luke’s Gospel where the angels sing to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward all.”
Every good blessing to you for 2011, too!
I sure miss FAPC, for reasons like this. I’m really glad you had the chance to write in the Wall Street Journal… I think we, myself as much as anyone, often forget and fail to see the benefits of religion, and no one seems to talk about it openly anymore, at least not unless it involves politics or recruiting. And sometimes it is hard to see. I personally found FAPC to be a home for the wanderer, or “watchful doubter” (Jars of Clay, “Oh My God”). While other places try to draw people in by streamlining faith to a list of do’s and don’ts and wrapping it in happy wrapping paper, you recognize that Jesus went to the sick, the hopeless, and life, even life with God, isn’t perfect.
Question: Do you think that the further we get from struggling to meet our daily needs, the further we get from our faith that there’s a God to meet us in our needs?
GREAT QUESTION! Many do think that further people get from any sort of struggle, the further the get from a sense that they depend on other people, a wider society, and, yes, a Creator, for their food, their breath, their very lives.
As one who often faced Christmas Eve sermon preparation and Christmas Eve congregations, I was grateful for your comments. I would challenge your comment about 60% of the New Yorkers who live within three miles of yoru church claim to have no involvement in any faith and that must surely be the highest percentge of people in any region of the country. It is a daunting number. In a somewhat different but related category, in San Francisco the number of people who claimed to be “churched” was anywhere from 5% to 13%. Whatever the number are, the challenge is significant. Yet, as you suggest, so is the abiding hunger.
Laird,
Good to hear from you!!! I am sure you are right, and do think the phenomenon that we both describe is more prevalent on the coasts. Although “interior” pastors are reporting it it too!
Blessings,
SBJ