a few [incomplete] thoughts on the sacred practice of Sabbath

“The dream of my life

Is to lie down by a slow river

And stare at the light in the trees--

to learn something of being nothing

A little while but the rich

Lens of attention”

-- Mary Oliver, “Entering the Kingdom”

via Death to the Stock Photo

Get us to the place 

A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain. This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines -- they are a way of sowing to the Spirit. The Disciplines are God's way of getting us into the ground; they put us where he can work within us and transform us. By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done. 

Richard Foster , Celebration of Discipline

via the daily asterisk* 

I've been saying for many months here that I can't write because I'm too busy.  And that's mostly true.  Maybe even truer if I said it this way:

"I'm choosing not to write so that I can make space to follow God in other things He's asking me to do right now."  

Probably the most true way to say it is this:

"I'm choosing not to write because on some days I'm trying to obey God and make space for other things He's asking me to do.  On other days I'm just plain pissed about the things God's asking me to do and not writing is my way of getting even." 

Truth is, God gave us these amazing gifts of four children and a move to Austin to pursue Brian's ordination and relationship in a vibrant, healthy worship community, and an introduction to creamy jalapeno sauce.  Growing up requires me to recognize that good gifts come with responsibility.  My having to work full time, or lose sleep over my kids being flung hither and yon into adulthood, or deal with anxiety related to becoming a priest's wife, or roll up my sleeves to invest in this healthy worship community, or start eating more vegetables and fewer tacos are all decisions grown up people make in order to steward the abundance of good gifts that come down like lights from the Father.

Only a child wants it both ways:  good gifts with no responsibility.

My hope is to remain like a child with a simple faith and pleasure in my good Father while also becoming a grown-up in the way I respond to the things I don't like. I go back to the place of sowing to the Spirit in the act of spiritual disciplines, get into the ground where God can do the work of transformation in me.

This fall Brian and I and a couple of friends are co-leading a new small group in our neighborhood.  We'll focus on one spiritual discipline each month, starting -- appropriately -- with the practice of Sabbath. I realize that many of my ways to grasp for "rest" are not at all the same thing as Sabbath rest.  

Sabbath - We desire to set apart one day a week for rest and worship of God.

Our month to focus on Sabbath practices is over but I'm not letting go.  I need rest.  Deep down in my soul. I need to be at peace with myself in the midst of real or perceived chaos.  

I think the Buddhists call this Zen.  I choose to believe there is a way of Christian rest.  I believe the Christ who naps in capsizing boats follows the footsteps of his Father who takes days off even though the spinning universe depends on His attention.  

“Sabbath is the time set aside to do nothing so that we can receive everything, to set aside our anxious attempts to make ourselves useful, to set aside our tense restlessness, to set aside our media-satiated boredom. Sabbath is the time to receive silence and let it deepen into gratitude, to receive quiet into which forgotten faces and voices unobtrusively make themselves present, to receive the days of the just completed week and absorb the wonder and miracle still reverberating from each one, to receive our Lord's amazing grace.” ― Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers

A few possible exercises our small group discussed on the practice Sabbath (source: Spiritual Disciplines Handbook) :

1.  Plan a twenty-four-hour sabbath you can enter with anticipation. The night before your sabbath, remind your body how long it has to luxuriate and rest in God.

• Consider the things that would nourish you: worship, music, a nap, making art, walking, reading, playing with children, afternoon tea.  Plan them spaciously into the day.

2.  Begin your Sabbath gently on the evening before.  Light a candle.

• Invite the presence of Christ to guide you through your sabbath.
• Eat with friends and family.
• Go to bed early, speaking peace to one another.
• Pray for Christ to give you deep, refreshing sleep. Rest in his arms. Commit your dreams to the Lord

3.  Prepare a “sabbath box or basket.”  Choose a basket or cover a grocery-size box with gift wrap. Each week on the evening before Sabbath, gather as a family or group of friends to put all the things you don’t need to take with you into Sabbath day. Drop cell phones, credit cards, laptops into the box. Put work projects and homework in the box.

• Tell one another what you are looking forward to as you enter Sabbath.
• Pray together to receive the gift of Sabbath.

4.  The night before your sabbath day, enter into sleep as a spiritual act of worship. Consciously let go of your compulsion to be indispensable. Drop all that brings you anxiety into the arms of your heavenly Father. Lay your head on the pillow imagining that you are putting your head into the lap of God. Commit your body and dreams to him. Relax in God and rest.

5.  Awake gently to your sabbath day. If it is possible, don’t set an alarm. Let your body wake naturally. As you come to consciousness, take several deep breaths and open your body wide to God for the new day. Stretch out and feel the full length of of yourself. Thank God that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. Thank him for the gift of the day before you.

• Is God speaking to you in any way? Listen and respond.
• Get up slowly and attend to your desire to encounter God today.

Resources on Sabbath

• The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
• Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller
• The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath by Mark Buchanan
• Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight by Norman Wirzba
• Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting by Marva Dawn
• Sabbath As Resistance: Saying NO to the Culture of Now by Walter Brueggemann

A few Scripture passages to meditate:

• Hebrews 4:1, 9-11
• Mark 2:27
• Exodus 20:8-10
• so many Psalms

My playlist of Songs for Rest

In what ways do you practice Sabbath?   

What art speaks to you of rest -- in general or in a particular work?   

It would mean so much to me to hear from you.

I don't want to miss the Present God, trying to trap down the Presence of God (a Transfiguration Sunday meditation)

For Transfiguration Sunday, I'm re-posting an excerpt from my Sacred Practice series: Making Moments (originally written January 2009):

Some people appear to think that the "spiritual life" is a peculiar condition mainly supported by cream ices and corrected by powders. But the solid norm of the spiritual life should be like that of the natural life: a matter of porridge, bread and butter.... It is not the best housekeeper who has the most ferocious spring-clean, or gets things from the confectioner when she is expecting guests. "If any man open the door, I will come in to him"; share his ordinary meal, and irradiate his ordinary life. The demand for temperance of soul, for acknowledgment of the sacred character of the normal, is based on that fact -- the central Christian fact -- of the humble entrance of God into our common human life. (from The House of the Soul and Concerning the Inner Life, Evelyn Underhill; bolded font is mine)

For the same years I've been killing an addiction to the Grand Scheme I've been trying to understand how my relationship with God works in just the ordinary stuff of life. I have been trying to understand how to live from this place of contentment that David describes: 

God, I'm not trying to rule the roost, I don't want to be king of the mountain. I haven't meddled where I have no business or fantasized grandiose plans. I've kept my feet on the ground, I've cultivated a quiet heart. Like a baby content in its mother's arms, my soul is a baby content. Wait, Israel, for God. Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always! (Psalm 131: 1-3, MSG)

There have been Grand Moments in my life. More than any one person deserves. Moments when it seemed that all heaven and earth synced for just a glimpse of glory. Like Jesus taking his three best friends to the mountain to share in the wonder of such a transfigured Moment. 

There's much I'm sure I have to learn from this Gospel account, but one learning that has been pasted to the inside of my eyelids is that Peter could not get out of his head long enough to savor the moment. He missed or nearly missed -- I'm not sure from the telling -- the extreme grandiosity of God in this moment. He wanted to strategize, capitalize, theorize and theologize the Moment into something manageable and marketable. Something he could control.

I've lost track of the number of times my response has matched Peter's. Something in me is unable to rest, to savor, to soak in the Moment. My mind rushes on to ways that I can trap all the good feelings, pin the legs of the thing down and preserve it under glass. To build some kind of shrine to the Moment so that it will be available to me any time I rub the glass three times. And with all of that scheming I miss the voice of God: This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him.

Transfiguration of Christ
Bellini, Giovanni, d. 1516

I've learned that my desire for the Presence of God on my terms and in my ideals blinds me to the Present God. The same God who shows up in a cow barn in the middle of the night and on a hike to Emmaus with old friends. When I am consumed with whipping up a plan to build some sort of shrine to the Moment I do not hear the knock on the door, Jesus standing at the door, hoping to be invited in for a meal.

What is the fear of surrendering fully to a Grand Moment? I know the answer for me. It's the coming down from the mountain part. That's the rub. It's Frodo trying to live in the Shire again. It's Mary's first case of morning sickness after Gabriel left the room. It's Cinderella, shoeless, back to sweeping soot. 

During this week's meditation I am reminded that I want to stop treating the rare Grand Moment like some kind of marketing research or science project. I want to sponge up the Moment so that I can walk away with it shining out of my eyes, and fingertips and the ends of my hair. (I shall tape a poster to my mirror, Tamara lassoes the moon.)

I want to develop my senses to recognize the Jesus of the ordinary; to notice sooner than the Emmaus travelers: Didn't we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road? To live in the abundant presence of Christ that surrounds and infuses the ordinary joys and pains of every day rather than just plucking the blackberries of the few-and-far between Grand Moments.

This is hard because it involves death. Christ followed each moment from day to day and his journey took him through suffering and death. I don't like this Christ.

In The Choice to be Human Eugene Kennedy comments on the Matthew account of the Mount of Transfiguration  (bold font is mine):

 This is a mystery blinding in its intensity. We still do not like to look at the separations and deaths to ourselves that are inevitable in lives fully and lovingly lived. Better, with Peter in his boisterous enthusiasm, to stay at this high point of affirmation than to follow with Jesus as he accepts his own departure to Jerusalem and the final acts of his mission. The passage, ringing with glory, turns our gaze down the slopes toward the often shadowed valley in which most people lead their lives. There we find the setting for the kind of religious experience of which Jesus has been speaking. It has little to do with the minute observation of detailed rules. It concerns rather those things which cannot be measured at all: loving someone throughout a lifetime, making sacrifices in our lives for the benefit of those who follow after us, raising a child, keeping our word, forgiving each other for our failures, standing together in the bad weather of life. Our Exodus leads us not through strange and exotic places but through the very middle of our quite ordinary lives. 

If I am paying attention I will hear all the voices of other children of the burning heart through the centuries who find salvation and glory and sublime in the ordinary, draining, painful, exciting, mundane, sticky, dusty, hungry and thirsty, sweaty, peanut-butter-and-jelly, pot-scrubbing moments of each day. This must be what it means to live fully and lovingly. In other words, to worship at the shrines of Past Grand Moments is to live only halfly and meanly.

Years ago, this same truth was one of the greatest realizations I took from reading Kathleen Norris' Acedia & Me. Acedia is a stinginess of the soul that becomes disinterested in the time and place I find myself in right now -- this lower-case m moment. 

In the fourth century, Evagrius marked acedia as one of the spiritual afflictions, far more deadly than the more physical temptations such as gluttony or lust, or the melancholy arising from deprivation or anger. Acedia, he insisted, is something more, a weariness of soul that ‘instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, [and] a hatred for manual labor...(Norris is quoting Benedictine Mary Margaret Funk, whose name makes me giggle)

This, then, becomes a serious issue. Hatred of place and time is hatred of good gifts from my Father. It's ultimately a self-aggrandizement that says I could do it better if I were just given the chance. I might as well say what I'm really thinking: These piddly little moments are meaningless to me unless I get my own way. This is a dangerous place to live and, I'm becoming convinced, thwarts the hand of my good, giving Father in my daily life.

My reading from other saints last week introduced me to a warning from DietrichBonhoeffer: We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts…How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things? He wrote this from an illegal seminary in Nazi Germany. Enough said.

Where does this leave me, then? It leaves me humbled in the presence of the Present Christ. The Christ who leaned down to fear-stricken Peter, James and John on the mount and said Do not be afraid.

 It leaves me making the choice to be awake. To choose to notice and pay attention and be grateful. To quit day-dreaming of all the Grand Moments-yet-to-be and to enjoy the ordinary companionship with  Christ and his followers. It leaves me waiting in a cold Subway, hungry for lunch, working through the awkward tension of making conversation with a new friend. It leaves me noticing the beauty of wind-chapped cheeks and brightly colored scarves and mittens on a snowy hilltop. It leaves me in a wide-open stance, ready to receive all of Christ's gifts on earth and in heaven. It leaves me praying the unwitting prayer of Sylvia Plath (oh, how sweet for her to have found the present Christ, bold font is mine):

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect miracle
Or an accident.
To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent
Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent
By bestowing largesse, honour,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic; ignorant
Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant
A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content
Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

 -- Sylvia Plath

Dying the Many Little Deaths of Ordinary Service

For several years I've been writing reflections from the spiritual disciplines devotionals that I use during Ordinary Time (the time of the year that doesn't fall between Advent and Pentecost).  Some years I use the book Disciplines for the Inner Life by Bob Benson, Sr. and Michael W. Benson.  This year I'm using A Year With God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines by Richard Foster.  I am no speed-reader, especially when my intention is to not just hear but do the words I'm reading. This means my written reflections pop up rather sporadically here, but my hope is to share something from the series with you at least once a month.

The Sacred Practice of Serving God in Every Task

defintion of service:  "Loving, thoughtful, active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our world, through which we experience the many little deaths of going beyond ourselves."  -- A Year With God by Richard Foster

Since June I've been meditating the sacred practice of ordinary, everyday service.   The devotional breaks this practice into two categories: serving God in every task and serving others rather than being served.  


A confession before  you read further: I am a weakling when it comes to everyday service.  There's a whole set of psychological reasons -- some rather legitimate -- I could give as rationale.  At the end of the day, though, I don't like to do mundane, grubby work.  Plain and simple.  The purpose for this disclaimer is to say I've only just begun to learn what I'm about to share here, four practices of everyday service.

My son Alex meeting his cousin Cade for the first time.

1.  The Sacred Practice of Carrying

"The Gershonites by family and clan will serve by carrying heavy loads: the curtains of the Sanctuary and the Tent of Meeting; the covering of the Tent and the outer covering of dolphin skins; the screens for the entrance to the Tent; the cords; and all the equipment used in its ministries. The Gershonites have the job of doing the work connected with these things. All their work of lifting and carrying and moving is to be done under the supervision of Aaron and his sons. Assign them specifically what they are to carry. This is the work of the Gershonite clans at the Tent of Meeting. Ithamar son of Aaron the priest is to supervise their work."  (Numbers 4: 24-28, MSG)

The brilliance of our orderly God who thought of everything -- including forming entire Levitical clans solely for the work of carrying -- never ceases to amaze me.  While the work of everyday, ordinary service extends far wider than the work we do in corporate worship, reading about this specially anointed tribe of Levites reminded me of people I've worked with in ministry in the past.


In our former church building, the sanctuary and many other ministry spaces were built on as an extension to the end of a long, narrow  former elementary school building, forming an "L"-shaped structure.  At one end -- the top of the "L" -- was an attic one floor up and storage closets one floor down.  Any time we needed to use an item from storage we had to walk as far as humanly possible and still remain within the building, load up our arms with all that we could carry and trudge back to our ministry spaces on the other side of the building. Each special event required whole teams of people just to carry items from the attic and basement:  artwork, easels, supplies, candles, wreaths, boxes and boxes of fabric, furniture, props, benches, rugs, wood and metal. I was especially mindful of the sacred act of carrying watching a team of people work together each year lugging rugged crosses for our Good Friday exhibit.  I saw them as a beautiful reflection of the suffering servant. 


In our current church, we do not own a building. Every Sunday teams of people arrive early and stay late to carry toys for the children's rooms, signs to the parking lot, candles, bread and wine to the altar.  Every cross, every cable must be carried into the worship areas before service and then carried back out again every single week.


This act of carrying for no other purpose but to serve others forms us into a the image of Jesus, the Servant of all.

The beautiful truth is that we are surrounded by opportunities to practice this sacred act every day:

• carrying baskets of dirty clothes to the laundry room and then back upstairs to bedrooms, folded
• carrying a mug of coffee to a co-worker
• carrying children on hips, over shoulders, in car seats or tucked in slings
• carrying bag after bag of groceries from the store to the car, from the car to the kitchen, from the counters to the cupboards
• carrying random bits and pieces scattered hither and yon throughout the house to their rightful place
• carrying box after box from moving truck to a friend's new house -- such as the grueling work scores of our friends did for us three times in the past four years.  (in our last move, one friend asked hopefully "any chance your new home is one-story"?)

I also thought about the time, six years ago, we carried mud-logged boxes, furniture, carpets, books, toys out of flooded homes.  We carried entire sepia-soaked neighborhoods, dumped them on street curbs. We carried stories and prayers for each neighbor we served.

We carry spiritual and emotional burdens for each other, yes.  It seems, though, that like the God-ordained calling for the ancient Levitic clan, the service of carrying required real sweat and muscle.  There's nothing else quite like it to form humble servant hearts.

Two practices I've been learning to help me die the little deaths of ordinary service:

1. Be a Carrier:  Find stuff to carry for people (without them noticing is even better)
2. Remember Your Calling:  See myself as set apart for God to carry burdens for others

We actively promote the good of others and the causes of God when we die little deaths in the service of carrying.

2.  The Sacred Practice of Making Meals

I was brought up in a culture steeped in a timeworn practice to care for families of new babies, extend comfort to the sick, welcome new neighbors -- the liturgy of taking them a meal.

In the past few years, I've gotten a bit sloppy in this act of service. I was re-membered into the liturgy; reminded by this very study that it had been too long.  In a flurry of nostalgia, I set about the work of making two meals -- one for a friend ready to give birth and one ready to move.

What started out in the morning as bright and noble intentions became a big, ol' reality check on my list of frustrations with myself.  My cooking skills, organizational skills, even driving skills were tested so that any amount of warm fuzzes I'd hoped for at the beginning of the day fizzled into plain old humble service by the end of the day.  Humility is a healthy side effect of ordinary service.

Two practices I've been learning to help me die the little deaths of ordinary service:

1. Join a care team: Most organizations, churches, schools and workplaces promote community care through the efforts of some sort of care team, welcome wagon, community outreach committee.  Volunteering in even a small way will keep your meal-making muscles healthy.
2. Visit Take Them A Meal blog: I love the mission and tips on this blog. (If you have other resources you find helpful, please share them in a comment!)

We actively promote the good of others and the causes of God when we die little deaths in the service of making meals.

3.  The Sacred Practice of Our Work

"You have your work. It will be more meaningful for you, whatever it may be, if you took all the opportunities it affords to serve and give joy to others; if you reverence the things you work with and are conscious that your working with them gives them an opportunity to express themselves at a higher level through your activity and love; if you share some of the fruit of your labor with those less fortunate, if you do all for the love and glory of the heavenly Father, knowing then that your work is part of the transformation of the whole creation, including especially yourself."  (From A Place Apart: Monastic Prayer and Practice for Everyone by M. Basil Pennington)

In his letter to the Colossians, the apostle Paul reminds slaves to obey their earthly masters as a way to please them, yes, but most importantly as a wholehearted effort to please their Master, Christ.  In his translation of the New Testament passage, Eugene Peterson speaks plainly: 

"The sullen servant who does shoddy work will be held responsible. Being a follower of Jesus doesn't cover up bad work."

If we're to take seriously Pennington's flowery exhortation we'll remember that our work is "meaningful" and "affords to serve and give joy to others."  Depending on where you spend your working hours, this may be easier to recognize for some more than others.  A new friend of mine told me recently, over coffee and with a sparkle in her eyes, "I love my job."  She told me about one of her first weeks at work, being the only hospital staff available to greet a pregnant woman in the parking lot for her emergency delivery.  Because she did her job well a woman and her baby stayed alive.  But what if your job is cleaning warehouse bathrooms during the middle of the night?  How meaningful is that?  

Somehow in God's service economy -- God's good gift of work -- He receives pleasure from our vocational skills.  Paul reminds us that our Master, Christ, will see our work and reward us well.  

This topic of work could fill up hundreds of posts.  As every other good gift from our Creator,   we've treated this ability to do meaningful work haphazardly far too often in both recent and ancient times.  Certainly, discovering our own special strengths and pursuing work that makes the best use of our passions is an ideal most of us pursue.  In that pursuit, it'd be good to remember Paul's words to the Colossians are targeted toward a demographic of workers who had no say at all in their work, slaves.  

For now, for me, I need to embrace God's gift of work.  When I energetically, cheerfully join His great service economy I become part of His work to transform the whole creation, including my own self.

Two practices I've been learning to help me die the little deaths of ordinary service:

1. Do what no one else wants to do: Every workplace has its own "dirty work" no one wants to do (cleaning the dirty coffee mugs in the office kitchen comes to mind).  Make an effort to do that work, unnoticed, on a regular basis.
2. Get good at what you do: Look for ways to re-energize your normal work rhythms.  Where can you improve your skills and enthusiasm?

We actively promote the good of others and the causes of God when we die little deaths in the service of our work.

4.  The Sacred Practice of Making Home

             "This virtuous wife [in Proverbs 31] is a woman who lives in response to the grace of God..." (from A Year With God by Richard Foster)

I have spent more time as a wife and mother protecting myself from being used up by the needs in my home than as a woman who lives in response to the grace of God.  To be kind to myself, I started out young and unprepared for all the work four kids in my first six of years of marriage would require.  Sometimes I responded to this reality out of fear, acting like a control freak against mess and chaos.  Other times I responded with selfish preoccupation as if my family were out to take advantage of me and I needed to keep myself at a distance from their needs.


I am sad about all the days I've not served my family well.  I am glad for the grace of God that is never used up, never kept out of reach, never given with strings attached.  I'm grateful for this bonus year I've been given to spend intense amounts of time trying to make a comfortable, happy home for my family.  


I also developed a secret strategy that I hope will pay off when my kids leave home.  I made sure to take advantage of memorable moments, building memorable traditions of serving my family with meals, gifts and homey touches.  (see an example of this sort of tradition: Pumpkin Chip Cookies on the First Day of School)


In the meantime, I'm trusting the God who makes all things new to give me decades more opportunities to serve my family and my home as a grateful response to the generous grace of God. 


Two practices I've been learning to help me die the little deaths of ordinary service:

1. Give up martyrdom: Refrain from complaining -- outwardly or inwardly -- about serving my family.  Instead practice gratitude for all the goodness each need represents.
2. Learn how to do daily tasks with more awareness.  For example, find out the best secrets for getting a sink shiny clean and take pleasure in the finished product.  Pay attention to the sensory details of mundane tasks (the warm suds of dishwater, the lemony smell of cleaner, the churring sound of a working washing machine).

We actively promote the good of others and the causes of God when we die little deaths in the service of making home.

unable to find proper credit for this artwork

Source: flickr.com via Tamara on Pinterest

Share your story.  What practices do you use to die the little deaths of ordinary service?  What practices do you need to develop to promote the good of others and the cause of God through ordinary acts of service?

How to Change Your Church's Worship Service

For several years I've been writing reflections from the spiritual disciplines devotionals that I use during Ordinary Time (the time of the year that doesn't fall between Advent and Pentecost).  Some years I use the book Disciplines for the Inner Life by Bob Benson, Sr. and Michael W. Benson.  This year I'm using A Year With God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines by Richard Foster.  I am no speed-reader, especially when my intention is to not just hear but do the words I'm reading. This means my written reflections pop up rather sporadically here, but my hope is to share something from the series with you at least once a month.

The Sacred Practice of Corporate Worship 

“It is madness to wear ladies and velvet hats to church, we should be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may awake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”                                             -- Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Since Pentecost I've been spending time reading through the sacred practices of worship.  This practice falls into two broad categories:  everyday worship and corporate worship.  I wrote the reflection for everyday worship here ("You Don't Have to be a Worship Leader to Worship God in the Mall Parking Lot").

Today, I'm sharing with you what I'm learning about the sacred practices that feed the habit of corporate worship.  Some little bit of New Yorker cheekiness prompted me to title this post: How to Change Your Church's Worship Service. You're pretty savvy readers, and I'm guessing you know that changing your church's worship service really begins with changing your own worship practices.

a worship service at our former church, Union Center Christian Church
Endicott, NY (photo by Hope Spicer)

1.  Practice All Week

"After all, [Jesus] had graciously spoken to me in dozens of little ways throughout the week; he will certainly speak to me here as well."-- Richard Foster's comment on the interconnection between daily private worship and communal worship, A Year With God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines

We spend all week worshipping this God with our everyday, walking-around lives.  The Word-made-flesh makes all places sacred.  The Spirit of Christ, our worship leader, conducts spirit-and-truth worship in every room we step foot, every building, every parking lot, every ball field, every traffic jam.  We practice worship paying attention to the kingdom presence of Christ in all the noisy chaos of everyday living.

We practice worship offering gratitude for everything we consume, offering petition for each need we discover, intercession for those inside and outside our sphere of influence, awe for each mystery.  We practice worship when we open our hands, hearts and homes to give and receive blessing.

We practice worship seeking quiet places to listen, learn the character of God in Scripture and spiritual writings, sit in quiet, read the Word, rehearse the goodness of our Father, lay our questions on Him, pay attention to the inner impressions we suspect come from Him.  We practice worship in a rhythm of alone and together, hushed and raucous, satisfied and needy, sitting, standing, lying down and walking around.

We can not change our church's worship service without a hearty work-out of week-long worship.

2.  Expect to Meet God

"A striking feature of worship in the Bible is that people gathered in what we could only call a 'holy expectancy.' They believed they would actually hear the Kol Yahweh, the voice of God...They were coming into the awful, glorious, gracious presence of the living God. They gathered with anticipation, knowing that Christ was present among them and would teach them and touch them with his living power....When more than one or two come into public worship with a holy expectancy, it can change the atmosphere of a room. People who enter harried and distracted are drawn quickly into a sense of the silent Presence. Hearts and minds are lifted upward. The air becomes charged with expectancy."  -- Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline

One of the most important worship truths I've ever learned is that I am not responsible to initiate worship.  Instead, It is my job to respond to the invitation of God, through His Spirit and led by His Son.  Can you imagine the pressure this relieves?  Prior to this new understanding, I spent my whole life trying to be clean enough, sing loudly enough, feel tingly enough, clap on rhythm often enough to bring about God's presence.  

It is not true that we initiate worship.  The mantra that we worship for an audience of One is misplaced.  The truer statement:  We follow a worship leader of One.  Jesus has been given the authority to lead His Church to God.  If worshipping God depends on my ability to conjure up His Spirit then I'm sunk, you're sunk, we're all sunk.

Since God is the one responsible through His Son and Spirit to gather us each week to meet Him, I can expect that He'll also show up.  I can, of course, ignore him, dismiss him, blow right past him with my lofty expectations of how "worship" should look, sound and feel.  This often happens when I spend too much time worshipping my ideal modernized image of worship and church rather than simmering in the ancient truths of worship and church.  Sometimes, it happens when I forget that the Spirit of Christ is making all things new in and through His people, and might surprise us in new songs and methods of worship.

I miss meeting God in corporate worship when I am preoccupied, tending to my long list of wish-dreams for worship.  If I am not practicing a humble self-awareness of my long list of besetting sin and wounds, I do not have eyes trained to see the Presence of Jesus in the middle of His worshipping people.  Another word for a wish-dream that controls my expectations is idolatry.  

I'm learning a few practices that help me meet God in my church's worship service:

• Show up on Saturday night: We can learn from the Jewish tradition that Sabbath begins at sundown.  Treat Saturday evening and Sunday morning as important hours of preparation for my church's worship service.

• Be an introvert:  Arrive ten minutes early, sit in the sanctuary and quietly prepare ourselves.  Pray for the worship leaders and ministers to sense God's hand upon them, to speak and to lead boldly.  Pray for the others working to facilitate God meeting His people in worship.  Rather than finding people to talk with before the service, pray for one or two people instead.  Pray that they might experience God's presence in worship.

• Pray with your eyes open:  Notice the sanctuary space, the colors, symbols and ornaments.  Pay attention to the faces and sounds filling the room.  Listen to the noise in your head. The sort of "gut feelings" you experience during this time will alert you to your list of worship wish-dreams, the places God wants to forgive you, heal you and bless you as you worship Him this morning.  

We can not change our church's worship service without expecting to meet God as the worship leader, responding in worship to His promised presence.

3.  Act Like A True Worshipper

"If Christians worshipped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship...Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured."      -- Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

For as long as the Church has gathered for worship services, we've struggled to remember our worship responsibilities to God, to each other and to ourselves. The accounts we've been given of the worship habits for the Church in the dark ages provide an example of this sort of forgetfulness. The common folk were expected to listen to a priest read what they could not understand, and watch him partake what they were not invited to eat.  In a similar way, I'm thinking of the current predicament the Church has constructed, confusing the people in the pew as the audience and the people on the platform the performers.

Instead of riding the pendulum of worship service innovation, embracing and then jettisoning each idea published to get those people in the room engaged, what if we all just went back to God's ideas for worship given in the Law, given as a new command through His Son's life, death, resurrection and ascension, enabled by His Spirit at Pentecost?  Worship is an action, a habit we get to build each week of our lives, if we're lucky.  Worship is not a feeling, a program, or a set of songs.  We do the work of worship together, each with very important roles.  When you don't act like a worshipper, the whole Church misses out. 

One of my favorite habits in the Anglican church we attend is the practice of Communion during each service.  Near the top of the list of reasons I love this weekly ritual is that I get to watch the children walk to the front with their families and wait their turn to either receive the bread and wine or the prayer of blessing.  Every week I watch the family rehearse which little one should stand with hands open and which should stand with arms bent across their chest.  In our church, this habit is a reminder of each one's baptism.  Has it happened already?  Hands open, bread given. Not yet?  Arms crossed, blessing given.

This morning I watched a sweet little blonde stand with arms extended above the puff of her pink tu-tu, waiting for her bread.  When the priest placed the bite of brown bread into her hands, she did not know what to do.  She stood there looking at her bread until her father leaned down, placed his hand under her forearm and gently lifted her bread-filled hand to her mouth.  And I cried because I watched the Gospel enacted in front of me, in the ordinary sharing of bread, drink and blessing.  Sometimes I do not cry, but giggle, when I notice a harried mama deliver a stern glance or gentle nudge, making sure her little offspring does not haul off a chunk of bread for later.  All of it an unspoken catechism.  All of it enacting worship.

This, of course, is only one part of the worship service.  The Scriptures give us actions for worship all throughout the Old Testament and the New.  For a quick primer I recommend two passages I meditated during this study:  Deuteronomy 12:1-7 and the account of the beautiful worshipper Anna in Luke 2:36-38.  The list of practices God has given us for corporate worship serve as pathways to the act of worshiping in spirit and truth.  When we are formed in these practices we grow as true worshipers of the one true God rather than worshipers of our own worship wish-dreams and ill-formed ideas of who God is and who we are.

I'm learning a few practices that help me act like a true worshipper in my church's worship service:

• Sing like a worship leader:  Listen to the instruments playing, notice the rhythm and pitch, learn the tunes and mind the lyrics.  Focus on singing the songs directly to God, but also on the harmonies and melodies of those singing around me.  

• Believe God's Word:  Listen for God's direct voice in the Scripture readings and the Word preached.  For my learning style, I need to read those words as they are being spoken,  so carrying a Bible is very important for me to read and agree with God's word.  

• Practice acting:  Don't misunderstand "acting" in this practice to be "pretending" or "faking".  Practice the definition of acting as "performing".  When an actor performs, he places his whole self: body, memory, emotions into the hands of the script and the director.  This is the sort of acting I mean, with one difference.  Acting worship actually forms us into worshippers.  We become what we practice.  We practice to become.

We can not change our church's worship service without  acting -- body, mind, and emotions -- like a true worshiper of the one true God.

4.  Share Stories and Food

"A quickening Presence pervades us, breaking down some part of the special privacy and isolation of our individual lives and blending our spirits within a superindividual Life and Power. An objective, dynamic Presence enfolds us all, nourishes our souls, speaks glad, unutterable comfort with us, and quickens us in depths that had before been slumbering."                                                           -- Thomas R. Kelly, The Eternal Promise

Whether your church practices the habit of communion each Sunday, a bagels and coffee hospitality table after service or a coffee counter in the foyer, there are many ways to share stories and food after the worship service.  The old school term for this is fellowship (or, feller-ship, as some might say).  

I'm delighted to worship a God who makes the ordinary act of eating and talking an act of worship.  Because either my husband or I have been working for a church for almost ten years, we haven't been able to figure out how to share Sunday lunch with different people in our church community each week but we're committed to keep trying to find a workable solution.  

For now, I've begun entering the conversations at our coffee and bagel table with a purposed heart.  I want to hear the ways my church family experienced our service, the thoughts and questions and concerns and fears and healing and directions they received from the Spirit of Christ during our time together.  Out of all the practices I've mentioned, this one is, by far, the hardest for me.  I am an introvert and would prefer to take my experience from the service, duck out the back door and savor it all by myself over a bite to eat.  Sometimes, that is exactly what I do.  

Acts 13:1-3 gives a beautiful account of the importance of sharing  our worship experience with each other.  In the particular account, the men gathered were seeking God's direction for Paul and Barnabas.  They began by worshiping together.  When they sensed the direction the Lord was  giving them, they shared with each other and began worshiping together again, testing the Spirit.  Only then, after a full assurance they'd heard from the Spirit of God did they "lay hands on them and send them off."

Today, I applied Acts 13 in a small way by asking the people I talked with what they'd heard from the Spirit during the service.  Not every conversation was deep and profound, some might have been had we not been surrounded by a jabbering, caffeine-seeking crowd.  But a few were.  I heard from one friend who'd received an assurance for accepting a new job offer (after we'd been praying together on the question for a few weeks, from another who heard the Spirit telling her to consider leaving her job.  I met a new family who were visiting for the very first time, and I received a lavish gift of blessing from another friend.  

Clearly, I miss out a vital element of worshiping with my church community when I skip this part of our service each week.

I'm learning a few practices that help me share stories and food in my church's worship service:

• Be an extrovert: Oh, this is so hard for me!  My daughter told me, when she heard my plan to engage with people after the service, "Mom, don't you mean act like an extrovert because you know you can't be one."  Well, yes.  I may be an introvert but I love hearing and telling stories.  Entering the "after-service zone" with a story-telling purpose makes all the difference!

• Find something to do:  One of my friends who shares the same after-service dread  finds a way to help someone do something after the service.  Whether your church is portable like ours or not, I'm positive someone somewhere needs help with something.  Roll up your sleeves and get busy.  While you're at it, share a story or two.

• Pray with your eyes open:  Ask Jesus to show you someone who needs something you can give.  Maybe someone standing alone, someone still sitting in the pew, a young mom trying to have a conversation while simultaneously chasing her toddler, an older person navigating a crowded room.  Ask Jesus to show you one person you can pray over, help or comfort. 

We can not change our church's worship service without sharing stories and food together.

5.  Practice All Week

Worship alone.  Worship together. Repeat until Jesus returns.

Psalm 100
Laura James

"After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!' 

 And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, 'Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.'                                                                                -- Revelation 7: 9-12, ESV