Church Going

“CHURCH GOING
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new—
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
“Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep…”

— Philip Larkin, 1955

(Read the whole poem here)

Rain and sheep? Maybe in the Irish countryside. Here in metro Boston they turn churches into banks (temples to capitalism, how fitting)—or housing. The church I served when I was first ordained is condos now. I try to avoid driving down that street when I’m back in town.

Lots of churches in these parts are are homes now. I can name half a dozen without trying, so there must be many more. It’s no wonder, with housing at a premium and real estate in short supply. Everyone needs housing (thus the Friday Café)… but church? who needs church?

And what do they need it for?

On opening day at the Friday Café, a man who stays at our Shelter is the first to arrive. The "café" is nothing fancy: a church hall with some round tables and chairs, an embarrassingly modest spread of refreshments, and a handful of kindly volunteers who welcome him and try to help him feel at home. There’s no TV, no computer—just some art materials and a couple of board games. Still he ends ups staying all day, sitting quietly at a table where guests and volunteers are chatting.

One of the few times he speaks is in response to an invitation to stay for church at 4:00. “I haven’t been to church since I was 16,” he says. He breaks his perfect record, though, and stays; then surprises himself by crying through the whole service. Later he tells me that he'd wanted to join in the community reflections on the teaching the kingdom of God is among you, but was too choked up to get the words out. Then he floors me by telling me what he had wanted to share: a connection that had come to him between that teaching and the story of Lazarus at the rich man’s gate. Lazarus! at the rich man’s gate! I know.

Forty or fifty years since he’s been inside a church, and he’s doing exegesis in his head like a seasoned preacher. What’s been going on with him all this time? And why did he stay away from church so long, if that’s the way he thinks?

I’m sure he had his reasons.

But now here he is in our church hall, choking back tears.

Who needs church?

And what do they need it for?

Maybe Philip Larkin was right, 60 years ago, that church in its old form was “going,” that church-going itself was on the way out. But he was wrong that there’s “nothing going on” in church any more. 

We Are Alive

View fullsize

Yesterday was All-Saints/Souls Day, one of the most beautiful Sundays of the liturgical calendar, made especially poignant when a loved one’s departure is so fresh that their name is lifted up among the people. So it was for me yesterday at my sweet little congregation, Hope Central in Jamaica Plain, MA. Sitting in the pew as I watched snow falling softly outside, I was reminded that there are few more powerful forces on earth than the Church when it is actively mediating the portal between heaven and earth, connecting this life to the next. Timeless liturgy, music and scripture each function as shimmering touchstones, as emotional photographs, as cords that tether, as a collective inheritance that absolutely destroys the perils of mortality by transcending it altogether.

These feelings seized me yesterday during the soaring hymn, “For All the Saints." The familiar music instantly transported me to my father’s death, which took place in a hushed hospice room in the mountains of South Carolina a few years ago. I was bedside for three days, and in the end, all the world was reduced to the vigil of waiting. Despite my deep faith in the hereafter, I remember feeling a stab of such desperate sorrow that my dad had to go on alone, to walk towards what the poet Mary Oliver has called “the cottage of darkness.”

I remember counting the ragged breaths of my father, broken up by his occasional murmuring. In the last moments, he began to speak casually to his own father and mother, long dead, as if they were in the room. My mom, sitting across from me, said simply, “The spirit world is getting closer.” *

At that moment, I felt we were approaching the very edge of heaven itself, the veil parting. Dad murmured again, and the nurse sitting vigil with us remarked quietly: “It’s always this way. Near the end, the dying almost always see loved ones who have passed on--it is amazing how clear this is to them. I’ve seen it a million times: there’s always a crowd at the end.”

With her words, I felt something warm and clear come into the room: a presence of peace. At death, our loved ones are not extinguished, nor are they abandoned. They are surrounded by so great a crowd, as are we, always.

Flower Shop Church

Last week the Congregational Church of West Medford, UCC, sold its 110-year-old building and moved into a flower shop down the road. Talk about a stripping away! Here is the latest beautiful reflection from the pastor about what they're all living through. Having been through the closing process with a church, I know how much courage and grace has gone into this decision. And I love how open Pastor Wendy is to promise of resurrection even amid the losing and the letting go. This is what the church needs—not a new plan for outreach, not more praise music, but a radical heart for our changing world, and the willingness to meet it where it is. God be with you, Sanctuary, UCC. May you put down new roots and bloom in your flower shop home.