This month, I have had the great pleasure of worshiping
outside of Christ Church Cathedral –my spiritual and professional home for the
past seven years. On December 1st,
I left the walls of my own comfortable faith tradition to experience worship as
a stranger, nomad, seeker and pilgrim. To date, I have worshiped in
mega-churches and small country churches, with the non-denominationals and the
super-structurals. I began this journey wondering what it was like to experience
warm hospitality verses cold prickling stares entering a new church for the
first time. The inner sociologist in me wondered how churches were creating
space to welcome the stranger in their midst and what effect this was having on
the body of Christ.
What I am discovering, is not only that churches everywhere
are warm and welcoming, but the diversity of Christian tradition has far more
to teach us about the nature of God than simply God is welcoming. I never have been able to describe God, but I
have always described our creator as more than we can imagine. As an Anglican,
I love the words that often close Morning Prayer – “Glory to God whose power,
working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians
3:20). Because I know God is the one whom
is more than we can comprehend or imagine, I have often believed heaven to be
the best of all that I can imagine, plus some. Heaven like a patched work quilt
of the most beautiful fabrics ever produced, plus some. A sprinkle of
evangelical spirit here, mixed with a dose of high church liturgy there, a
heartfelt Spanish love song mixed with an engaged and philosophically thought
provoking sermon, plus some. Because God is always bigger than we can vision or
imagine, I imagine our most authentic worship is more creative, more diverse,
and includes more cultures than we can ever envision, plus some.
To date, two of my most powerful worship experiences have
been this cacophony of praise. Both experiences laid within my own tradition of
the Episcopal Church, however, both included powerful rituals outside WASP
custom. In one, I led a compline service with a non-denominational , evangelical.
He desired to steer away from the Book of
Common Prayer to offer a more spirit- led prayer. His acoustic guitar
skills joined with my desire to follow liturgy and tradition and created a service
of altar-building around the hymn “Come Though Fount of Every Blessing.” It was
beautiful. The second, a Rite II
Eucharist from the El Libro de Oracion
Comun, included Hispanic teens leading one praise song and white southern
teens leading the next.
If God can grant me such powerful worship experiences within
the context of my own tradition, what awe-inspiring lessons of God’s goodness might
there be to learn from praising outside my own church?
In my nine-years of professional full-time ministry I have
talked, dialogued, and shared meals with Christians from other traditions. I have
jointly served on councils, drafted policies, marched in protests, and shared
service projects. Yet, I have rarely worshiped in God’s cacophony of diversity.
Worship is what Christians do – it is our most precious offering, yet we rarely
worship together. In my experience, we rarely worship together because it is
difficult to figure out. If we had
communion would it be symbolic or real? Would a woman or homosexual be able to
preach? Who would we pray to and how would we do it? Our fears of how to do
things in order to not offend one another keep us from being open to the beauty
that God has given us.
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