It's a dance
So I walked into church at New Hope Fellowship yesterday morning, a bit surprised to be in a good mood. A freak 24-hour bug (which most of y'all readers heard me whine and moan about plenty much already, I'm sure) kept me from flying to Albuquerque for the Catholic-Emergent conference, but then I got well and spent a really enjoyable weekend at home with Tina, and friends, and we hung up hammocks in our backyard, and there was sunshine. Yay!
So I showed up at church a few minutes early. The congregation was smaller than last week because the winter-long, county-wide Hypothermia Shelter Program had ended, and so it was no longer the case that a large percentage of area homeless folks were all in the same place first thing Sunday morning, with relative ease of transportation to church. Pastor Pat and the New Hope regulars were a little sad about that, but Pat greeted me warmly and we chatted a bit before the service, as sundry Common Table folk (and a few straggling New Hope regulars) came in from the chilly sunshine.
Pat began the service with announcements, and with prayer for Brother Kenny, who is going through some major struggles right now. I've only met Kenny a couple of times, but I like him, and I can see that he's a man who has given himself to God. I was sad and moved to hear of his struggles.
Then we moved to a time of worship through music, with CT's Jen and Jackie, along with Pastor Pat's granddaughter, leading the worship music. I was really enjoying singing and worshiping with this blended, motley group of Jesus-followers, but then something happened that moved me to astonished tears.
A little girl (maybe 7 or 8?), there with her Mom, started dancing up front. I have to believe that she had at least some training in ballet or the like, because she was very graceful most of the time, but she occasionally slipped and stumbled due to the low friction of her socks on the tile floor. Whenever she fell, her Mom would quietly urge her to sit down before she hurt herself, but the little girl would protest, and Mom would relent, and the girl would keep dancing. She was beautiful.
The topic of the service was Jesus' saying, "I am the Light of the world", and the worship songs had lyrics like, "we want to see God". And all I could think was, "and there is God, right there: in the joy and grace of that little girl, in our songs of praise, in this time of worship where she, and the musicians, and we incompetent yet enthusiastic singers, and the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all sharing together in the joy of each other's presence."
It brought to mind one of those Greek vocabulary words that too often turn up in otherwise agreeable blog posts about church: perichoresis. Like most $20 words in other languages that have been invested with Theological Significance, it's tough to translate, but it was one of the early-ish concepts that were employed to help understand the Trinity. The idea, as I may or may not grok it, is that it describes the Trinity in terms of images like intimacy, sharing, loving relationship, and even dance: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally engaged with each other in an ever-moving yet ever-loving set of relationships - like dancing. And, in Jesus, God invites us to participate in that dance - in that moving, loving web of relationships - too.
Then we read the day's scripture together, and Pat began to preach. She was passionate, and funny, and challenging, and throughout her sermon, as she contrasted the secretive darkness we tend to prefer with the light that comes through relationship with Jesus, she kept on using images that evoked, for me, this concept of perichoresis. Images of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit inviting us out of our dark corners into the light, into relationship with Jesus, and God, and each other, to be participants in God's dance of light and love. By the end of the service, I felt like I'd gained a new perspective on this Trinitarian dance that I'd never seen before.
Of course, not everything Pat said sat well with me. She made a couple of claims that I found myself mentally railing against. But as The Sage mentioned as we chatted in the parking lot after the service, nobody gets everything right. Certainly not us. And I feel like there are HUGE gifts to be received (or rejected) depending on whether we can extend grace to our sisters and brothers to be wrong about things - even if those things happen to be peeves of ours. Because, quite frankly, the fact that we're peeved is no guarantee that we're not the ones who are wrong.
And in the words of a Tweet I saw from the conference I missed this weekend, where Catholics and Protestants were coming together in a new context, "we [the Church] are bound together by THE CROSS OF JESUS CHRIST". That galvanized me. Damn right, we are. And I hope to God that we can summon up the grace to overlook the differences that, compared to that cross, are nothing.
And if we can, we just might get to see some dancing that will take our breath away. Heck, we might even get to join the dance ourselves.
So I showed up at church a few minutes early. The congregation was smaller than last week because the winter-long, county-wide Hypothermia Shelter Program had ended, and so it was no longer the case that a large percentage of area homeless folks were all in the same place first thing Sunday morning, with relative ease of transportation to church. Pastor Pat and the New Hope regulars were a little sad about that, but Pat greeted me warmly and we chatted a bit before the service, as sundry Common Table folk (and a few straggling New Hope regulars) came in from the chilly sunshine.
Pat began the service with announcements, and with prayer for Brother Kenny, who is going through some major struggles right now. I've only met Kenny a couple of times, but I like him, and I can see that he's a man who has given himself to God. I was sad and moved to hear of his struggles.
Then we moved to a time of worship through music, with CT's Jen and Jackie, along with Pastor Pat's granddaughter, leading the worship music. I was really enjoying singing and worshiping with this blended, motley group of Jesus-followers, but then something happened that moved me to astonished tears.
A little girl (maybe 7 or 8?), there with her Mom, started dancing up front. I have to believe that she had at least some training in ballet or the like, because she was very graceful most of the time, but she occasionally slipped and stumbled due to the low friction of her socks on the tile floor. Whenever she fell, her Mom would quietly urge her to sit down before she hurt herself, but the little girl would protest, and Mom would relent, and the girl would keep dancing. She was beautiful.
The topic of the service was Jesus' saying, "I am the Light of the world", and the worship songs had lyrics like, "we want to see God". And all I could think was, "and there is God, right there: in the joy and grace of that little girl, in our songs of praise, in this time of worship where she, and the musicians, and we incompetent yet enthusiastic singers, and the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all sharing together in the joy of each other's presence."
It brought to mind one of those Greek vocabulary words that too often turn up in otherwise agreeable blog posts about church: perichoresis. Like most $20 words in other languages that have been invested with Theological Significance, it's tough to translate, but it was one of the early-ish concepts that were employed to help understand the Trinity. The idea, as I may or may not grok it, is that it describes the Trinity in terms of images like intimacy, sharing, loving relationship, and even dance: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally engaged with each other in an ever-moving yet ever-loving set of relationships - like dancing. And, in Jesus, God invites us to participate in that dance - in that moving, loving web of relationships - too.
Then we read the day's scripture together, and Pat began to preach. She was passionate, and funny, and challenging, and throughout her sermon, as she contrasted the secretive darkness we tend to prefer with the light that comes through relationship with Jesus, she kept on using images that evoked, for me, this concept of perichoresis. Images of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit inviting us out of our dark corners into the light, into relationship with Jesus, and God, and each other, to be participants in God's dance of light and love. By the end of the service, I felt like I'd gained a new perspective on this Trinitarian dance that I'd never seen before.
Of course, not everything Pat said sat well with me. She made a couple of claims that I found myself mentally railing against. But as The Sage mentioned as we chatted in the parking lot after the service, nobody gets everything right. Certainly not us. And I feel like there are HUGE gifts to be received (or rejected) depending on whether we can extend grace to our sisters and brothers to be wrong about things - even if those things happen to be peeves of ours. Because, quite frankly, the fact that we're peeved is no guarantee that we're not the ones who are wrong.
And in the words of a Tweet I saw from the conference I missed this weekend, where Catholics and Protestants were coming together in a new context, "we [the Church] are bound together by THE CROSS OF JESUS CHRIST". That galvanized me. Damn right, we are. And I hope to God that we can summon up the grace to overlook the differences that, compared to that cross, are nothing.
And if we can, we just might get to see some dancing that will take our breath away. Heck, we might even get to join the dance ourselves.
posted by Mike Croghan at
10:47 PM
1 Comments:
This is beautiful, Mike. Thanks for writing.
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