The capacity for astonishment: Why worship still matters to me

On a recent vacation, Rachel and I spent Sunday morning ferrying family to the nearby airport in our rented van. We were glad to do it.

As the morning wore on, it sunk in what I was missing.

I missed being at church.

When I skip Sunday worship, something goes cattywampus with my week. I begin to lose my place in time.

James Taylor’s song “Bartender’s Blues” expresses a cornerstone of my ecclesiology. “I need four walls around me to hold my life, to keep me from going astray,” his chorus begins. “And a honkytonk angel to hold me tight, to keep me from slipping away.” The church provides sanctuary within her figurative walls. She is the honkytonk angel whose descant is my homing beacon.

It’s not that churchgoing makes me spiritual. I’m mindful of those words attributed to Billy Sunday about how going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

But worship affords liminal space in which to reacquaint myself with my deepest, truest self, the me from whom I become estranged in the machinery of weekly living.

Worship is a discipline that draws me out of myself into a wider, scarier world, a world at war with itself, gassing, gasping, aghast and yearning for colors — I am taking Bonhoeffer slightly out of context — “yearning for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, trembling with anger at despotism and petty humiliation.”

That world.

I follow the prayers for the sick. How can I stand in the breach with these neighbors? I count my blessings. I ponder shortcomings in self and society and my own complicity with broken systems (including the institutional church) that are polluted with all the ‘isms’ that malign and divide. I see the world that is and get a glimpse of the world that could (should?) be, and I struggle with those terrible degrees of separation.

Worship is the rote singing, sitting, standing, pausing, passing the peace, listening, and the less-expected exhilaration of being gently, sweetly whelmed by awe and wonder.

This wasn’t always the case for me.

I grew from being a prisoner of the Sunday worship hour to requiring it.

As a kid, being subjected to sermons I didn’t have the patience to understand was an exquisite bore. While I always enjoyed singing, listening to the off-key foghorns around me made me laugh and wince in equal measure. I liked daydreaming the hour away and still find such untethered dawdling a phenomenon of discovery. I’d doze sitting between my parents who seemed small compared to the enormity of the hour.

These were the moments I first became aware there was something bigger in life than that which one easily sees — my dad’s unexpected blinking away tears, my mother’s speechless respect for what I’ve since learned to call mystery.

My biggest preoccupation in worship as a kid was watching for the crows who often descended in great flocks in the side yard of the sanctuary. Our small flock of congregants would startle these ominous birds with Mrs. Soulé’s organ blast and the rumbling to our feet for the singing of the hymn. These great birds scattered into the sky, wings flapping madly, slicing the sun, shadows dappling the faces of the unnoticing congregation intently honking out the song.

To a child, these were otherworldly scenes.

This now-grown man finds that worship is, with or without the visitation of crows, as essential for life as is air.

And I am keenly aware that for some people “Church” is a bad word.

I don’t disagree.

Much harm has been done to the world in the name of religion. Fundamentalists and nationalists of every ilk have weaponized holy writ to prosper whatever malignancy they wish to spread.

Many of my non-churched, post-churched, and de-churched friends hold no animosity towards organized religion, they just find it completely irrelevant. Religion is not among their comforts, and they aspire for better things on Sunday mornings.

I admire them and enjoy being in conversation with them about their quest. We have a lot in common and much to learn from each other.

In the meantime, I continue to set my inner clock to the chimes that mark the call to worship. My friends who find their way into temples, mosques, and other houses of worship know what I’m trying to say. Every sanctuary is holy ground, or could be, which is why Barbara Brown Taylor preaches barefooted. We make room for fellow pilgrims. We sing a lyric that stirs hope or sharpens concern. We hear a story that transports us to another dimension.

I’m always looking for a sign, a word, a flicker of light, a flock of birds.

And each week I’m reminded who I am.

And whose.