I walk in thinking, “was this place always this small?” I know I’ve grown; it’s been at least a decade if not more since I’ve been here, but it still feels very small….like when you go back to your elementary school.
I am acutely aware that I am different. Not just older, but changed. It is nothing like seeing something that has not changed to remind you of how much you have, or vice versa. I am also aware that I am not dressed for this occasion. The dress code has not changed either.
Although the place looks smaller, the people are the same…older, but the same. Ushers in white, still in the same stations as when I was eight. Choir members in the same spots in the choir box, different outfits, still matching, singing the same hymns, reciting the same chants.
Pews still covered in mahogany crush velvet, the Commandments on the wall, the Communion table in the same spot, the pulpit with the podium covered with that material with the double crosses on it. More than that, it is still a place where only the few in-crowd are allowed to walk. Not just anyone can walk up there. The pastor in his robe, minister so and so, etc.
People say that familiarity, sameness is comforting…yet it feels odd, to me, that a church feels so the same. Being grafted into the Way, the Truth, and the Life should produce growth, right? Fig trees, without figs…I think.
The service, still three hours long….ushers in white, mothers in their Sunday hats, deacons in vests and wingtips. Language and gestures related to Sunday mornings. Songs sung. Scriptures read while standing. Prayers drawn out with the requisite three, “Lord, Gods” and five “Amens”. Form intact.
“Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth ” (2 Timothy 3:5-6, KJV).
The warning rings in my ears…do we focus more on the form than the function of Sunday morning service? Do we come simply to present a form of godliness? To repent from last week, particularly Saturday night’s shenanigans? To feel okay when we ask God, again, for that new job, car, spouse, promotion, house, fill-in-the-blank? Because we’ve been doing it since vacation Bible school, or when we took the ‘right hand of fellowship’ or because we promised Nana as she passed on? To check it off our ‘to do list’?Is this why we do what we do on Sunday mornings? Do we go for form or function?
