I didn’t go to church this week. I ended up worshipping at the Church of the Holy Comforter, as my friend calls it, otherwise known as “accidentally sleeping in because you’ve had an exhausting week and got off work after midnight and forgot to set an alarm.” It was great.
And you know, I made it through the week just fine. I’m not here to tell you that there’s a mystical recharging of the spiritual batteries every week when you attend service and I’m not here to tell you that God, like a petty, jealous significant other, is going to be upset with you when you miss your designated time to hang out with God and God’s family. Prior planning and a high comfort level with your current circumstances are going to carry you through the regular late spring days on a gentle breeze. In many ways and in the most profound of senses, you’ll be okay if you miss church. Plenty of you have been doing it for years and you’re still doing well.
But I will tell you what I did miss. I missed the chance to make music for free with people I enjoy being around. I missed the opportunity to see people across generations who I like checking in with and who support me in everything I do and through any season of my life. I missed a typically thoughtful lesson on something I care deeply about, Christianity and its life in the world. I missed my weekly reset, the time I take to remind myself that I hope for something bigger and better than anything I can do or make to come into this world.
More than anything else, going to church every week grounds me. It keeps me tied to a world outside my job and my home and my pop culture intake. Twitter might update me with news around the nation and around the world, but that’s always something happening somewhere else. It’s news being told to me in 140 characters or less, a brevity that can typically only draw me in with complete honesty or sensationalism. And still, it’s a story that I read. But going to church is different. I meet people who have different walks in life than I do, different struggles, different victories, and different metrics for both. I meet people who share their stories, the minutiae of their daily lives, and it opens up places in my community for me to see and feel and hear and do. Being there with other people forces me to go outside of myself, which is key for me, a person whose inner monologue is more than enough to keep me company.
And there’s this thing that ties us all together, though each person sees it to a different degree. We all agreed to be here to follow, as best we can, the teachings of a man who died because he was trying to overthrow the damaging religious elite of his time, who told us to care for the poor and the orphans and the least of these, who told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, who flipped over tables in the face of a system that was separating people from their hope for better times. We all came here to be a part of a movement that is supposed to be this man’s body on the earth, now that he doesn’t have one here, to continue his good works for him. We’re supposed to be this wonderful thing, the greater fool who sits here investing in the earth and its people because we think it’ll be better down the line, that with help, we can choose to make the sacrifices that will make this place a good place for our children and our children’s children to live. There is strength and desperate hopefulness implied in what we choose to believe and somewhere in our Sunday, we all catch a glimpse of that, no matter how tiny the sliver of light is for any given person.
Or that’s what it should be, anyway. I know that church isn’t that for most people. I know that church isn’t always that for anybody. I know that this world can drag us down and make us forget what could be driving us. I know that people can be just the worst thing that ever existed and I know they can break your heart or, even better, slowly wear it down until you don’t know what this shriveled fig is in your chest, but you’re certain you just misplaced your real heart somewhere else. I know that people can ruin lives. I know that churches, built of people, have ruined lives. I hate all of that with a fury fueled by a well of deep sadness about our brokenness. The world is a rough place with injuries that aren’t going to be healed with WWJD bandaids. If the church is going to be any kind of useful, we have to be better than that.
I just saw Tomorrowland and I’m not going to spoil any of the plot, but at one point, one of the characters is describing what could be and why we find certain things so appealing. It’s because it’s “a future that expects nothing from you.” Oh, let’s be better than that. Let’s allow some expectations to be placed upon us and let’s meet them. Let’s work. Let’s grow the goodness to be found in the world and stifle out the bad. Let’s be better.
I’ll set my alarm on Sunday.
