State Occasions

I'm now in the throes of Passiontide (a/k/a Holy Week) at Grace Episcopal Church. I'm furiously finalizing bulletins, prayer lists and sermons ... Oh my! I don't know what it is about Christmas and Easter but I find them to be a homiletic nightmare. It goes beyond the whole writer's block of the blank page staring at me on my laptop. It's the struggle with what to say.

For the 2.75 people who read my blog ... rounding up to the nearest 3 ... you may find it odd that words fail me on "state occasions." I guess I find difficult is that Christmas and Easter are days when lots of people show up for lots of different reasons and I'm not sure how to connect with all the differing expectations in the room.

It's one thing to preach on a Sunday to Sunday basis with our members who faithfully attend worship. I have a relationship with them. They know something about me and I know something about them. But on Christmas and Easter, there are a significant number of visitors whom I do not know. Some of these visitors are seeking a Christian community and checking us out to see what kind of message gets preached and lived in our context. Some come because it's "what you do on Easter." It would be nice to see these folks regularly but that's something they need to decide - I'm not there to judge them and I do want them to feel welcome. Some are there because they are visiting relatives. It's all kind of a spiritual stew and it intimidates me.

I do take this to Christ in prayer and faithfully follow with study and exegesis. But even so, the blank page stares at me. I take some consolation in reading other preacher's Easter sermons, especially sensing they too struggle with this. A few of these sermons are good ... many, not so much. I take consolation I'm not alone.

Come Holy Spirit!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming ...

It does seem like the first full week of the Easter season is like going back to our regularly scheduled programming, doesn't it? For those of us who are highly involved in the church, whether lay or ordained, Holy Week seems to put us in a form of "suspended animation" where the rhythm of our lives is disrupted - even if only for a brief intense few days.

But now we're back. Back to the regular routine of school and work, back to household chores (and boy did that laundry pile get out of control last week!), back to writing papers to finish up that pesky M.Div. so I can get ordained.

St. Paul says, "So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away– look, what is new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5.17). But what happens when Easter feels like a resurrection back to the same life rather than something totally different?

For me, this is the trap of looking for some miraculous mountaintop or lightening bolt kind of experience to affirm my faith in Christ. I don't know of a time when I wasn't a Christian. Sure, I've had conversions (note that's plural!) along my journey, but the vast majority of the time, my call is to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

I'll admit, finding God's presence in the pile of dirty laundry is a challenge; however, I learned a lot from an obscure monk named Brother Lawrence. In a little book entitled, The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence was interviewed by Joseph de Beaufort, a counsel to the Archbishop of Paris. These conversations were recorded and published in this small book in 1691 (you can print a copy from the link above).

Brother Lawrence's aim was to live a life in constant conversation with God and that God's presence is in and through all things - even the most mundane tasks. Lawrence is my kind of guy - he really didn't like being assigned to work in the kitchen (cooking's not my gift either). But by setting his heart on doing everything for God, even the tasks he didn't like became a joy instead of a burden.

So I'm looking for God in the laundry room. I've no doubt God is there.