The Story of Table Church continues....

It’s been awhile since I have talked about Table Church- a grand experiment in community and worship at Holy Spirit. Each week during Lent, there was a different focus to the time together, but overall it was intended to be relaxed and open- porous, if you will. Easy to enter and exit. After the opening weeks of setting the tone, and then talking about fellowship of the table, we moved into weeks where we talked about praying together, confessing together, and some core understandings about communion together.

Each week I provided a jumping off point for those gathered to engage over the mealtime.

For example the week we discussed praying together, I amplified our usual prayer practice. Each week I handed out slips of paper to people and pens so that after we cleared the table we could spend time in prayer together based upon the concerns of the community. We would pass an offering plate and gather the prayers. Then I would take a moment and organize them around general themes of thanksgiving, the world, people in need, etc. We would open by singing the Taize song- “O Lord Hear my Prayer” three times and then I would pray the prayer and we would again sing at the end of the prayers and share together in the Lord’s Prayer. But one week, I asked groups of people to pick a person to pray the prayers of the group. Each group had been given a paper- one said “God, you are….” Another said “We thank you that…” Another said “ We ask that you…” The groups were asked to discuss the ways they would complete these as a way of opening up that prayer does not follow a rigid formula- it can be that simple. Then one person from each group read the prayer they had created as we prayed together.

In the week we talked about confession as being something we share in worship, but that in community we should be able to go to a sister or brother and ask for them to hear us and help us see God in situations, we opened with a common youth group ice breaker- “Two Truths and a Lie.” People were broken into four groups and each person was asked to state two true things and one not true thing about themselves but not say which was which and the group had to guess. This was interesting because many people struggled with what they were willing to say about themselves. This gets at the heart of a tension in community- the “me” we present and our worries about how we would be received. Some people were not so sure they would tell another person something in a moment of confession. Others were honest enough to say they were not sure they would really engage this with God. In my practice of the Examen,  I try to lift up both that we can come to God with these things and look for God’s work and guidance in them. Perhaps when we have those moments we accept that God loves us for the “us” we really are, we might then be more able to be Christ for someone else in their need.  Perhaps seeing another’s need, allows God to speak to us in ours.

One week I handed out different colored slips of paper as people were preparing to sit down, and asked that they sit with the other people who had that same color paper. This was a way to mix up the patterns of socializing. Being creatures of habit, we all tend to form groups, but then those groups start to be fixed. Once in the groups I asked each group to talk about what would make a dinner or a party- great? What makes a gathering a good one? People spent most of their time on the food and the decorations, and the theme. Not much time on the people. How fascinating to see a pattern we can experience in church. We spend a lot of time focusing upon the music, the flowers, the building, but not so much on the needs of people. But there was some conversation about people- we would invite friends and relatives. We might tell friends to bring others. But then one group said- well, not all the relatives- just the ones we like. And not just any friends- yeah.  As each group read their responses, this group went last. Their honesty got the group talking and knowingly laughing.

We don’t really want just anyone. So what does that say about communion- a meal and a celebration? Jesus is the host and the center of an amazing celebration in the Meal- how do we see it?

Some people chafed at the notion that communion is a celebration- it should be solemn and we should remember what Jesus did for us. Yes, but how is it also something we celebrate? This was food for thought too.

Our last week, I provided all of the food and just encouraged people to come. We talked about what the early Christians would have been eating, or not. We talked about how each week we had people who only got there when they could, not unlike the early church- and how we like the early church Paul writes to needed to make sure that all were being fed and drawn into the table. We talked about what it meant to really rub elbows together- I made sure the tables were set close- not like we might sit in church. After all our weeks together- how would it feel to hear- One of you will hand me over?  

In our earlier week, people had said for the sake of a party going well they would accommodate that there might be some foods they don’t like or music they don’t like or people they are not really fond of, because the most important thing was the party. What had we learned to adjust to accommodate the fact that we may not all like the same things, but were gathered around a central thing, a person- Jesus the Christ? 

I asked for feedback about the experience from those who had been regulars and the newcomers that night. The notion of gathering, blessing our bread and wine/grape juice, breaking the bread and sharing it, sharing a meal, and fellowship, studying together and praying together.

"It was relaxing." At the end of the day, people found more and more that while they came in with their stresses, they became relaxed.

As something we did week to week, people found some weeks they did not have time to prepare an elaborate thing to share for the meal, and it was still all OK.

It was a different way to worship- acoustic music, no bulletins, no printed music to figure out. But it felt like worship. It was open to strangers.  One person noted that more people would like it but might be intimidated because it was an unknown thing. Others agreed, and then the person said- "But I guess it’s up to us to be the messengers." Exactly!!

Then I invited people to consider that for those who have not been to church lately or maybe not really ever, that feeling of fear of the unknown- what is on the other side of the door- is the same. But we can be the messengers.

Another person suggested we continue this kind of worship at some level, perhaps once a month. When asked for thoughts, everyone else was in agreement. I explored what day or time would be best. Overwhelmingly the response was that Wednesday night was best- it was a kind of middle of the week refresher between Sundays.

So those of us who have gone on the grand adventure of trying a new thing, and making some tweaks on the way, are going to try another new thing starting in later in May.  

And as we prepared to end our time in prayer, someone commented that our time could be more intimate if the overhead lights were not so bright. If we just had the candles. A request for something more intimate!

I turned out the overheads lights so we could just have the candles. We ended our time at the table, with just the glow of the light of lots of tiny votives, and the cross, holding hands in prayer, and then singing:
Go now in peace.
Go now in peace.
May the love of God surround you.
May the love of God surround you.
Every where
Everywhere
You may go.
You may go.

Stay tuned…

Ref-lectionary thoughts-Messengers

God's messengers are a quirky bunch. In this week's lectionary readings, we see Amos, who is as stunned as we are that he is to be God's messenger. "I prune trees, and play in the dirt.I am not anyone of consequence or obvious skill, no matter what scale you use to evaluate me." Yet he was called by God to be a messenger, and to tell others in power, to how to prune away what was not life-giving and how to nurture and grow that straighter, stronger tree. The tree which could sustain all living things perhaps. The most effective pruning is what allows a tree to survive, to avoid blight and disease, or collapse. Pruning takes a good eye, and a strong hand to make a clean cut. A sloppy cut can actually do even more harm instead of the good intended. Pruning seems counterintuitive- why would cutting back something thriving lead to better growth? Pruning takes being deliberate, slow thinking before acting, to discern what should grow. Amos told things that the people needed to hear, but hard to imagine we would listen if God sent a landscaper to tell us today.
Then there is Paul in our epistle. How could someone who revelled and excelled in prosecutorial incisiveness be a messenger for the Jesus message? And to top it off, some historians talk about Paul as being slight of build, and not all that great as a public speaker. How could a guy with "short man syndrome" be the point person for a message? Yet what better person to have dogged persistence is "prosecuting" the case for Jesus? He was a person who was figuratively pruned and re-oriented who could tell others of the miraculous experience of it all. What greater example than the total role reversal of Paul? And in the end, we do not revere him for his public speaking anyway, but for the marvelous weaving of ideas and arguments in his writings. And we don't know what his thorn is, but what if it was something that would make us not want to look at him or be in his company? What if he had Tourette's syndrome, for example? How likely is it that in our media saturated world today, a short guy with a whiny voice and some off-putting feature, who is better in print, would be a person we would be drawn to as God's messenger?
And we can't overlook John the Baptizer. Everything we are told leads us to believe that John may well be the subject of a mental health commitment hearing today. He seemed to lack a good sense of self-care. He lived beyond civilization, eating bugs, and gleaning, eschewing all conventions when it came to clothing. Engaging in what may have seemed like rants in the wilderness rather than speeches. Thinking outside the box in every way- telling people to come to the river, not the temple for purification. Encourgaing people to engage in an exodus back into the wilderness and away from their conventions. Challenging people to radically re-orient- and living out this radical re-orientation in every way. Yet not content to be radical in the wilderness alone, but challenging others to make clear the path and to strip away the things that were in the way of right being. Would we listen to a John today or would we try to make him the subject of reality TV, or a viral video?
As I look at each of these messengers, they are not carefully packaged, media savvy folks. Each of them in their time are not obvious PR men for a message. Yet each of them embodies their message. And there is a thread in their message- we as humans so often continue to add new practices, new requirements, and trappings to a simple message. Though we all profess to yearn for the simple life, we are incapable of being sustained in it. When the commandments were given, the people were told that they should neither add to nor take away from God's commands.
Yet we do. And time and again, we need a reminder to prune, to reorient, even to reverse. As I think about Amos, Paul and John, I wonder what it would have been like to be in their midst. I wonder how much easier it is to look back with that 20/20 hindsight and sit in judgment of others then who heard them, and their lack of response to the messenger. And then I wonder whether there is a messenger in our midst that I am ignoring because he or she doesn't meet the criteria of someone I should listen to, someone equally foolish to be chosen, whom God has selected for all of the right reasons. But while I ponder this I continue to be amazed that we are all given unique qualities that in a given time and context God can and will use. And maybe while there are the occasional figures larger than life who are messengers, it would be better to remember that each of us is necessary and integral in ways we only sometimes realize. In between the big moments of the message are all of the little echoes that can be spoken through each of our lives if we stop jamming The Messenger who created us all for just such work.