When Jesus stands up in the synagogue to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, he lets the community know that the status quo has come to an end, that a new day is dawning, that the very thing for which generations of God’s people had prayed had finally come to pass. It is my belief that when we gather as followers of Jesus Christ, we do so in the same spirit. Whether our communities gather in storefronts, or campus chapels, or basements, or school gyms, or parks, or neogothic structures, we proclaim that a new day is dawning not just for the world at large, but for the community within which we gather. Each time we gather, we repeat the words of John’s Revelation: See, I am making all things new. The deepest prayers of a community—healing from trauma, freedom from addiction, reconciliation from years of structural racism, hope in the middle of economic strain, deep relationships in a culture of increasing isolation—are all caught up in the prayers and witness of the local church, if we are paying attention and are willing to get dirty. We declare that there is healing, there is freedom, there is reconciliation, there is hope, there is community. In Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, and Prayer, Rowan Williams raises and then answers a question about the location of a Christian community vis-à-vis suffering and chaos. He writes:
If we ask the question, “Where might you expect to find the baptized?” one answer is, “In the neighborhood of chaos.” It means you might expect to find Christian people near to those places where humanity is most at risk, where humanity is most disordered, disfigured and needy. Christians will be found in the neighborhood of Jesus—but Jesus is found in the neighborhood of human confusion and suffering, defenselessly alongside those in need. If being baptized is being led to where Jesus is, then being baptized is being led towards the chaos and the neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its own destiny. (Williams, Being Christian, 4–5)
The Church stands in a paradox—at the meeting and overlap of two ages—one that is passing away and another that is on the rise. We stand with Jesus and Mary, announcing the arrival of the promise of God even as we wait on its fullness. It is our work to take our place in the messiest places in our communities, where abuse and neglect erode human relationships, where addiction and violence corrode human dignity, where poverty and oppression stifle the human spirit, and to declare—by word and example—the Good News of God in Christ. Public liturgy in that context can’t always be staid and safe. The joy of our prayers is mingled with the grief of human suffering, our Alleluias cohabitate with groaning and weeping.
But we stand anyway, because God’s Spirit is here, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water; stand by at the river bank to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was turned into a snake. Say to him, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you to say, ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness.’ ”
(Exod. 7:14–16a)
SEWANEE, TENNESSEE, HAS BEEN HOME to me ever since I first entered the “domain” as a prospective student searching for an Episcopal seminary where I could complete my Anglican year. Years later, when the then dean asked me to return to be a part of a conversation on liturgical renewal, I jumped at the opportunity. At the point, I had served two congregations—one in Kansas City, Missouri; the other in Minneapolis, Minnesota—both of whom sought to renew themselves through a deeper engagement with liturgy. Though the two congregations represent two different contexts and histories, they were united in this reality: they were hungry for renewal, but woefully unaware of what renewal would require of community.
The first congregation—a large, established, traditional congregation in an affluent neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri—was doing “well.” They had a large budget, multiple clergy and lay staff members, and an average Sunday attendance in the mid- to high two hundreds. The leadership of church had developed the foresight to see a few years down the line and recognize that unless they did something different, they were about to experience a sharp decline. I was happy to come alongside them as an associate priest, to learn from and grow with them, and together we engaged in some innovative work around the margins of the community—creating small groups for artists with a worship- and community-building component. We also experimented with raising up a seeker community defined by question-asking that led to seeking the wisdom of the broader community. The system, like all systems, struggled when it came to substantial innovation at the heart of the community.
The second congregation—a small, scrappy congregation in Minneapolis—wasn’t always so small. In living memory, the pews were full and future was bright. The decline that brought the church to the place it currently found itself was swift. As the new rector of the congregation, I had conversations with many former members, and the message I got was that many of them fled the advance of liberal theology, or communal in-fighting, or had problems with my predecessor being the first female rector in the parish’s history. As the first black, openly gay rector in the parish’s history, I was clear many of them would not be coming back. For the ones who remained, they coalesced around the importance of liturgy in their communal life. By the time I arrived, the church was mainly a Sunday parish with little communal, missional, or liturgical life outside of Sunday mornings.
After observing for a few months, listening to where the Holy Spirit was alive in the community, I discovered that people were incredibly interested in liturgy and yet the worship life of the community felt stagnant. After a bit more inquiry, I located the problem—the community had engaged in a lot of revision around liturgy—swapping out different prayers and experimenting with different ways of using space—without deep, substantive formation in the prayer book tradition. The questions often asked by people involved with creating worship in the community were “what did you like” or “what didn’t you like.” It was a step of desperation, the result of an earnest desire to experience revival and renewal.
What I have learned from a few years of parish leadership is this: the revival and renewal many faith communities seek will require engaging the complex feelings that come with discomfort and dislocation. I’ve also learned that people seldomly volunteer to be uncomfortable. Despite the fact that discomfort is at the heart of the Christian story (“take up your cross and follow” sure isn’t an invitation to an all-inclusive spa), Western Christianity’s centuries-long alliance with power has managed to iron out our collective capacity for discomfort for the sake of God’s mission. In a time when Western Christianity is being asked to summon up the skills, resources, and capacity to engage this missional age for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are finding it hard to show up and demonstrate resilience. I wonder how much of this is enshrined in the worship life of many faith communities. If the questions about the community’s worship come down to what we “like,” it is clear that we aren’t terribly interested in transformation and renewal. It might be that we are more interested in the status quo than we are ready to